Celebrating my debut book release during lockdown!
I can’t believe Jaz Santos vs the World has been out for over 4 months now - over a third of a year since Jaz Santos was released onto shelves nationwide! I thought it would be a good time to reminisce on my publication day/week - and what a wonderful time it was. I signed my book deal just as covid was really beginning to spread around Europe, so publishing this book has always lived alongside the reality of the pandemic and I was fully prepared from the start to be celebrating my book launch in my house via zoom! In the end, due to the loosening of restrictions and a slight move of my publication date from April 2021 to May 2021 I got to have 2 very small and special book launch celebrations.
As many will know, publishing a children’s book has been my biggest dream starting back from when my age was still in single digits. I spent most of my childhood immersed in stories, whether it was writing them, telling them and acting them out with my dolls or reading them - stories were just my thing. I forget details, isolated facts but if you tell me something in a story you’d best believe that one obscure fact hidden in them will stay buried somewhere in my mind for a very long time. The fictional characters in books like the Baby-sitters Club and Anne of Green Gables became some of my closest friends. And when my nose wasn’t stuck in a book or scribbling a new story, I was out playing football with friends, cycling or baking. If you read Jaz Santos you’ll know there’s elements of all those things in the story so this really was just a big jamboree of my favourite things rolled into a book. What more could 9 year old me have wished for? So, you can see why I was definitely NOT going to let a thing like a pesky pandemic dampen the joy of this once-in-a-lifetime occasion!
My publication week kicked off with a gorgeous book-cake made by a friend of mine who happens to be a very talented baker and cake designer. She lives in Liverpool and packed it so amazingly it did not get ruined in the post and it arrived in London looking as perfect as it did when she made it. It really looked like my book, and it tasted amazing too! If you live in Merseyside I strongly recommend Munchie’s cake design… And yes I enjoyed devouring the cake myself through pub week!
My actual official publication day was Thursday, May 27th, and it started with eating sparkly vegan brownies sent by Sallyanne, my lovely agent - a perfect book release day breakfast for Jaz Santos! I would share a picture of them but I ate them so fast with my morning coffee that I forgot to take the obligatory social media-worthy picture and by the time I remembered there were just a few crumbs lying on my plate. Ha! So anyway next up was the afternoon tea at the grand and lovely Wolsely in Piccadily with my wonderful editors, two of my publishing ‘dream team’ Naomi and Sara who have championed Jaz Santos from the start, helping me to make it book deal ready before that all-important acquisitions meeting. The photo at the top of this blog is of us celebrating Jaz with lots of cakes just like Jaz Santos would like.
All in all a wonderful afternoon and also marked the first time I’d been inside of a restaurant since March 2020! I had been one of those super cautious people throughout the pandemic rarely leaving the house for anything other than exercise or essentials or the occasional outdoors gathering, so boy was I glad to a return to some kind of normality -whatever that means nowadays!
The second celebration a few days later on Sunday was slightly bigger, in accordance with the government guidelines at the time of 30 people outdoors - so I invited 30 of my favourite Londoners to join me in the picnic area at Horniman Museum in South London for cupcakes and doughnuts and of course that all-important first book signing! As small scale and informal as it was I had such a fantastic time, there were many people there that I hadn’t seen for a long time so it was also a bit of a reunion. And wow the sun really came out for me and my guests (thank you, God!). The whole week, and month it had been pretty dismal with a stream of showers and even heavy rain, and then that Sunday it was clear blue skies and high temperatures. Also the same day Jaz Santos got the coveted Amazon ‘bestseller’ badge in one of the categories it was listed in - and it’s a competitive category as well with many established writers so I was super proud to have reached that high ranking even though it didn’t last longer much longer than a week - at least Jaz Santos enjoyed a well-timed moment of Amazon glory :)
Unfortunately my local bookstore did not stock Jaz Santos for reasons only they will know (shade fully intended) but I also managed to make it to a nearby-ish Sainsbury (yes my book is in Sainsbury’s across the country!) where I seen my book being sold in person for the first time! I had the urge to buy a copy, which I did, because doesn’t everyone want to buy their own book?!
I could go on much more about all the little gems that made publication week so special thanks to so many wonderful friends, fellow writers and authors, booksellers and book & youth organisations, bloggers, teachers etc but I’ll save that for another blog post or my next acknowledgements. And of course my amazing publishers Puffin - I grew up reading books from this glorious imprint and it will never stop feeling surreal to have that Puffin symbol next to a book I have written.
And finally, I want to say is that as excited and happy as I was to have a book coming out, I did feel quite intimidated and at times to be quite honest terrified. If you’re an extroverted introvert like me who loves socialising but shys away from the spotlight, it really can become fairly daunting as publication date rolls up.
So, I definitely appreciated every pre-order, purchase, social media post, and everyone who showed up in one way or the other be it virtually or in-person sending kind wishes and encouragement and leaving brilliant reviews online, or sending me a note to say you/your little person has enjoyed it. If you did any of those things or something else to support my debut - please accept a huge and heartfelt thank you! It really has meant the world to me..and Jaz Santos!
Below, is the image I used for my publication day ‘how it started, how it’s going’ social media post, it really is an evergreen reminder to me at least that dreams do come true. Okay, thanks for reading my blog and excuse me while I cry into my never-ending supply of cake and talk to 9 year old me for a moment, as I think about the promise I made to future me, that I would write books and that the first one would be for children…. congratulations P- we did it!
Collection of stories I wrote in childhood and copy of Jaz Santos vs the World.