From the Faber Academy

There's a link here to Ben Johncock's blog, which is consistently interesting and worth reading anyway, but on this occasion is even more so (for me at least), as I'm mentioned!

The Telegraph

There's a lovely mention of Before I Go to Sleep in the Telegraph. The link is here.

Bookseller+Publisher, Project

So this is the cover of the Australian trade magazine Bookseller+Publisher in April 2011! I'm thrilled, and what's more there's an interview inside. I'll hopefully be able to post a link to that next month.

I'm also in this month's Project magazine - an iPad app. It's free at the moment and is an excellent read, so if you have an iPad what have you got to lose?

The UK Trailer

What's in the box?

Some people have received a mysterious package recently....

When they opened it, they found this.

The German Jacket

This is the jacket design for the German translation of Before I Go to Sleep. The title translates as "I Must Not Sleep" which was chosen as the original title doesn't have the same resonance when translated. I love it, and think it's very striking, but what do you think?

The US tour

I think 'exciting' may be the most overused word in my vocabulary at the moment (usually followed by an exclamation mark) but I'm afraid I'm going to have to use it again....

Exciting times! I received an email on Monday from my publicist at HarperCollins US with details of my US tour. I'm particularly happy about this because one of the things I'm really looking forward to over the coming months is meeting people who have read, or think they might want to read, Before I Go to Sleep. Plus I love visiting the States, though so far I've only been to New York and, almost twenty years ago, California and the Pacific coast. So I'm really looking forward to seeing more of America.

For those who are interested, here are the first few dates that have been confirmed.

Friday, June 24, 2011
06:30 PM
MURDER BY THE BOOK
2342 Bissonnet ST Houston, TX 77005

Sunday, June 26, 2011
02:00 PM
BARNES & NOBLE
3721 Veterans Memorial Boulev Metairie, LA 70002

Monday, June 27, 2011
08:00 PM
BOOKS & BOOKS
265 Aragon AVE Coral Gables, FL 33134

Tuesday, June 28, 2011
07:00 PM
MURDER ON THE BEACH MYSTERY BOOKSTORE/Delray Beach
(NE 2nd Ave) 273 Pineapple Grove Way Delray Beach, FL 33444

To keep up-to-date with further events in the States then please look at my page on the HarperCollins website. For all events then please follow my Facebook page.... 

The Aldeburgh Literary Festival

I'm just back from the Aldeburgh literary festival, where I had a rover ticket. A good idea, as it turned out, as there were some great events that I probably wouldn’t have gone to if I'd had to sit and choose in advance.

The opening event was a good case in point. Robin Hanbury-Tenison talked about his new book which was about the world’s greatest explorers. He was marvellously entertaining - I particularly liked the story about the fact that the first person to circumnavigate the globe was not an explorer but a slave, and that a French explorer, Bougainville, took with him a female valet who passed as a man until arriving in Tahiti.  David Reynolds talked about Obama’s first term and  Selina Hastings talked about Somerset Maugham (both brilliant). The 'headliner' was Lionel Shriver who discussed her most recent book, So Much for That. She was very entertaining - she spoke about the book and the ideas behind and within it for about twenty minutes, then read a very engaging scene for about ten, before taking questions for the last half an hour. I felt quite fired up by the end of it - massively grateful for the NHS and rather depressed that NICE (the organisation that has been responsible for making the tricky, uncomfortable, economic, decisions about whether very expensive drugs and treatments are worth the cost in terms of the benefit they bring) has been reduced to an 'advisory' body and therefore effectively neutered. But that's the great thing about fiction - it can highlight and draw attention to real-life consequences of decisions like that, and in a very powerful way.

It was a great weekend, then, in lots of ways, and credit must go to the organisers, John and Mary, who have created something really special in the festival and bookshop they run. I can't wait for next year! 

An interview...

Here's a link to an interview I've done for The Harrogate Festival...