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.

Chatter

This October I've a couple of new interviews online. The first is with Glow Magazine, a follow-on from the 14/4 Literary Dinner I took part in back in March - thanks to Melanie Gow for organising what was a fabulous event (fine food, great company & bookish chat), and LaDawn Clare-Panton for the interview - you can read it HERE. The second is with journalism student Sarah Abrahams. Sarah is a fellow Devon girl, and I met her when she brought along a brilliantly holiday-battered hardback of The Book of Summers to sign when I was in WHSmith in Exeter - you can read that interview HERE. Between the two I talk about getting muddy ankles with Lizzy Bennet, losing my voice in Kigali, and my Arvon tutor Louise Dean's prescription for writer's block... 

 

Appledore

This week I was on the North Devon coast for the Appledore Book Festival. Appledore is a tiny fishing village situated just where the rivers Taw and Torridge meet. With its picturesque location (reminding me very much of Shaldon, one of my favourite South Devon spots, and setting for 'the call'), and such a well-established festival (now in its sixth year, originally founded as a mission to save an ailing - now thriving - library) the trip promised to be memorable. Truth is, the 24 hours I spent on 'bookish business' in Appledore were some of my favourite since The Book of Summers was published - and that's really saying something. There was delicious company in the form of Shelley Harris, author of Jubilee, and Carol Rifka Brunt, author of Tell The Wolves I'm Home, and our very lovely event chair Professor Helen Taylor of Exeter University. Incredibly generous hospitality from our hosts Brenda Daly and Pat Millner. And an enthusiastic and supportive crowd of festival go-ers at our New Voices panel. Altogether, a pretty perfect book festival experience.

When I returned to Bristol on Thursday night I gabbled to my husband. I told him about sitting in the dark drinking wine by moonlight to the tune of crashing waves. I told him about our cream tea lunch with a ginger beer chaser. I told him about the knock-your-socks-off views from upstairs in our guesthouse, and the excellent fry-ups downstairs. I told him how together we'd talked women & reading, ownership of stories, second novel approaches, writerly rebellion, elusive titles, meeting our literary heroes - and that was all before our panel even started. Here's to sweet times in Appledore, and new friends made.

Creative differences - a Book Slam blog

Over on the Book Slam website I've written about working from home as my husband does the same... a little bit confessional, a little bit therapeutic... read it HERE. 

  

I will arise and go now

I've just returned from a blissful holiday on the Tuscan island of Elba. We stayed on a cape on the North shore, known as 'piccola isola nell'isola' - the little island within an island. It's a place where steep forests of pine and eucalyptus tumble towards the sea, and the snaking roads are hemmed with olive trees and monstrously beautiful cacti, bursting with strange fruit. For all the heart-stopping vistas, it's always been the sight of four walls that really captures my imagination; dusty-red roof tiles, a just-glimpsed wrought iron balcony, a crooked gateway, leading who knows where. Whenever I'm abroad I daydream, imagine myself upping sticks and living there, slipping sideways into a simpler, more picturesque existence. I've always been this way; as a child, seeing Hungary's Lake Balaton for the first time; as a student, living in the Swiss city of Lausanne; now, on our 'island within an island', thinking how would it be, to live here? Would my writing table face the hillside, or the sea?

The longing to 'arise and go now' runs deep. Yeats' 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' is one of my favourite poems, and thanks to a piece in The Guardian I recently discovered the site Cabin Porn - I fear I should block it from my computer for I can see myself falling into its clutches, the hours rushing past and my wordcount stagnating. I wrote something of this desire into The Book of Summers. Villa Serena is the picture-book home from home, a sun-baked rural idyll. Between summers, memories of Marika, Zoltán and Tamás fill Erzsi's heart, but Villa Serena is ever present in her imagination. But before I wrote of Villa Serena, there was another villa. In 2003 I was living in London and had been granted a month-long sabbatical from my job in an advertising agency. My dad and had just retired from art teaching, and I had an art project I wanted to work on, so the two of us rented a house in Northern Mallorca for the month of October. Our plan was to install ourselves there, devote ourselves to our creative endeavours, and enjoy weekend visits from my mum, sister and friends. 

When you're used to counting holiday days and prizing each and every one, the month-long stay felt like a perfect eternity.  At Les Estemenyes, my dad played his guitar on the terrace, as I picked fresh lemons to slice into our late morning Gin and Tonics. We walked into town to drink coffee with the old boys at a café on the square, and bought buttery apple tarts and bottles of white Rioja. I swam lengths in the ice-cold, bug-dotted pool as my dad fired the barbeque for Merguez and skewered prawns. As dark fell he wrote verse and sketched, and I set to work on my collages. One I titled Les Estemenyes, after the villa. I just have a print of it now as I sold the original, but every so often I look at it and think of the days that inspired it. Outside of the odd childhood competition, it was the first time I'd earned any money from creative work. I spent my earnings on a glamorous pair of boots to trot around Soho in when I was back in the real world of my Ad Land job, but all the while I was planning and plotting my escape. Two years later, I was headed for the mountains - six months that would change everything. 

While I'm freer now than I've ever been, the old desire for flight never goes; a house glimpsed on holiday still lights the fires of possibility. As I sit down at my writing desk, hemmed in by my Bristol street, I transport myself. As long as I'm writing, anywhere, and anything, is possible. A desire for travel will probably always be important to my stories; a ceaseless fascination for a different life, the allure of a home from home, the romance of the unfamiliar. I think of those words of Yeats and I believe in them now as much as ever: 'I will arise and go now, for always night and day/ I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;/ While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey/ I hear it in the deep heart's core.' 

