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247 Alis Hawkins & Emma Corfield Walters | Crime/Mystery Author alongside an Independent Bookshop Owner
3 Plays5 minutes ago
Crime and mystery novelist, Alis Hawkins is here alongside her good friend Emma Corfield Walters who co-founded, owns and runs Book-ish, an independent bookshop in Crickhowell (and now also Abergavenny). We had a great chat about how Alis and Emma got to where they are and the value of booksellers and authors knowing each other on a personal level.
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Transcript
The Significance of Writing in Storytelling
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. I love Because the writing is sort of everything, right? You can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Guests: Alice Hawkins & Emma Caulfield-Waters
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by two guests, the first of which... is CWA Dagger shortlisted historical crime and mystery author.
00:00:27
Speaker
And the second is the owner of the British Book Awards Independent Bookshop of the Year 2024, Bookish. It's Alice Hawkins and Emma Caulfield-Waters. Hello, welcome.
Alice Hawkins on 'The Hunter's Club'
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello. Hi, Jamie.
00:00:38
Speaker
thanks for Thanks for both coming on. um I know it's it's always difficult to organize um more than one guest. It's hard enough to organize one guest, I'll tell you that. We're here. We made it. you for making the time.
00:00:50
Speaker
ah Thank you very much for the invitation. Absolutely. Thank you. um Let's start with just a little bit about um both of you. I think probably first up we'll do Alice.
00:01:01
Speaker
Your brand new novel, The Hunter's Club, is coming out on the 16th of October, book number three in the Oxford Mystery series. Tell us a little bit about the book and and and then the series.
Protagonists of 'The Hunter's Club'
00:01:14
Speaker
So, like you say, it's book number three in the series. So we have our two main protagonists who we met right at the beginning of the series in A Bitter Remedy. So my books are all told through first-person narration. So we have, in in the red corner, we have Rhiannon, a.k.a. Non Vaughan, a young Welsh working-class, brilliant person from West Wales.
00:01:36
Speaker
um She comes from a seafaring family, you know, not admiralty seafaring, but plying up and down the coast of Ceredigion in coal barges and what have you.
00:01:46
Speaker
um She is self-taught. She's a brilliant mathematician and linguist. And she has gone to Oxford to avail herself of the the new um ah opportunities for women to attend lectures and not get degrees, but actually do exams, which which show that, frankly, they're as good as the men. And she gets to Oxford. And because this is who she is, she will not be told no. She will not take her nose out of things that don't concern her.
Plot Overview of 'The Hunter's Club'
00:02:14
Speaker
She gets embroiled in a mystery. around the death of a young man at Jesus College because her friend and mentor Basil Rice is a lecturer at Jesus College. He is my other viewpoint character.
00:02:27
Speaker
He is everything none is not. He is middle class, he's respectable, he's very Oxford, and he's quite establishment. and So far so boring but under the surface there's a lot going on because Basil is gay in an era when you really really did not want to be gay because ah sexual acts by men were were illegal and could see you put in jail and and on hard labor.
00:02:51
Speaker
And even to be suspected of being gay was to lose your respectability and to say goodbye to any kind of promotion prospects. So these two very, very different people, um friends in in the books and and co-conspirators, as it were, come together but about halfway through this book actually because they're both investigating different things at the beginning. Basil has been asked by the senior proctor, the senior disciplinary officer officer at at Oxford University, to investigate a series of attacks on undergraduates which leave them bound, gagged and hooded at the date at the gates of their colleges at kind of in in the small hours.
00:03:31
Speaker
And Basil's been asked to look into this before anything worse happens to these undergraduates. ah Meanwhile, Non, who has now done all her exams and has gone through the education system and is working as a part-time journalist and a part-time tutor at Somerville Hall, ah she is asked to clear the name of a young woman who has been thrown into jail by the Vice-Chancellor's Court at the University of Oxford, because the Vice-Chancellor's Court is having a crackdown on the fraternisation between undergraduates and the young women of the town.
