The story of a chair

The last time I was at my parents' house, I was looking through some old photographs and 
found this one...





It shows my mother, sister and I sitting under the apple tree in our garden. I am the smallest person in the picture, probably three or four years old, with no idea of the photographer behind me. Perhaps we had no garden furniture then, for the chairs we are sitting on are from the dining room of our cottage. We would have seen the sunshine and carried them out onto the lawn. I have no memory of this day, but there have been plenty of similar ones since. When I saw this photograph - nearly thirty years after it was taken - my eye was drawn to the chair my sister is sitting on. I hadn't seen it in ages. My dad, at heart, is both a hoarder and a restorer. He revealed that the chair was somewhere in the depths of the garden shed, likely riddled with woodworm and laced with spiders' webs, but he'd dig it out and brush it off if I wanted. And I did want. I'd been on the look out for a new chair for my writing room for some time. I've never been a fan of 'office furniture' - ergonomics and lumbar support are always so.... ugly - I'd rather a less comfortable seat with a touch of romance about it. 


A month or so later, my dad came up trumps. The chair was just where he thought it'd be, at the back of the shed among our old bicycles and abandoned easels, trapped by a pair of oars. He spruced it up, banishing the sprinklings of woodworm, scrubbing and treating and varnishing. He re-upholstered it using some fabric I'd brought back from Rwanda, purchased by the piece in Kimironko market. As well as giving me the chair, my dad gave me the history behind it. He'd liberated it from a skip at the Manchester school where he was an art teacher in the 70s. It was an old teacher's chair, probably dating from the 50s. For years we'd had it in our dining room at home, until his parents died and we inherited their furniture. If I'd hadn't seen the photograph, it'd still be in the shed. And now it's here, in another photograph... 

My writing room in Bristol. Sharp eyes might glimpse the mood board for my second novel, and a copy of my first in my bookcase, beside some of my favourite authors. The chair appears black and shining and perfectly at home. It presides over my desk - another reclaimed piece of furniture - and seems to know its place. Abandoned and rescued twice, it's something new born of something old, and made with love. It might not be the comfiest seat in the world, and the height is a little off for typing, but for me it's the perfect writing chair. We have history; one summer's day we both sat under an apple tree in a sunny garden, the Devon hillsides rolling away behind us. 

Home to Waterstones

When I think about writing The Book of Summers, a couple of decisions stand out as having particularly helped its progress; one was taking my self-styled writing sabbatical in 2010, and the other was to extend it. At the start of that year I resigned from my job in a marketing agency and lived on a shoestring for six months, my sole ambition to finish writing The Book of Summers. I'd already been working on the manuscript for two and a half years, but I knew that if I wanted it to be as good as I thought it could be, I needed to give it more time. All writers work differently, and many under far greater life pressures than I was enduring, but I felt I needed to free myself up in order to write the way I wanted to. I feared I wasn't being self-critical enough and with six months off, I knew I could give myself a clear run at it, reshaping the narrative, asking all the tough questions I knew I needed to and not be afraid of the answers. My husband is a comic book writer, used to up and down incomes of his own, but he was wholly supportive of my choice to chuck in my steady job and so we began 2010 on a tight budget, saying 'no' to a lot of things, and working away in our little Bristol flat, heads and hearts full of dreams. 


In those six months The Book of Summers began to take on a new shape and I liked the look of it. I knew if I took another six months and carried on at the same pace then by the end of the year my manuscript would be ready to send out to agents. But my funds were dwindling fast and I needed a part-time job. It was too soon to go back to my old world as I knew it would swallow me up again. I wanted something I could pick up and put down again at the end of the day and pay me just enough to get by. I flirted with the idea of waitressing - I'd always liked it as a student, getting by on a wing and a smile - so I did a couple of trial shifts at local restaurants. One was an upmarket fish place and they were looking for someone who could open wine at table deftly (nope) and carry three or more plates at a time (also nope), so I failed dismally. The other wanted me to work several unpaid shifts, the first mostly consisting of me folding napkins. I think after I'd folded the first few they could assess my capabilities, so I said thanks but no thanks. I also applied for three part-time admin jobs at the university, imagining myself cycling to campus in the september sun, scarf flying behind me, Ali MacGraw style. I didn't even get an interview - all my years of advertising and marketing meant nothing when more than 300 people had applied for each position. I began to worry I'd been rash. I'd burnt through my savings. I was ill-qualified for the kind of jobs I thought I wanted, and self-aware enough to know that I harboured distinctly romantic notions about them, anyway. I spent most of the summer worrying about what my next move should be, my day's writing interspersed with lists of pros & cons and scouring job sites. I began to wonder if my best option was, after all, to go back to the marketing world that I knew inside out. Then I saw that my local Waterstones were looking for Christmas temps. I applied in a flash. My only retail experience was a six-month stint in a French snowboard shop but I loved books, boy, did I love books. As I was waiting to hear I went for a long walk through the grounds of Ashton Court Manor. The estate overlooks the whole of Bristol, and the trees were just turning to Autumn gold. I caught a falling leaf and made a wish - an old habit. 


