The First Author’s Afterword Live Show And Announcing A Second in Winchester!
Posted 5th March 2025
Category: Events Genres: N/A
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Last Wednesday 26th February, I (though arguably ‘we’) hosted the first Author’s Afterword Live! event. Alex Hay of The Queen of Fives and The Housekeepers, Lucy Barker of The Other Side of Mrs Wood, and Stacey Thomas of The Revels very kindly came down to Hampshire from London and Bath for a real life effective sequel to our previous podcast episode together. We were hosted by the wonderful and relatively new independent bookshop, Goldfinch Books in Alton which is one of those bookshops that has a real vision and as a result a thriving community.
We had a good-sized audience and great support from Louise Morrish, Goldfinch Books’ writer in residence and all-round busy literary person (her book club has 80 members!) Bookshop owner Gary set us up on a small stage with wonderful lighting and incidently saved the day with his video recording of the event when I realised my own had shut off early (I have since bought an SD card that will run to 5 hours…)
The conversation was a real deep dive into writing – I had planned some questions, but Alex, Lucy, and Stacey love talking about the writing and research process and know each other well so we went even further into topics than I’d thought possible. Among other subjects we covered Stacey’s use of language given that The Revels is set in the Jacobean period and book two will be about the 1950s (and an audience member’s question later took us back to that subject for more which was awesome); Alex dived into the need to carefully decide when to reveal aspects of a story; Lucy brought up deadlines and discussed questions of character, and later supported Alex in discussing setting and research in that vein.
There were cheers for books published, laughter at Alex’s use of reality television in a Victorian con novel, and the audience questions caused so much fantastic back and forth conversation that I’m happy to say that section of the evening overran to good effect.
I’m excited to say that I’ll be hosting a second live show on Friday 4th April at P&G Wells in Winchester; it’s the oldest bookshop in England and my long-time favourite. The authors will be Jessica Bull of Miss Austen Investigates, Flora Carr of The Tower, and Sarah Marsh of A Sign Of Her Own. Doors open at 19:00 and tickets can be purchased from P&G.
For the Goldfinch event, my thanks goes to Alex, Lucy, and Stacey, as well as Gary, Louise, Adrian, Caitlin, and Johnny. Thank you all! The video of event one will be available in the next couple of weeks – it’s going to take some time to put together.
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