Back in the bleakness of mid-February 2011, Sam Mills mentioned that she’d seen a feature about an online literary festival in a newspaper, and suggested that The Scattered Authors could hold the first-ever online children's festival on our shared blog. Sam says:
“I worried the idea might be rubbish, so I was excited by the positive and enthused response. The festival was on!”
So The Awfully Big Blog Adventure Online Literary Festival was born. It’s quite a mouthful. So we quickly shortened it to ABBAlitfest. Short, sweet, and easy on everyone’s typing fingers. Sam then approached each author-blogger individually about doing something for the festival—even though she knew it would take many times as long as doing a group-mailing.
“Day after day, I shot off email after email. I was so pleased when the first authors I approached, Liz Kessler and Adele Geras, said YES and agreed to do giveaways. Soon I had 12 authors on board and I began to compose a timetable. By the end we had a grand total of 47 authors. All the pieces were of such good quality...I think that made the festival.”
While Sam was working her socks off, wrangling authors and posts into place (much like herding cats, some say), another piece of the festival jigsaw was
12 Comments on The ABBAlitfest Story - Lucy Coats, last added: 7/15/2011
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By: Scattered Authors,
on 7/9/2011
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Lit Fest 2011, Contributor: Sam Mills, Add a tag
11 Comments on Interview: Tyger Drew and Sam Mills, last added: 7/9/2011
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I had so much fun working with you, Lucy! Your publicity campaign was amazing. And I must also mention Linda Strachan and give thanks to her, as she helped me when I was drowning under my workload and got some pieces in from Celia Rees and others - many thanks, Linda!
And what a fabulous job you all did!
Congratulations to all the organisers - a truly wonderful event!
You're quite right, Sam--so many brilliant people helped in so many ways--and Linda Sespecially deserves a big mention (I'm with her right now, and will tell her) It's a long, long list, and I forsee several more emails coming up! As you know, I loved working with you too....
John and Keren--thanks for your kind words.
I was really chuffed to be part of such an exciting event! Huge congratulations and thanks to all the organisers and helpers for all their hard work.
P.S. I forgot to say - I love the new-look site!
I've really enjoyed the ABBA literary festival - what a great idea, and such brilliant posts - I still haven't managed to look at all of them. It sounds like an enormous amount of work but definitely worth it. Thank you for doing it!
Hannah illustrated the site - I just nicked the lettering!
Do take a look at Hannah's site (and clip) if you haven't already:
http://www.hannahshawillustrator.co.uk/
Ten thousands hits sounds amazing- Abba lit fest is stadium rock!!
As I said elsewhere - it was an enormous amount of work for some people and I hope I can repay you for some of it one day.
Perhaps one of the nicest things about all this was that my 88yr old father who would not actually go to anything like this could also read and enjoy some of it. (He also much admires Lucy's dogs and I had a hard time persuading him that no, we are not having a dog!)
To everyone who put something up - my sincere thanks.
One question, Lucy - what kind of chocolate?
It was a FANTASTIC effort, Lucy! Huge appreciation! xxx