Its finally time for the SocialDistanceBookFest, where you can stay home while supporting authors and indie bookstores, and hopefully add a few new books to your TBR!
This is an all day event created by a dedicated group of bookworms from all corners of the internet. It includes 18 panels, more than 80 authors, virtual Fandom Meetups, virtual signing opportunities, and some amazing giveaways! Check out our website and social media linked below for all the details, and check out our bookshop.org page where you can order books from featured authors and support indie bookstores. 10% of proceeds will be donated to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s COVID-19 Fund. We hope you take advantage of everything the bookfest has to offer, and in case you miss any interesting panels, check out our playlist of all the panels and meetups, which will continue to be available for viewing
VERY Important, here's our Panel Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpQwex2MTjxk07WsYh1xlC8vSjJoYXCcs This is where you can click through to see all the panel, set reminders so you don't miss any and also watch any you did miss after the event is over, this will be here for you to enjoy whenever you want to...
And for all the latest updates, here's our links to social media, they'll have plenty going on during and after the event!
I have some very exciting news for you today... On 25th April I will be taking part in the Social Distance Book Festival!
So many of our favorite book and author events have been canceled due to COVID-19. To combat this while sticking to Social Distancing, and hopefully giving readers a reason to smile, we’re putting together an online book event. Seriously this team is working so hard and it just the BEST group of people!
The Social Distance Book Festival is an all-online event that will be taking place on April 25th, 2020. We will be running panels for different genres/areas of interest across several booktube channels throughout the day. We’re hoping to do a few fan events as well, though nothing has been finalized.
Thanks so Fabulous Book Fiend contributor Linda for attending this UK event on behalf of the blog!
On the 23rd of April 2019 (World Book Night), Waterstones, Harrogate hosted an event with renowned author Lucinda Riley, at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate. I was lucky enough to be one of the approximately 200 people who was able to buy a ticket and attend the event. As many of you will know, former actress Lucinda is the author of a whole host of novels, including the very popular Seven Sisters series.
At this event, she was interviewed by her son, Harry, presenter on a local radio station. We were treated to a really entertaining evening, where we learned about the origins of Lucinda’s forthcoming new novel, The Butterfly Room, as well as some of her background, including her writing habits. She certainly does an impressive amount of travelling to make sure the settings for her stories are correctly described. Thanks to Lucinda for making this a most enjoyable occasion and for patiently signing all those books, taking time to converse with her readers at the same time.
Since I have been back in Denver, my lovely guest reviewer AKA Linda AKA my mum AKA @highlandhamster on Twitter (go follow!) has been to a couple of book events on behalf of the blog. Also because book events are so fun and bookish people are the best!
Here's what happened when she went to the latest event, and Evening with Stephanie Butland at The Little Ripon Bookshop...
The Little Ripon Bookshop, an excellent independent bookshop, organised this event with Stephanie Butland, author of Lost for Words, published last year, and now The Curious Heart of Alisa Rae, published this month. After reading a couple of passages from the new book, Stephanie talked about various aspects of her writing, including researching her subject, choosing character names and, indeed, the title of the book, and choice of setting.
As dance plays a big role in The Curious Heart of Alisa Rae, there was even talk of a dance lesson with Anton du Beke. Finally, we were given some incite into her next book, due to be published in summer 2019. All in all, a fascinating evening.
You can click here to read our review of The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae!
So you may or may not know that this time last week I was at Book Con in NYC. A book convention, what could be better than that? I have wanted to go to this convention for years but usually it is during term time in the UK so there has been no question of me going, but this year was my year!
I'll be posting a video about it on my channel next week so keep an eye out for that, and of course a separate book haul will be going up as well because I got books, chapter samplers, ARCs, merch and TOTE BAGS! So many tote bags!
I wanted to give you a little run down of what I did on here as well though. I posted to my instagram stories and also posted pictures to my feed on there so this will look familiar to you if you're already following me on there (if you're not already following me on there, go ahead and do that now, I'm fabulous_book_fiend and I love my insta story button!)
I was staying across the water at Lincoln harbour, partly because once you get the ferry across the Hudson, its only a couple of blocks walk to the Javits Centre where Book Con is and partly because we've stayed there before and I LOVE the ferry, you get the best views!
One of the best parts about Book Con is obviously the other book lovers that you get to meet whilst you're there. I was lucky enough to meet to several people I already chat to on Instagram and BookTube and got chatting to a whole load of other people. Here are photos of me with Jess from Enchanted Fandom, Jena from Jena Brown Writes and Shelly from Book Lovers Coffee. I also got to hang out both days with Bethany from Beautifully Bookish Bethany on BookTube but we were always too tired to take any selfies!
