Spotted!

Number 6 at the airport. Don't particularly like London Gatwick but I do like this photograph :)

with thanks to the lovely Kate Byrne.

My Awfully Big Bookshop Adventure.

Anyone who reads this blog will already know that I quite like books, and perhaps also know - or guess - that my favourite shops happen to be those selling books. I've never needed an excuse to visit a bookshop, but if I did -  I had one today. Because I was taken (by my publisher) on a tour of a few... to meet booksellers and sign copies of The Last Summer.

The day started in Farnham, at Waterstones, where I spotted my book almost before I entered the shop, on the table in front of me, in front of the door.

After talking to staff, and signing copies, we headed to Waterstones in Alton, and then Waterstones Petersfield. We went to One Tree Books - where we had lunch (quiche and a salad, if you must know), and where the book was also on prominent display in the front of the shop. And then, behind the counter I saw this:

One Tree Books best sellers, with The Last Summer at number one... and poor Julian Barnes trailing in third place. Yes, alright, I know it's a blip, but it was a beautiful moment in my life.

We headed west from Petersfield, in glorious sunshine and through spectacular countryside, to Winchester. I'd already been warned that the Waterstones shop in Winchester would only have the compulsory one copy; that the manager had said it wasn't for them... though I have no idea why (and I'd quite like to ask him). But there was a shop called P & G Wells, I was told (reassured), that were very keen on the book, and keen to meet me. Before heading to P & G Wells we went into Waterstones, briefly; the place was empty, and yes, one copy of my book was there, in the A-Z of fiction.

So, this is P & G Wells: reputed to be the oldest bookshop in the country. And what a beautiful book shop it is. At first - and when I took this photograph - I didn't notice what was in the far right of the window. I was distracted. The shop overlooks the old city walls, and gardens, and magnolia trees, and is doors away from Jane Austen's house, the place where she died.

Yep, it was another lovely moment... to see The Last Summer basking there in the sunshine, and in the window of what is, truly, a beautiful bookshop. Inside, immediately opposite the door, was another  big display of the book, and yet more on the counter. Who needs Waterstones Winchester, I thought; I LOVE this place. And, in truth, I would have loved it anyway, even without my book all over the shop. Because it was magical; an old-fashioned bookshop with the lingering scent of old leather and pages. Not only that, but everywhere I looked were titles that made my heart sing. No (A, B or C list) celebrity memoirs here.

I met the owner - as charming as his shop. I was given a brief history, and a tour - including upstairs, to one of the best childrens' book departments I've seen in recent years, and culminating in a visit to the bookbinders at the back of the shop, where hundreds of years of cobwebs hung from the ceiling. And I felt as though I'd stepped back in time two hundred years.

The place was busy. The owner told me that business was good. The staff smiled and were attentive: they seemed to know and care about their customers. And I too made purchases. How could I not?

The Last Summer: online reviews.

With three weeks to go until the launch of The Last Summer in the UK, and less than ten days until the German publication, I thought I'd post links to a few early online reviews.

One More Page

The Riddle of Writing, Deborah Swift

She Reads Novels

Fleur Fisher, in her world

The Historical Novels Society

Reader, I Read It

Hang ups and handbags

Huge thanks to my online reviewers, and to those of you who have taken the time to post reviews on amazon. Thank you also to those of you who've tweeted, messaged and emailed me. It means a lot... and I LOVE hearing from my readers :)

Agents and publishers (a post for authors).

We live in interesting times, particularly in publishing, where digital technology has accelerated change and altered our vision of the future. And change is never easy to live through, to adapt to. We have to alter our thinking, reinvent our ideas; we have to be creative; we have to keep up. Meanwhile, debates rage on the Future of Publishing, and the same questions come up again and again. Will authors still need publishers? Will the literary agent one day be a thing of the past? And then there's the booksellers: where will they be in this new (publishing) world order? If only we had a crystal ball, an accurate one.

It's over two weeks since Jonny Geller posted an Agent's Manifesto on The Bookseller's blog. Tweeted over 1400 times, it's caused a few ripples in the publishing world, and inspired a robust defence of the publisher's role. Then, for some reason, The Bookseller hid it behind a paywall. But now it's back and available to view. And - just in case - it's here as well. If you haven't yet read it, you should.

It feels like a perfect storm is brewing; publishers battening down the hatches, retailers at war with one another, e-tailers deactivating “buy” buttons as if it’s a game of Call of Duty.

One person has been forgotten in this unholy maelstrom: the author. Remember, we don’t have a job without him or her. For those of us still working in the legacy business of publishing books, here’s a reminder of the primary mover in this chain—an Agent’s Manifesto, as it were, to All Those in the Business of Publishing Books on Behalf of the Author:

» 
The author is the expert. Why assume that the one person who has spent the past 12-18 months on the subject, the story and the world of their work, knows least about how they should be represented to the trade and to the reader?

» 
The author is not an object which a publisher has to step over in order to achieve a successful publication. If they have a problem with the cover, blurb, copy or format, then something isn’t right.

» 
The author loves bookshops. Bookshops need to learn how to love authors again. We need to bring them back together.

» 
We publishing professionals are the ones who bear the risk—agents with time; publishers with investment; retailers with space. Authors risk only their whole life, self-esteem and their babies.

» 
Publishers need to understand that “Author Care” is not a euphemism for “Care in the Community”. Authors who are valued, understood, appreciated, included, nurtured and spoken to like an adult will experience a phenomenon called Trust. Trust breeds loyalty; loyalty means longevity; longevity means sales.

