My First (ever!) Festival in Bomber County

My first author event. My first public reading. My first book signing. And somehow, it all happened in the heart of Bomber County.

There are certain moments in this whole Just Jane journey that have made me stop and think, how on earth did I end up here?

The Woodhall Spa Festival of Storytelling was definitely one of them.

Only a few days after Just Jane was officially published, I found myself heading to Lincolnshire for something completely new: my first event as a published author.

Until then, writing had been a largely private experience. For a long time, hardly anyone even knew I was writing a book. It had been me, a laptop and these characters who had gradually become such a huge part of my life.

Suddenly, I was about to stand in front of actual people and talk about them. And if that wasn't daunting enough, I was also going to read my own words aloud. In public.

There are definitely moments when writing a book seems like the easier part.

Back to Bomber County

There couldn't have been a more appropriate place for my first author event than Woodhall Spa.

For anyone interested in Bomber Command, this part of Lincolnshire feels different. The history is everywhere.

Woodhall Spa itself has such strong connections with the RAF and Bomber Command, and you don't have to travel far before you're passing the sites of former wartime airfields and places whose names have become inseparable from the story of the bombing campaign.

For a novel set at RAF East Kirkby, being invited to talk about Just Jane in the heart of that landscape felt incredibly special.

The fictional world I'd spent so long creating suddenly didn't feel quite so far away. These were the roads, villages and skies that had inspired it. And now I was bringing Jane and Bill's story back to Bomber County.

My first author table

Then came another first: setting up a table and seeing copies of my own book sitting on it. That was surreal.

There is something very strange about spending so long working on a manuscript on a computer and then suddenly seeing a pile of finished books with your name printed across them.

I think part of me still expected somebody to come along and tell me there had been some sort of mistake.

Instead, people started stopping.

They picked up the book. They asked about the story. They recognised Just Jane on the cover and wanted to know about the connection with the Lancaster at East Kirkby.

And then something happened that has since become one of my favourite parts of attending aviation events. People started telling me their stories.

The stories behind the history

One of the things I've discovered since publishing Just Jane is that Bomber Command history is rarely just history.

For so many people, it's family history.

A father. A grandfather. An uncle. Someone who flew. Someone who worked on an airfield. Someone who came home.

And sometimes, someone who didn't.

Conversations that began with “What's your book about?” would turn into stories about relatives, aircraft, squadrons and memories that had been passed down through families.

Those conversations have become one of the most unexpected and rewarding parts of writing Just Jane.

I started out wanting to tell a fictional story inspired by Bomber Command.

Publishing it has introduced me to countless real ones.

And then I had to read it...

Talking about the book was one thing. Reading it aloud was another.

My first public reading from Just Jane was something I had been both looking forward to and quietly dreading.

When you write fiction, you hear the characters in your head. You know how a sentence should sound, where someone hesitates and what sits behind a particular piece of dialogue.

These were sentences I'd written quietly at home, never really imagining that one day I'd be standing in Woodhall Spa reading them to an audience.

I was nervous. Very nervous.

More than selling books

Looking back, what I remember most about that weekend isn't how many books were on the table.

It's the people. The conversations. Meeting readers for the first time.

Talking about Lancasters and Bomber Command with people who shared the same fascination.

Hearing family stories.

And experiencing the slightly bizarre feeling of someone wanting me to sign a book.

It also reinforced something that has become increasingly important to me.

Just Jane isn't simply a book I want to sell.

100% of my royalties from the novel go to the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, helping support the place and aircraft that inspired the story.

So taking the book to events like this has another purpose too. Every new reader helps the story travel a little further, while the royalties it generates travel back to aviation heritage.

That principle would eventually become central to Bomber County Books: Stories that give back.