13th March 2019
I woke feeling excited and incredibly nervous that no one would show up for the launch. I needn’t have worried. Hodges Figgis was buzzing with people, well over 100 in fact. I had imagined a leisurely chat to welcome people as they arrived before the speeches followed perhaps by signing a handful of books afterwards.Instead I ended up signing books for the entire duration of the launch with a brief break for speeches (well not so brief in my case). I told the story of how the book came about and thanked the team who made it happen – all the while seeing faces in the room from my past and from so many different aspects of my life. It is quite a moving experience and there were so many people there that I could have spent the entire night chatting to. I still feel guilty for not getting to speak to everyone. Signing books is a surreal experience it somehow felt equally strange to sign books for people I work with, people I hadn’t seen for 30 years and girls I went to school with. Wonderful also to be told on the night that just 3 days after publication 100 Days to a Younger Brain was a top 10 non-fiction best-seller in Ireland. In it’s first full week since publication it has managed to become the No 1 best-selling non-fiction book in Ireland. Dream come true thanks to my family and an incredible team of people at Orion Publishing, Hachette Ireland and Peters Fraser Dunlop.