00:04:03
Speaker
And she she feels she's been wrongly accused of soliciting and she wants none to help clear her name. And because they're both working on on on different aspects um of of attacks on young people, if you like, eventually, as you would expect in a novel of this kind, the two investigations come together.
00:04:23
Speaker
Okay, that sounds great. um Sounds like there's a lot going on. Great to have ah juxtaposed, two juxtaposed point of view characters so that you can sort of always see the other side.
00:04:35
Speaker
Absolutely. And different parts of Oxford as well, because Non is very working class. She talks to the working classes. She talks to women. Basil being the man, he gets to do all the talking to the university people and and kind of more upper class men.
00:04:46
Speaker
and So yeah, they they cover the whole gamut really.
Emma Caulfield-Waters and the Growth of Bookish
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Sounds great. Um, and ah few days away from us recording currently and ahead of its launch, um, you are going to be doing an event at bookish and evening with Alice Hawkins. So seamlessly segueing over to Emma now owner and am I right in thinking co-founder of bookish?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your bookshop. but Well, and we opened on the high street in Crick Howell in mid Wales back in 2010.
00:05:31
Speaker
ah We just celebrated our 15th birthday last Saturday. oh Amazing. chi Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long. It's it just flown by. um We started out in a small little shop with no heating. And honestly, I'd come from a completely different world. I ended up building surveying company before being a bookseller.
00:05:48
Speaker
And I barely knew what an ISBN was. and And then suddenly I discovered this amazing trade with an amazing community within it and haven't really looked back at all.
00:06:01
Speaker
um
Community Engagement and Support for Authors
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's been it's been a wonderful journey, really. And then, you know, we've we've gone on and to be really involved in our community, and really rolled up our sleeves um and been part of that.
00:06:15
Speaker
and But I think, you know, we've we've really... nurtured the have the bookselling community and our readers and therefore our writers, you know, such as Alice, who we've been working with for a good number of years now.
00:06:29
Speaker
and So we have um the main bookshop, which people often comment because Crick Owl has a population of 2,000. It is a big shop for for such a small population, such a small town.
00:06:40
Speaker
um We've got a cafe and we have an event space upstairs where we'll we be on Monday. And then we opened a second shop six miles away in Abergavenny two years ago, which is is lovely, very small, so really kind of heavily curated.
00:06:55
Speaker
um And yeah, we're just constantly trying to find new ways of pressing books into people's hands, new ways of getting people excited about reading new ways to reach new audiences for ourselves um to sell more books but also for our authors um and we take that that really really seriously so I love it when somebody comes into the shop and says oh I had somebody come in today said I haven't read for a for a long while and I really want to get back into it, but I don't know what I like because I've read, I've not read in such a long time. I really don't know what I like anymore. I said, okay, fine.
00:07:30
Speaker
Tell me about what you've been watching on Netflix. Tell me about your favorite characters. And she said, oh, I've been watching Happy Valley and I really love that character. it's like, right, okay. So... off we go um so hopefully i sort of sent her off with with it with a couple of books um and she'll come back um and we'll have that same conversation again and and it's really exciting you know when when somebody comes in and and asks me for a recommendation i'm constantly kind of jumping out from behind the tiller going right who needs to recommend it let me do favorite part of my job so yeah it's it's absolutely wonderful and i i um a bit of a
00:08:07
Speaker
an overly enthusiastic puppy from time to time when I get excited about you know people's books and events. And, you know, like today we've been going into local schools with Chris de Cowell, which was fantastic.
00:08:20
Speaker
um And just trying to find new ways of working with different different people. So, yeah, there's, this's this well, an infinite amount of ideas on my shelf ah in in the bookshop. And, um you know, you can go in any direction. And and I absolutely love that.
00:08:36
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, that's great. sounds like you're doing great as well, expanding, franchising and now with the second shop. And I think as a I think all readers, there's nothing more sort of thrilling than recommending someone a book and then for them to come back and tell you how amazing it was.
