Hello! Welcome to my Wednesday slot.
My apologies for the 'radio silence' of the last few days on this blog. A lot of my time has been spent away from home since I've been jaunting around and about. I've not been near internet connections and have been unable to write much in the way of blog posts. That's my excuses, so here's the first post for my reasons why.
Last Saturday, I popped down (a nine hour return journey by bus/coach)
to visit The Edinburgh International Book Festival and to have a yummy lunch with my
publishers and some fellow authors at Crooked Cat Publishing.
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| 4 Crooked Cat beauties! |
The minute I left the St. Andrew’s bus station, I could see
that the city of Edinburgh was heaving. Festival goers, and general tourist traffic, mingled
with Saturday shoppers, weaving their merry way along the main city centre
streets. I, personally, have never seen Edinburgh
so busy and I wasn’t anywhere near The Royal Mile or the Castle.
(Photo: Steph writing as Cathie Dunn; Emma Mooney; Nancy Jardine; Carol Anne Hunter)
I was a first timer at the Book Festival and was keen to see
what it was all about. Even more important was the fact that The Beltane
Choice, Book 1 of my Celtic Fervour Series of historical adventures was
available for buying at the Crooked Cat stand in the Festival bookshop.
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| Laurence and Steph Patterson of Crooked Cat Publishing |
I’ve already blogged about the festival this month (see Wed
13th August post and photos) so I was delighted to find that the three
shelves of Crooked Cat novels had been moved to the upper shelves- a much more
prominent at eye-level position. Laurence and Steph Patterson, my publishers, are kneeling in the photo,(right) the better to show off our fantastic selection of 20 bestsellers from Crooked Cat Publishing!
Laurence and Steph encouraged me
to sign some of my copies of The Beltane Choice while I was there since there was a triple section of
‘Author signed’ copies at a location nearer the cash desks.
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| man browsing a CC novel- hope it was mine :-) |
Placing my novels on the available space on the top
shelf of one bookcase was a fantastic moment. An even better moment was when I
returned around 3 hours later, after a wonderful lunch, to find there were no
copies of The Beltane Choice anywhere around the author signed area. You can be assured that
I definitely wanted to believe that the copies had been sold and not placed
elsewhere. I guess, in due time, Laurence will be able to tell me how many
copies sold during the festival.
A notable thing was that although the tented village of
the International book Festival was extremely busy, the queues to buy books were
small. It was, however, encouraging to see people going round with pen and
paper, though more commonly their phone, making notes about the books. I’m
hoping that means that those browsers will buy ebook versions or buy the books
from another source like Amazon.
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| at the Crooked Cat Children's section |
The bookshop area for Children and YA books was remarkably devoid
of children and that wasn’t so encouraging. I had thought that it might be a
very large attraction, but it wasn't while I was looking around.
I took loads of photos and in the warm sunshine of Edinburgh had a generally
lovely day. If possible, I’ll be visiting the 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival
and encourage anyone who loves to see a large collection of books to visit as
well.
Who knows, perhaps I'll wangle an author signing!
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| visitors, sunshine and the ubiquitous seagull! |
Slainthe!
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