At the end of September I started working part-time at Waterstones Bristol Galleries as one of the first batch of Christmas temps, and it was to Waterstones Bristol Galleries that I returned on saturday, for my first instore signing. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces, and receive such a warm welcome. I hung my coat and bag on a peg in the staff-room (where I'd eaten many a peanut butter sandwich, leafed through many a dog-eared Bookseller, chatted many a bookish chat) and sat down at the table that was waiting for me. A stack of The Book of Summers to one side, and a Sharpie at the ready. I smiled and I felt at home. I owe a big thank you to Waterstones, not just for having me on saturday and supporting The Book of Summers so thoroughly, but also for employing me in 2010. For it was that part-time job which allowed me to maintain the momentum of my sabbatical - keeping my head down, my spirits up and my funds level - I'll always think of it with a mix of gratitude, relief and a terrific sense of freedom. It was the home stretch to The Book of Summers, an appropriate end to my year of writing and the beginning of so much more.

Busy, busy

The Book of Summers has now been out in the world for one month and a day... In all the excitement of publication I've missed posting a few things, so here's something of a round-up of what's been going on at Camp Summer.

I've been speaking to some lovely book bloggers and doing interviews with Lloyd Paige, The Unlikely Bookworm and Jaffa Reads Too as well as a Publication Day guest blog over at Our Book Reviews. The Book of Summers has also been reviewed by plenty of book bloggers, and here are some of my recent favourites: Lovely Lovely Books ('evocative, accomplished and just gorgeous'), Fleur Fisher In Her World ('wonderful descriptions, well drawn characters, real emotions'), Something Booky ('absolutely stunning'), The Unlikely Bookworm ('poignant and utterly captivating'). I've been lucky to be getting some really lovely reviews over on Waterstones, Amazon and Good Reads, and a couple of particular write-ups made my day - this from Fictions Online ('an astoundingly beautiful tale') and from Marleen ('unexpected treasures'). 

March has turned out to be the month where I've bought more magazines than ever before and across the broadest spectrum - from Heat to The Spectator - and I've been chuffed to find great reviews and mentions for The Book of Summers in all of them. I've added choice quotes to my website HERE. Several of my favourite write-ups are in full online, in Cosmopolitan, The Spectator and The Big Issue. I wrote a short story celebrating Mother's Day for My Weekly - sadly it isn't available on the web, but I loved writing it. Like The Book of Summers it's about the poignancy of memory and mother and daughter ties. I was chuffed to bits that the super stylish Stylist Magazine also picked The Book of Summers as one of the 'hottest debuts of 2012', calling it 'fantastically evocative and sun-drenched.' But the magazine entry that elicited the biggest gasp from me was probably the shot in Grazia, where a quite humungous pic of The Book of Summers appeared in the 'Hot things to do now' listing...

Two summers ago I attended Marie Claire's How To Get Published workshop at the Bristol Hotel du Vin - the magazine interviewed me just before Publication Day and the write-up appeared in the Inspire & Mentor section of their website - you can see it here. I wrote about how memories of sun-kissed childhood holidays inspired my writing over on the We Love This Book site. And I was also interviewed by The Western Morning News - for a Devon gal, that was quite something - you can read the piece in full here. The spread in the paper made use of some of my dad's holiday snaps, including this rather beautiful image of Lake Balaton at sunset.

