Bella’s Scribblings: Paperback Writer

I am riding along on the tip of the foaming crest of a magnificent wave of excitement. I have been really lucky to have received so much support from brilliant bloggers, lovely readers and my ever-enthusiastic friends and family. My novel came out as an e-book on 12^th February and has been bouncing around in the Amazon and KOBO charts each day since (my husband is obsessively monitoring it’s fortunes). Yesterday saw my novel ‘It Started At Sunset Cottage’ enter the world as a paperback – an actual real, hold in my sweaty palm (I’m excited and roll-on doesn’t doesn’t work on that part of my anatomy), proper book with paper pages and everything! I have avoided stroking the beautiful cover so far, but it’s been hard. I thought I was excited when the e-book came out but seeing it in real life is a whole new level of excited!

So next week on Wednesday 29^th April I am joining four other local authors to hold a joint book launch at Coventry library. We have exchanged e-mails and decided that we will each talk about ourselves and our writing for ten minutes and then read an extract from our book. It suddenly struck me (like a chair in the face) that our audience of lovely readers (assuming someone turns up) will be coming along expecting to see real authors. Right now I feel like I’m masquerading and have sneaked in alongside these multi-published individuals experienced at such book events and there will be a line of proper authors and then… me. I feel it will be a little bit like putting Miranda Hart on Prime Minister’s Question Time – which would be fun for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway if you’d like to witness it first hand please come along as I will need all the support I can muster as that big wave of excitement abruptly crashes around me and I find myself face down with a mouthful of sand!

by

Bella Osborne

Bella’s first novel, It Started at Sunset Cottage was released by Harper Impulse. She was a runner-up for the New Talent Award at the 2013 Festival of Romance and a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.