News / Journal - April - June

The last three months have been full of exciting times, starting with my trip down to the London Book Fair in April to discuss the first draft of ‘Little Miracles’ with editor and agent. Really pleased to see the Lovely poster for Pandora's Box while I was down there.

May brought the long awaited ‘publication day’, and the news that Sainsburys and WH Smiths travel and High Street would be stocking the book. The Launch Party went ahead as planned on the 10th May – and by some stroke of fortune we’d chosen the hottest day of the year so far (28 degrees) – perfect for having all the friends and family in the garden! My friend Val gave a reading from the book (chapter 30, if you’re interested!) which was much applauded, there was far too much food and the champagne and merriment flowed into the evening. All in all a truly magical day!
May also brought a lot of work my way promotion-wise, with newspaper, TV and radio interviews. But the excitement wasn’t over yet! On the 15th May I was delighted to receive the Joan Hessayon New Writers' Award at the Summer party held annually by the RNA at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. This was a great honour and it was another wonderful celebratory evening to remember.

By the beginning of June I was ready to get stuck into the edits for book two, ‘Little Miracles,’ discussed so many weeks before with agent and editor! Gulp! Lots of work there… but I’m really enjoying getting back into these characters after the long break.   I’ve also just handed in the synopsis for book three. At least I always knew what the theme for that would be; the first book is about Hope, the second book is about Faith – so naturally the third one has to be about Charity!

Part of the exciting thing about the first month after publication has been – as you might expect – getting feedback from people who’ve actually read the book. The reviews have been terrific, and it’s been such a boost. Being a newbie to website technology, it’s also been rather exciting for me to see – using the website statistics – exactly where in the world people are visiting my website from. Currently, most visitors to this site are from the UK as you might expect, but half as many again (and gaining) are from the US and people are looking in from countries world-wide, in some cases very far-flung places. It’s rather thrilling to think Pandora’s Box has travelled so far.

Now I have to get on with those edits before the next party on 1st July comes up – the Harper Collins author party at the very beautiful John Madejski gardens ( V and A museum). I’ll be posting up some pictures about that in due course…        

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