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If on a website a traveller...Update - March 2002 This is my first update for the website, so first of all, I have to say welcome to my online home! Pull up a chair, make yourselves comfy, grab a drink if you like. I'll try to remember the biscuits for next time I'm here. I haven't decided on the décor for the place yet, but it'll definitely be a chilled sort of a vibe. Scatter cushions, ethnic throws, dimmed lighting, larva lamps, a fully-stocked mini-bar, maybe some music in the background.... But yes, welcome. I'm really pleased to have set this site up, and I hope that there will be many more of these updates to come! The point of the site is to promote my writing (because, let's be honest, I want to sell enough books so I don't have to get a proper job), but these updates will probably just be a ramble-on about stuff in general. We'll see where my adventures in the world of publishing take us - hopefully nowhere too strange, as I don't feel much like tumbling down any rabbit-holes at the moment! Visits to the Big Smoke to see editors and agents are strange enough for a wide-eyed provincial kid like me. So, the story so far. I have a two-book contract with Simon and Schuster UK, which is fantastic. My first novel, Beholden, has gone through the editing process and is now at proof stage, with an anticipated publication date of January or February 2003. I (or rather, my agents) have also sold the book to France, Germany and Holland, which thrills me no end. I'm cracking on with the second book, as yet untitled, and so far so good on that front. The writing side of this life is great, and exactly as I imagined it - acres and acres of time to sit in front of my computer trying to transfer the ideas in my head into a working narrative. The other side of the life is still a little bemusing, but I'm grateful that I have time before the first book hits the shops to get my head around the sorts of things I need to do. Back in January, I did my first public reading - as part of an East Midlands Arts and Shoestring Press launch event for an anthology of new writing (called, with originality, New Writing), as one of five local writers giving readings - and it went surprisingly well. I even raised a few laughs, all of them in the right places, so that was pretty satisfying. It's fairly nerve-wracking to be stood in front of people reading my work out, but I have the feeling that it's something I can get the hang of and maybe, one day, if I'm really lucky, even quite enjoy, in a masochistic sort of way. I had a pretty busy January, in fact, as I also ran a workshop session at the MA in Writing at Nottingham Trent University, which is a course I graduated from in 2001. It was a very strange experience going back to talk to the group - not quite as bad as going back to primary school with that feeling that you're about to bang your head on the ceiling, but not far off that. The students were very polite and interested and asked lots of questions, which was nice but a little disconcerting, as I didn't until then feel I'd developed as a writer much beyond where they are now. And I probably haven't, but everything seems a little different from this side of the looking-glass. Seeing them and feeling their enthusiasm and frustrations and ambitions took me back - yes, reader, I'm reminiscing already... I can remember thinking that getting an agent and then a book deal was the end of the process - it was only when I got there that I realised just how much more there was - like reaching the brow of a hill only to realise that the slope was hiding the mountain beyond. But it's an exciting journey to be starting out on, and maybe, with this website, I can tell you about the view along the way. I do hope you'll pop back to hear more! |
