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Yesterday, the brilliant Pickled Pepper Books hosted our Dave Pigeon launch party. There was bunting. There was cake. There were crafts. And there were enough jammy biscuits to feed a small nation.

The party celebrated the launch of my debut book Dave Pigeon: How to Deal with Bad Cats and Keep (most of) Your Feathers. Illustrated by the amazingly talented Sheena Dempsey and published by animal-loving publisher Faber&Faber, the book tells the story of two plucky pigeons who are writing their autobiography of revenge. When asked, I often describe the book as the Hunger Games for pigeons and cats. Only not the Hunger Games at all. It’s more about two hungry pigeons and an even hungrier cat and they are all a bit rubbish at games.

Here is a photo montage of our wonderful afternoon at Pickled Pepper Books, dedicated to absolutely everyone who came along to the launch and to those who weren’t there but sent us their wonderful messages of support. It’s means the world to me to see so many people back our Dave on his journey to the bookshelves.

With love and feathers

xxx

Husband and cub dressed for the occasion

Pickled Pepper Books also dressed up for the Dave Pigeon Launch

Fabulous feather glitter tattoos, courtesy of my lovely little sister

Our budding artists decorating their bird gliders

When your sister-in-law turns up with the most incredible surprise: AN ACTUAL DAVE PIGEON CAKE (no pigeons were harmed in the making of this cake)

Speechy things with our birdrilliant editor Alice

Story time

Signing, signing, signing

To celebrate ‘Dave Pigeon’ being out in the world and to say a huge thank you for your incredible support, Sheena and I would love to invite you all to the Dave Pigeon launch party this Sunday. There will be free arts and crafts for the kids and there will be cake so we hope to see you there!

It’s been exciting times at Team Dave Pigeon HQ. The wonderful Steve and Urmi at Pickled Pepper Books offered us the chance to take over one of their splendid windows in the lead up to the Dave Pigeon Launch Party! (Yes, this is like Christmas for me.)

Our window is in place and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a vision of Dave Pigeon-ness in glorious blue and grass. Should you ever be in need of wanting to create a Dave Pigeon window yourself, here’s my guide to how we designed our space.

First, we needed an idea. This was easy. Sheena’s incredible spreads in Dave Pigeon provided endless inspiration. This one of a flock of birds flying off from the garden, is one of my favourites.

This spread soon inspired an idea of a flock of birds flying out of a large Dave Pigeon book. That’s when the sketching happened:

But would it work? How do you get a bunch of birds to emerge from a book? Enter an old Coco Pops box, Lego plates, mini print-outs of the birds and the book, oh and a lot of string:

Convinced by the mini prototype, we got to work building the book to fit the window until… TA DAAAAH we had a large foamboard book! (I didn’t have a 50 pence piece to compare sizes so I had to use my 5-year-old son.)

Then came the Dave Pigeon Window Day. Sheena used her magic skills and contortionist abilities to draw in our heroes, Dave and Skipper, on the window with chalk pens.

Then came the job of trimming grass to fit our window for a truly garden feel, thanks to the husband.

This was the ‘left a bit, right a bit’ bit:

And voilà! Our gorgeous Dave Pigeon window was dressed and finished. You can see the window now up until just after Sunday 8th May 2016 at Pickled Pepper Books.

Hugest thanks to Team Dave Pigeon Window: Sheena, James, and Steve and Urmi from Pickled Pepper Books because the secret to a lovely window is team work and a bucket load of coffee.

A lovely review of Dave Pigeon here from North Somerset CBG.

Sitting in bed with my mug of tea and one and a half jammy dodgers, (the bottom half crumbled in transit from the petrol station to home), and I’m having a moment to think about how incredible the last twenty-four hours has been.

Dave Pigeon has received so much support and love already, it really has been the most wonderful celebration of all the hard work that went into writing the book. Yesterday is a day I’m not going to forget for a long while.

Thank you also to absolutely everyone who sent me pictures of Dave Pigeon on bookshop shelves, on bookshop tables and on their own shelves. I can’t tell you how chuffed I am to see how many wonderful places Dave is roosting.

Of the lot, I picked this picture as my favourite.

That’s my lovely Dad there. He’s reading Dave Pigeon. The first fiction book he has ever read. EVER.

Considering he and my mum raised three bookworms in me and my sisters, it’s hard to believe my dad has never read a book for pleasure in his entire life. But he really hasn’t.

This is his first.

Well done Dave Pigeon, I think we’ve converted him.

The day is finally here! Dave Pigeon is out in the world. Thank you so much for sticking by me on this journey. Your support has meant the world to me and I’m sending you wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow of virtual love and feathers in return.

To celebrate getting to publication day, the very brilliant Ross Hendrick has created the Dave Pigeon mini book trailer.

Enjoy!

The first review of Dave Pigeon is in and I’m over the moon with how he’s been received. Have a read of what librarian Jo Clarke thought: Book Lover Jo

On Sunday, Sheena and I took Dave Pigeon to meet the lovely folk of Dublin at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival.

We ran a ‘Dave Pigeon: Art and Story Fun’ event were the children who attended drew their own pigeon characters and created their own pigeon adventure.

We met ‘Harry the Pigeon’ and took Dave Pigeon on a terrific adventure from a forest to the park where he escaped a wolf attack, only to fall into an underground trap. But fear not, he was rescued by a group of disco-partying penguins living in the back garden of a nearby house.

We had the best time creating a new world for the pigeons with such brilliant and creative budding young writers and illustrators.