The last two weeks have been a bit hectic with a trip down to Devon to pick up the books from the printers with a stop over at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay (including a great visit to Greenways the summer house of Agatha Christie). The books look great and Imprint 
Digital have done a great job.
I did my first talk at the Prae Wood Primary School last week which was an interesting experience to say the least. I am used to presenting to large audiences at conferences all over the world - but I have to admit this was one of the most frightening sessions I had done for some time. The kids were great and very attentive with some fascinating questions. You realise that as we get older we build in a set if filters to stop asking certain types of questions - eight year olds haven't developed these filters yet! Hopefully they enjoyed the session and I now feel a little less fazed to do some more.
The day after I was invited to attend an 'audition' to get on the speaker list for the Womens Institute (WI) for Hertfordshire, I had put together a presentation on 'How to Write a Book' which I thought would be an interesting topic for the group. In the invitation it just mentioned a 'selection committee' which, as did other speakers, I assumed would be half a dozen people. Was I wrong!. When I got there there was 60 or 70 people sat in a large hall and although they had a screen there was no projector.
So with no way of projecting, a much larger audience than I had expected and the prospect of being scored by lots of ladies of a certain age, I launched into a strange version of what I was going to talk about. Whether they liked it or not I have still to hear.
I had a meeting with Waterstones to update them on the book launch and to ascertain how to get the books into their system and I have to say they make it very easy and have agreed to take 100 books up front which apparently is not normal as they usually only agree to take 20 - 30.
All we have to do now is to generate the interest...... We have radio and newspaper interviews/articles set up for the week before the launch and I am hoping to get a few more school visits in the diary in the next few weeks. I have also participated in a leaflet drop to 3,500 houses in the Wheathampstead area through the Wheathampstead Enterprise Board which is going out on the 31st of October.
Amazon has generated 6 pre-orders which I guess is good and I assume that the leaflet drop will generate more orders through this channel - although they do tale 60% of the price in commission!
I now have the book as an eBook and will be launching this after the new year at the same time as the next physical book in the series.
Check back to see how things progress!
