Tales Events – UKYABA Blogger Awards 2015
“The UKYA Blogger Awards have been set up in recognition of the services given to authors and publishers by the book-blogging community.”
On the 7th March in the bottom floor basement, surrounded by books at Waterstones High Street Kensington something amazing and magical happened!
In a room full of wine, nibbles, authors, publicists, bloggers, friends and family!
The first ever UKYA Blogger Awards 2015!
The dream child of super fabulous organiser of the awards, author and all round cool guy Andy Robb laid on a huge celebration to beat all celebrations! A celebration of bloggers! The 1st in its kind and here’s hoping for many more!
I couldn’t wait to attend the awards, not because I was up for an award, but to finally meet authors, publicists and other bloggers who I have been talking to for a while and had never met! I have to say I wasn’t disappointed!
So on the tube I got from my hotel dragging my husband and my son along for the ride to! My son was only interested in one thing….to support his Mom I hear you cry….well nope…..it was meeting The Dreamsnatcher author Abi Elphinstone! Bless Him!
The night was filled with laughter, hugs and chatting and upon arriving it was great to mingle with everyone……I spent most of the night going…..Oh hello I recognise you from twitter *hugs* or OMG ITS ACTUALLY YOU *hugs* quite a few times! 🙂
Then the awards presentation started! The awesome Andy Robb did a fab job of announcing the awards, the nominees and the presenters of the awards and everyone cheered for each other! So much love and support in one room! It was amazing!
I think even if you were not there the love could be felt all over twitter on the hashtag #ukyaba – everyone supporting everyone! One big loving community!
Okay *gulps* ….something awesome and I can honestly say unexpected may have happened!
I won the award in my category! Champion Newcomer 2015!
How the you know what did that happen?!
With my legs turning to jelly at the mention of Tales Of Yesterday the lovely Jessie from Stripes Publishing read out my blogs name as the winner!
I was in complete shock and started shaking immediately upon walking up to get my award. I even forgot to put my wine glass down! Classy eh?!
With dry mouth I was asked to make a speech! A speech? On the spot! With the randomness that comes out of my mouth! and with my broad brummie accent! Oh dear! This could have had disastrous consequences especially as wine was involved! But I kept it together (phew) and said a lot of sensible for me thank you’s !
As well as this wonderful trophy, that still makes my tummy flip every time I look at it, I won a fab £50 Waterstones Voucher from Stripes Publishing and an unbelievable prize of exclusive content on all of their books for a year! Wow! Speechless is the only word I can think of to describe my feelings on this as well as pure excitement!
After the award presentations were over we got to drink, mingle, congratulate people, hug and be merry! It was awesome!
(In July 2015 I was kindly asked due to winning this award to be a speaker on a Blogging For Beginners Workshop….at YALC! – find out what it’s all about here)
Also the #ukyaba hashtag trended on twitter for 3 hours!!! Wow!
And I wouldn’t be able to sleep properly if I didn’t put a photo montage together!
Don’t forget to check out the awards from a 10 year old view a bit further down too!
Enjoy!
Photos courtesy of my husband Kevin, my son Corey and extra photos courtesy of Serendipity Viv, Cloverness, Winged Reviews, Sister Spooky, YAYeahYeah, S C Ransom, Liz de Jager and Luna’s Little Library.
Also thanks to Queen Of Contemporary, Mile Long Bookshelf and Dark Readers for letting me use their photos with their awards.
My Thank you’s
As I said in my speech on the night…thank you so much to everyone for their support since I started blogging in November 2014! Only 5 months ago! You are all bloomin fantastic each and every one of you. Bloggers, publicists, authors! You know who you all are! I cannot believe that my name was up on a list with bloggers I admire and am in awe of let alone winning a trophy! *wipes tears from eyes*
Thank you to the awesome blogging community for welcoming me with open arms and making me feel all warm inside – yes all of you! I have got to know a lot of you through twitter and have had the absolute honour in meeting some of you and you are all the most kindest, genuine, enthusiastic people I have ever met and I am honoured to know you all!
Thank you to all of the authors for writing such fab awesome books that I get to write my feelings and emotions that they stir up inside me down on my blog! Thank you all for being so supportive, awesome and approachable to talk to! #UKYAFOREVER!
Thank you to all the publicists for sending me awesome books to review! My postman’s back will never be the same….I think he hates me! 🙂
Thank you to my husband Kevin, who nowadays watches TV on his own and puts up with tripping over above book post when we come home from work. Thank you to my son Corey for loving books as much as I do and being a fab ten year old! And to my family and friends for the support and reading my blog posts! 🙂
A huge thank you to Stripes Publishing for my amazing prizes also! It literally has blown my tiny mind! Thank You!
