Robin Stevens's Blog, page 11

Book Recommendation Video for August 2021!

I’m about to head off on leave – but before I go, here’s one last YouTube recommendation video of all the books I think you might be interested in reading while I’m away! They are:

Show Us Who You Are by Elle McNicoll (8+)

Amari and the Night Brothers by BB Alston (8+)

The Secret Detectives by Ella Risbridger (8+)

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé (13+)

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna (15+)

I also mention the Very Merry Murder Club, an anthology of 13 wintery mysteries which is coming out on the 28th of October, and which you can pre-order now!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this video – it feels very strange to be saying goodbye for the rest of the year, but I know the time will fly by, and I’ll be back in 2022 with loads of exciting Ministry of Unladylike Activity news before you know it!

Once Upon a Crime – timeline and case list!

If you’ve already got your copy of Once Upon a Crime, you may have noticed some lovely extra material at the back of the book: a timeline and a book checklist!

A lot of you have been asking for downloadable copies, and I’m very pleased to say that they’re available now over on the Activities page:

Murder Most Unladylike timeline

Cases I Have Cracked With the Detective Society

I’m so pleased to have them up on the site – enjoy, Detectives!

Happy publication day, Once Upon a Crime!

The wait is finally over, Detectives! I’m so pleased that my book of Murder Most Unladylike short stories, Once Upon a Crime, is out TODAY!

To celebrate, I’ve made a new video that you can watch now on my YouTube channel. I talk more about the stories, and I also read from the very beginning of ‘The Case of the Uninvited Guest’, the story of what happened at Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy’s wedding.

It’s been so wonderful to hear from so many people who are already buying and reading the book, all over the world – I feel incredibly lucky to be finishing this series with such dedicated, thoughtful and kind fans. Thank you!

I’m going to be doing two more events before I head off on maternity leave at the end of next week: an Instagram Live on my Instagram account on Sunday 8th August at 4pm BST, and an interview with YouTuber Gavin Hetherington on his How To Train Your Gavin channel on Friday 13th August at 5pm BST. Both are free, and Gavin’s YouTube interview will stay up afterwards if you miss it when it’s first being aired!

I really do feel so proud to be able to say goodbye to the Murder Most Unladylike series this way. It’s wonderful to be taking a break knowing that my first series is finished – and my second, The Ministry of Unladylike Activity, is on the way next year in 2022!

Once Upon a Crime is Winstone’s Children’s Book of the Month for August!

I’m delighted that Winstone’s independent bookstores have chosen Once Upon a Crime as their Children’s Book of the Month for August!

It’s been reviewed by Grace in the Sherborne Times, too – thank you so much, Grace, and thank you to Winstone’s!

One week until Once Upon a Crime – read an exclusive extract now!

It’s true! Once Upon a Crime publishes in just SEVEN DAYS in the UK and Ireland – the wait is nearly over!

You may start seeing copies in stores from Monday 2nd August – there’s no embargo (a fancy publishing word that just means ‘hold’) on the book, so booksellers can put it out on display any time during publication week.

I’m working very hard to get everyone’s Round Table Books pre-orders out to them before publication day – orders will close on the 1st August (Sunday) for the rest of the year, so if you haven’t pre-ordered yet, this is your last chance! I’ve sent out copies to readers in Hong Kong, India, UAE, Hungary, Australia and Spain (among other countries!), and over the next few days I’m going to make a start on books to Ireland – and then the HUGE pile of books for UK fans! It makes me feel so proud and happy to know that even though I can’t travel myself at the moment, my books are going all over the world to reach their readers.

If you’d like to watch me talk about Once Upon a Crime, there’s a very special publication day virtual event with Waterstones and Elle McNicoll – you can buy tickets here, and they’ll be on sale all the way up until the 5th itself. And if you can’t make it, or you can’t pay for an event, don’t worry – there’ll be more ways to hear from me that I’ll announce soon.

