Unknown and lovely - a Book Slam blog

No sooner have I finished my second book... Well, I'm starting to think, tentatively, about what I'm writing next... and I wrote about how THAT feels for Book Slam... Go HERE to read about winds of inspiration, thought-provoking foxes, and why, when it comes to a blank page and the perilous setting down of first words, it's Hemingway who has the last word.

A Heart Bent Out of Shape - sneak peek

My publisher, Headline, have made some quite beautiful proof copies of A Heart Bent Out of Shape. The hardback cover will look a little different, but the feeling evoked by the design - for these advance copies, and the finished thing - is absolutely right. Roll on September, say I...  

Budapest part 2: First Novel Fest

Amidst the wonders of sumptuous cake, dazzling shop windows, and general jaunting about Budapest, I also took part in the European First Novel Festival. The Budapest International Book Festival has been in existence for some twenty years, but the First Novel Fest is somewhat newer (fittingly). This year writers from Bulgaria, Hungary, Holland, France, Italy, Scotland, Slovenia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Finland, Norway, Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Israel, and England (me!) took part. And what a brilliantly eclectic group we were; different ages, backgrounds, concerns, but the shared experience of having recently released our first novels... 

The setting for our meets and panels was Millenáris, a cultural centre and green space in the heart of Buda. The site was once home to an electrical factory, and something of this industrial spirit remains, with converted hangars and distinctly urban architecture (and rusted hunks of metal that could have been relics of a bygone era, or the modernest of art, who knows...). Anyway, it was cool. It felt a bit Berlin-y. And over the Festival weekend it was full of book-loving types sitting in the sunshine, beering and coffee-ing, and eating hot coils of sugared bread (Transylvanian 'Chimney Cake'). I also had a glimpse of it by night, after an evening reception for the Festival, where refreshments came in the form of award winning vintages from Hungary's foremost winegrower, and a dazzling buffet that included, amongst many other favourite dishes, a celestially-good Paprika Chicken. By night, the whole park rang with the croaking of frogs, an insanely vociferous chorus. A sound that was only drowned out, momentarily, by a man leaving our party and howling at the moon - the walking embodiment of the tortured artist. Lovely stuff.

Inside two of the main halls, the Book Festival was in full swing, with exhibitors from all over Hungary and Europe, as well as a full programme of events. My publisher Park's stand became our meeting point for the weekend. It was fab to see the stacks of Nyarak Könyve, and I only regret not trying to nab one of the beautiful posters made for the occasion, using one of the Polaroid-style images from the UK hardback. My sunday launch was advertised on the stand, with bunches of gorgeous summer flowers. I was feeling a lot of Park love.

My first event was a panel on the subject of 'family', with writers from Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Scotland, and Holland, and hosted by writer and critic Zsofia Ban. While our books were wildly different - from magic realism in a Serbian village to a tale of 'waiting' in a Dutch fishing town - we'd all written of family, in some form; fractured family, harmonious family, murderous family, loving family. It made for spirited discussion - luckily for me, the official language of the festival was English - and I couldn't help being humbled by the language skills of the other writers. 

On the second day of the Festival I took part in a panel whose only theme was along the lines of 'you're all first time novelists... GO!' It worked brilliantly. The host was charismatic writer András Forgách, and he succeeded in spinning the conversation between all eight of us, ensuring everyone got the time to talk about their experiences, from quitting a job in a Czech McDonalds, to love in the time of French recession, to being a Danish soldier in Afghanistan. We compared stories of sudden inspiration striking (I was playing tennis and heard a seagull - true story), and debated the pros and cons of writing while listening to music (I voted yes - especially if it's the obsessive repeat playing of one album, teenage-style). Being invited to take part in the Festival was a real privilege, and this particular panel was one of the most enjoyable events I've ever done.       

Gurning, between far more composed writers Cathrine Riebnitzsky and Jessica Gregson.

In a pause between interviews and events, Éva and Vera asked if I'd like a peek inside the Park offices, as they were located just a short walk from the Festival site. Steps from Millenáris Park, we found ourselves on a peaceful residential street, and stopped at a beautiful turn-of-the-century apartment block, complete with garden path and wooden balconies. I thought we were catching our breath - it was HOT - but no, tucked inside this glorious old building was the Park office, once the former workspace and home of celebrated architect Marcel Komor. Of the many aesthetically lovely things about my publisher's HQ - from the mezzanine galleries, to the shaded balconies, to the parquet floor - the intricately painted wooden ceiling is perhaps the most remarkable.

In every sense, The Book of Summers has found a very nice Hungarian home indeed.

A post-event stroll across the Margit Bridge, in Budapest's evening sun, Danube truly blue.

