Book Tour!

I'm one of those people that's superstitious about talking about an opportunity until it's pretty certain that it's going to happen, which is why I'm only now saying anything about this: I'm going to be scooting around Italy in October!

The Shore was released in Italy yesterday under the title Tutto il Nostro Sangue, because the nuances of 'shore' don't translate.

I'm probably a little too happy that the version my aunts will read has 'blood' in the title.

So, for the purpose of getting to meet me and talking up the book, my Italian publisher has decided to ship me over for a week in October.

I'll be at the CartaCarbone Festival in Treviso on the 13th of October, then the Marco Polo bookshop in Venice on Friday the 14th, Le Notti Bianche in Pavia and Volante in Lecco on the 15th, Il Mio Libro in Milan on the 16th, and Minimum Fax bookshop in Rome on the 17th.

Considering that I've tried and failed to visit Italy several times over the past decade and a half, I'm more excited about the trip than terrified. The only real issue is that I'm pretty rubbish at languages - In school I studied French for two years, Spanish for five, and Italian for seven, and can navigate exactly none of them. Though they say that finding oneself in a position where one is forced to use the language results in a dramatic increase in understanding.

On the plus side, I'm going back to Virginia for my brother's wedding the week before, so I'll have the chance to refresh the basic phrases ahead of time. Assuming that I can get my uncle to stop worrying about my personal safety long enough to teach me.

Highlights of Edinburgh

Since coming back from Edinburgh on Monday I've had the worst time trying to stay awake, which probably means that the summer has finally caught up to me. Last year my first book had just come out, I knew no one, and I had to leave David at home, so I was generally shy and terrified throughout the festival. This year David came along, I kept running into book people I knew, and even though I was nervous about discussing The Lauras for the first time I had a rough idea of how the evening would go. 

Highlights of the trip include:

- Chatting with Gavin Grant and Olivia Smith, and listening to Kevin Barry's stories about minks, mice, and other vermin. 

- Spending an embarrassing amount of time in the Author's yurt trying to get in as much shop talk as possible. 

- Drinking pints of whisky with Jenni Fagan and Stuart Kelly after the yurt had closed and all sane people gone to bed.

- Dragging Dave to the top of an extinct volcano only to hear American accents. 

- Dragging Dave to eat cranachan and haggis only to hear American accents.

- Fangirling shamelessly over Marcus Sedgwick.

- Getting through my first reading from The Lauras without messing up or cursing. 

- Buying books when I'd promised I wouldn't. 

As the more social of the two of us, Dave made friends with pretty much everyone he came across, and now wants me to hurry up finishing the next book so we can go back. 

Edinburgh!

The Lauras was released on time, and if there were any negative reviews then I haven't seen them - and it would probably be good if it stayed that way, as I was a basket case for the week leading up and the week after publication. And now I'm a bit of a basket case again, because on Thursday I'll be at Edinburgh Book Festival, reading from and talking about book the second for the first time, and dammit if I don't have the slightest clue what questions, from audience or chair, the whole thing will lead to. In honesty, the only reason that I'm not hiding under the bed is that I've been paired with Jenni Fagan with The Sunlight Pilgrims, and there's a good chance I'll spend too much time asking her questions about her books to answer any about my own.

Dave gets to come along this time; I'm far too excited about getting to show him the yurt.

External validation

The Lauras comes out tomorrow, which means I'm halfway to a quivering ball of nerves - though that may be the six cups of black coffee that I've just drunk. It's not that I'm worried that the book will be badly received, because on a fundamental level I believe that the writing is the important part, and it being read once it's finished is somewhat superfluous. But I do have a fair amount of impostor's syndrome when it comes to my fictive tendencies, so the days leading up to a proving point, when something new goes out into the world and people are asked to respond to it, aren't exactly relaxing. I'm not sure what it is that's got me uneasy - but then, even though I can't say  what it is about cloudy water that makes me uneasy I still won't stay in the bathtub after it's gotten too soapy to see the bottom.

In the positive column I've got a firmer idea of what's going on than I did last time, and I've got enough of a reference point to know that what's going on is so far all good.

Yesterday I got to scoot into London to record a segment for BBC Radio 4's Front Row, which means that, as with The Shore, my first time talking about The Lauras was in a recording room with Kirsty Lang. Which was the best possible way to start things off, because Kirsty is wonderful. It's too early yet for me to have a solid idea of the sort of conversations the book will prompt, or to have well thought out responses to them, so her questions are my primer for what I should be thinking about as Edinburgh draws nearer and other speaking opportunities pop up.

The thinking is going to need to happen quickly, as I'm going back into London tomorrow afternoon for an interview with Radio Gorgeous, which is unexplored territory for me.

Text-wise, there have been good reviews in the Sunday Mirror, the Sunday Times, and Stylist Magazine, with rumblings of more to come. Even though no one's panned it as far as I've seen, I'm quite tempted to put my head down and pretend that none of it is happening. The writing is really the fun bit, and the thesis clock is ticking.

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