Summer is here, it’s Wimbledon fortnight in southwest London and it’s not been raining too much for England! But that’s not the only reason to celebrate 😊. I’m thrilled to announce that the audiobook of my Amazon UK bestseller The Secret Lake has just come out and is available to sample for free or to buy now. With its summer mystery adventure theme, the timing couldn’t be better.
The reading age for The Secret Lake book is 8-11. However, the audiobook is perfect for ages 6 and above. (Grown-up fans of classic children’s adventure stories such as Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew love it too!) So if you have a car or other journey planned and would like to keep the kids occupied for two and a half hours, do check out the samples by following the links.
- Listen to a sample or buy The Secret Lake audiobook on Audible
- Listen to a sample or buy The Secret Lake audiobook on Amazon
- Listen to a sample or buy The Secret Lake from Apple Books
I am narrating so I do hope you and the children enjoy an English accent. It required huge amounts of practice and preparation but was worth every minute for the experience. Did you know that for every hour of audio recording there are typically six hours of editing and mastering involved?! Here are a few photos of me at the recording studio in Brixton with sound engineer Andy Marlow 🙂
The Secret Lake has continued to chart in the top 300-800 (mostly) on Amazon UK over the last few months, as well as fluctuating in the top 2,000-5,000 over on Amazon.com. It has also been ranked regularly in the top 2,000 for all print book sales (not just children’s or Amazon) for the whole of the UK in recent months, according to reports from Nielsen bookscan. As I have said before, when I first sent the manuscript out to publishers they told me that children were no longer interested in traditional adventure stories. How wrong they were!
The audiobook on Amazon has Whispersync enabled, which means the kids can swap between the Kindle version and audiobook and keep their place, or even listen and read along with word highlights on some Kindle models. I’ve not tested this yet but will do so and blog about it at a later date. I think you need to have the Audible app installed for this to work.
The Secret Lake, Australia and Ten Log Cabins 🏕️
Yes, this is a very unlikely combination, I have to confess! But my favourite email in this week was from a lovely Australian called Graham. It read as follows:
Hi Karen, We have just purchased a property in New South Wales, Australia and have named it Secret Lake. We saw your book and loved it. We will be building 10 self-contained cabins around our lake and will find and put copies of your book in each cabin.
Here’s a picture of the lake that was in the property details he sent a link to. I am still speechless but so thrilled 🙂 As and when they are built I will share photos of the books in situ!
The Secret Lake in translation: introducing my first Albanian Fan
I was thrilled last Autumn to receive a rights request for The Secret Lake from Albania and even more excited when the book came out in June. Here’s a picture of my first Albanian fan at a book fair in Kosovo, which has a large Albanian population. The publisher Botart have many other English classics on their list, such as Michelle Magorian (Goodnight Mr Tom), Roald Dahl and David Walliams so I feel in good company and very safe hands. Next up is a Russian translation for which I have recently finalised a deal – more on this another time! In the meantime I hope you enjoy the picture and video below 😊.
The Secret Lake as a Class Reader
I’ve been receiving increasing contact from primary school teachers saying they have been using The Secret Lake in class, including one Deputy Head of English at a school in Durham, UK who is now mapping out a full Scheme of Work based on the book to be taught across four classes from September. He has invited me to go and watch the sessions live once they are up and running – I can’t wait and will blog about this in more detail when the time comes.
And below is a lovely photo (for which I received permission to share) from a school in Wiltshire, where the children each sent me a handwritten letter telling me how much they had enjoyed the story. Getting feedback from readers and schools means so much. Please do email or write to me with any feedback you have for any of my books and I will be happy to reply and share. Anything I can do to help encourage children to read and write more is a pleasure!
That’s it for now. I hope you have a wonderful summer (or winter) break!
Before signing off I just want to wish the Women’s England Football Team the very best of luck in their World Cup semi final against the USA this evening. May the best team win! Needless to say, Eeek is excited for more reasons than one! (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask the kids if they’ve read the book…!) ⚽ 👽 🏆
Update: Eeek! sends congratulations to the USA Women’s Soccer Team for winning! “You were awesome!” ⚽ 👽 🏆
- Check out Eeek! The Runaway Alien on Amazon 👽
- Listen to a sample or buy The Secret Lake audiobook on Audible
- Listen to a sample or buy The Secret Lake audiobook on Amazon
Happy reading and listening!
Karen