Budapest part 1: Nyarak Könyve launch

Two weeks ago, The Book of Summers came out in Hungary. Happy timing, as the Budapest International Literature Festival was taking place at the same time, and I was invited over as the English representative in the European First Novel Festival. I'll be writing a whole separate entry on that experience, but for now I just want to tell you about Nyarak Könyve, and how beautifully my Hungarian publisher, Park, launched it in Budapest.

After being met at the airport by the lovely Éva, we sped into the city by taxi, windows down, sun beaming, talking over the schedule for my stay. My husband and I arrived at our hotel in the late afternoon, and were greeted by this...

If you've read The Book of Summers, and have a particularly keen eye for cake, you might recognise it as a Dobos Torte; a favourite Magyar cake possessed of a topping that in the book I describe as a 'toffee coloured skating rink'. Or, as the non-English cake baker suggests, 'scating risk', which sounds infinitely more daring. What a lovely sight, especially as it was presented with a copy of my book in Hungarian and a welcome note from my editor, Vera. We made coffee, cut huge slices, and sat on our balcony, basking in the Budapest sunshine.

Fabulous Team Park: Vera and Éva and I

Sunday 21st was the launch event for Nyarak Könyve.  It took place at the main site of Budapest's book festival, and it was great to see just how many people came along - maybe they were curious to see how this semi-outsider had written about Hungary. The format for the event was fab: I was interviewed by eminent cultural commentator and TV journalist Balázs Lévai (with the help of a very lovely interpreter, who relayed our conversation to the audience), while renowned Hungarian actress Annamaria Láng read sections from the book. Actually read feels like an understatement, she performed them, with such subtlety and grace that even though I couldn't understand a word (perhaps especially because) I was utterly moved. Afterwards I signed books, regrouped with my family (my mum and dad had also joined us in Budapest - joy!), and went for beers in the sunshine.

Hanging out at the Fisherman's Bastion, post-launch, a fave Budapest spot

There wasn't a lot of time for sightseeing this time in Budapest, but I did make one pilgrimage. A particularly self-indulgent one, too. I was tipped off that at a downtown bookstore there was a rather fabulous window display. On our last morning we hopped on the metro and got off at Rákoczi Street, home to the brilliantly named Libri Könyvpalota (Libri Book Palace). I spotted this from afar...   

... move closer...

... and closer still...

It's far easier being unselfconscious when you're abroad, but I didn't even try to pretend to take it in my stride. Pointed. Stared. Posed. If a passer-by finds it one hundredth as head-turning as me it'll have done its job supremely.

It was always going to be a special trip, seeing my words in Hungarian for the first time, and taking part in the Festival with my family there too, but the experience surpassed all expectations. Much of that was down to the kindness and enthusiasm of Park, who looked after me (and my book) so well - Nyarak Könyve couldn't be in better hands. As well as the excitements of the launch, my time in Budapest was made of so many memorable moments. April snows turning to blistering sunshine just before our arrival. White light falling over the Danube at dusk. A driving tour with Éva and András, Park's MD, along the tree-lined serenity of Andrássy Útca, past skateboarders turning tricks at Heroes' Square, and into the green suburbs, for dinner in a garden restaurant. A saturday morning stroll on Margit Island, just steps away from our hotel, a place thronged with pleasure-seekers, tots on trikes and body-beautiful Magyars. Feeling that deep city heat that I love so much - river glittering, pavement cafes bursting at their seams - knowing that summer's on its way.  That maybe, in Hungary and with Nyarak Könyve, it has, in fact, already arrived. A huge Köszönöm szépen to all at Park.       

Breathtaking

Back in the summer I wrote about the perils of Holiday Reading for Book Slam. I talked about 'Environmental Mismatch', when your chosen book is all out of kilter with your holiday destination. For last week's snowboarding trip to Austria, I packed a surf story. Tim Winton's BREATH is set over a sequence of endless summers, on the other side of the world. Its pages are steeped in sun and salt water. At one point the following exchange takes place: 'I've never seen snow, I said. White, she said. And cold.' A good book for a winter trip, then? It turned out to be the best. The very best. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a more perfect holiday reading experience. 

I first came across Tim Winton when I heard his coastal memoir, Land's Edge, read on Radio 4 last year. BREATH, Winton's 2008 novel, is a sea song of tough beauty, ceaselessly poetic, never less than controlled. It's a coming-of-age story, tinted with nostalgia, joy, and deep dark regret, and imbued with passion for the extraordinary (never 'extreme', Winton tells us) sport of surfing. The most stunning passages take place on the water, and the book succeeds in leading us all the way into a specific experience and making us understand and feel every single aspect of it. I can imagine the book is no less of a powerful read for those who've never stood sideways (through surf or skate or snow), but if you've had a taste of it - no matter how fleeting, or how diluted, compared to the protagonist Bruce Pike's experience - the effect is all the stronger. And if you're getting up every morning as I did last week, taking your board and heading into the white world of the mountains, BREATH's poetry ringing in your ears, and spurring your every powder turn or swift descent, the line between book life and real life criss-crosses in beautiful, breathtaking, fashion.   

