On Australian Radio

Before I Go to Sleep has been discussed on Australian radio! My Australian publisher, Michael Heyward, was a guest on 'The Book Show' the other day, which airs on ABC Radio (I think that's right - correct me if I'm wrong!). He was joined by host Ramona Koval, journalist and writer Jane Sullivan and Jane O'Hara, director of the Brisbane Writer's Festival. You can listen to the show here. 

Before I Go to Sleep is discussed at about 13 minutes in but the whole show is fascinating and well worth a listen. For me it was slightly surreal to hear my novel being talked about on the radio, but very exciting! 

When I write

It's been a quiet few days - as far as anything writing or book related goes, at least. I've been plugging away at Nine Lives, and in doing so I've discovered something rather surprising:

Like it or not, I write best in the morning.

This might not be a shock to you, but to me (and to anyone who knows me) it's rather a revelation. If you believe (and I do) that there are evening/night people, and morning people, I'm definitely the former. I can be so exhausted at 4.30 pm that I want to go to bed, yet I can guarantee that at 8pm I'll start to come alive, and by midnight, when I really ought to be going to bed, I'm totally awake, my mind firing on all cylinders (relatively speaking).

Yet, with writing, it seems to be different. I've tried writing at all times of the day, and contrary to what one might expect, I seem to be a morning writer. I work best if I set my alarm for 6.30. I drag myself out of bed at about 6.45, grope for my glasses, stumble towards the coffee machine. The house is still dark, the street outside quiet, not even the pug bothers to move. I slouch in front of my computer, still not quite sure where I am, much less why I'm awake, and with a minimum of reading back, I force myself to press on. I don't fully wake up for at least an hour or so. I don't check my emails, I don't even log onto Facebook. There's no point - not that early. I just write.

This peacefulness helps but I think it's actually the weird awake/not awake state that actually makes the difference. The barrier between the real world and the imaginary one seems easier to cross (perhaps because I'm not yet fully in either). My inner critic, though never gone completely, is half asleep. I'm not so hard on myself if I can't think of the right word or perfect metaphor, because hey, I showed up, didn't I? What I do come out with seems to emerge direct from the subconscious, half formed, and when I look back later, now fully awake, I'm sometimes genuinely surprised at what I've come up with (and occasionally in a good way!). I suppose it's no surprise really, after all many artists and writers have used drugs to take their mind elsewhere and unlock some mysterious part of their creativity; perhaps for me being half asleep goes some way towards achieving the same ends. It's not quite as rock 'n' roll though, is it?

Oh well. Maybe tomorrow I'll live dangerously and set my alarm for six...

What's under the slip cover...

For those who are interested,  I wanted to show the full picture that will be used on the jacket of the US version of Before I Go to Sleep. Spooky, isn't it?

The UK jacket

I'm delighted to be able to reveal the jacket for Before I Go to Sleep in the UK!

I absolutely love it - what do you think?

Text catalogue and a smelly night out

I just thought I'd share this - it's the new Text catalogue that I received in the post the other day. Text are publishing Before I Go to Sleep in Australia, and here you can see that I've been honoured with a double page spread - very exciting!

Also - I went to a really good event last night. It was called Scratch and Sniff and hosted by Odette Toilette. The theme was Scent and the Pen, and I didn't know what to expect but we were introduced to lots of very interesting scents/perfumes and encouraged to discuss them. (One in particular stood out - the perfumer wanted to create the smell of (and I'm paraphrasing) "a matador who has deflowered a virgin and taken the bloodied sheet into the bullring where he kills the bull"). There were also some interesting speakers who talked, amongst other things, about the difficulty of describing smell, beyond nice/nasty or sweet/sour, then we all had a go at describing the contents of five anonymous bottles before attempting a scent inspire Haiku. All very good fun - and a very different night out.

What's been happening lately

Time for a bit of a catch up I think....

So the bound proofs are in, and are going out again. I was given a few when I was at Transworld on Tuesday, and most of those went to my ex-coursemates when I went out for a drink with them on Friday. It was good timing - I wanted them to be amongst the first to actually get one of the final versions of the book. Without them the book would have been very different, and to say that their input into the early stages of the book was invaluable would be an understatement. Their help was sometimes very practical ('Why don't you try....?') and sometimes less tangible, though no less important ('Come on, of course you can make it work!', often conveyed non-verbally) but it was all absolutely vital and utterly profound.

As the three of us who were there are all at different stage in a new book we talked a lot about the importance of having someone in your life who you can show work to but who will be honest with you. All of the advice says not to show your work to your family, loved ones or someone you're sleeping with as their judgement will always be tempered with a desire to spare your feelings and possible create an easier life for themselves ('It's wonderful, darling' will always lead to a less fractious exchange than 'Well, it's OK but I think you can do better'). I realised (again, I've never really forgotten), how lucky I am to have N, whose judgement is never less than honest, who never lets me get away with anything less than my best, and who will risk an entire evening of me sulking like a child denied his favourite toy in order to help me to improve my work. Thank you N.

What else? I've read an absolutely brilliant book in manuscript. It's coming out next year (certainly in Australia, I'm not sure where else) and is written by Alice LaPlante. It's called Turn of Mind and is definitely one to watch I think. Oh, and I've also given a copy of Before I Go to Sleep to my brother-in-law - we're hoping to work on a very exciting (to me at least!) project together, but more on that when something's definite.

There, I think that's probably it for now...

The bound proofs

Well, I am ridiculously excited once more. Yesterday I had a meeting with my UK publisher, (Transworld - the book is coming out on their 'Doubleday' imprint) and saw, for the first time a bound proof of the UK edition of Before I Go to Sleep.

For those that don't know (and I didn't, until very recently) this is a copy of the book that looks and feels like a 'proper' paperback book - the only difference is that the text inside is not (quite) the final text (it's the copy-edited-but-not-proofread version) and the jacket doesn't (quite) have the same picture on it (though the picture it does have follows the same design concept* as the real, actually-available-in-the-shops book will have next April).

It looks lovely, and feels lovely, and it's absolutely bizarre to open it and see the words that started off somewhere in my head last year actually there, in black and white, on a page. The book exists now, in the world, and it's a weird feeling. Once again it almost feels as though it doesn't have anything to do with me, which is kind of nice in a way. Now I just have to wait to see what the people who these proofs are being sent to will think of the book. Fingers crossed!

*I'd love to share the cover, but I can't, yet.