Burgess Hill Girls - School Visit

Last week, Ellie and I attended Burgess Hill Girls for an afternoon of The Songs You’ve Never Heard talks and workshops centred around anti-bullying and female empowerment.

We started with a careers talk in the library to a group of around 20 girls who were all interested in writing and music. It was so lovely to chat to them about the process of publishing a musical book and they asked us brilliant questions!

After this session, we took a workshop with the whole of Year 9, splitting them into lyric games with Ellie and a drama task with me. It was great to see everyone performing as Meg and Caspar, and we finished up on a big group singalong of And What? - the girls picked up the song amazingly and they even had some synchronised dance moves!

We ended the day with an assembly in front of Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11 where we gave a talk about our creative work as women in the music industry. Burgess Hill wanted us to share the message of women empowering each other and I hope we were able to bring some inspiration with our real life stories and experiences.

The visit was particularly special because we were also joined by a few sixth formers who were in our very first reading group of Songs way back in 2019! Thank you Burgess Hills for having us and for being a huge support on our journey to publication! And a huge thank you for also sharing our visit with Sussex Press!

YALC 2022

Last weekend, Ellie and I went to YALC at Olympia as part of the Sweet Cherry stall - this was my fourth YALC attendance but my very first as an author and it was so amazing to experience the weekend from the other side!

On the Friday, Ellie and I hosted a workshop on creating our music-themed book where we had group discussions about favourite songs, a Q&A discussion, live song performances and a song title writing competition. We had so many AMAZING song title suggestions including “VIP(squared)”, “Sacramento Moonlight”, “She’s Boring And In Love”, “Mega Pint Of Slay” and “Witchcraft On The Prairie”. I loved how creative everyone was and it was so much fun to meet fellow music lovers and writers!

It was so much fun being on the Sweet Cherry stall for the rest of the weekend - we met so many cool, interesting people (including some Insta friends!), signed lots of books and asked everyone passing by to add their current favourite song to our Ultimate YALC Playlist. People are LIFE AND DEATH about their song choices and I absolutely love it! My friend Katie was also around to help, we have YALC-ed together for the last few years so it was really nice to share the experience together on the stand!

On the Saturday I also got the opportunity to sing live in between author panels and throughout the day I got up and spontaneously performed around 5 songs from The Songs You’ve Never Heard. It was INCREDIBLY NERVEWRACKING, but I am so glad I did it because so many people commented how live music lifted the day! Thank you all for being so lovely and supportive! I hope you enjoyed hearing the songs (and I hope the authors weren’t too annoyed at me delayed their panels hahaha)…

By the Sunday we had SOLD OUT of Songs which was absolutely incredible and completely exceeded all our expectations! There was also only one copy left at the Waterstones stand (and can I just say that having our book ON DISPLAY AT WATERSTONES was pretty bloody cool). We so appreciate the support of every single person who bought a copy and we really hope you enjoy the story!

The other amazing thing about the weekend was getting to meet so many of my favourite authors! I saw Alice Oseman in the green room and nearly had a heart attack… I also met Beth Reekles, Simon James Green and Dean Atta backstage who were all absolutely lovely. At official signings I got to meet Juno Dawson and Holly Bourne who held my copy of the book up to me and told me “No one can take this away from you”. When I say I had A MOMENT, I am not even kidding…

I also got to briefly meet the literary queen that is Jacqueline Wilson and hear her panel talk which was just simply inspirational! I asked everyone I met if they would sign my copy of Songs and I now have a beautiful front page filled with all my favourite people. I shall treasure this until the day I die!

By Sunday I was absolutely exhausted but my heart was absolutely full! What an amazing weekend that I shall never forget for as long as I live. Here’s to doing it all over again next year! :D