Tim Winton's writing is tinglingly good. There are three passages in the book that make me cry every time I read them (even on a casual flick - I know, I've tested it), and it's not because they're sad - it's because they're perfect. I've never known the intoxicating, addictive fear that Winton writes of, nor the extremity of Pikelet's experiences on a surf board, but I get it. I've always got it. He calls surfing dancing, and as I read, I know I've danced too. I learnt to snowboard when I was nineteen and living in Switzerland. I can remember almost everything about that first day in early December. It was made of 'bluebird and pow' - blue skies, fresh snow - I knew it was beautiful, I didn't figure it for rare. Maybe I thought all days on the mountain were like that; untouched, and above the clouds. We hired boards in the village and went up without an instructor, falling our way chaotically down the hill. The colour-coding of slopes meant nothing to us (only now do I know that the first run I rolled down was Red), and we had none of the restraint of orderly ski school snakes. I was out of control, cartwheeling, a rag doll on a runaway board. When I got home I cried in the shower as the water hit my still-screaming muscles. The next morning I woke up back in my student lodging feeling as though I'd been hit by a car. I struggled to turn my head or lift an arm to switch off my bleating alarm. I lay still, stretching out my fingers and my toes, every part of me aching in a way it never had. For all the pain, I already knew I loved everything about le surf.  Fifteen years of snowboarding holidays later, including two season-long trips, and just a single winter missed (I was finishing writing The Book of Summers) and I love it still.

First ever day on the mountain, in 1998. I'm the one on the right - bad style, big smile.

On last week's trip, more than ever before I examined how I feel about snowboarding. That was the BREATH effect - no matter that it was snow not surf - it's an act that is every bit as 'completely pointless and beautiful'. I've never been one of Winton's grommets or 'hell men', but for a while back there, when I lived in the mountains, I was swept up in the season's buzz - I wanted to ride faster, jump higher - progression was everything, and daring yourself to do the things you were afraid of was part of it. Last week I guess I accepted that now I'm more of a daytripper, and it's the romance of the ride that I appreciate the most. Haring down twisting, pine-lined paths, catching the biting scent of woodsmoke, sticking my board in the snow and watching the view. My husband, however, is still fuelled by that nip of fear, and the thrill of over-coming it. Last week he dropped into the park, flying off too-big kickers and clattering his board over slick and unforgiving boxes, and I watched him do it. I felt a little envious - not of his ability, but of his unending desire to step up and push his luck, knowing that for every smack down, the moments when you ride away with a half-crazed smile are worth it a thousand times over. I always weigh up the risk, and ride within what I see as the bounds of my ability. It's safe, but in its way it's limiting. I know I can change that at any moment, ruefulness is a foolish sort of self-deception, but I also know that I don't really want to. Not now. So I console myself with the words of BREATH's Bruce Pike as he recalls his first wave. Not his biggest, his toughest, his bravest, but his first. He tells us that even now, as an old man, he judges 'every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living'. Everyone has their own bliss, and perhaps it's about finding it, and recognising it. In life, in memory, or glimpsed through the pages of a graceful, vital story.

Paean to paper

After writing last time about keeping a diary, what of the notebooks themselves? While my Writing Diary is an unromantic Word document, I have an ever-increasing collection of notebooks, some of which I can't bring myself to write a word in. They're simply... too lovely. Let me take you on a photo-tour of just some of the yet-to-be-spine-cracked notebooks currently occupying my desk, and others that I only seem bold enough to write in when I'm abroad. Perhaps there's something about the sense of rejuvenation and discovery that makes a beautiful notebook the perfect travelling companion. New climes, clean sheet.

These are top of my 'too gorgeous for words' pile. Vintage traveller, cloth-bound, Liberty print... it'd take a brave writer to start scribbling in their pages. Perhaps 2013 will be the year.

I've a penchant for most things French, including these old school style jotters. With their wafer thin paper and scant pages you'd think they'd retail at just a few centimes... mais non... which is probably why I keep them for best. 'Au cerf' contains early notes on The Book of Summers, but it wasn't until I was on a lakeside holiday in Hungary that I dared to jot in it. 

    
Girl meets boy. Ryan Gosling, actually. The one on the left is too lovely, and the one on the right too silly, and neither contain so much as a scribble. Yet. 

These I file under Precious Notebooks or Leather-bound Lovelies. The red one was a gift from my mum, it's delicately printed with butterflies and came all the way to Rwanda with me. A six hour delay in Nairobi airport flew by as I wrote up our travels in it, wholly occupied in trying to find words for sights and experiences that left me mostly speechless. On the last page I've listed handy Kinyarwandan phrases and phonetic pronunciations. I can remember writing them down one balmy night on the shores of Lake Kivu, with our dear friends Steve and Kate and their driver, friend, and best Kinyarwandan teacher Claude. And the blue... a very limited edition notebook made by the brilliant Headline. It took a trip to Italy for me to write a word in it; a messy brainstorm for titles for my second novel. Maybe I thought The Book of Summers would bring it luck.

