Busy with events and planning bookshop tours

I’ve had a brilliant but busy few weeks - a couple of events and a lot of time spent planning a schedule of bookshop visits over the next couple of months.

I was at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October, where I appeared on a panel talking to sixthformers about careers in writing. I love doing events at Cheltenham, as I grew up there and love the festival. This one was particularly brilliant as the students were really keen and interested, and I had a fantastic group of people on the panel with me - podcast developer Clarissa Pabi, editor Ione Gamble and poet Yomi Sode.

Yesterday I went to a local secondary school and gave a talk on creative writing, and ran a workshop for another group of sixthformers - a lot of teenagers this month! This was also really good fun, apart from when I realised I had written on the whiteboard with permanent marker.

A lot of the rest of my time has been taken up with planning for a mammoth tour of bookshops I’m going to do this month (with a few in December and January too). These aren’t visits to meet readers (sorry!) but rather to meet booksellers and tell them about What July Knew. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you’ll see lots of videos and photos from these trips in the coming weeks!

Not long now until July comes out - only three months!