My book launch last night went very well.
It was held in the Oxfam Bookshop in Swansea. They like to encourage writers, artists and crafts people, and hosted my first book launch last year too. Several of the people who came to the launch, bought books before and afterwards, so it was mutually beneficial.
I kept it simple. We had orange juice with lemonade, tea and coffee, and my daughter made cookies. I thanked everyone for coming and spoke for fifteen minutes or so, and introduced my illustrator Carrie Francis, who talked about her illustrations. Then we took the money and signed the books. Easy!
Easy when you know how (I learned lessons from the first time) and when you’re not nervous about standing up in front of people. Actually, I was a bit nervous. Although I used to give seminars, talks and training before I had my stroke, talking is an effort now and I’m a bit self conscious.
But the talk went well. I recapped on how this whole local history thing started, and my first book Alina, The White Lady of Oystermouth (see here). The success of that book led to the writing of Broken Reed: The Lords of Gower and King John. Then I told them the story of the book, and how amazing it is (see here).
Carrie explained how much research she did for each of the illustrations. She really takes her work seriously, and it’s seriously good. The illustrations lift the books to a whole new level. You can see the first one in last Wednesday’s post here.
Loads of people came and I sold a good number of books. So a good night all round!