I've had an incredible first month as a published author and the generosity of feeling towards The Book of Summers has been astounding. In the week before Mother's Day I met a couple of old work pals in a bar by the waterside and signed six books, writing the names of their mothers and girlfriends. I received an email from a friend in Shanghai, passing on a family review, with such a glowing report from her mum that my cheeks ached from beaming. I've had excited phone calls and text messages from friends who've spotted the book in stores all over, and been sent snaps of it in Auckland, Kilkenny and Dublin. As well as the brilliant press coverage, it's these kind of things that have made this first month so special. It's often quoted that once your book is out there in the world then it's no longer yours. Two weeks before I was published I blogged about this over at Book Slam, and vowed to stay sanguine in the face of reviews. All reviews. For amidst the rave there have, of course, been a handful that proved less enjoyable to read - and against all reason it's always one negative remark that lingers longer than ten positive comments. It's a truth universally acknowledged that by writing and publishing you're opening yourself to inevitable criticism. But also generosity and warmth, often from unexpected quarters. If The Book of Summers doesn't belong to me anymore then that's just fine - I'm only too happy to share it. And I'll never stop feeling lucky that I can.     

Writing about Arvon

In November 2008 I took an Arvon Foundation course at Totleigh Barton in Devon, and it turned out to be a real milestone in my life as an aspiring writer. That week - with tutors Louise Dean, Patrick Neate and Bidisha as guest - was the first time I ever called myself the 'W' word. It turned out to be a lot of other firsts too.  I was, therefore, delighted to get the chance to tell Arvon how much I love them in a guest blog over on their website. You can read my account of the tip-top tutors, acapella disco and a touch of rock and roll here. 


At my launch party last week I was thrilled that three of my dear Arvon friends - Jen, Polly and Nessy - were able to come and celebrate with me. Just before we met again, Jen sent me a picture. She'd taken it quietly, without me realising, on one of the free afternoons at Totleigh where we'd each sought our own corners of the house to work in. 

Photo credit: Jennifer McDerra

I can't remember the precise day, but I recall the feeling of sitting at that ancient table, its oak smoothed by the elbows of so many good and great writers down the years. There's a woodburner just out of shot that would have been omitting a delicious hiss and crackle, a comforting accompaniment to the hunt for words. Behind me is the kitchen, and it would have been full of the alloted chefs for the night - fellow student-writers rolling up their sleeves and attempting to follow recipe cards, feeling the weight of responsibility of cooking for the group but already giggling with too much wine. You can see from the picture that it's dark outside; it was November so it could have been as early as five o'clock, but soon I would have had to shut down my laptop, and take my books upstairs. And I'd have come back down to find the room filled with chatter. There'd have been candles lit, delicious wafts coming from the kitchen, and the pop and glug of pouring wine. And all around me there'd have been people blinking and stretching and feeling the hair on the tops of their heads as they emerged from their afternoon's solitary writing and rejoined the world; not the ordinary world, the humdrum world, but the Arvon world. Which is a very special place indeed.  

Summer's on its way

It's official. The Book of Summers is now out in the big, wide world, sent off in style at a wonderful launch party at Daunt in Hampstead. The shop was bursting at the seams with well-wishers and dear friends - as was the pub afterwards - making it a very special night indeed. I couldn't have felt luckier. 


I owe a big, big, BIG thanks to all - especially those who came from far-flung climes (Rwanda! France! Derbyshire! Brizzle! South London!), the ever wonderful Headline for organising, and Daunt for hosting. Best. Monday. Ever.

The lovely Daunt Hampstead, with bunting and everything (think that's always there, mind).

Endless Summers...

Signing... I was even allowed to keep the inaugural Sharpie.

The word on the street? Cool kids read The Book of Summers.

Prescription for the morning after the night before? The Breakfast Club special of Chorizo & Hash Browns. Dreamy.

Kitchen poetry - a Book Slam blog

Here's a picture of my kitchen shelf, home to all of my recipe books... take out your magnifying glass and you might spot some not-so-culinary names besides the likes of Nigel and Nigella.

You can read more about sauce-splattered poetry books and overcooked chickens here - chez Book Slam.

Win a luxury cruise! Yes, really...