And if you’d like to get an exclusive sneak peek of one of the stories in Once Upon a Crime, you can read the beginning of May Wong and the Deadly Flat here! This was sent out to newsletter subscribers last week – if you haven’t signed up yet, it’s the best way to get news from me straight to your inbox, even before it hits this website.

I’ll be back soon with a lot more Once Upon a Crime news – I’m so excited to see it get out into the world, and to talk to you about it!

Once Upon a Crime virtual event announcement!

Once Upon a Crime‘s publication day is just around the corner (August 3rd in Australia and New Zealand, and August 5th in the UK, Ireland, India, South Africa and most other territories where the Puffin edition is sold) – and I’m very happy to announce an event to celebrate it!

I’m not able to do any in-person events for this book, but I will be doing a few online events instead. I know lots of you would love to meet me in person – and I really do miss being able to meet fans – but I think it’s really nice that this way of doing things means that fans have equal access to events, wherever in the world you are!

The first Once Upon a Crime event will be at 11am UK time on the 5th of August. It’s hosted by Waterstones, who have been so supportive of me and the Murder Most Unladylike series, and I’ll be in conversation with brilliant children’s author Elle McNicoll. Elle’s first book, A Kind of Spark, just won the Waterstones Prize, and I’m a huge fan of her writing, so this is very exciting for me!

You can book tickets at the link above, or here – this event costs £5 per screen, or £10 for a ticket plus a copy of the book. The £5 ticket is available to anyone, anywhere in the world, but the £10 book and ticket is only available to fans in the UK. But don’t despair, non-UK readers – until the 1st August anyone can still order a signed copy of Once Upon a Crime from Round Table Books. They will ship anywhere in the world for the cost of postage and packing!

I’ll be announcing more events in the coming weeks, so don’t worry if you can’t make this one, or you don’t feel able to pay.

Writing Prompt Mondays: Prompt 27

Hello Detectives! You’ve been very patient as you’ve waited for a new writing prompt this year – thank you for all of your great stories for last month’s Share-a-Story writing prompt!

At the moment I’m not able to give feedback on your work – I only have a few weeks left before I head off on maternity leave, and I need to focus on the second draft of The Ministry of Unladylike Activity! My editor has just given me my notes, and I can already see how much better it’ll be once I’ve made all the changes I need to – but making those changes will take a lot of effort and time.

But while I write, I’m leaving you with a prompt of your own. This will run until the beginning of August, when I’ll give you one last prompt to tide you over for the rest of the year!

The theme this time around is change. All of our lives have changed over the past year and a half, and are still changing, and I’m very interested in what changes will stick, and what changes will be reversed. Of course, as always, you can write about yourselves or characters like yourselves, or you can write about someone completely different. Your change can be magical, scientific, domestic or deadly (a murder is a change, after all …), it can take place in the past, the future, right now or an entirely different world. Whatever you like!

By the way, if you haven’t yet, please do sign up to my newsletter. The theme this month is writing, and I give some (hopefully) useful writing advice to my readers. Even while I’m away, it’ll be kept up to date by members of my team, so if you want to catch up on book news, it’s the best place to do it!

The rules:

It can be as long or as short as you like, and take you as much or as little time as you want.It can be any genre (type) of story you want. If you have an idea for something that I haven’t mentioned, don’t wait for my permission – just go for it! This is your creativity working!You are not allowed to worry about grammar or spelling.You are not allowed to worry if it isn’t perfect, or criticise yourself as you’re writing.You are encouraged to make a plan before you begin, to make it easier for you to get to the end of the story. This can be two words or a whole page! But if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.Get to the end of the story without stopping to go back and fix bits you don’t like. Once you’ve finished, read it through again. If you still don’t like those bits, you can edit them now!If you want (and only if you want!) you’re allowed to post the first 500 words of your story in the comments below. I have to moderate the comments so it may take a while for them to show up – please be patient. I don’t want to see you apologising for your story or minimising what you’ve done when you post – writing a story is a triumph and you should be proud!Please do not use your full name when you comment – first names are fine, or you can make up a username that you like! Also remember to stay safe online and not get into private discussions with anyone you don’t know in real life without telling an adult first.If you like someone else’s story, you are allowed to comment to say so! If you’d like to give them ideas that might make their story even stronger, that’s OK, but please be kind and remember how deeply we all care about our writing. A good format for feedback might be something like: ‘I loved ****! Have you thought of ****? I think it might make your story even better!’ I will delete any comment if I feel it’s critical without being constructive.I can’t give feedback on any individual stories – I’m not marking them!This isn’t a competition, and there will be no winners and no prizes.