Right now, with my second novel finished, my mind is buzzing with new ideas about what to write next. New words deserve new notebooks. My current stationery crush is on Rifle Paper Co. I discovered their notecards in Anthropologie and I've now got my heart set on their delicious Botanicals journals (above). No listless scribbles or meandering To-Do lists for those pages. If I ever dared to put pen to their paper, I like to think I'll be writing something beautiful. Or at the very least, be writing somewhere beautiful. I need to plan a trip.

Notes to self - a Book Slam blog

Over on the Book Slam website I've written about writing and diaries, and writing diaries, and Writing Diaries... Go HERE to see why I agree with Joan.

Feeling strange

In Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith's excellent collection of essays, the author talks about the feeling of finishing a novel. 'Who can find anything bad to say about the last day of a novel?' she writes, 'It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives'. 

After living in a cocoon of editing for most of January, I sent my novel off to my editors on Friday. Was this the 'last day' that Smith writes about? Sort of. My manuscript and I have gone through two rounds of notes, and all that remains now are copy edits for UK and US. Do I feel so happy, like Smith, that I'm lost for adjectives? Not quite. Above all, I feel a little bit... strange. I've tried to dissect this feeling further, as I too expected out-and-out ecstasy, at least a bit of heel kicking and capering, but instead I poured a large glass of wine, sank into a bath, turned up my music loud enough to annoy the neighbours, and... felt strange.

Strange... because it's Lausanne. Back in November 2011, just as I was really getting stuck into the writing of A Heart Bent Out of Shape/The Swiss Affair, I wrote a blog about my 'golden city', the place I lived for a year while at university and have loved ever since. My story is set in Lausanne, and throughout its writing I felt the immense joy, and the considerable responsibility, of committing to paper a place that has lived in one's imagination for so long. Lausanne isn't just a setting for a novel, a city plucked from Google Maps, and researched through Wiki, it's LAUSANNE. A name I cannot see or say or hear without feeling the prickle of lust usually reserved for lovers. I was nineteen when I went to live there for the year. Have you ever longed for something and then when it eventually happens you discover that it's even better than your imaginings? I don't think that happens too many times in a lifetime, but it happened to me when I first went to Lausanne. After a golden year in a golden city I've returned again and again and it's always and never the same. I doubt I'll ever write another novel set in Lausanne, so this is it... Have I done it justice on the page? Along the way I've weeded out so much, because I've realised that just because it lives in my memory it doesn't mean it matters to the story. Slain darlings? You bet. One of the best things about writing is that you can take the things that you love, the things you hold dear, and make something new out of them. But a story built of cherished things is especially hard to let go of, and maybe that's why I feel... strange.

Darling: The comely facade of a Lausanne building.

Strange also because... of my characters. The people I've made up and who are, now, as real to me as anyone I know. Hadley and Joel and Hugo and Kristina... Have I told their story with 'all the truth and tenderness and severity' I'm capable of, as Katherine Anne Porter so perfectly says? God, I hope so. That moment when your characters finally feel fully-formed, a potent mix of pride and responsibility hits; the desire to do your best by them, and the hope that they'll go out into the world and be looked upon kindly, and be understood. There's some reconciling to be done too, between how they seem to me, the doting mother, and how they appear on the page. A final once-over, a kiss on the head, then out into the world.

So after finishing on Friday I felt strange on saturday and I felt strange on sunday and on monday I went to London and met lots of people and talked about the new book and began to feel more and more excited about it but, also, still strange. Today, as I write, I feel good. I'm sitting at my desk, wearing the same holey pink cardigan and listening to the same album that were my constants through the last month of writing but... something's missing. I don't have a 100,000 word document open. I'm not scribbling notes. I'm no longer trying to change the fates of people I've made up but are no less beloved for it. Soon I'll be checking copy edits, I'll see a cover, hold a proof in my hands, and then the book itself. But for now? It's still a little strange, and maybe I'm just learning that that's the way I like it. 

The new book

I'm editing. Which means for the next couple of weeks I'll be cocooned in my writing room, with little exposure to fresh air and extremely limited human contact outside of my husband and me x 2. You see, after working for years in agencies, I can't help splitting my personality into Suit and Creative, and right now the Suit is 'handling' the Creative, so I'm surrounded by post-its, timing plans and action lists. There's also plenty of cajoling and doughnuts. When I/we emerge, around the beginning of February, I'll be smiling, I hope, because bar last tweaks and copy edits, Book Two will be nearly ready. I'm delighted to say that Book Two has a new title. Actually, it has two*...

