Real author. High five.

I’m a sucker for book launches these days. Free wine. Check. Books. Check. Chance to meet real authors. In like Flynn.

On Friday night however, I got a chance to be more than involved. I attended the launch of Second Chance, an anthology of short stories published by Original Writing. And this time, my name was in print. In the book like. Published!

If you have never been to a book launch before, know that they start at 6.30pm. This is a golden rule. You need to catch everyone before they flee the city for home. And you need to get there early to drown the wine.

Living someway out of the city and depending on babysitters who don’t finish work till 6pm in the countryside – well sure we lucky to be there at all. But we were, and it was great.

The atmosphere was warm and full of life. The room in the Central Hotel was packed with well wishers and family and bubbling with writers.

It was one of the busiest book launches I ever saw. And best of all, the book looked great.

When I got my hands on it, I immediately got a photograph taken for social media. Because that’s how authors roll these days.

I met Damien from Deuxiemepeau who was lovely. We’ve been chatting on Twitter ever since the winners were announced for the anthology so it was nice to meet in real life and totally judge each other. I think we passed each other’s tick boxes.

Mo Busby travelled from Belfast and arrived into the city centre in a tizzy with a near parking ticket for driving in the bus lanes. Always helps to have northern reg and accent I find when looking all innocent to the gardai. She is working on her poetry and was thrilled to be picked for the anthology.

Fiona Kenny who helped organise the launch and consults for the company told us there had been hundreds of entries, so we we really were chuffed to have made it that far.

I was keen to seek out the Original Writing staff because three years ago, I almost accepted a job with the company. It was one of those fork in the road moments and I always wondered whether I should have taken the job and gotten into publishing then. But, here I was, having found my way back, picked from the crowd, a short few years later. I met Niamh who was lovely and convinced her to have a baby to help increase her writing power. Worked for me.

My new author friends asked me to sign the book. I couldn’t take it seriously, but you know in the future, when I do hopefully achieve my dream, I’ll have to come up with better sign off than a scraggly sheep. Back to practicing autographs so.

With book launched it was time to really let our hair down and himself and our best buds hits the bars of Dublin and tried to drink them dry. It nearly worked.

We met this one in a bar called Mary’s Bar. Naturally we decided the bar would forever more be called ‘Hairy Mary’s’. The makings of a character in a future book I reckon.

So now for the important stuff. The book is for sale. It is real. And if you buy it, the royalties actually go to the authors. There may be 30 of us, but hey, Christmas is coming.

You can do the honours here.

Thank you.

LadyNicci (Real author. High five).