June update video – Once Upon a Crime and Ministry!

Hello Detectives!

The first draft of the Ministry of Unladylike Activity is finally finished, and so I’ve had time to sit down and film an update video for you while I wait for my edits!

In it I talk about messy, bad first drafts (do you think that published authors’ books are immediately good? Sadly, we’re just like you – it takes quite a few drafts for us to make our manuscripts good enough for fans to read, and I’m at the very beginning of the process with Ministry!), and tell you what’s ahead for the book.

I also talk more about Once Upon a Crime, which will be published in the UK, Ireland, India and South Africa on the 5th of August, and Australia and New Zealand on the 3rd. There’s not long to go now, and I’ve finally seen finished copies – it’s looking gorgeous!

Finally, I tell you about some personal news that you may have already spotted on my social media – I’m pregnant, with my own little detective due in September! A few fans have asked me what this will mean for the publication of my books – the short answer is ‘not much!’ and the longer answer is in the video! Basically, although I’m going to be stepping away from the internet for six months, you shouldn’t really notice any disruption unless you’re waiting for a reply to a fan email!

I’m working very hard to get everything done before I leave, so updates are going to be less regular from now until I go – my priority has to be the next draft of Ministry! Please bear with me – it’s been a very strange year, and I’m just feeling proud that I’m still publishing a book next month, and another one next summer, despite everything that’s happened!

Big news: The full Murder Most Unladylike series will be published in America!

That’s right, US and Canadian Detectives: you’ve been asking for this for years, and I can finally say that every single one of my Murder Most Unladylike books has now found an American home!

They’re being published by my current publisher, Simon & Schuster – originally they decided to only go up to the fifth book, Mistletoe and Murder, but they’ve now decided that due to more and more fans discovering the series, they want to publish the full set! This means books six to nine (A Spoonful of Murder, Death in the Spotlight, Top Marks for Murder and Death Sets Sail) AND the two books of short stories (Cream Buns and Crime and Once Upon a Crime)!

I want to thank my editor at S&S, Alexa Pastor, as well as my agent, Gemma Cooper – Gemma has been working on this deal for years and I’m so thrilled that it’s finally happened!

You may have noticed that I’m calling the books ‘Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries’ instead of ‘Wells and Wong Mysteries’ – and there’s a reason for that! Originally the series was called the ‘Wells and Wong Mysteries’ in the US, but we’ve decided that it makes more sense to have the same series title in the UK and the US. So Hazel and Daisy’s adventures are now known as ‘the Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries’ everywhere English-language editions are sold! The look of the US editions won’t change, though, nor will their actual titles – all of the new books should match Elizabeth Baddeley’s beautiful existing US covers!

It’ll be a few years before all of the books will publish – they’ll be releasing them slowly rather than all at once – so don’t expect them in your local bookstore next month. But it’s just so wonderful that they will eventually all be out there, ready to be discovered by readers. I’m thrilled, and I hope you are too!

Death in the Spotlight in Vogue India

It’s Pride Month, and I’m delighted to see that Nupur Sarvaiya has chosen Death in the Spotlight as one of ten children’s books that feature queer characters and experiences in this Vogue India article.

It’s a really nice mention for lots of reasons – I am very proud that many young LGBTQ+ fans have reached out to me to tell me what Daisy’s coming-out scene means to them, and also so pleased to see my book getting recognition in India, where I’ve been hearing from more and more fans recently.

If you’re looking for some great books to read this month, I think Vogue India’s list is the place to begin!