A HEART BENT OUT OF SHAPE will be published in the UK in July 2013.
THE SWISS AFFAIR will be published in the US/ Canada in December 2013.

As soon as we have covers & cover copy, I'll be excited to share them with you here. For now though, I'm in lock-down. I enjoy the utter absorption of editing, and the focus of a looming deadline. I close the door, flip my blinds, flick on my lamp, and plug into my headphones. Music is essential. Sometimes I play it at such a whisper that tracks slip by without me noticing, other times I let it roar. I've been working on A HEART BENT OUT OF SHAPE/ THE SWISS AFFAIR for  about a year and a half, and some tunes have had more play than others. These tracks have become my soundtrack to the book; they've accompanied the writing of it but also, probably unsurprisingly, I think they go pretty well with the story too.

Nouvelle Vague - I Melt With You
Cat Power - Sea of Love
Beck - Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
Lykke Li - Sadness Is A Blessing 
Lana Del Ray - Born To Die
Johnny Cash - Hurt
Charlotte Gainsbourg - Memoir
Blur - No Distance Left To Run
Miike Snow - Animal
Regina Spektor - Real Love
  
... and a bonus track, mainly because I've been feeling very grateful to my excellent editors, Leah and Erika, recently...

Editors - Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors   

Just as I've been living my book through music, I've been playing with pictures too. You can't keep a good mood-board down. Right, that's enough artful procrastination, back to the editing. The day/night is yet young.

*It's definitely the same book, so don't go buying it twice. Actually, what am I saying? Please DO buy it twice (my mum will be).

Guest blogs

I've just written a piece for my publisher Headline about my eventful first year as an author; specifically book fests and Book Slam. You can read it HERE.

On the subject of Book Slam, over on their site I extol the joys of finding treasure without a map... Those 'stumbled upon' books you fall in love with at first sight. You can read that HERE. 

My highest-lightest 2012 highlights

I ummed and ahhed about a piece like this, and then I thought of the very first blog post I wrote. I'd just found my agent and was feeling like I was taking a first step down an exciting, if uncertain road; the only thing I knew was that I wanted to write about what happened next. Back then, I quoted good old Ferris Bueller and I'll quote him again now... "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it". So, in that spirit, below are just ten of the very many great things about 2012.

1) My first official outing as a soon-to-be published author was in January 2012. Thanks to the organisational efforts of my friend Kate, I ran a writing workshop in Kigali, Rwanda. I lost my voice. There was a power cut. It was an eventful first event. I loved it, and will never, ever forget it.

2) On 1st March 2012 The Book of Summers was published in hardback and after weeks of rain the sun beamed all day. I celebrated at The Gay Hussar with my fab agent Rowan, and the absolutely brilliant Headline 'Team Summer', Leah, Ben & Vicky. To top it off, towards the end of the night Leah, my editor, told me that my novel was to be a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club pick. I had to keep this amazing news under my hat for the next three months. Hard? Very. I walked back to my hotel in Bloomsbury that night feeling like one of the luckiest people around. My little book was out in the world and the very best people were helping it on its way.

3) Later in March I had my launch party at Daunt in Hampstead. Friends. Wine. Salty snacks. It was really great. I tried to give a speech to say as much, but I ended up crying instead. I think everyone knew what I meant, and more importantly, how much it meant.

4) In May The Book of Summers came out in paperback and I hit the couch with Richard & Judy. It was surreal and excellent and I just about managed to resist the urge to smother them in grateful kisses. Afterwards we drank cocktails on the Shoreditch House roof terrace and basked in the first (and one of the last) flaming-hot days of the summer.

5) At the end of May I celebrated my USA Pub Day with a plate of maple-syrup soaked pancakes. Two years earlier I'd wed in Vegas and honeymooned in New Mexico and enjoyed countless roadside diner short stacks. There was no better way to mark my publication across the pond.

6) Through the spring and summer I was lucky to get some really lovely reviews for The Book of Summers. I've come to know some brilliant book bloggers & am very grateful for their enthusiasm and thoughtful words. Almost-life-size book cover shots in Marie Claire and Grazia made me squeal in the aisles of the newsagent. I've written three pieces for ELLE through the year, after they tipped me as one of their 'most anticipated debut novelists'. Oh, I do love ELLE. And a really sweet surprise? Emails from perfectly lovely strangers, saying they'd read & liked my book. I cherish every one. And as to any less-than-lovely comments - you're just not a real author without them.

7) In July I visited Madrid for the launch of El libro de los veranos. The Spanish football team had just won Euro 2012 and were parading victorious; I arrived in the city to the tune of air horns. My publisher, Suma de letras, looked after me handsomely. I met lots of charming Spanish journalists, walked the Gran Via in blazing sunshine, spotted my book in two shop windows, and went home loaded with some of the best Manchego in Madrid. Happy, happy.