The whole thing was really overwhelming to start off with because it is a huge space filled with so many people and there are publishers and book lovers and bookish merch everywhere. You stand in a lot of lines and wander through a lot of crowds but it is definitely worth it!
As well as other books I got signed, I got to meet Sarah Morgan and have her sign US copies of Holiday in the Hamptons-exciting!
I also went to two panels. One featuring Book Tubers Ariel Bissett, Abookutopia, Tashapolis, Emmabooks, A Clockwork Reader, and Brandonthebookaddict.
And another featuring poets Amanda Lovelace, Cyrus Parker, Trista Mateer, Iain S Thomas, Nikita Gill and KY Robinson.
There were photobooth opportunities and I got to go to a party run by penguin with books, prosecco and Ice Cream, as well as a romance party where Sarah Morgan had actual Cadbury's chocolate (Brits who live in the states will appreciate this!)
It was a great weekend and I will definitely try and make sure I get to go again next year!
Yes I've been to some more book events. I am definitely making the most of my time in the UK by attending as many book events and supporting as many of my favourite authors as I possibly can (so you can expect another one of these wrap ups before i go home!).
Last week was a whole week of book events for me, so lets do them in Chronological order.
Monday
Fabulous Night in with Fabulous Magazine.
C.L. Taylor, B.A. Paris, Adele Parks and Sarah Pinborough were interview by Claire Frost from Fabulous Magazine. We were treated to drinks from I Heart Wines on the 17th floor of the News Building, a fabulous venue for book events! Then the interview took place. Claire did a great job with the questions she asked because they sparked such awesome discussion between the authors themselves. You could tell that everyone on the stage was a massive book lover and so it was great just to hear everyone speak!
The authors talked about how they wrote the dark fiction that they do write, saying that they don;t really feel like they have to get into role before writing, its just the writing that comes naturally to them. They spoke about the different way that they draft their novels and how much they write in a year. Some of the authors take a matter of months over their novels, whereas others wrote theirs in a matter of weeks because of deadlines looming. All the authors spoke about their novels in a way that made them sound completely compelling and I definitely want to read the two that I haven't already read! Click here to read my review of The Fear by C.L. Taylor.
The evening was fabulous and my thanks to fabulous Magazine for hosting and to my friend Hayley for coming with me!
Tuesday
Tuesday saw the pre-launch of The Surface Breaks by Louise O'Neill. This is a feminist retelling of The Little Mermaid and everyone who has read it has raved about how awesome it is. Louise came out in full mermaid sequins ready to be interviewed by the wonderful Emma Gannon. They talked about the writing process behind the book, how Louise likes to take herself back to West Cork to write so that she has the time and space to do so.
They also talked about the fact that Louise is a feminist icon and the responsibility that comes with that. It was great to hear such an open and honest discussion about feminism and society today between such prolific and prominent women. They also touched on Louise's other books Asking for It, Only Ever Yours and Almost Love. There was a singing after the discussion and Q & A.
Thank you to Waterstones for hosting this event!
Wednesday
Another Waterstones event but this time in Covent Garden, if you haven't been to this store, it really is a lovely store and their Sci-Fi/Fantasy section is truly a book-lover's dream! This event was to celebrate the launch of House Swap by Rebecca Fleet and the paperback of He Said She Said by Erin Kelly. I went away from the event having bought both the books because the authors gave a reading and made them sound just awesome!
Again we talked about the writing process and specifically what happens with this kind of crime/thriller novel during the drafting. Erin spoke about her experience of having one of her books made into a TV series and also being a Richard and Judy pick. Rebecca spoke about what a difference it made to be published as a crime author than it was to be published under her previous novels.
Alison Barrow lead the discussion really well, even delving into the role of female authors in the crime market and why female readers are seen as needing their own genre. It was a great evening and I felt really inspired to read outside my comfort zone and delve into these books very soon!
Thursday
Yet another Waterstones event! This time i headed to Leamington Spa to celebrate the paperback publication of Together by Julie Cohen and The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman. I have already review both of these books to just click on the titles to see my thoughts!
These fabulous authors were in discussion with each other, asking each other in-depth questions. Rowan spoke about the research she did in Brooklyn before writing about the area in her novel, and specifically the area in 1977. She also spoke about the struggle of cutting down to just writing one book a year (she doesn't do that anymore!).
Both authors spoke about what their job looks like on a day to day basis, from their writing process to their social media time and their time doing events like this! Julie spoke about the difficulty in writing her book backwards and trying to speak about the book to promote it without giving away any spoilers!
I also made a video about both of these books because I loved them so much so I'll leave you with those!
