“Please can you sign my book?”

I'm having a book launch at

The Reading Shop, The Parade, Oadby, Leicester 

at 11 am on 16^th April.

The books are in

 A Children’s History of Leicester  ISBN: 978-1849931496

And they've put some of my Bathtime Rap books in the window display too

All we need now are some visitors to make my book launch a really fun morning... or is it? My pen is feeling nervous. It’s watched other authors signing books, their pens moving with a flash and a flourish and the signing is done. So why can’t my pen do the same? It seems to get tongue-tied (nib-tied?). It has no trouble when I write a manuscript. It works perfectly well when producing a covering letter. It even enjoys signing the contract but it has never managed to grasp the art of book signing.

So if you come along to the book launch (and I do hope you will) don’t forget, when you’re ready to have your book signed, to please go easy on my pen. It may be feeling just a little nervous.

    

I was on the radio

The following is, as promised, one of my regular chatty blogs. If you’re here as part of the A to Z Challenge then please visit my previous blog.

Last Friday BBC Radio Leicester, invited me in to record a piece for their afternoon chat show. They wanted to talk to me about my new children’s book, a Children’s History of Leicester, and our book launch which will take place at The Reading Shop, Oadby on 16th April (more about that later). 

I’ve been on Radio Leicester before but it’s still terrifying. I tried being rational. They’re not going to trip me up. It’s Rupal Rajani and her chatty programme. And it’s not live so we can stop if I say something ridiculous. And besides, I’m going to be talking about my favourite subject, my writing. Why should I possibly be nervous?

But as usual my body wouldn’t listen. I paced and practiced and got myself into quite a state but then, as always seems to happen on these occasions, I was fine when it came to doing it. I sat down in the studio and started chatting away as if I was having coffee with a friend.

Rupal Rajani in her recording studio

All too soon the interview was over and I was striding back to the car, proud of the way I’d managed to remain calm in the face of a mass of microphones.

The chair where I sat with all those microphones staring at me

I was just negotiating the car around a protruding kerb at the entrance to the car park when the voice on the car radio (which of course was tuned to Radio Leicester) issued a quick ‘later today’ item and it was my name... on BBC radio... I drove straight over the kerb. Clunk! Not as calm as I thought I was, huh?

If you’d like to hear my interview then you can find it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cs2cf with 5 days left to listen. It’s about 35 minutes into the 1^st April programme.