West Cork Literary Festival

Despite living in the UK for the better part of six years, I've only managed to get over to Ireland twice so far, even though the flight is shorter than the train journey to Norwich. My first thought on landing in Cork airport was that this is a problem that needs remedying, preferably with David in tow, as he hasn't really seen Ireland either. It's not so much that the southwest coast is beautiful - everyone knows that - as that it is my kind of place: quiet and slow and hidden, coastal with lots of space for walking and getting lost.

The festival was held in the town of Bantry, which was big enough for me to get lost in more than once but small enough that I really shouldn't have been able to. Since it was such a trek the festival let me come across a day early, which meant that I had an evening and a morning in which to get lost.

The reading took place on Whiddy Island, which looks like this:

The other writer was Horatio Clare with Down to the Sea in Ships, who is a character. We scooted across to the island an hour early to get ourselves settled in, which consisted mostly of talking books and teaching, being anxious, and getting sunburned. That was when I found out that I should probably update my author photo: he'd spent the evening before drinking with the festival organisers and other writers, and even though they knew for certain that I'd made it to Bantry, no one had been able to spot me, or been certain that they'd spotted me, because they were all looking for red hair. 

Most of our nerves were due to neither of us being able to remember if we had a chairperson for the event, which is the difference between an easy-bordering-on-fun undertaking and an event in which I am guaranteed to faint, so we were both incredibly relieved when Sue Leonard turned up on the ferry along with the audience and said that she'd be running the show so we needn't worry. We read, we talked about misogyny and violence and the sea, and all in all it was a lovely way to put The Shore to bed, as this was most likely the last time that I'll get to talk about it more than in passing. The Bantry bookseller managed a little black magic and had copies of The Lauras for sale, which gave Sue and I both a moment of anxiety when we saw them because she hadn't read it and I hadn't prepared it and we were both certain that it wasn't the book that we were meant to be talking about but there it was. 

Afterwards I got the chance to chat with some of the audience, which is always fun, and finally met Sara Baume, who wrote Spill, Simmer, Falter, Whither, and with whom I share an agent, a publisher, and a name. And after that I got to hear Zadie Smith and Nick Laird read their work and talk about writing, which brought about something not far off a moment of perfect happiness. Which was good, because after that I discovered that somewhere along the way I'd picked up a case of food poisoning. Which is half the reason why it's taken me nearly a week to say anything on the wonder of West Cork. The other half the reason is the sudden burst of little things to do before The Lauras comes out next week but which I haven't really had the energy to do. 

At least I'm back in Reading for a little while - this may be the first Saturday I've woken up here in five weeks - and with any luck will turn back into myself soon.

French Shore

Just found out that the French edition of The Shore is being released on November 14th! The cover is lovely, of course:

This makes four covers, for anyone keeping track.

And now I understand why Lucy wants me to space my books out a little bit more. Every time I think we've moved on to the next thing, something else happens with the last thing.

Full circle

When I was seven or so we got a book out from the library that was illustrated in the style of an illuminated manuscript. It was the first time I'd ever seen that art style, and I became obsessed with it.  Compared to all the other illustrated books I'd read it was like seeing in colour for the first time; it satisfied a need for order and complexity and beauty that I hadn't realised I had.

The notes on the illustrations mentioned books of hours and the Book of Kells. I had no idea what a book of hours was, but 'Book of Kells' sounded enough like a specific title that I asked a librarian at my tiny local branch if they had or could get a copy. She told me that it lived at Oxford (good guess, it's at Trinity College) and that only researchers and doctors were allowed to touch it; a colour reproduction of anything but the Chi Rho page was similarly out of reach.

So I decided that I had to get a doctorate so they'd let me visit the book. And over the years I collected books on illumination and celtic knotwork, learned calligraphy and got to hold a book of hours, but the want never went away: I must get a degree; I must get to read the Book of Kells. It was a low-level obsession, but it was indeed an obsession.

