Book Launch ‘After My Own Heart’ by Sophia Blackwell

A few months ago we were sent the first novel by Sophia Blackwell to review on our website  ‘After My Own Heart‘.
Liz decided this one appealed to her so I didn’t get a look in and it has to be said she couldn’t put it down!

Then a few weeks later Emily of Lime House Books very kindly sent us an invitation to the launch party which was to be held at the Green Carnation in Soho.

I headed into town a bit earlier so I could have a mooch about Soho, did you know there is now a Moomin shop in Soho? – that certainly took me back to my youth!

Liz joined me and we splurged and got a cab to Soho, found a great place for dinner called the Soho Brasserie in which a young lady was hanging up her paintings. They were amazing and really put me in the mind of Picasso!  (see left)

Then we wandered next door to the dark depths of the Green Carnation. Neither Liz or I had been to a book launch before so had no idea what to expect. Emily gave us a very warm welcome and we learnt that serendipity was at play once again! Her boyfriend lives four doors down from us here in Enfield! We did wonder how the invitation had been put through our door unstamped all those months ago 🙂

We had a very pleasant evening met some very interesting people, some of whom had been to uni with Sophia.  Sophia herself came over for a brief chat, Liz told her how much she had enjoyed the book, which of course we got signed!  I also purchased her book of poetry ‘Into Temptation‘. That will be wending its way to California to my lovely poetic friend Stephen Kalinich – I know he will love it!

The artist was also present who had made the very original cover art. Her name is Kerry Hyndman and you can check out her work here. We also got to meet Hester from Turnaround Books who also sends us books to review so it was great to put a face to a name and meet her and her colleagues.

So all in all it was a splendid night, Sophia read from her book, sadly it was almost pitch black in there, so it’s more like an audio than a visual recording but I have popped it on YouTube anyway so at least you can hear the reading.

Thanks so much to Emily and Lime House for asking us and for Sophia’s mum who also made us feel very welcome, what a lovely lady!

Good luck with the book Sophia.