Friday 25 September 2015

The next book

When Heinemann offered on The Shore I had a sneaking suspicion that it was a one-time triumph, and that after that first book was done and dusted I'd have to resign myself to an adulthood of actual adulting, and that any books that I happened to write after that would wind up in a desk drawer. So I am very pleasantly surprised that this isn't going to be the case just yet. The roadtrip novel I spent the summer busily revising (and for which no one, including the staff and editors at two publishing houses, can come up with a satisfactory name) has been picked up by Jason Arthur at Heinemann, and should be released (hopefully with a staggeringly beautiful title) in the summer of 2016.

The timeline for this one is much tighter than for the first - I should be dragging myself through edits before the year is over, hopefully while not under the influence of prescription anything this time, and all in all it looks like there will be a lot more hustling and a lot less sitting around. Two books in as many years is not usual in literary fiction - and my other work is showing why quite clearly - so it will probably be a while before Belief surfaces. This time around I feel a lot more relaxed about the whole thing, since I know how it all generally goes. But the biggest difference is, since the deal went through, I feel like I can call myself a professional writer now.

On a completely different note, I wonder what Henry will say...

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