Femme Feral UK launch week!

Hello loves!

British friends, Femme Feral should be in bookshops this Thursday!!! I'm a bundle of raw nerves. It is a very vulnerable act to make a piece of art and then put it out into the word. I'm ecstatic/terrified/VERY STRESSED.

South Africa and the US, your wait is just a little longer until May.

The next few weeks are going to be a blur of interviews and media appearances and all the parts of my job I like the least. I'm trying to find pockets of joy and connection where I can, and holding onto the part I feel only the purest happiness about: that you are finally going to get to read this thing I've poured my deepest love into for several years.

Many very kind readers have been asking how they can help with the launch (I'm so, so grateful). Here are all the ways you can help, including free things like adding the book on Goodreads. But the very most helpful thing you can do is to pre-order the book.

A visit to the book house

One of the purest pockets of joy so far was that I got to visit the Grand House of Bookleyness Where All The Books Live, AKA my publisher Bloomsbury's UK distribution warehouse. It's where the books are stored once they're printed and bound, before they're sent off to bookshops all around the world. If both machines and books make you slightly unhinged with excitement (i.e. me), it's paradise.

I signed 2,000 copies of the special hardback edition with sprayed edges. If you're wondering, this took me about three hours of the most hardcore physical labour a writing career has thus far required of me.

200,000 books leave this warehouse every single day, so maybe the reading crisis is a little overstated and my whole career isn't doomed just yet. Right now, these 2,000 copies of Femme Feral are on their way to bookshops all around the world (South Africa, some of them are bound for you).

A book is a collection of words that came out of my brain, but it's also a marvellous physical object, an enduring and wonderful technology. I love that even today, when most of the words we read every day are created by pixels on a screen, it's still so meaningful to so many people to own a book that has been touched by the hand of its author. For the few brief moments that I scrawled my name across each page, I tried to think about its reader (you!), feeling grateful for the connection a book allows me to have with total strangers, each time trying to pour into the scrawl the thought: here, I made this gift for you.

Queens Park Books signing

One of the best places to buy one of those delicious signed special edition hardbacks is at wonderful indie Queens Park Books. I will be popping in this Thursday (9 April) around noon if you want to come and get your book especially dedicated to you, on launch day.

MCM Comic Con

Fellow nerds, I'm delighted to say that I'm appearing at MCM Comic Con this May. I shall also be trying not to get evicted for stalking Nathan Fillion. Tickets here.

Observer Live Event

Londoners, there are still some spots at the Observer Debut Novelists of 2026 live event on 15 April. It's going to be one of the most joyful pockets of joy!

Lovely things

Little things that have been keeping me sane amongst the stress:

• Going for runs and listening to the bonkers fun Dungeon Crawler Carl series (I just started book 3. Donut is Queen!).
• Gorging memes relating to the Artemis II moon mission and Project Hail Mary.
• Bingeing the TV show The Pitt (it's so good, oh my god).
• Reading short stories because my brain can't cope with full novels right now. Highlights have been Kate Folk's hilarious riff on dating AIs "Out There" and Eliza Clark's deliciously twisted mermaid story "She's Always Hungry".
• Looking at art with my friends. The Nigerian Modernism exhibition at the Tate Mod is unmissable and on for a few more weeks.
• Knitting my first jumper.

If you see me out in the world during the next few weeks, I AM NOT OKAY, PLEASE FEED ME SNACKS AND GIVE ME A HUG.

Wishing you all book robots!

Sam