I’m a little late writing this up, but a couple of weekends ago I drove down to Nottingham to take part in my first proper event as an author.
It was organised by a fellow Unbound author and saw a whole group of us take over the city’s Waterstones for a day of panel discussions, readings and book chat.
We even managed to get a mention in the i Paper as part of Bookshop Day!
While I’ve previously been along to talk to a book group on an author visit, this was my first time speaking in front of an audience of strangers.
The day’s panels began with a focus on debut authors, before moving on the genre fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction and comedy writing. All the sessions were genuinely interesting and the non-fiction panel in particular was incredibly varied, with John-Michael O’Sullivan doing a great job as moderator. It just goes to show how unique Unbound are as a publisher, who are willing to take on books on everything from death festivals to fashion icons to lidos.
I took part in the genre panel, along with fellow writers Eamonn Griffin (event organiser extraordinaire), Joshua Winning, Alys Earl, Eli Allison and Miles Hudson. We discussed our respective genres and where they might go in the future (obviously that gave me an opportunity to get political when taking about dystopian fiction #sorrynotsorry), as well as writing and research and how we came to write genre fiction.
Over the last year or so I’ve spent a lot of time talking to other Unbounders on social media, so it was lovely to finally meet some of them in real life. We made a weekend of it, heading down to Nottingham the day before to go out for a meal and drinks, which was a lot of fun.
Writing can be a lonely business, so having people around who understand and are happy to talk about the random intricacies of your story and writing life is a wonderful thing.
Hopefully we’ll be able to do it all again soon, in another town!