To celebrate the launch of The Book of Summers, Waterstones are running a cardholder competition, to win a luxury cruise through Hungary. It's an amazing prize, the trip starting in Vienna, taking you through Budapest and on into Romania. Go here to find out how to enter. And it's 'no purchase necessary.' Wait a minute, what am I saying? It's purchase very necessary, obviously...


I'll leave you with a picture of my sister and I on the banks of the Danube in 1990, with the Liberty Bridge - Szabadság hid - behind us. I'm the little one with the ropey fringe. 

Walking on sunshine

I'll tell the story of my first Publication Day in six pictures. 


Thursday 1st March was a beautiful blue-sky day. It seemed like the first burst of spring sunshine after a bitterly cold winter. There's a nice poetry to that idea, but I'm pretty sure it's true anyway...

That evening I was bound for The Gay Hussar - a long standing institution and brilliant Hungarian restaurant in Soho - for a celebratory dinner, organised by the loveliest of all publishers, Headline. There was the dream team of Leah, Vicky and Ben from Headline and my agent Rowan, and some lovely journalists (Cortina from Book Brunch, Debs from Heat, Charlotte from The Sunday Express, and Suzi who reviews for the Indy on Sunday, FT and Time Out). It was a night filled with chatter, laughter, and that wonderful Magyar speciality, cold cherry soup. Here we all are...

Rowan and I, almost a year to the day that we first met...

The next morning - ever so slightly woozy-headed - I braved a book shop, to see if I could spot The Book of Summers. Once upon a time I used to work just off Oxford Street, so it seemed fitting that it was Oxford Street that I returned to, on an altogether different kind of business. This was the sight that greeted me... wholly unexpected and all the better for it...

  
Move closer...

Closer still...

There it is. Great, great joy.


I wound my way back to Bristol, my arms full of flowers from the night before, and the broadest of smiles on my face. It was a pretty perfect first publication day, and launch parties with friends and family still await... I'll be walking on sunshine for a while yet.  

A thing of beauty

When Julian Barnes won the Booker prize, The Guardian told how in his speech he thanked the designer of his book's cover, Suzanne Dean. And this was noted as unusual, amidst the traditional agent and editor thanks. The piece went on to talk about how in our increasingly digitally-driven world, making tangible books look beautiful, as desirable items to have and to hold and to keep on a bookshelf reminding us who we are and what we love, is more vital than ever.


Thanks to my publisher Headline, The Book of Summers is a visual and material treat. For starters it's in hardback, something I never presumed as a given. It has proper weight to it, and the pages are a deliciously creamy hue. When I run my fingers over the cover the finish is beautifully matt. All in all, there's nothing flimsy about its presence; it proclaims itself as a book to keep. The cover and endpapers, designed by the very talented Yeti Lambregts, are gorgeous. Morning Glory flowers, picked out in gold, trail across a perfect sky blue background, twining the letters of the title, creeping on to the spine. Look closely and there's a smudgey, painterly touch to this same blue. The effect is elegant, refined, and evocative of summer days, while not sending our minds in too particular a direction. Inside, the flowers continue in antiqued styling, and the page appears pre-loved, with the creases and blemishes of time. Polaroids are taped in, just like in The Book of Summers of the story. It's a delicate and lovely piece of design.

Here, Yeti explains the different stages the book went through on its design journey:

Many of us judge a book by its cover - or form a first impression, at least. I was delighted to see the cover art celebrated on the 'creative living' site Jackie Magpie, as one of 'a treasure trove of fictional gems.' Elsewhere online, it was interesting to see some debate (and a lovely review) on the blog Dog Ear Discs, suggesting that some male readers might be turned off by the outward prettiness of The Book of Summers. Perhaps idealistically, I always hope that would-be readers will stick around long enough to browse the opening lines, or jump-flick to random pages, maybe not getting the full story but at least enough of it to decide whether they think a book's for them or not. All I know is that on the eve of Publication Day, I couldn't be happier with how my novel looks. On this last day of February, the sun showed its face for a while this afternoon and finally it felt like spring. But it's cold again now, and we're heading towards the bleary evening. Yet here I am, holding The Book of Summers in my hand, admiring the beauty of its cover design, the care with which it's been printed and made, and I'm basking. It's as if we're skipping seasons, as if summer has arrived and for a while at least, is here to stay.