October ELLE

In the October issue of ELLE (out now) I've written about my runaway Las Vegas wedding. It's included as part of the 'Do You Remember The First Time?' feature (with Monique Roffey writing about her first bra). Back in May 2010 it was my first trip to America, my first time in Sin City and, not least, my first time as a bride. 

As well as the delights of a stealth Vegas wedding, I write about a Texan mushroom hunter called Butch, a night spent in a concrete wigwam and a whole lot of chimichangas. I also mention a photo taken by a hobo. This is it. A quick snap on a desert-hot day, trucks whistling past, camera not quite steady. More dear and beloved than any stagey shot.

Ed Book Fest

Last year I went to the Edinburgh International Book Festival with my husband. He was performing his usual duet as a show solo, as his brother was still recovering from a particularly nasty appendicitis. I went with him in support, tucking myself amongst the cheering 8-11 year olds as he talked about the magic of making comics. We caught some comedy, ate some Haggis, and generally had a right old caper. At the time I was still writing and editing The Book of Summers - five months away from publication. In the authors' yurt (of all the very fine things about the Edinburgh Book Festival, it may just be the finest) I felt vaguely like an interloper; legitimate author WAG, sure, but not quite yet the real deal. Well, this year it was different. For the 2012 Festival Bobby and I travelled to Edinburgh together. Whether it was generous programme planning or just serendipity we had events on the same day. How very fine, to be making my literary festival debut* in the company of my husband...

... and his lil' bro Lorenzo, of course. As well as the public and schools' programme, The Etherington Brothers were taking part in the Festival's Outreach programme, and over the course of three days they performed five shows to nearly 1,000 children, amassing far more knuckle-bumps and crazed hoots of laughter than I could ever hope for.

August is a magical time to be in Edinburgh, and we couldn't come to the Book Festival without catching a show at the Fringe. The essence this year? Variety. Earlier in the day I'd been to see Suzanne Joinson and Greg Baxter talk about their books, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (which I recently read and loved) and The Apartment (which I'm now very keen to read), and also Mark Haddon in conversation with Claire Armistead, which was as entertaining as it was inspiring. That evening, we ventured into the thick of the city-wide party and saw the inimitable Tom Thum. If you think you know beat-boxing (and I'm not sure I did, not really) then... think again. He takes it to a whole other level. It's ear-boggling. The next time my neighbours blast their foundation-shaking dubstep bass lines just as I'm settling in to a nice afternoon's writing I shall close my eyes and think of Tom Thum. I'll pretend he's next door practising a new sound. I'll probably smile.   

My event, 'Family Dramas Exposed', was with Karl Ove Knausgaard, whose book A Death In The Family (just published here in translation) is, in Norway, a huge bestseller, and the stuff of watercooler chat and newspaper headlines. I'd just finished reading A Death In The Family before I went to Edinburgh and found it utterly fascinating. It's an examination of the author's relationship with his father, and the repercussions of his death; profound, and unflinchingly honest. Amidst the intensity it also has some brilliant bits where a teenage Karl Ove roams the Norwegian countryside with a plastic bag of beers looking for a party, or tries to get a gig with his startlingly-mediocre band at a shopping centre. Our event was a sell-out, and chaired by the very lovely Jenny Brown, who made the whole thing feel easy - a minor miracle considering how nervous I felt beforehand. We talked about capturing the lost days of childhood, attempting to understand the actions of even the most flawed characters, and how parents can really mess things up for their children (á la Philip Larkin). Afterwards we got to meet some of the brilliantly receptive audience and sign books. Then Karl Ove and I signed books for one another (he'd read The Book of Summers, which I really didn't expect). It was a real honour to share a stage with him - a perfect first lit fest experience. 

I also read as part of the Amnesty International Imprisoned Writers series, along with Jane Rogers and Edinburgh's 'Makar' (poet laureate) Ron Butlin. Most of us writers use the word 'freedom' lightly, it is, in a manner of speaking, our stock-in-trade; the freedom to imagine, to create, to cheat time and space. Reading for Amnesty was a reminder that we should never take it for granted; that freedom should be celebrated, fought for, and pursued at all costs. My piece was by the Zimbabwean journalist Bright Chibvuri, who was arrested in 2007 on allegations of practising journalism without accreditation. The event was titled 'Workers Rights are Human Rights' and it was great to see how packed the space was, and how much support there was for Amnesty.

One of the really fun things about Edinburgh was having time to hang out with my agent and the lovely gang from my publisher, Headline. Special thanks to Rowan, Leah, Vicky, and Ben (who somehow managed to talk me onto the billing - special hurrah for him). Remember that feeling I mentioned, of being an interloper? It hadn't altogether gone away. Flicking through the Festival programme, glancing surreptitiously around the Yurt, seeing the snaking queues for some events - the Festival was full of living legends and I felt incredibly lucky to be there. Thank you, Edinburgh, you were memorable in all of the right ways. Until next year - as writer or reader or, with a bit of luck - both.

*As a debut novelist at the Festival, The Book of Summers is entered into the Anobii First Book Award. If you'd like to vote for me (oh, please do!) then go HERE and just follow the links. Thank you x