8) In August I made my first appearance at a literary festival... The Edinburgh Festival. My husband and his brother had shows of their own, so we got to experience it all together. I shared a stage with the brilliant Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. I hung out with my agent & publisher. I saw a mind-melting beat-boxer. It was all ace.

9) Earlier in the year Patrick Neate, my former Arvon tutor (O Captain, my Captain!), asked me if I'd like to contribute a short story to the new Book Slam collection. Would I? Too Much Too Young was published in November. I recorded my story, Me and Bobby McGee, for the Jarvis Cocker show on BBC 6Music, my favourite station. The Book Slam 'lit night club' came to Bristol for the first time, and I read along with fellow contributors Nikesh Shukla and Salena Godden. I repeat... Would I??

10) Through it all I've been writing my next novel, due out in July 2013. Last time it was Hungary and this time it's Switzerland. There's a girl called Hadley, and a story to be told.  2012 has been a year full of excitement and first-experiences, a proper thrill ride, but there've been a lot of quiet moments too. There had to be. Days and nights when I've disconnected my laptop from the internet, closed my writing room door, and lost myself in another world entirely. Even when deadlines are looming fiercely and the words aren't quite flowing I always treasure this; my secret place.

But my single best thing about 2012 - the highlight that beams brighter than anything else - is the support and good cheer I've enjoyed from my dear friends (many old, some new) and family. My husband, Bobby, is endlessly encouraging and always the first person to read anything I write. Without him, without them, there's little point to any of it really, so THANK YOU. And to everyone else, thank you too. May 2013 be good to us all.          

Sprucing (pruning & mucking about)

I've spent today sprucing up my writing room, as I like the idea of starting 2013 with a little less (a tiny bit less) clutter about me. In my clear-out I came across a postcard I'd forgotten about. It's the work of two of my favourite wise men; words by Patrick Leigh Fermor, design by Alan Fletcher. As I await notes on the second draft of my next novel it seems more appropriate than ever... 

As to my next novel, how DOES it look? At the moment, something like this...

That's the south wall of my writing room, stuck all over with chapter by chapter post-its. Another piece of clutter (or very necessary accoutrement) that survived my grand tidy-up/ chuck-out. 

Writers, here's to 'chopping and pruning and mucking about'. Readers, may you always 'like the sound of it' too. A very happy New Year, one and all.

Days like these

This time of year always makes me think of snow, and as the first flakes fall a feeling of incomparable levity and possibility comes with them. Seven years ago I quit my London job and headed off to the French Alps with my boyfriend and our snowboards. We ended up staying for two winters. I worked as a chalet chef and a shopgirl, he as a cleaner and snowboard guide. And I began writing. I've written about this transformative time before, last year in ELLE magazine, and on my blog, but I don't think I ever told you this... it started with poetry. 

No child is self-conscious about their scribbled verse and out in the French Alps I was playing, working too, but mostly playing. My days, as soon as I was free of the chalet kitchen or the shop, were spent sliding down slippery stuff, and, as my mum used to say when I was small, 'running around with my mouth open'. Out there I was trying to go fast, really fast, even faster. Jumping. Gathering snow to make bigger things to jump. For two winters I was all wet mittens and red cheeks, and this return to childish pleasures, this abandonment, sparked the kind of creative courage that children think nothing of. So I began with poetry, not caring if it was any good (it wasn't), just relishing the feeling of creation. I found a couple of these old scribbles the other day and I remember well the moments that led to them. The poems themselves are grim little things so fear not, I won't reproduce them here, but I'll tell you their essence because there's still something in them that I like. And the very fact that they exist, I like even more.

My favourite job as a chalet chef was taking out the rubbish after the night's service had ended. At around 10 o'clock I'd heft the bin bag down the stairs and out of the back door. The freezing night air would never fail to startle, like a clean, hard smack to both cheeks. The sound of the river that ran just beyond the chalet would be so much louder in the still night, a wild roar, too fast-running to ever freeze. The enormous cliffs that surrounded us glowered, and somewhere even further on there was the misty neon twinkle of nearby Avoriaz. The giant bins were at the very top of the driveway, so I'd walk up past the chalet carrying the rubbish. That first winter, 05-06, was a doozy, fresh snow nearly every day or so it seemed, and I always took pleasure in the trail of footprints I left behind me. As I dumped the rubbish in the bin I'd turn and look back at the chalet and its lights, see the shapes of guests moving inside, sometimes hear a snatch of music, and feel a wonderful separation from the peopled world. Just like the American naturalist John Muir said, 'going out, I found, was really going in'.  I did this every night for five months and somewhere in the middle I wrote a poem about it. I hadn't written a poem for ten years or more.