Deep thought, deep Devon

The other week I took myself off to the seaside for a few days, to bury myself in the writing of my second novel. Since September I've been edging my way into it, ticking along with my daily wordcount, feeling it start to slowly take shape. But I hadn't yet been consumed by it. And the manuscript was throwing up difficult questions that I needed time away to answer. The Devon air proved just the thing.

I tucked myself away in a little hotel for a few days, and wrote from dawn until dusk and into the night. All of the usual distractions were entirely absent and although I felt a shade lonely at times, this feeling never lasted long. As soon as I let them breathe a little, I found the new characters I'm creating to be excellent company. And the story I've been working on for several months caught a hold of me at last, and refused to let me go. Happily trapped and writing feverishly, I stayed in my Devon hideaway just long enough to get over that awkward mid-point in a novel's progress. And whenever I sought diversion I could stare out of my window and see a view like this... comforting in its abstraction.

The village I'd chosen was devoid of most of the usual seaside trappings, the shops stuffed with lurid paraphernalia, cutesy 'gone surfing' signs and the like, but one souvenir did catch my eye. Its motto was peculiarly fitting. For much as I was intent at shutting the world out for those few days, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that when I got back to Bristol the first finished copies of The Book of Summers would be waiting for me, and that publication day is just around the corner. And so, like a grockel (def: a tourist but, really, anyone who doesn't hail from Devon), I went home with a reminder of happy days spent working by the water. And even happier days still to come.

Ten terrifying questions

... only they weren't. They were actually a lot of fun. 


The Australian-based Booktopia is rapidly becoming one of my favourite books sites, for entirely narcissistic reasons. Not only is it offering very cool sounding tote bags with every order of The Book of Summers (while stocks last!), it was also one of the first sites to review my novel, and it now features what is my first online interview.  A lot of love coming from Down Under. You can read my responses to Booktopia's Ten Terrifying Questions here, and find out why ditching class, crazy-good artists, and heroic husbands maketh this writer.

The joy of criticism - a Book Slam blog

With publication just under two weeks away, my mind can't help turning to... reviews. I wandered across to the Book Slam site and decided to chew it over some more there. Click here to read about a boy called Holden, how we all love to criticise and my best keep-it-sanguine (as a wise man once said) pep talk...

A new home

So... I've a new online home, at emyliahall.com. And rather lovely it is too, don't you think?

As with all the best things, it was a collaborative effort. My father hand-painted my name (disobeying all his inclinations for a perfectly executed classical script), my husband came up with the questions that form the Q&A section (equally resisting his natural impulses for slightly sillier inquisitions), and friend and former colleague Dan Hunt thankfully did everything just as he always does, and put the whole thing together, designing and building me a truly lovely site. I'm indebted to all, but especially to him. Thanks also to Vicky Cowell at Headline and Erika Imranyi at MIRA for much valued advice, along the way. 

The creation of my website has also given me the chance to show off, for the first time, the gorgeous cover for the US edition of The Book of Summers. The artwork includes very lovely quotes from best-selling author Marisa de los Santos, 'Elegantly written and intensely intimate... a moving, poetic debut', and Rebecca Rasmussen, 'So tender and lovely, this is a novel I will keep on my bookshelf forever.' I'm enormously grateful to both for reading my novel in proof form, and being so very kind about it.

This gorgeous thing will be on US shelves in June - I can hardly wait. But for now, it's all about the UK countdown.... after all, it's only nineteen days until Summer's here, hadn't you heard? 

Part II: Rwanda - for the first time

The night before we flew to Rwanda, I read the last pages of Philip Gourevitch's essential and harrowing account of the Rwandan genocide. He wrote, 'Even now, as I write, in the early months of 1998, Rwanda's war against the genocide continues. Perhaps by the time you read this the outcome will be clearer (...) Of course, if you're some kind of archeologist who digs this book up in the distant future, five, or fifty, or five hundred years from now, there's a chance that Rwanda will be a peaceful land of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you may be planning your next holiday there and the stories you find in these pages will offer but a memorial backdrop...'

