Sam Blake Books

Professional photo dump! Pics by the brilliant Adrian Pope of our SoA Awards in Southwark Cathedral:

1. First up the incredible staff team with myself and board member Helen Epega added - this is how many people are supporting SoA authors across membership, contracts, policy and campaigns, prizes, grants, estates, communications, and not least the events team who put the night together. Every single one of them is brilliant!

2. Me introducing the evening and telling our audience about Human Authored and our forthcoming rebrand.

3. Southwark Cathedral is such a stunning venue with many literary links (Shakespeare's brother is buried here) and comes with added cat (Hodge has his own insta!)

4. The Very Reverend Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral who is a poet and a brilliant speechmaker

5. Helen Epega, board member and multi talented lady of words and music

6. The fabulous Cerrie Burnell, this year's keynote and wonder woman

7. Our prize winners! The SoA Awards are widest reaching portfolio of awards with a total of £100,000, awarded annually for poetry, fiction, non-fiction and illustration. Check out the website to discover which one you can enter next year! (And yes I was talking and not paying attention to Adrian's directions)

8. Myself with the SoA's incredible Chief Executive Anna Ganley

What a line up!

Earlier in the day I chaired our annual Fellows meeting, always a joy - recapping on the year showed how much the team have done over the past 12 months - and there's more to come! ✨

I love working with these people!

Helen Epega is an incredible writer, composer, librettist, synesthete, creator of 'Song Queen : A Pidgin Opera', and 'Of Earth and Quill' & 'Sounds of Us UK'. She has also invented an app that helps nuero divergent people manage live performances, and serves on the SoA board.

Anna Ganley is Chief Executive at the SoA and an absolute joy to work with. (She also has very very cool hair!)

Southwark Cathedral was packed with 400 guests (sneaky pic from the side aisle) and here's the view of Cerrie presenting from backstage 🤗

Home now to the incredible , which is just gorgeous and so welcoming! So good to be back!

This evening I had the absolute pleasure and honour of introducing Awards at Southwark Cathedral. The Rev Mark Oakley delivered a magnificent speech and I introduced board member Helen Epega who covered the awards part of the evening (that's the hardest part! She made it look easy!) Tonight Cerrie Burnell of Ceebebies fame was our keynote with an absolutely brilliant speech where she likened writing to tightrope walking in the dark - what a perfect description!

Here too with the fabulous Harrie Evans, previous board member and current chair of the crucial policy and campaign committee.

The cathedral was packed and there was so much love and joy in the room, it was a true celebration of everything the Society of Authors do - huge congratulations to Sophia and the staff team who pulled it all together so seamlessly 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

This is *absolutely* brilliant, original, perfectly plotted, genius - you will NOT be able to put it down!

Out in just a few weeks (2nd July I think) you can preorder now and thank me later!

Honestly, don't risk missing it because *everyone* will be talking about it and . You want to be first with the news don't you? So clickety click and order from your favourite shop. Go go go!

Best book I've read this year... REALLY 🔥🔥🔥

Hey presto ✨ An empty table fills with plots, chatter, gossip, and a murder of lady crime writers 💀 🔏

Gorgeous cocktails, fabulous food and flaming desserts! So lovely to see in Dublin! And what a brilliant event with Lisa and hosted by the fabulous .crowley 🔥

The photo of the creme brulee is from a video made - it arrived fully alight but between me 'persuading' her to take a video and her trying to find her phone, we only caught the end of the flame. Trust me it was very impressive!

Thank you to the team at The Cellar Bar at for being so lovely, what a gorgeous spot!

Bloody Scotland, the leading Scottish International Crime Writing Festival takes place this September in Stirling and I'll be there alongside Deborah Masson and Tanya Sweeney in an event chaired by author Zoe Venditozzi.

Every Breath You Take:
Three very different takes on the theme of stalking and obsession are sure to have you looking over your shoulder. The Police need to do more than just sing about it…

Saturday 19th September 8.15pm
Venue: Made in Stirling, 44 King Street, Stirling, FK8 1AY
Tickets/Booking: https://bloodyscotland.com/event/every-breath-you-take-sam-blake-deborah-masson-tanya-sweeney-542011/

Thank you for a fantastic night! Prizes like this raise the profile of books and reading for all of us, they get people into shops and while they are picking up a shortlisted or winning books they are very likely to find something else wonderful, something that could change their life.

The Awards take place next week on 18th June in Southwark Cathedral - join over 400 book lovers to celebrate the huge range of prizes - whatever you write, and whatever age you are, there's a prize to fit!

Find out more - join us to celebrate and most importantly SUPPORT all authors - the is your union, we're stronger together 📖💪✨

Another fabulous evening to celebrate the winners of the Women's Prize - the rain held off and didn't dampen spirits at all!

Huge congratulations to and the organising committee, this is such a wonderful evening. Huge congratulations too, to the winners Virginia Evans for fiction and Lyse Doucet for nonfiction, and particularly to the 2024 Discoveries winner Niamh Connolly who gave a brilliant speech!

As Kate said 'The original data centres are libraries, the original data centres are books... Reading matters.'

Here with Radio 2 Bookclub producer and children's author Joe Haddow and SoA CEO Anna Ganley. Seated with SoA sub committee member Stella Oni and Anna, with the Irish gang: Edel Coffey, Katriona O'Sullivan & Niamh Connolly, with the brilliant Lexie Elliot, then Kit de Waal and finally Debs from Love Reading. For once I managed to take some photos!

Balancing the books!

I was in lovely offices very close to Warren Street tube this morning. Superb top level accountants to authors, lots of sports people and all sorts of businesses, they have sculpture outside their conference rooms!

Authors in the UK don't get the artists exemption tax break that we get in Ireland - I like to think that the guy on the ladder in pic 2 is an author escaping the tax man 😂 but I'll probably be killed for saying that! Obviously ALL clients are fully tax compliant!

Get in touch with them if you need help, they really are brilliant 👌✨

I haven't counted but I think we're fairly close to the forty shades of green here this morning 💚 It's decidedly damp (but ever the optimist I've just put the washing out - it's not actually raining)

This is the field beside my house, the slope of the Big Sugarloaf in the distance. There's very often one horse here, which always breaks my heart a little. These two are beautiful and always together.