The Independent Alliance Author Showcase

I was lucky enough to attend the 'Independent Alliance Author's' event at Dragon's Hall in Norwich through work. An evening of books, wine, pizza and talented people awaited me.

The Independent Alliance organisation is comprised of eighteen independent publishing houses and on Tuesday evening, I attended one of their events for the first time.

The event took place at the National Centre of Writing, which is of course based at Dragons Hall. There are many lovely buildings in Norwich but this one is especially beautiful with the Medieval infrastructure still surviving and in my opinion, the perfect place to celebrate books.

As part of the event, we were given free books and yes, I did come home with a few...

The books I brought home, a wonderful mixture of genres.

During the event, I had a great chat with Mandy Morton, author of the feline mystery series 'The No.2 Feline Detective Agency' who like me is a big fan of cats and in fact, this series is inspired by her first cat Hettie. I normally do not read mysteries (I find life confusing enough as it is!), but this one features plenty of puns and chocolate so I think it will be a delight to read.

My very own signed copy!

Another wonderful author I thoroughly enjoyed talking to was Alice Hattrick, author of 'Ill Feelings' and whose new book 'Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives' is out this month. Their new book is a blend of biography, queer history and defiance. As someone who enjoys queer history and embroidery, I think this is going to be brilliant and I was lucky enough to be given a copy!

Alice was also kind enough to sign her book for me!

Of course, I couldn't resist bringing home a copy of 'YAP!: a Short History of Small Dogs' by Stephanie Howard-Smith since I live with a silly doggy bear!

Lilly the dog and her new favourite book

I thoroughly enjoyed the event and was delighted to be given a goodie bag including book accessories, catalogues and a bar of my favourite sustainable chocolate 'Tony's Chocolonely'! Some sustainable chocolate and a new book, a wonderful combination I am sure we can all agree.

Right! I now need to start reading my new books so I can let you all know what I think about them!

Hanging out at the Independent Alliance Showcase event.