Fourteen years on - a sort of distant future - our university friends, and first London flatmates, Steve and Kate, are living in Rwanda. In their emails and brief visits home they've conjured for us, as best they can, the country they live in. They've talked of flying about Kigali on the back of moto-taxis, and buying bright-patterned kitenge at the market; having shirts and dresses run up by gifted seamstresses on ancient Singer sewing machines. They've talked about their house, its padlocked gates and the peak-capped security guard keeping watch, but how these things never felt as though they were really needed. They've talked of evenings spent on wicker sofas on candlelit verandas, a restaurant called Heaven, and spoken word nights where they sang jazz songs alongside Kinyarwandan poets. They've talked about the soldiers who quietly and calmly patrol the streets; ever-present, but merging into the background. Between the not so very old war reports, and my friends' accounts of the life they love in the new Rwanda, I tried to form my own picture. But I couldn't help imagining a tightrope of a place; a line walked between despair and hope. How could a tourist, an ex-pat, indeed anybody, still not find it somehow precarious? The only way to find out was to see for myself.

Now that I'm back, I can't pretend to know it all; for no tourist, however wide-eyed and open-eared, can ever claim to know a place in a week. But for all the aspects of Rwanda that I don't understand, and probably never will, there are some things that I do now know. And I treasure them. They may be only fragments, passing images, barely snatched, but they are mine. And I share them here.

I know that when dawn comes the chorus of birdsong is ballistic and indignant - the sun rises quickly, as if to bring quiet. 

I know that I never once grew tired of seeing children delight in our otherness, watching them break into gulping laughter and chase our car, their cries of 'muzungu! muzungu!' rising in the dust.

I know that I've never seen a patchwork quilt anything like the hillsides of Rwanda. The neatly stitched hedges marking the edges of potato fields, the jaunty patterns of banana trees, the row after row of stiff-tall sweet corn, the rich, dense tea plantations, clinging to the sides of vertical slopes. Not one inch of red earth is wasted.

I know that in Rwanda there are some of the people you would expect; Western do-gooders dressed in khaki, putting the world to rights over a Mojito, pasty-faced Evangelists, intense girls in drawstring pants and Development careerists with red-burned forearms. But my friends are none of these and I am glad.

I know that at a classic Rwandan buffet, the tastiest dish to pile high is the ruby red stew of savoury banana. And the shredded cassava leaves. And the purple peanut sauce. Everything's fresh, home-grown, and delicious.

I know that in Kimironko market, you'll find yourself surrounded by shifting walls of the most cheerful fabric you've ever seen; rainbow-coloured, crazy-patterned kitenge from the DRC, and Kenya, and the Ivory Coast. A stallholder will say, 'if you like it, you can buy it.' And you do, so you do.

I know that at sundown on Lake Kivu the fishermen sing for the day's catch. You sit spellbound, bobbing in kayaks, as their voices carry across the still water. Then you watch them row home, as the deceptively peaceful hills of the Democratic Republic of Congo rise behind. 

I know that when you happen upon a small boy cowherd, wandering behind his tail-flicking charges, eating a knob of maize, you return his grin. You pull over, and shake his hand. You marvel at one another, for a moment, and then you each carry on in your own direction. A little altered, perhaps.

I know that at dusk a sweet and smoky scent pervades the air, and it's the burning of eucalyptus leaves in people's houses. You realise that it's a smell that one day soon you will miss. That, inexplicably, and for all its strangeness, it reminds you of home.  

I know that when you're in the misted Virungas, and a silverback turns his lazy, soulful gaze on you, from barely feet away, something inside you shifts. You stand still, stiller than you've ever stood before. You barely breathe. And yet, part of you wants to reach out a hand, and make solid the connection you know you feel. But it's awe that holds you motionless. 

I know that in Rwanda most of the people I pass who are my age - or a little younger, or a lot older - will have seen their whole world torn to pieces. They will have been to hell and back. Lost more, perhaps, than they can ever hope to find again. And yet everywhere I see grace and laughter. I swap more true smiles with strangers than I ever have, and hear more gentle words of welcome spoken. I know that respect is due. I also know that Rwanda calls itself 'the land of a thousand hills'; its beauty is soft, and undulating and verdant. And while it would be presumptuous and uninformed to weigh the verity of Gourevitch's words, 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' I will say this - whatever is has been, whatever it will be, and for all I still do not know, to me, this passing visitor, Rwanda feels like a place of warmth and healing. 