00:08:54
Speaker
And you're basically doing that professionally. I love it. She is. She is. Yeah. Amazing. can i Can I just say, as well as being an amazing support to authors and publishers, Emma is really a community champion. When the when when COVID struck, she and her her staff were hand delivering books to people.
00:09:13
Speaker
And when Crick Howell was cut off by floods, She, again, was at the centre of things and organising things because that's who she is. You know, she really can't help myself. But she's absolutely brilliant. And she used to also organise the Krakow Literary Festival, which, again, for a town of 2,000 people, was absolutely extraordinary. So she is a force of nature, Emma.
00:09:33
Speaker
Just an amazing person. Thank you, Alice. Very, very pleased to call her, my friend. Thank you. Amazing. Likewise. That's great. So now that we both have, now that we have backgrounds for both of you, um I'd love to hear about the sort of the author and the bookshop events from both sides of the aisle, as it were. So you got you guys are friends. We've established this. um ah I presume you guys have collaborated like this before before this evening coming up on Monday.
00:10:04
Speaker
Oh, sure. Yeah, lots. I mean, ah and Emma's been kind enough to launch lots of my books. We first met when I went on a ah ah tour of every independent bookshop in Wales and back in 2019, BC, before COVID. when with nervous We can all virtually not remember that time, right? But there was a time before COVID where you could do things. And they were I think I went to 26 different bookshops.
00:10:27
Speaker
um i I got in touch with them all ahead of time and said, I'm going to come. I would, you know, if you'd like to offer me an event, that'd be great, but I'm still coming. I'm going to take a selfie and give you a proof and blah, blah, blah. um And Emma was one of the dozen bookshops that did offer me an event, never having met me before, just on the basis of, well, why not?
00:10:45
Speaker
and So I went to speak to the newly formed book club at Bookish in Crickhawal, which was absolutely brilliant. And One of Emma's booksellers, Amy, became a real champion for my previous series, the Time for Valley Coroner series, and literally was hand-selling them in in the shop. It was just brilliant. too um and Then I think...
00:11:05
Speaker
We couldn't launch my third Tidy Valley Coroner book there because of COVID, but we did launch the fourth with you, didn't we, Emma? Yeah, absolutely. And you've launched on all the Oxford Mysteries as well, which is absolutely great. So now I've got this this group of people who really like my books and who come and who know each other. And it's like ah it's it's like a kind of – it's a bit like a fan club, to be perfectly honest. It is a fan club. And I've become friends with lots of these people, and that hasn't – That's only happened with one other bookshop and that's a bookshop where I live back in, well, I well i used to live back in West Wales.
00:11:39
Speaker
So even though Emma's shop is not my local bookshop, it is my favourite and my most often visited bookshop because they're just so welcoming and so proactive on behalf of authors, which is you know
Bookselling Challenges and Personal Connections
00:11:53
Speaker
absolutely brilliant. i mean, the the kind of social media stuff that they always do ahead of events is brilliant. And I get there's much...
00:12:02
Speaker
airtime as it were on social media as somebody incredibly famous you know like Cressida Cowell today can't believe you've learned how to train your dragon Emma that's amazing my dragon is now well trained exactly so yeah it's it's it's a fun it's fantastic in that respect it's a it's a tremendously egalitarian shop you know you go in there and you are treated as an author you're treated like royalty whether you're like me a kind of mid-lister or whether you're somebody really famous But I think that that works both ways. I mean, as you said, you contacted us, you arranged that book tour and you were championing Welsh bookshops just as much as trying to let them know about your your new book.
00:12:41
Speaker
um And I think... as you say, Amy read the the first proof and was really kind of championing. And we've gone on from there. As you say, it is a whole community. and My mother is not happy that she's on holiday for next week's event. know, I saw today. point it' yeah To the point where and she tried to get Alice to change the dates, despite the fact next week is publication week.
00:13:06
Speaker
um We have chairing this event because, you know, Alice has been chaired by numerous people, including me. um Chairing the event is is Gavin, a first-time events chair. But Gavin started coming to our events.
