How to Make the Most of A Book Tour Stop by Kathryn Evans
Liverpool: home of The Beatles; city of friendliness and unity and latest tour stop for the Lost and Founders! And my goodness did we pack a lot in.
I met up with the rest of the team, and after surviving a road crossing that might give me nightmares for years, we celebrated Orangeboy author Patrice Lawrence’s amazing Costa shortlisting before heading out to a lovely event at Write Blend, a gorgeous independent book and coffee shop run by the hugely energetic and charismatic team of Bob Stone and Sally-Anne Tapia-Bowes. The audience were warm, friendly and interested and there was a teen identical twin in the audience which made Sign of One author ( and identical twin) Eugene Lambert, very happy!
After the event we had a lovely catch up over a late dinner and more celebrating – well, there was Sue Wallman’s Zoella selection for Lying about Last Summer to toast, and we’d never raised a glass to Olivia Levez’ starred Kirkus review for The Island, or the Carnegie nominations and EdBookFest prize for More of Me …we had a lot of celebrating to catch up on!
The following day we had two school events organised by Sally-Anne and Bob. First stop, the amazing Alsop High School – boy the energy of those 300 year 8’s! The interactive element of my creativity talk was very enthusiastically engaged in…luckily Sue and Olivia were happy to help with the tidying up afterwards.
We had time to chat with some of the children as we signed books afterwards and they were great. Also, there was cake, Sally-Anne knows the way to an author’s heart is through a buttercream filling…yum.
In the afternoon we headed to Merchant Taylors’ Girl’s School for a literary lunch with some of their Year Eleven’s. It was such a special session – Year Eleven’s are so often caught up in pre-exam work that they miss out on author visits, and these girls were so interesting and interested, I’d have loved a bit more time to chat with them all.
Next we had a panel discussion with Years Eight and Nine. They were utterly delightful and we had plenty of time afterwards to sign the books they were very keen to buy. Olivia and I felt a bit like rockstars as they pressed forward with books for signing – it was a wonderful way to round off our Liverpool tour stop.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself it’s not all a dream.
Kathryn Evans 
It must have been so fun to do these school visits as part of a team of authors, Kathy!
I highly recommend it!