life of a street dancer

Good news! Remember in my last blog I had two parking fines? And one went up because they claimed I never paid but I did? So I called up to pay over the phone and the payment literally was pending in my account for a week—basically the council couldn't be bothered to take out the money. So now I'm really annoyed as this is the second time I tried to pay for this damn parking. I called up, spoke to this lovely girl who asks me when I got the letters. Turns out I didn't have my full days to pay so they lowered it back down to £65. I will take £65 over £130 anyway so was happy with that! And the good news keeps on rolling! I literally had the worst start to the year. It felt like every day there was something crap happening to the point I wanted to quit my own company (I know!) and just doing something not publishing related. I kept praying about it and I felt in my soul everything was going to work out but you know when you're just like WHEN??? Well my book is in the f...

So we made it! Praise be to God as so many people didn't. What an amazing year it's been. I can say hand on heart that this has been the best year of my life. Every month something significant happened. I knew that this year would be all about my career and God really showed up. The Author School grew and we did more events and one-to-ones. Hashtag Press turned 1 years old and we've published our 10th book. Yay! At The Lil' Author Skool, we published The Originals and found our next bunch of young writers to be published next year. The Lil' Author Skool is my passion project but it's done so well with very little put into it so next year I'm going to run it how I run my businesses and I want to see how big it can get. Emily Knight I am...Awakened has done so good and is nominated for 2 book awards. My third book, Beats, Love and high top trainers has 7 publishers interested (well now 6 as one couldn't deal with all the black girl magic. Ha!). My career ...

                Emily Knight I am...Awakened is nominated for a Carnegie Medal! AHHHHHH!! Do you know what's so crazy? The Saturday before I got the email, I was feeling so low. I just felt like I wanted more and was writing down ideas for things I could do to build my brand etc and trying to find time that I don't have to do more. Then the Monday comes and I got an email saying I've been nominated. It's such an amazing feeling to have my Emily alongside some of my fav authors and books. Our little pub house hanging with the big dogs! Being nominated has definitely opened up more doors for me, I even had a massive literary agent from NYC approach me. I'm signed already but it was extremely flattering. Now my dance book is making the rounds and when I found out how many publishers have shown interest. At first I was like girl you're lying, is this real? But then later that evening it hit me and I just started crying. Then I got foreign rights agen...

It's Black History Month and it is freezing cold. I ordered my fur coat ASAP. I was so lucky that my cousin hooked me up with a weekend packed with The Hate U Give. I read THUG last year. I remember seeing it in Waterstones and picking it up because I saw a picture of a black girl on the cover. When I read the title I was like, didn't Tupac say this? I then read the blurb and literally was in shock that this Black Lives Matter book was in Waterstones ( as it should be but it's not something you see every day). I sat down and read it up to Khalil and the policeman. I couldn't get over the fact that this book had been published by a big publishing house. I brought it straight away and finished reading it the next day. It is one of my favourite books so when Toyin told me she was working the BFI London Fim Festival and THUG was going to be shown and did I want to see an exclusive screening, all I could say was Girl!!!!!! Then she upped it by getting me tickets to hear Ang...

I can't believe it's Christmas Eve. This year has zoomed past like crazy and now this is my second to last blog of 2015. Sad face. I am proud to say that I have the full cover art for Emily Knight 2 and a book title! I am so excited to see it all come to life.The cover art is stunning. I get really anxious when it's time for change and everyone knows how much I love Giles Greenfield's work so not using him for my second book was a bummer. Especially because Emily Knight is a series and so it needs to be consistent in the branding. I used Alexandra Artigas and she is a boss. She slam dunked the cover art. I've been going through the revision notes from my editor - not my fav part of writing a book - but I know that it will only make the story stronger and clearer. Octopus Publishing contacted me because they found this awesome blog and wanted to send me a new dance book that's come out. I was like cool and then they said, we'll just send you others  - al...