00:13:21
Speaker
He is a customer who's turned into a very dear bookshop friend and a close friend of Alice's now. You meet up for coffee every week couple of which is fantastic. We met today, in fact, yes. Partly to talk about the yeah the launch event next week. But yeah, no, it's amazing. So it's it's it is ah is a community. But I think...
00:13:40
Speaker
And Alice has really worked hard to get her books out there, but also in the correct way, and because we do get approached by a lot of authors and we don't ah often we do not you know decide to stock their books for a huge number of reasons. We have a page on our website that's specifically targeted to and debut authors or self-published authors.
00:14:06
Speaker
That's not to say we don't stock self-published books and we don't stock and new books at all. We we we really champion debut authors. m But they have to fit in with our stock. They have to fit in with with what we can sell. We have to feel that we can press this book in somebody's hands and and find a home for it.
00:14:24
Speaker
i And that isn't always the case. and And, you know, there's certain times where we can't take a book on because, it's not supplied through a wholesaler which makes it really tricky for us to be able to deal with all of the hundreds of other invoices that we have to deal with all of that boring stuff yeah so from a very practical level it's difficult to champion certain authors or the subject matter might not be kind of something that we feel that we can really get you know get behind so and and and we only have so much space as well um even to the point where sometimes there's there's not um any title on the spine of a book or
00:15:02
Speaker
you know, there have been times where there's been no ISBN and we just can't do that. yeah So Alice approached this brilliantly by coming to us and doing a huge amount of social media, doing a huge amount of talking to but to other bookshops. So, you know, when I went to to see my friends, Matt Downing Chepstow Bookshop or Andy Rossiter's or Meldon and Griffin, we all know each other.
00:15:22
Speaker
So we all know Alice um because she's she's created that herself. She's worked incredibly, incredibly hard at making sure that we all know about it. And at the time when Alice was, was um was coming around on her bookshop tour, there weren't and there still aren't that many um books in English set in Wales. There were tons of books set in sort of Scotland, tons of books ah you know've set in in London, tons of books set in Cornwall, but there's not a huge amount and set in Wales. And we really kind of need that.
00:15:56
Speaker
People come to visit the bookshop and they come from all over the world. And we want to be able to press something into their hands that that you know they can take a little bit of of Welsh literature home with them.
00:16:07
Speaker
So that's incredibly important as well. So there's lots of bits that but Alice has done incredibly well herself. um So I still feel this is very much ah team effort when we talk about events and how we promote events and getting a new audience members in. Yes, you know, we put things out on social media. We have a newsletter. We have lots of ways of promotion.
00:16:29
Speaker
But Alice works with us on that. And again, that isn't always the case when we have author events. Often it's a case of, well, while I'm coming on this date and they don't know. really help us help them. yeah yeah So, you know, then it is difficult to get an audience and it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time.
00:16:46
Speaker
um And sometimes there might be 10 people in the room, but those 10 people are your new readers and they will go and tell friend about your book and they'll go and tell ah friend about the event that they've just been to.
00:16:59
Speaker
um And that's how we build a community. Absolutely. takes time. takes a bit of patience. It does. quite a lot hard work. It does. Yeah, absolutely. It does. But, you know, I mean, I did an event in in Gloucester Library last last autumn and the the librarian rang me and she said, oh, you might want to cancel because we've only sold six tickets. And I said, that's fine. I will come and talk to one person. If one person can be bothered to buy a ticket to come and hear me speak about my books, I am coming to talk to that person.
00:17:27
Speaker
Because... as As writers, I know it would be lovely to be on the bestseller lists, but you know most of us can't be. And what we all want is to be read. And what booksellers like Emma do brilliantly is get our books into the hands of the right people.
00:17:43
Speaker
you know they This is the the the beauty of independent bookshops. Their customers aren't just customers, they're a community. they They are known by the booksellers. And even if they're they're visitors and they come in, like Emma's just illustrated, you know, what did you what did you recently watch on Netflix? Or she would say, you know, what book you reading at the moment? What have you recently enjoyed?
