The author is writing his blog when the phone rings. He doesn't mind the interruption - plus it's an international number - so he answers it.
'Hello?'
'Mr Watson?' A woman's voice. American. He doesn't recognise it.
'Yes?'
The caller introduces herself. It's a journalist, the one who interviewed him over the phone a few days ago. She explains she just wants to check a few facts.
Fact checking. He's heard of this. In an increasingly litigious country it's become ubiquitous. He imagines she's written her piece and now, before it goes to the printers, she wants to make sure there's nothing in it that might cause him to want to sue her. Not that he'd do that anyway, he thinks, but she has to do what she has to do.
'OK,' he says.
She clears her throat; clearly she has a list. 'Right. You're thirty-nine?'
'I'm forty,' he says.
'You were born in London?'
'I was born in the West Midlands. I live in London.'
'OK. You wrote
Before I Go to Sleep after going part time in your job?'
'I did.'
'You worked for the National Health Service?'
'Yes,' he says. 'Technically I still do. But yes, that's right.'
'Good. You didn't realise the book was a thriller at first?'
'I suppose not,' he says. 'I just wrote the book I wanted to write and it wasn't until someone else read it and pointed it out to me that I realised that I'd written a thriller.'
'OK. And it's the first novel you've had published.'
'Yes.'
'But you've written all your life?'
He thinks back to the original interview. He remembers telling her how he used to smuggle books under the bedclothes, along with a torch, and he can't remember a time when he didn't want to write them. He'd explained how he'd dabbled in science fiction and fantasy as a child and even tried poetry as a teenager, 'Though thinly disguised as song lyrics,' he'd said. 'I wanted to be a rock star.' He remembers telling her he'd started novels in the past, but Before I Go to Sleep was the first he'd finished and been totally happy with.
He smiles, and says, 'Yes. Yes I have.'
'Any you told me you'd started novels before, but in the past you've always given up?'
'Yes...'
'So, how many novels have you written before?'
'Well,' he says. 'A few. But none that I've finished. Or none that I've been happy with, at least. Certainly none that I'd show anybody else. So Before I Go to Sleep is my first novel.'
'But how many have you started, before this one?'
He begins to get nervous. 'Well, I can't really put a number to it. With some I got a fair way in, but with others I didn't write much more than the title and a few hundred words, or maybe a couple of thousand. You can't really call those novels...'
'So, how many, would you say? Five?'
'No, probably more than that...'
'OK. Ten?'
'No, I'd say maybe more. But don't forget that with most of them I didn't get any further than--'
'Fifty?'
'No. Less'
'Twenty?'
He can hear she's getting exasperated. He doesn't want that - he'd really enjoyed talking to her during the interview and she'd liked his book and said some flattering things. He wants her to be happy. He wants to give her what she needs.
'OK,' he says. 'Twenty. About twenty.'
She asks a few more questions, then they talk for a while. She says she'll write the piece up, and it'll go in the newspaper soon. They say goodbye, and a few days later it's there. The interview, in the Wall Street Journal. And in it, the journalist has written that the author has started 'roughly' twenty other novels before the one he got published. In black and white it looks a little bit too concrete, as if Before I Go to Sleep is his twenty-first novel, and he has twenty manuscripts mouldering in a bottom drawer somewhere. He wishes he'd resisted the urge to give her a number. Perhaps he should just have said 'A few', and made sure she understood that most of them were only a few lines here and there, or a character sketch, or even just a title, and it's misleading to refer to them as novels.
But it doesn't matter, he thinks. And it doesn't, really, except that now other journalists have read that interview, and they've quoted it, and quietly dropped the word 'roughly'. And he doesn't want to sound like he's complaining, because it's lovely that people are even interested in what he's written before, and the interview was in
The Wall St Journal, for goodness sake, and it was great, and the journalist was amazing and made the interview experience an absolute joy. But everywhere he goes people are asking if Before I Go to Sleep is his twenty-first novel. And it isn't. It's his first, and all the other writing he's done was just him serving his apprenticeship, and he wishes there was a way he could make that clear.
So he decides to write about it in his blog.
Well, what a week! On Tuesday I had a fantastic time helping my wonderful agent launch the book she's co-written, Dangerous Women: The Guide to Modern Life. It's a really brilliant book, full of great advice to help people live as well as they dare (and, really, who would want to live any other way?). My contribution towards launching the book was mostly in assisting in the drinking of champagne, eating of canapés (and the most delicious chocolate cake) and chatting to wonderful and fascinating people, but I think I carried out my end of the bargain fully (at least, the sore head I had on Wednesday would suggest I did).
I recovered enough, though, to go and see Throwing Muses. This was a personal highlight for me - I've been a fan of the band since their 1989 album, Hunkpapa - and have followed singer/songwriter/guitarist Kristin Hersh's career (both musical, and literary) ever since. The Muses never really broke up, but they ran out of money (Hersh has never been one to compromise in order to fit into the music industry's idea of what might sell records, and her thoughts on sustainability of music in the current climate make interesting reading) and so recording and touring have been intermittent. This was the first time I've seen them, therefore, since 2003, and it was a fantastic show, a world away from XFactor (which, this year, I have totally avoided and feel all the better for doing so). Anyone interested could do worse than look here, where they will also find information about Hersh's other band (and the only band I love more than Throwing Muses), 50FootWave. Incidentally, by clicking that last link, you can download everything 50FootWave have ever recorded, for free, and with their blessing. I told you Hersh's thoughts on sustainability were interesting...