Another moment. On changeover day it was all hands on deck, with one batch of guests leaving and another arriving, all in all there were twenty-eight people switching places; rooms to be readied, meals to be made. Tasks were always accomplished with a sort of panic, one ear perpetually cocked for the sound of a transfer bus arriving in the driveway. I remember frantically vacuuming a bedroom once, and the hoover started stuttering and choking. I picked up a random ball of cotton (stray threads?) and some unrecognisable but quite substantial lint that the sucker couldn't manage. In haste, I shoved them in the pocket of my jeans, and carried on vacuuming. Later, as guests left and pressed a tip into my hand I smiled and pocketed this too. Much later, after I'd taken out the bins (& thought it'd make a nice, or bad, poem), and rolled into to a bar to wash the work away, I reached into that same pocket and drew out the note. It was stuck over with all of the bits the hoover couldn't manage. I brushed it off and swapped it for a beer. There was simplicity in the exchange and something else too (unidentified hairs?). However misguidedly, I thought this would also make a nice poem. It didn't, of course, but I still like the fact that something in me, the new me, the changing me, thought that it would. That the world wasn't rushing on so fast, and I with it, that I didn't notice these things.

What am I trying to say? That slowing down some things and speeding up others, being in a different place, doing things I never normally did, stirred me up and made me think differently. As social as those winters were, and as an intense an experience as it was working with my boyfriend (now husband), I spent a lot of time inside my own head, and it was less cluttered than it'd been in a long time. Something was freed up. Ordinary things felt poetic. Everywhere I looked I saw possibility. When we talked about returning to the UK I knew I'd be doing so with a whole new plan - to write a novel and try and get it published. And then write another. And another. And make this the thing that I cared about above, almost, all else. Truth, imagination, and always trying to be a better writer. Two winters of incubation to reach that conclusion may seem excessive, someone else might experience the same enlightenment in a fraction of the time and closer to home, but that was just the way it was with me. So days like these, when winter's here and in the Alps it's snowing hard, I think of bin bags and lint and a crumpled ten Euro note. And you know what? It feels like flying.

!Book Slam Bristol!

With the success of three London launches filling her sails, the fair ship Book Slam is heading westerly and docking in Bristol on the evening of Monday 10th December. I'll be reading my story from Too Much Too Young, along with fellow contributors and live lit legends Salena Godden and Nikesh Shukla. What with music from Robin Allender too, it promises to be much fun. We'll be at Spike Island, Bristol's own Helicon, twixt the sacred springs of the Cumberland Basin and the New Cut...

It's from 6.30-8.30pm, and entry is FREE... more details HERE, and how to find Spike HERE. 

One of the many nice things about having a story in a collection along with eleven other authors is that you can safely shout about it without being that guy. So here's Too Much Too Young looking handsome alongside a Flat White. Just because.

And here's what makes this special little book extra special - every copy signed by every author.

As a festive treat, you can pick up both Volume I and Volume II for just £30. I've read every story in both books and can say with just a smidgeon of bias (... one thirtieth, in fact) that this is an offer well worth accepting.  The people behind Book Slam are some of the nicest out there (you can read what Glorious Leader Patrick Neate has to say about it all here) and for the good of live literature we need to keep them doing what they're doing. I know what I'm giving all of my friends for Christmas (you guys, bit late to look away now, apologies etc). 

An uncommon sunday; Jarvis, 6Music and me

It's not everyday that my dad wakes me up with a rousing rendition of Pulp's Common People down the telephone. But then it's not everyday that I get a story played on BBC 6Music, by the most excellent Jarvis Cocker. All thanks to brilliant Book Slam and the annual Too Much Too Young, in which the story features.

You can listen to the show HERE (my story comes in at 35.01). The link will be live just until the 25th November. Jarvis, and Adam the producer, have chosen some great tunes to split it with, including a masterful version of Don't Be Cruel. And the way the end of the story rolls into the next song made me happy, happy, happy. 

Too Much Too Young publishes a week tomorrow. Pre-order it HERE, check out the launch events HERE. In Jarvis's words, 'it's good, in't it?'

Thank you for a very cool sunday, Mr Cocker.

News just in...

A footnote/ squeal-accompanied-addition to my last entry... You can hear me read my story, Me and Bobby McGee, from the new Book Slam collection Too Much Too Young on Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service tomorrow, from 4-6pm GMT, on BBC Radio 6Music. You'll also be able to 'listen again' for seven days, thereafter. I love 6Music. I love Jarvis Cocker. This might just be the coolest thing. I will not sleep tonight.

Too Much Too Young - a Book Slam book

As regular readers of my blog know (hello! And thanks) since the start of the year I've written a roughly-monthly column over on bookslam.com. Having run excellent live literature and music events for the past nine years, in 2011 Book Slam (London's best literary night club - TM) published their first short story collection - One For The Trouble - featuring stories from a stellar line-up of event alumni. The book is cloth-bound, hard-backed, has one of those cool lil dangly ribbon page-markers, and each is signed by every one of the contributors (the likes of Hari Kunzru, Helen Oyeyemi, Joe Dunthorne, Irvine Welsh, William Boyd...). One For The Trouble has always sat on my 'special' stack of books in my writing room, reserved only for the finest volumes, so imagine my DELIGHT when I was asked to contribute a story for the second Book Slam collection... titled TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG. 