00:18:02
Speaker
And they will get my books into the right hands, not into the hands of people who are going to go, well, I suppose that was all right, but I didn't really enjoy
Promoting Welsh Crime Writers: Crime Cymru
00:18:10
Speaker
it. You know, she's going to give it to people who she knows are going to find something that that they really love about my books, which is, I mean, you can't buy that, frankly. That that is just sheer bookselling genius.
00:18:23
Speaker
I don't often get called a genius. Say again. now You are. Come on. girls I mean, as you said, I know a lot of booksellers now. I know genius when I see it. Mad genius from time to time. ah I mean, the other thing that we do together, and Emma's been brilliant with me in this, is, as I said, she used to run Crick Howell Book Festival.
00:18:42
Speaker
And I i started, well, gosh, eight, nine years ago now, I started a Welsh Crime Writers Collective called Crime Cymru to try and get the writers, the Welsh crime writers to work together, to market our books together and and and to promote, like Emma said, to promote um books as mostly written in English that are set in Wales because there aren't very many.
00:19:04
Speaker
And Emma was kind enough to invite Crime Cymru to the Crick Harrell Book Festival several years in a row, I seem to recall, Emma. and we We did whole days of crime. crime you know We were the crime aspect of the festival. um And Emma saw me doing some interviews.
00:19:20
Speaker
And then she started asking me to interview people for her for the bookshop. So now, whenever she's got anybody who she thinks I might like, she'll get on the phone and say, i we've got such such coming. would Would you like to come and interview them? Or occasionally I'll say to her.
00:19:36
Speaker
I really think it would be brilliant to have these two people together. And I would really like to come and interview them. Shall we do that? And I'll say, yes, yes, we will, Alice. She does.
00:19:47
Speaker
My audience get bored of me always chairing events and it's good for them to have you know a bit of variation as well. But Alice is a brilliant, brilliant event chair. But it's another way of making sure that um authors get to meet other authors. and And I think in your case, Alice, it was Anne Cleaves that you were particularly thrilled meet. She's such a champion of a fellow authors She really is. She's amazing.
00:20:14
Speaker
She she she is She's brilliant. and And you two had such a wonderful event together. it was a really warm thoughtful just ah you know a hug in an event it really was um i And sometimes, you know, I know that you're a bit of a fan of of people's works and it was interesting. it's And it's not all just crime.
00:20:36
Speaker
i mean, one of the first events that you chaired for me was Joanna Trollope. Yes. Because you just had to mention you were a fan Yes, absolutely. So he said, oh, would you like to interview her then?
00:20:47
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Some serious work went into that. Well, serious work always goes into all my interviews, to be honest. It doesn't matter who it is, but... Yeah, no. And it's great because I, you know, I get to meet and fangirl over people that I probably wouldn't meet otherwise.
Building Community Through Independent Bookshops
00:21:01
Speaker
I mean, you know, it was, I that was always going to meet Anne, I guess, at ah different festivals. But, you know, I've now interviewed her twice for you or three times, Emma. I can't remember. Twice, I think. And then you've also had other bookshops have asked you to chair the back that. Yes, I interviewed her.
00:21:14
Speaker
That's right. I've interviewed her for Matt. so So now, so we went on holiday. my My partner and I went on holiday to the North East and we went and had coffee with Anne. And she's asked me to and chair an event with her at the festival that she is is part of running Bay Tales up in Whitley Bay next June so you know this it all rolls on all through the kind of all through your life as an author it's one thing leads to another to another to another and it's absolutely brilliant and and and because of Emma I now know loads of other booksellers around the country because she said oh you're going there go and meet my friend such and such and I do and they say oh Emma she's amazing yes let's do some things together yeah
00:21:52
Speaker
Okay. Well, you know, it works it works in all ways. I mean, you know, read you mentioned Bay Tales. So and when you were up in Northumberland, I said you must go in and meet Helen from Forer Books. She's absolutely one of my favourite people.
