Handwritten Girl Tour

As I’m based in Northern Ireland, it’s not always possible to attend every literary meet up that is organised. So one day, I took some time and contacted a few people and the Handwritten Girl Tour was planned.

The Handwritten Girl Tour was the opportunity to have an adventure. To go to London and to meet the people that have made my book reviewing experience so much fun and those who have provided me with fabulous books and introduced me to some marvellous authors. I wanted to thank them in person for helping me on my journey.

I travelled off to London and started tweeting about my adventure including the hashtag #HWGTour much to everyone’s bemusement. My first stop on the tour was at Headline, where I metFrances Gough, Elaine Egan, Georgina Moore and Vicky Palmer. It was wonderful to meet those ladies after tea, a lot of gossiping, brainstorming and a photograph, I was on my way to next appointment.

Next up was Random House and there I met Najma Finlay who brought me tea and a copy of the eagerly anticipated debut of ‘A Song For Issy Bradley’ (which has a beautiful cover by the way). We chatted and captured a selfie before I went on to my next stop of the adventure at Pan MacMillan, to meet Sam Eades, who recently moved there from Headline.

I loved the Pan Mac offices, airy with a huge image of the cover of Emma Donoghue’s new book ‘Frog Music’ in the reception, I immediately warmed to the place as it’s meeting rooms were named after typefaces. Sam came to meet me, a fellow Jo Nesbo fan and we caught up about our love of books and we did a selfie before running on.

Day two of the tour started at Simon and Schuster where Alice Murphy brought in croissants and danishes for us to share with Sara Jade Virtue aka Bookminx. It was so lovely to meet these two, as I already kinda felt like I knew them through the power of Twitter. After chatting for a while, Alice then took me on a tour of the offices and I met Mel Four, the creator of the cover for Melissa Hill’s, most recent book ‘A Gift To Remember’. It was wonderful to see the creation in all it’s stunning glory.

Next up I called into the Penguin UK, where I met the lovely Katie Sheldrake, Joe Yule and Francesca Russell. Katie showed me around Penguin’s mammoth office before taking me up to the tenth floor to show me the pièce de résistance. The offices show a breathtaking view of London. On one side, you have The Shard and The Gherkin and on the other side, there is the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament.

After finishing at Penguin, I quickly bolted to my next appointment which was a meeting with two of my favourite authors Jane Fallon and Adele Parks. It was lovely to meet the ladies in the flesh. Over coffee and tea, we chatted about books, movies and the writing path.

Leaving the ladies to have their lunch, I then made my way towards Foyles (a huge bookshop in Leicester Square) for an event that was organised by Curtis Brown Creative.

The event was split into two parts. The first part was a Q&A with agents and publicists talking about writing and offering advice to budding writers. After a quick break, the second part started and this time, it was with authors. The author panel consisted of Nathan Filer, the most recent winner of Costa Coffee Book of the Year with his debut ‘The Shock of the Fall’, Adele Parks, Antonia Honeywell and Tom Rob Smith. This part of the event I particularly enjoyed, as the authors talked about their own writing journey’s, their thoughts on synopsis’s as well as tips. I started tweeting from this event, mentioning particular advice from the authors that I found useful and thought that it would help others. This seemed to be case as the tweets were retweeted and favourited.

My final stop on the Handwritten Girl tour was the Islington Design Centre, where Carole Matthews was appearing as part of The Chocolate Festival (which was bad for me, as I’ve given up chocolate for Lent). I was delighted to be able to meet her as I’m reading her new book at the moment called ‘A Place To Call Home’. At the event Carole read from ‘The Chocolate Lovers Club’ appropriate for the festival, whilst including some random chocolate facts before revealing that there would be a third book in the series called ‘The Chocolate Lovers Christmas’ set for release in 2015.

After signing my book and photograph, taken by the Lovely Kev, my adventure had come to an end.

Exhilarated that I had crammed so much in, I was genuinely sad when it was all over. Having met such a wonderful mixture of inspirational and creative people, I boarded my plane home with a head full of new ideas and already looking forward to Handwritten Girl Tour 2!

A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to meet me, it was greatly appreciated.