The brief was the same as last year - to write a story inspired, closely or loosely, by a song. That's the kind of thing I could happily spend weeks, months, years deliberating over, but in the end I plumped for ME AND BOBBY MCGEE. Much as I love the drawly cowboy notes of Kris Kristofferson's original, given the name of the anthology I took the Janis Joplin version. She recorded it just a few days before her death in 1970 and it was released in 1971, her first number one and a posthumous one, at that. I've always loved it (my dad used to play it on his guitar when I was growing up) and it's a song that's bursting with story - the footloose romance that came and went; wistful, celebratory and sad, all at once. I played it over and over, and an idea for my own story started to form... whatever happened to a guy like Bobby? As Janis sings: 'One day up near Salinas, I let him slip away/ He's looking for that home and I hope he finds it/ But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday/ To be holding Bobby's body next to mine.'

TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG features brand new stories from David Nicholls, Diana Evans, Jeremy Dyson, Marina Lewycka, Nikesh Shukla, Jesse Armstrong, Jackie Taylor, Craig Taylor, Patrick Neate, Salena Godden, Chris Cleave... and I. Now you can see why I'm so excited. I've written about the collection over on the Book Slam website, and I reckon my assessment of it is only about eleven twelfths unbiased. Seriously, you're in for a treat... you can read what I thought of it HERE. 

If you'd like to pre-order the collection (it publishes on 27th November), you can do that HERE. Just as before, each copy is signed by all of the authors (I took a not-so-speedy 4.5 hours... but each 'Emylia' is written with big love and no little joy). There's currently a sweet offer where if you pre-order TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG you can get two free tickets to any one of the three (yes, three!) launch events on the 27th, 28th, and 29th of November. As the lovely people behind it say, 'Book Slam was founded almost a decade ago to support a diverse reading culture and stand against what is, for us all, an increasingly monolithic cultural life.' I vote YES to that, don't you?

December ELLE

In the December issue of ELLE I've written about my two grandmothers as part of the feature 'My Other Mother'. Despite almost sharing a name, Anna and Annie couldn't have been more different and I talk about my memories of them both; my lustrous Hungarian Nana and my delicate English Gran.

My Granddad sneaks in there too. I wonder what Jack and Annie Hall (yes, that was her real name, and no, I've never seen the film - I really should) would say if they knew their picture was in a fashion magazine? 'Ooh-er', probably. I love this photograph. I think I remember playing Dominoes at the kitchen table that day, my Dad saying 'Mimi' and snapping as I turned. Or maybe I've just seen it so many times that I can't separate the moment from the record of it. Images like this inspired me to write The Book of Summers; 'All photographs testify to time's relentless melt' (Susan Sontag).

Inspiration

Last week I took myself off to the seaside for a few days. I love the coast in winter, and I've found the perfect spot in which to hole up and write; solitude, perfect peace, and a fine view. My work? The second draft of my next novel. Part of the appeal of this sort of retreat is that I get to leave so many of my day to day distractions behind, including the lovely clutter of my writing room, with its books and pictures and piles and stacks. There's something about the sparsity of space and singularity of purpose that meshes nicely and suits me very well - for a few days, anyway. I couldn't ditch all my paraphernalia though - I did pack three postcards. A little bit talismanic, they remind me of what I'm writing and where I'm writing it; cool-crisp days, romantic city streets, the genteel glamour of Lac Léman - and a hint of darkness. BEYOND BEAUTY is due out next summer.

  

And more chatter

Yesterday I was a guest on Dr Phil Hammond's Saturday Surgery on BBC Radio Bristol. We talked fantasy dinner party guests (I plumped for Jane Austen, Caravaggio, and Paul Simon), I got to pick a couple of records, and chat about The Book of Summers, the upcoming Book Slam collection Too Much Too Young, and what I'm writing next. As well as a GP, Dr Phil is the medical correspondent for Private Eye and a stand-up comic; a very funny chap. I just about managed to keep my laughter at bay (corpsing - not so cool), and generally had a jolly old time; even if all I had to offer Jane Austen was pizza, and found myself haunted by a mysterious and persistent entity named Anne. Moderately chaotic, then... if you'd like, you can listen HERE (I come in around 36 mins, tho' the link will only work until 26th October).

  
Caravaggio's 'Doubting Thomas' (1602/3) - the first work I saw by the Italian painter. I love the startling realism, and the intimacy of the captured moment. From what I know of the artist, he sounds like the kind of fellow who'd have a tale or two to tell; good and crazy dinner guest material.