A Lovely Surprise!

I had a fantastic day last Saturday at Peterborough Central Library, on Made in Peterborough: Authors’ Day. I arrived about half an hour before the event was due to start and set up on my table. I had a display of rocks and minerals which might be encountered in the lava tubes on Naxada, (the hero, Jordas, is a geologist and the novel has a geological setting) and my laptop, open on my website so that I could show it to visitors, along with leaflets about Floodtide (an e-book isn’t quite the same as a physical book!), and my iPad and Kindle so that I could show visitors.

One of the first people through the door was a lady who marched over to me and asked if I was Helen Gould. When I said yes, she said, “Oh good!” and proceeded to invite me to be a judge on a Creative Writing competition panel. It was a fantastic, but lovely, surprise. They wanted me because of my background in teaching creative writing.

The competition has been organised by Stamford Civic Society, The Burghley House Preservation Trust and Stamford Living Magazine. The two or three other judges are currently being finalised. The brief is for 14-16-year-olds living or at school in Stamford to write about what their town means to them – but in the most creative way possible. The winner will get £100-worth of book tokens and have their story (750 words maximum) published in Stamford Living Magazine, and the runner-up will get £50-worth of book tokens. There will be a prize-giving day at Burghley House in early May. The deadline for submissions is Friday the 27th March 2015.

As if that wasn’t fantastic enough, in the afternoon my Formatting and Publishing on Kindle seminar brought 17 people through the door. Everyone said it was really helpful, so both the librarian and I were well chuffed. I have posted some photos to go with this.

As a result of the competition I am going on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to publicise both the novel and the competition, plus all my usual radio contacts, so keep looking as I will post the dates and times of the various shows on the site. And do listen in!

An overview.

An overview.

 

Chatting with another author

Chatting with another author

Pam Fish, National Association of Writing Groups

Pam Fish, National Association of Writing Groups

Dave Brzeski, publisher extraordinaire!

Dave Brzeski, publisher extraordinaire!

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