Last year Dave and I went to Dublin for our first anniversary, and we took an afternoon to wander slowly through the exhibition on the book, how it was made and who had made it and what had happened to it afterwards. And I finally got to see it: the four gospels, each open. They were under glass, and I figured that was the closest I'd ever get to my desire to look at every single page.

Then Trinity College digitised it. All of it. Even the backs of the decorated pages so you can see how the colours bled through the vellum and the words on the facing page transferred over.

So I've spent today flicking back and forth between my doctoral thesis and the four gospels, working towards the degree that I decided I couldn't live without because I thought it was the only way to see the book that I can now spend as much time as I want paging through without leaving my desk. It's been twenty years. The satisfaction is unspeakable.

From Trinity College's Digital Collections

Finished copies!

Look what came in the post!

Earlier than expected, more than expected, and bluer than expected

The Lauras doesn't come out until August (the 5th, the 11th, or the 8th, I'm not sure; the day keeps moving), but finished copies have already been printed and are being slung around to reviewers and non-reviewers alike. While The Shore  looked in proofs a lot like the finished copies, with this one the final books seem to have a bit of extra oomph to them. It could be that they're simply far more blue.  

Finished on the left, proof on the right.

The jacket pattern kinda reminds me of the way I draft nonfiction

I can't make pixels convey exactly how blue that flyleaf is. You'll just have to get a copy.

So, absolutely no more meddling: it is finished. I can't change it any more. And while I'm happy that it is - and still can't believe that I've managed to get not one, but two novels into print in the traditional fashion - I'm just a little nervous about how it will be received. More so, I think, than I was with The Shore. 

Guess all I can do is wait and see what people think. 

And maybe throw copies at naysayers. But I only have twelve copies, and I can think of nearly two dozen people who will want one. 

Thesis mode

My memory is odd. Looking back I get the impression that I've spent the last six months in general idleness, avoiding work and skiving off, and present Sara hates past Sara because of it, because when the looking back occurs present Sara is usually hustling to meet a deadline and wondering why past Sara didn't take care of it. But when I flip back through my diary it becomes clear why past Sara didn't take care of it, because past Sara generally does far more hustling of other types than present Sara remembers.

Today was the day that the first rough draft of my critical thesis was due to my supervisor. A week ago today was the day that I actually began working on it, because in the month before that I owed Henry 20,000 words, taught for FLY, presented at a conference, spent a week in the US doing research, judged a short fiction prize, had Annual Progress Review, and more or less kept up with the planning of my own conference. So the acrimony directed at past Sara was generally groundless, as very little skiving took place.

I've been writing up my research periodically as I've gone along, more as notes on what I've done than as actual readable material, and I've churned out a handful of self-contained pieces, so writing the first draft was less 'writing' than 'figuring out what part of what I already had was useable.' And if I'm bad at remembering what I've done, I'm even worse at remembering what I've already included in a document. So instead of approaching the thesis with any dignity, I took the arts-and-crafts line of attack:

Print it out, cut it up, sort like with like, put it back together, throw away the extra pieces. Just like Ikea.

I don't remember when I started doing it this way - no surprise there - but 'cut it all up and put it back together in an order that makes sense' seems to be the only way that I produce nonfiction that's in any way readable. 

It's kinda depressing to think that that's my critical output for the past three years. 

The risk, of course, is that all of the cutting and pasting and sorting out will take up so much time that the draft will be done in theory when the deadline pops up, but won't have made it back onto the computer. So far that hasn't happened, but I won't be surprised if one day I wind up hand-delivering a nine-foot sheet of taped-together paragraphs in lieu of a Word document. 

The whole was finished and sent at about ten this morning, with much fear and trembling because it's both far longer than my supervisor is expecting and far rougher than I was hoping it would be. Though, when I first sat down a week ago and looked at what I had, I hid under the desk and refused to come out because I thought I had absolutely nothing to show for the past three years, so I suppose I'm in a 100% better position than I expected to be.