Finally - I know that now I'm home, I miss Rwanda. Even if, after so few days spent, perhaps it's not really mine to hanker after. I know I want to try and hold on to the memory of it for as long as I can, but I can already feel it slipping; soon it will feel a world away again. I know the only answer, therefore, is to keep remembering, to keep writing, to keep discovering. And perhaps, one day, to go back.  

Part I: Kigali - for one night only

My first official appearance as an author, and my first public reading from The Book of Summers, took place in Kigali, Rwanda, last wednesday evening. The venue was The Goethe Institute in the district of Kacyiru. To get there we bumped down a red dust track, hemmed by banana trees, before rolling into the creative enclave that's home to the German cultural centre, an arts house, and a sprawling bar that was showing Libya versus Zambia (2-2) on the big screen. 

Just after 7pm a group of musicians finished their rehearsal and we took over the dance studio they'd been using, making a small, modest circle of chairs. But as participants continued to arrive the circle widened. In all, twenty-eight people joined us. My dear friend Kate Haines was the event's organiser, and I had her to thank for the fantastic and diverse attendance; there were regulars from her creative writing group - workshops run in coffee shops and classrooms across the city - as well as a number of students from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. There were some who had already published non-fiction, avid screenwriters, freestyling poets, advertising copywriters, feature writers, and many more who were simply 'interested in writing.' 

I guess every author remembers their first public outing but I can't help feeling that mine was particularly memorable. The windows of the room were open to the night and I was forced to speak loudly above the roar of cicadas. The heat was intense. I gave an introduction followed by a reading, then just as we were about to launch into some writing exercises my voice creaked and croaked. I coughed. Sipped some water. Coughed again. I tried to speak but there were no words - my voice had entirely gone. Thankfully, several bottles of water and only a short spell of embarrassment later, it returned. I conducted the rest of the workshop testing each word before I said it, downing water, the frog in my throat only just kept at bay. The next excitement was that we lost the lights. Power cuts happen fairly frequently in Kigali I'm told, but not usually for so long; the Goethe Institute was plunged into pitch black for the next two hours. Our gathering took on a clandestine air as we sat in the dark, the pricking lights of mobile phones just enough to write by, and for me to follow, more or less, my notes. Undeterred, we carried on. People read aloud, in cautious voices. I kept my cough at bay. 

Before...

... after!

When I was first asked to run the writing class I'd jumped at the chance, only wondering later whether, as a debut author, I'd earned my stripes yet. A fair question. So I thought about the workshops I'd attended and the authors I'd heard speak - and how I'd always felt as though I was moving forward just by being there, listening, my mind switched on to writing. So that night in Kigali I decided I'd pass on the wisdom I'd received, and some of what I'd learned myself along the way. Perhaps that's all anybody ever does. And it seemed to work; people listened, scribbled notes, even laughed at my feeble jokes, and there were plenty of questions at the end. Two and a half hours after we'd first sat down in our circle, the group and I went back out into the Kigali night. We said murakoze (thank you) and murabeho (goodbye) to one another, and email addresses were swapped. I couldn't stop smiling.

Kate Haines, founder of Material Books, and I.

On the way home we stopped off at for a late dinner, eating spicy chicken rice beneath a thatched gazebo, as around us a tinny kind of reggae hung on the night air. I was buzzing. My husband Bobby, once a drummer in a band, said to me, 'it's the post-gig high, isn't it?' and he was right. It was. But a different sensation too; In Kigali, for one night only, I realised I felt useful. And more like an author than I perhaps ever had. I drank a well earned beer, and watched the hills of the city strung out below us. I whispered a quiet word of thanks. Murakoze. And I tried not to cough.    

Literary remixes - a Book Slam blog

After reading P.D. James' 'Death Comes to Pemberley' I set to thinking about literary remixes, and what, to my mind, makes a classic. Despite James' virtuoso rendering of Austen's world, it's another remix that tops my playlist. Find out what, over on the Book Slam site...   

