Countdown to publication

by isabelrogers

My novel Life, Death and Cellos will be published in less than two weeks. *breathes into paper bag* I can recommend a looming event like this to take your mind off things like Brexit. You can (and frankly are enthusiastically encouraged to) order it now.

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I’ve been organising two launch events (in London and Winchester), sending out proofs and answering final queries from my wonderful and tireless editor Abbie Headon at Farrago. One last-minute change we’ve made is to call the books The Stockwell Park Orchestra Series rather than mysteries. Frankly it was always a bit of a shoehorn to get my first plot to be a mystery, and early feedback has confirmed that. So that leaves it WIDE open for me to do what I like in later books, which I’m finding terrifically exciting. Oh, and if I ever run out of things to do before publication, my deadline for the second book in the series is at the end of January.

There is (limited) space at both launch events so, if you would like to come along, please drop me a line via the Contact page on this site. I do need to keep track of numbers to make sure there are enough of essential things like copies of my book and drinks.

  • Tuesday 22 January, 2019: London launch – LRB Bookshop, Bloomsbury, London.
  • Thursday 24 January 2019: Winchester launch – P&G Wells Bookshop, College Street, Winchester.

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As you see, I’m lucky enough to have friends willing to say they liked it: Claire King writes wonderful novels (The Night Rainbow and Everything Love Is). Lev Parikian is a conductor and writer (Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? andWaving, Not Drowning). I’m very grateful to them both.

Finally, a request. One thing I didn’t know about before I started talking to people in the publishing business is how important it is to have book reviews. I don’t pretend to understand how these things work, but once a book has a number of reviews on Amazon, it affects the algorithms which brings it to the attention of buyers of similar books. I recommend buying books from local bookshops or Hive, but you don’t have to buy a book from Amazon to leave a review for it there. Honestly, if you’d like to make me obscenely grateful, I’d love you to do that for me. A one-liner will do!

Thank you. I’ll stop now. Perhaps see you at a launch party?

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