00:22:03
Speaker
i am And I will be at Bay Tales being a guest bookseller because um Helen came to help me with Green Man. I've been up to help her with Anik Literary Festival. I thought, oh, I quite fancy Bay Tales. So yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
You know, when when Alice told me that she was going up, we we started planning a road trip. Thinking, OK, fine, we're going together then. You know, it's it just is one of those industries that you can very easily...
00:22:28
Speaker
um introduce people to one another and it doesn't matter if you're geographically distant there's always that creative collaboration and I always love those two words together that creative collaboration because as I say every conversation leads to new opportunities and new ideas and oh let's do this and I didn't know you knew that and and on and on um so so yeah so we we will probably be together at Baytales with Anne Cleaves it'd be great it will be great
00:22:59
Speaker
Amazing.
Desert Island Books: Personal Favorites
00:23:00
Speaker
what What I'm getting is the sense that, Alice, you described Bookish and what I'm as creative as very much a community, but it sounds like a community that sort of goes far beyond the bounds of the brick and mortar you know bookshop that Bookish is and and and sort of reaches far more people than that, as we were saying, kind of across the country, which just sounds amazing. And I guess so that's kind of the publishing community more than anything else in terms of like Yeah, just all these independent bookshop owners and and then authors kind of all in their orbit, knowing each other and kind of ah bonding, I guess, over just the shared love of literature.
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. that is so That's exactly right. yeah Amazing. So we are about the time in the episode where I ship you both off and ask you um if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:23:57
Speaker
Let's do Alice first. What have you got for us? Okay, this is probably going to come as a surprise from a crime writer, but I am going to take Bridget Jones's diary fear ah Because on this desert island, I think I'd be a bit miserable. I'm not great without other people around. um And Bridget Jones's diary is the book that has made me laugh the most of anything I have ever read.
00:24:22
Speaker
um And also, I wouldn't feel, I didn't think I'd feel quite such an idiot as I made a mess of doing everything which I would have to do on the island as I accompanied Bridget through her life, making an awful pig's ear of everything.
Books, Baked Goods, and Community Events
00:24:35
Speaker
I think she would make me feel competent as i tried to weave things from palm leaves or catch a fish with a, I don't know, a broken fingernail or something. Yeah.
00:24:47
Speaker
so yes i think i need at least something to keep my spirits up so that be it if not competent she'd at least make you feel like it was okay because you can you can fail at things and still things can turn out okay in the end that's so well put well done absolutely yes why why didn't i think of saying it like that um emma which which book would you hope to have with you you know what, this is the worst question to ask me.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I'm really struggling. I'm flip-flopping between so many different titles and thinking, am I allowed to take the collected works of an author? and Because if I was allowed to do that, then I, no, I'm not allowed to do that. Cheating, cheating. If you reckon it could be bound into one copy, then I could potentially allow it I don't know then. Because I was thinking, oh, I could go with food writing, was thinking, no, we're going to get the ingredients and that would just be torture.
00:25:42
Speaker
um So I'm going to go with a bit of a left-of-field one. um And I'm going to go with and Shades of Grey by Jasper Ford. Not Fifty Shades of Grey, Shades of Grey. And Jasper did say that, you know, his sales did rocket after the publication of the...
00:26:01
Speaker
You take those. Yeah. Just because I i came across Jasper, a friend recommended him to me and I love a bit of random dystopian. he He defies categorization, really.
00:26:15
Speaker
I just find everything that he writes so, so imaginative. I love, ah you know, when he talks about... and putting literary dares to himself and writing himself out of them.
00:26:27
Speaker
and And I think this is it. I mean, you know, it is completely bonkers dystopia, um but there's so much cleverness in it. um And I think that it would, you know, utterly transport me out of, and out of my predicament to being stuck on a desert island, which I would like to escape quite quickly and back to my books.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. that's cool. I'll have to check that out. That sounds really interesting. The the idea of one writing themselves into a sort of literary corner and then finding a way out.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah. Seems daunting as a writer. but With all sorts of things. i mean, he has a nursery crime series, which is and ah crime noir, but set in the nursery world.