Adland

Over eleven years ago, when I was a green, green graduate, I took a job at an advertising agency in Soho. I thought it'd be a sparkly kind of profession, and in some ways it was. In the beginning I always got a kick out of seeing my agency's ads out there in the big, wide world. They didn't need to be Cannes-worthy, simply to point at something and say 'I helped make that' was novel enough for me. Sometimes, in the very early days, I even snipped ads from the paper and sent them home to my ever-encouraging mum; anything from budget travel to posh cars, from power tools to kids' TV, with the breathless note, 'this is mine!' It's been a long time since any press ad has given rise to such bursts of unbridled pride. And an even longer time since I sent one home to my mum. But the below, as it appeared in the inside front cover of the Debuts supplement of New Books Magazine, is, to me, deserving of both. Call me sentimental (and, okay... self-indulgent), but in all my time in adland I don't think I ever saw one lovelier. Thanks to Vicky Cowell and Headline for such a splash!     

Bristol fashion

I moved to Bristol four years ago, around the same time that I first started writing The Book of Summers. To me the city is synonymous with every stage that my manuscript went through, in its writing and re-writing. I played with plot as I walked the Bristol streets, to and from work. I sat in Bristol cafés, tinkering with characters. And I did a lot of dreaming, in Bristol supermarket queues, in the corners of Bristol pubs and across the Downs parklands. So it's rather fitting that my first interview as an author should appear in Bristol's local paper The Evening Post. Many thanks to Suzanne Savill for such a great write-up, and for this line perhaps above all:


It is a book that is exquisitely written, with a plot that is both uplifting and heartbreaking, and a sense of place that has the potential to do for Hungary what author Peter Mayle did for Provence. 


A Year In Provence, j'adore. You can read the piece in full here.

Beginnings

One of the questions I’ve been asked a lot over the past few months is, ‘did you always want to be a writer?’ And the answer, of course, is ‘yes’. When I went home for Christmas I found signs everywhere that the path I’m on is one my ten-year-old self would approve of…

My family home hasn’t changed for decades. Maybe it’s a sign of my parents’ nostalgia, but you won’t find spritzed and neutral guest quarters in their house – my bedroom is more or less the same as when I left it. The bookcases creak with pony club paperbacks and college texts, Daniel Deronda sharing shelf space with Arthur Ransome, Le Morte d’Arthur nudging up against a book of fairy spells. My old typewriter sits on the window sill. I remember being a lousy typist and in the end I got fed up of spending my pocket money on eraser ribbon and went back to my notebooks and blobbing fountain pens. And behold this for vanity: In the kitchen, a piece of my writing still hangs framed on the wall, approximately twenty five years after I decided it’d make the perfect birthday present for my mum. It’s a piece I wrote at primary school when we were set the task of describing the houses we lived in. I wrote about our Devon cottage, huddling under its thatch on the side of a hill. I noted the crumbled patch of wall where I leant my bike, a head of straw poking through the cob. I mentioned the quiet corner, where beneath a spindly apple tree our old cat is buried.

But despite the copious books, the tools of the trade, the celebrated, um, early works… it’s when I go into the garden of my childhood that I remember all over again why being a writer was always the right thing for me. The garden was the place where I dreamt up my stories, where I slipped into worlds of my own making. It wasn’t the biggest patch of land but it felt like it, the way it ran in a slope that gathered speed, the edges of the earth falling away into the neighbouring field. The way the hillside opposite seemed to be in touching distance, but really lay beyond a line of gangly birches, a twisting lane and a knee-deep stream. I’d stay out in my garden until darkness fell and the foxes started barking in the high woods, and, come morning, I’d be the first to dance away the lawn’s dew. Sometimes I kicked a football or batted around a shuttlecock, built a den or a bike assault course, but mostly I spent my time exploring; my feet treading the same old ground, my mind somewhere else altogether. My mum used to open a window and call out ‘are you talking to yourself?’ I’d shake my head, then pick up the story where I’d left off.

This Christmas, upon my return, the garden was etched out by winter. Old sweet corn stems stood cracked and white. A new crop of leeks persisted messily. Long rotted apples were scattered like billiard balls. The birches had lost their leaves and the distance hillside seemed closer than ever. So too, did my memories of a childhood spent roaming the edges of a page. Plucking words from thin air. Travelling, ad infinitum, in my garden of verse.

Resolutions for life and reading

For 2012 I'm making resolutions on reading - with a little help from Raymond Carver. You can read them over at the Book Slam website, where I'll be blogging through the year. 

Happy New Year, one and all. May 2012 bring us books to make our souls sing, and plenty more besides.