I felt very emotional the next day after the event and was very said to leave London….that’s how special the night and the awards were to me….I will forever remember it!
Well done and thank you to Andy Robb for organising and the wonderful hosts Waterstones High Street Kensington! You put on one heck of a celebration!
Also a big thank you to all publicists involved for sponsoring the awards, presenters and for Curious Fox Books for sponsoring the drinks for the evening events…hic hic hic
*chinks glass at everyone*
My highlights of the night!
There were so many highlights but some of them made me chuckle my little socks off and smile a lot – here are a few 🙂
The do we hug, do we hand shake, lets hug moment between Stephen ( @mybookishlife ) and Andrew ( @pewterwolf ) !
The ohhhhhhhh when Jonathan Stroud was announced to present and award!
James Dawson’s fantastic speech!
Serendipity Viv’s first words on winning her award for Champion of Content – “Oh Crap!”
Andy Robb’s pronunciation of Hachette! 🙂
My son, Corey’s little face looking at me when I won my award – it melted my heart!
But most of all the main highlight was the amount of love in the room for ALL bloggers! It was truly heart warming!
The UKYA Blogger Awards from the view of a 10 Year Old!
As you may be aware my 10 year old son attended the awards with me! Now rather unexpectedly he decided to record his first ever video for Tales Of Yesterday and record nearly all of the presentation and some of the evening! *gulps*
I have put the footage together as best as I can and I will now hand over to Corey…..please bear in mind that this was unexpected and the footage is rather shaky in places with some heads cut off too….but for his first ever video I thought he did fantastic!
I think he captured the night brilliantly and hopefully will remind everyone who was there what a fab night it was and anyone who wasn’t there…it will show you how much love for bloggers there was!
*hands microphone to Corey*
The Shortlist and Winners
Winners are highlighted for each category 🙂
(sponsored by Mira Ink)
QueenofContemporary/BookishBrits/BenjaminofTomes
(sponsored by Bloomsbury)
YAYAYeah/BookclubForum/PewterWolf
(sponsored by Egmont)
QueenofContemporary/ThirstforFiction/
CheezyFeetBooks/CicLovesBooks
(sponsored by Penguin Random House)
FlutteringButterflies/WritingfromtheTub/WondrousReads/
AnAwfulLotofReading/ BookAngelBooktopia/NarrativelySpeaking/Readaraptor/SerendipityReviews/
OverflowingLibrary
(sponsored by Hot Key)
QueerYA/PewterWolf/LunasLittleLibrary
(sponsored by Hatchette)
SisterSpooky/SnugglingontheSofa/ Readraptor/SerendipityReviews/OnceUponaBookcase/OverflowingLibrary
(sponsored by Faber and Faber)
LunasLittleLibrary/Readraptor/MountainsofInstead/
BookPassionforLife
(sponsored by Catnip)
MileLongBookshelf/WritingfromtheTub/Books4Teens/SisterSpooky/
BookAngelBooktopia/Readaraptor/SerendipityReviews/OverflowingLibrary/
WingedReviews
(sponsored by Walker)
Books4Teens/SerendipityReviews/OverflowingLibrary/
YAYAYeah
(sponsored by Little Tiger Press)
ChrissiReads/PerksofBeingaBookGirl/
AlwaysthatBookAddict
Other Fab UKYABA Blog Posts!
There have been some fab blog posts and videos by bloggers following the UKYA Blogger Awards 2015 – check some of them out here!
Author Eve Ainsworth – here
Champion Adult Blogger Sister Spooky – here
YA Book Prize – here
Champion of Diversity YA Yeah Yeah – here
Luna’s Little Library – here
Champion of Content Serendipity Reviews – here
Bloggers Blogger Pewter Wolf – here
Sable Caught – here
Champion Blogger Dark Readers – here
Author S C Ransom – here
Champion of Social Meia Winged Reviews – here
An Awful Lot Of Reading – here
Once Upon A Bookcase – here
Queen Of Contemporary – here
Find out more about the UKYA Blogger Awards by visiting the website here
Or why not follow the UKYA Blogger Awards on twitter – @ukyaba or catch up on all of the tweets by using the hashtag #ukyaba
Here’s to 2016!!!
Congratulations Michelle! Well deserved!
Awwwww thanks so much Rosie 🙂
xx