An Odd Little Showcase at YALC 2019

The Odd Voice Out team had to do battle against the July heat wave to make it to YALC 2019 in time. After our train was delayed at the outskirts of Euston station to rescue the passengers of another train that had broken down, we'd missed our time slot for setting up our debuting stall by a good four hours. This meant that we were having to lay out our table in the late shift of a baking hot Thursday evening to be ready for our first morning of YALC as exhibitors.      

But we made it! OvO was set up and raring to go come Friday morning. And what a crazy three days of sales, signings and book bantering it was that followed. What we offered on our table was not only glossy paperback copies of our first four titles, but also free samples to take home and games to play daily. Every day at 1pm we had a free prize give away, handing out raffle tickets to our stall's visitors and giving them the chance to walk off with a piece of our exclusive OvO merchandise - be it our owlish note pad and pen, our coaster and bottle opener in one, or our funky red headphones - modeled here by two astoundingly lucky winners in the same family. Thanks to those of you who shared photos of your prizes!   

But it wasn't all about the stall. The Odd Voice Team also ran two workshops on the Saturday of the con, which turned out to be really engaging round-table discussions with groups of highly imaginative budding writers who shared in our desire to see greater diversity in YA fiction. We also handed out many flyers for our creative writing contest 'Not So Normal Narrators' and have already seen entries coming in from our fellow YALC attendees. But one of our biggest draws over the three day event was our grand prize to win a bundle of our books and merch. We're happy to say that hundreds of you entered, signed up to our mailing list and answered our query regarding what you would most like to see represented in YA fiction (the rich variety of your answers will be discussed in our next blog!). In the final hours of Sunday afternoon, Rebecca Mace AKA @alwaysbookishbecca was picked as our winner and took home with her a hefty bagful of our swag.   

For any of our visitors who missed out on our prize giveaways, we hope you still managed to pick up the free first chapter samples of our current titles. If you did, then all we ask in return is that you now read and share your freebies with other YA fiction fans, either in person or on your social medias (using a #oddvoiceout tag or our author names). Please don't just let them lie at the bottom of your YALC tote bags. And if you like what you've read so far and missed out on buying, then you can still follow links from our books page to buy any or all of our titles in digital form. Paperback copies of our summer releases will be available very soon! And for any fellow writers new to our mailing list, remember we are now in the last few weeks of our first creative writing contest - get those entries in by August 31st to be in with a chance for cash prizes and anthology publication. Good luck all you fellow oddballs! We can't wait to read what you have come up with.