10 Jun The Box of Demons is open!
The Box of Demons is out.
It came out last Thursday, which was a lovely day. I got so many nice messages on Facebook and Twitter, and it’s been great to have independent bookshops tweeting me their photos of the display pack taking pride of place on counters up and down the country. I even had one store, A Festival of Books in Chipping Campden, send me a picture of their empty display – it had sold out in three days!
@dwhelanwriter @chrisriddell50 @katereppanmac all of my demons have escaped from #campden…..Sold out in three days pic.twitter.com/QbvDp54ONW
— Emily Dunn (@afestivalofbook) June 10, 2015
On Saturday I had my first event, at my local independent bookstore, Pickled Pepper Books, as part of Crouch End Festival. But before I could get down to talking about and reading from the book I had judging to do.
Steve from Pickled Pepper had asked me to help judge a creative writing competition for local schools, based on the theme of ‘Seasons’. It was hard work: we had to pick one winner and two runners up for each of the age groups, from year one up to year eight, across seven or eight schools. The standard was really high, and there was some excellent work that had to go unrecognised because there was too much good stuff. As I was reading them, I had to take a break to text my friend James, who is a teacher, to ask him how he managed it. I only had to judge the students’ work for half a day – he has to do it every day!
It was tough, but we finally picked our winners, and then took to the festival stage to announce them. Here’s Steve and I with some of the authors of tomorrow!
Steve from Pickled Pepper and I, with some of the winners
About an hour later, and it was time to take the stage at Pickled Pepper for my first public reading. Luckily they were a lovely audience, and I think we had a fair few future authors in attendance there as well: they kept coming up with some great ideas – including a fiendish scheme which involved travelling back in time to make sure there were no humans in Crouch End! It was nice to meet the audience afterwards as well. Even though Chris Riddell and I signed all the copies of the book back in May, everyone who bought a book wanted a dedication so it gave me a chance to chat – which brought even more great story ideas. What a creative lot the customers of Pickled Pepper are!
It was a really fun way to start the public bit of authoring, and if they’re all like that I’m going to be fine. I have a few libraries and schools to do next. I can’t wait!
Some pictures from the event at Pickled Pepper
Daniel Whelan | Three libraries. Three schools. One Author.
Posted at 10:00h, 22 September[…] such as this is still very new – until today I’d only road-tested it at my event at Pickled Pepper Books ten days ago – and it’s still developing. There’s a section in it where I talk about how real […]