00:27:17
Speaker
um and talks about you know the the thermodynamics of an egg was Humpty Dumpty pushed or was it shot um and know temperatures of of porridge in the fourth bear and how he proves that somebody else did it because of the temperature of porridge um and it reads like crime war but you you steal you're still dealing with an egg right okay this is bonkers but also it makes complete sense How does he do that? Sounds insane. Sounds absolutely and insane. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he has legions of fans. ah During COVID, week we did one of the very first online events. Hodder just kind of went, yeah, you do it.
00:27:55
Speaker
and And we had 500 people online and it was booking tickets. So it was internationally shipping. all of these books off to every corner of the globe because his fan base is also absolutely insane.
00:28:07
Speaker
and But he lives just up the road from from me. He lives just outside Hay-on-Wye. um So kind of did come in and you know socially distant signing and in return for some Chelsea buns.
00:28:19
Speaker
and say Well, there you go. Is that a regular currency at the bookshop? Yeah. yeah is Sweet treats, absolutely. Okay, right. Yeah, I'm sure I've given Alice, you know, Welsh cakes in the past.
00:28:31
Speaker
You definitely have. Today, said there was, um you know, a vegan flapjack from her cult. Yeah, so yeah, it is. I think can authors and booksellers both live off both tea and biscuits.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, there's definitely something about books and baked goods going hand in
Hosting Online Book Events During the Pandemic
00:28:48
Speaker
hand. There really is. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I've just remembered, Emma, you did launch the third book in my Typhi Valley series because you did it online. I did it online. As part of books at Home with Four Indies. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that was a bonkers time.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, that was a bonkers time. yeah And my my son and daughter-in-law, well, now daughter-in-law, then his girlfriend, were living with us at the time through ah lockdown. And he interviewed me. Oh, God, yes.
00:29:12
Speaker
do. Yeah. Yeah. We did. we I'm sorry that I didn't remember that. but We did about 500 of those online events with Helen, who I spoke to about earlier, Forum, and then Sue from Linghams and Carrie from Booker.
00:29:26
Speaker
And we just got together and we did that together. It was genius. We launched a lot of a lot books over that summer, probably for that six-month period. um And we had everybody from Floella Benjamin to Gordon Brown.
00:29:39
Speaker
on because there wasn't any you know there wasn't much out there in terms of other options online which just insane but what a time what a time it was what a time indeed and we've all forgotten what it was like beforehand um
00:29:56
Speaker
Next up, I've got some questions about the the the origins ah of the two of you, sort of asking about how ah you guys and and the bookshop got got to where it is now and where you guys are now.
Podcast Wrap-Up and Support Information
00:30:09
Speaker
That will all be in the extended episode on patreon.com slash right and wrong.
00:30:14
Speaker
um Because Alice has snuck in and just put them in the shelves. Yeah. You know what? That has happened. haven't bought this book. Amazing. That brings us to the end of the interview. So thank both of you so much for coming on the podcast and chatting with me, telling me all about everything that the you two are both up to, you know, the Hunter's Club, the new book that Alice has got coming out and everything that's going on with with Bookish and that. It sounds amazing. It's been so fun chatting with with the two of you.
00:30:46
Speaker
Thank you. thank Jamie, it has been fun. I've enjoyed it. um I've enjoyed it very much too. Thank you very much for inviting us. um it's It's absolutely my pleasure. And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what um Alice and Emma are doing, ah your best bet for Emma is to follow the bookish socials. You can find them on Twitter at bookishcrick, on Instagram and TikTok at bookishcrickowl.
00:31:10
Speaker
ah or the website book-ish.co.uk. You can follow Alice on Instagram, Blue Sky and Facebook at Alice Hawkins author or on her website, alicehawkins.co.uk.
00:31:21
Speaker
And to support this podcast, like, follow and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again to Alice and Emma and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.
00:31:34
Speaker
Shout out time. One of my amazing patrons, Lee Foxton, is querying their debut novel. It's a family drama, commercial fiction, along the lines of Jojo Moyes and David Nichols.
00:31:45
Speaker
Fingers crossed. I am rooting for you. Good luck.