Hastings Battleaxe the author strikes out…

I mentioned in the last post that I was due to attend the Crime Writers’ Day at Hastings Museum? Well,  that was yesterday. I even took a cake… see cake tribulations below, met some very pleasant fellow writers, learnt a lot, and despite a low attendance, even sold 9 books! Quite a tiring day though, and Battleaxe is still feeling very stressed.

It was lovely to see some of my friends and WI chums – thanks so much to Tom and Jan, Liz Allen, Jacky and Brian Scales and Bernadette. Lovely too to meet Battleaxe fan Sue W – sorry, I don’t know your other name! Judith – so sorry I missed you – I had gone home before you arrived.

I enjoyed the company of my table-mate, St Leonards based writer Helen Jacey. Helen writes 1940s themed crime mysteries. Her sleuth, Elvira Slate, has a dodgy and interesting past. I first ‘met’ Helen at the East Sussex WI Zoom Crime book club during lock-down. It was partly that group which decided me to get down to writing ‘Death, Deceit and Cake’.

So, what of the cake? I ended up buying a little Victoria Sponge from Marks, and thought I’d try and make it look like the cake on the cover of my novel. First, I made the icing too runny, and it all ran down the sides of the cake instead of sitting in a nice blob on the top. Then, I thought of dropping on a bit of red food colouring to look like blood, but put the ‘blood’ on before the icing was dry, so it all ran all over the place into an actually quite artistic tree pattern, but not at all the required sinister-looking drips… but the knitting needles looked good, and had got a wonderfully kitsch cake stand from friend Shirley, so all was well and the ‘poisoned cake’ attracted much favourable attention. I cut it up it in the afternoon and fed it to my fellow writers.

No, attendance was not good -a a steady trickle at best. Hastings Museum’s marketing efforts leave a good deal to be desired. However, given it was Battleaxe’s first effort, I was quite glad of the space and time. I had even managed to get a Tap to Pay app on my phone, which meant that people could pay me by card – and it worked really well. The Durbar Hall was a wonderful setting, quite dark and mysterious for a gathering of crime writers. We reckoned it would make a brilliant plot for a novel…

So, what did I learn? Obvious things like getting printed bookmarks to give away which have all my  details on and how to get hold of the book. I also learned about getting a free QR code which will link to this Hastings Battleaxe web-site, which obviously needs massive jazzing up to include proper authorly stuff.

The more experienced writers said to me that rushing to finish one book while promoting another is far too stressful. Nevertheless, I learned all sorts of things I could be doing to market the first novel but haven’t yet done – and I must remember there is plenty of time.

No writing-type stuff today – except ordering some more author’s copies of the book from Amazon – had only got 3 left!

Philosopher and I got up early and went to the Icklesham Car Boot. We have been many times before – a good outing on a sunny morning. It is a huge sale – it is alarming how much Stuff people hide in their homes… and then, watching the happy hordes trekking back to their cars laden with their purchases – it’s out of one home straight into another…

Philosopher bought something for Tom (no spoilers), a pair of pincers and an art book about William Nicholson. Battleaxe bought a patterned velvet dressing gown, a wonderful retro lucite clock with crabs etc inside it, for our downstairs loo, a purple top and… wait for it – a Battle Axe!