Kristen Bailey

Where my writing journey began. I wrote my first book in 2007 and entered it into this competition that sparked my love for writing. I am still in touch with all those runners-up too!

The Souper Mum Book Launch was held at the beautiful setting of the Museum of Farnham on Saturday 18th June.  What a bloody great night!  We had a reading of the prologue by Emma Harris and David Robertson, I signed books and you people drank a shed load of Prosecco - well done!! Thank you to everyone who came along to help us celebrate the book being out in the world. We also had a prize draw in aid of Maternity Worldwide - an international charity dedicated to providing quality care to mother and their babies in low income countries.  You can read my blog about it here.

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Thank you everyone again for your support and love xx

Thank you to Becky Hinshelwood for her kind and insightful review of Souper Mum, now up on the Books etc blog.  Books etc. are a locally run online book vendor here in Fleet and have been hugely supportive of Souper Mum from the beginning for which I'm hugely grateful - keep it local guys! xx

Thank you to Steven Lloyd at the Star Courier who featured news of Souper Mum's book launch in the local North Hampshire press.  Special thanks to Sarah Sweeney for the photo and Jane Hale, our photographer. Note: I'm fifth from the left :)

Big thanks to Allan Gibson at Fleethants.com - a community produced website supporting Fleet based events, news and people.  Under their very informative 'Arts' section, they've listed my author profile under their 'Books' section.  Who knew there were so many writers hidden in Fleet?  Very grateful for all the local support xx

Thank you to Alexandra Recker and Emily Gregory at Fleet Life/Elvetham Heath Directory magazines for featuring an interview with me this month. Both magazines serve the local area with lots of info about Fleet based groups, societies and events.  A wonderful little resource for the community. Though I am gutted I didn't do as a friend suggested and answered all their questions to the lyrics of Randy Crawford's 'Street Life.'  What a missed opportunity...

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What do you like most about Fleet? Well, Fleet Life, it's the only life I know....

I had a fantastic Friday last week talking to the lovely people of Sandhurst about writing, Souper Mum and my route to publication. A really lovely event hosted by a wonderful group of ladies - really encouraging to see a library being used to its full potential too; as a community hub brimming over with events, classes and groups, really bringing people together. I had a really receptive and friendly audience, couldn't have asked for more. I followed my talk with some book signing (congrats to Inge for winning a signed copy!) and a Macmillan Coffee Morning where the library raised over £200.  Amazing :) Thank you to anyone who came along that morning and to the lovely Bridget who invited me down.

I've got a lot to catch up on....so November saw the release of the sequel to 'Souper Mum' - 'Second Helpings.'  We celebrated with afternoon tea at the Museum of Farnham again - a brilliant venue. A more subdued affair than last time (i.e. no Prosecco) but we had another fantastic reading from Emma Harris and we raised money on the day for the Anthony Nolan Trust in honour of a wonderful friend of mine, Grace Green. Lots of books were sold and signed and more importantly, there was cake - lots of cake! Thank you to everyone who came along!

To tie in with the release of 'Second Helpings' - I embarked on my first ever blog tour appearing all over t'interweb visiting a mixture of blogs and online writers' mags. It was a great chance to connect to readers but also to members of the writing community. Great fun - I really enjoyed all the interviews and the chance to write pieces about writing and my books.

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