» 
Authors will endeavour to understand better what a publisher does—e-books are not created after two minutes of scanning and ticking a series of boxes on Amazon’s self-publishing program.

It’s not exactly the Independence Charter, but hopefully a reminder of where the core of our business lies.

I recently attended a conference, happily entitled “Disintermediation—who will be left?”, and the clear inference was that agents would be “disintermediated” out of the picture. I’m not so sure. Which author truly wants to close their Lithuanian rights deal (at midnight) while updating their blog (at 6 a.m.), revisiting the copy edit for the fourth time (a whole morning’s work) and keeping an eye on the hourly change of their book’s pricing? As Amanda Hocking, a returnee to “legacy publishing”, recently said: “It drove me nuts.” J K Rowling didn’t publish her adult novel on Pottermore or a variation thereof, and Vintage US has just bought the erotic sensation Fifty Shades of Grey after 250,000 downloads of this independently published novel. Authors need publishers; they need experts to guide and protect them.

However, the arguments I heard on a recent trip to New York suggests publishers are still focused in on themselves. An Amazon surge in sales of one of their backlist publishing titles was greeted by the same question: “yes, but at what price?”. The answer is “several thousand more sales than the previous five years”, but publishers don’t want to hear that. They are, understandably, agitated about the falling prices of their products (a concern shared by every agent and author I know), but publishers must understand that their inability to offer viable alternatives to the “publish or not publish” offers available will drive more authors to self-publishing initiatives.

The book industry needs to listen to authors and readers more so we can win back the argument that publishing is filled with skilled professionals seeking excellence in their fields, determined to publish works of commercial and cultural significance. Amazon is not the devil, but a different route. Booksellers need support; but they, in turn, need to bring a higher level of service to their customers. I’m sure none of the above applies to you, but if you know someone who might benefit from reading this, do pass it on.

(With thanks to JG for permission to post)

Answering questions.

Click here to read my answers to 20 questions about writing.

The End, and the beginning.

I have to post this... because it was a wonderful and strange moment this afternoon when I spotted my book, at 'One Tree Books' in Petersfield. And there it is: snuggled up with Jack Kerouac.

Naturally, I was pleased to see it, and delighted in its prominent position - at the very front of the store. I felt proud, and, weirdly, not of myself but of the book. I took this photograph and as I walked away I realised that it's the end of one journey and the start of another. What began as an idea and grew into a story has a life of its own now. My book has left me. We stumbled upon each other by chance today. Others will stumble upon it too. They will pick it up, look at it, perhaps ponder on whether to buy it, and either put it back or take it to the desk to pay. It will, eventually, leave the store. And that's its beginning; where the story starts.

Good Luck, my book.

An interview with Jane Harris.

Many of you will know by now that one of my favourite authors is Jane Harris. I discovered The Observations last year, and only recently read Gillespie and I. For me, Harris is breath of fresh air to historical fiction; she's inspirational. Her novels manage to magnify history: they bring the minutiae into focus and shine a torch into those dark corners. And her characters are anything but stereotypical. Love them or hate them, they're different: complex, quirky, funny, and compelling.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when Jane agreed to let me interview her, to ask her a few questions about those two books, and about her writing... and here it is.

JK: Jane, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. I feel truly blessed and honoured.

JH: The honour is all mine!

JK: So, first thing's first, and I've been longing to ask you this: where did the idea for The Observations come from?

JH: It began as a short story I wanted to write as one of a set of linked stories that I was hoping to pass off as a novel; this was before I was confident enough to tackle a ‘proper’ novel. I wrote a number of these stories: they were all on themes of Scottishness, Scottish identity, famous Scottish figures from history etc. Some of them were published; some remain half-written; others never got beyond the idea stage, and were just a few words scribbled on a card. In my research, I became interested in Robert Burns and the fact that he collected songs from ordinary people and I thought it might be interesting to write a story from the point of view of a girl from whom some fictional poet-farmer ‘collects’ a song.

However, once I started writing the story I lost interest in the poet and became fascinated by the narrator (Bessy) and her mistress. I had also been reading about Hannah Cullwick, a well-known diarist and servant from the 19^th century, (see: http://writingwomenshistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/hannah-cullwicks-stolen-love.html) and her collected writings also informed what I was doing. The short story kept expanding until I thought it must be a novel. But I ran out of steam about 30,000 words in and ended up putting the manuscript and all my notes away in a box in the attic. Meanwhile I gave up on writing the ‘linked stories’ novel and became distracted by other writing projects and by trying to earn a living. Almost ten years later, I unearthed the box and – having learned a bit more about how full-length fiction is put together – I had another attempt at making it work. The result was The Observations.

JK: For me, Bessy's voice makes the book: it's fresh, utterly compelling, and unique. But which came to you first, Bessy as a character, and narrator, or the premise for the book? And was it difficult for you to develop that voice?

JH: The premise for the short story came first. Then, as soon I began writing, the voice came. I was basing Bessy’s voice on a mixture of a few women I know, all Irish women – my mother, my aunt and my friend Noeleen. All of them are very funny and great storytellers. I tried to think of them as I wrote – or, to be honest, it was as though they were whispering in my ear. They all sort of morphed into this Bessy character and I could just hear them as I went along.

JK: Moving on to Gillespie and I... can you tell us about the advent of the book; how the idea came to you? I'm intrigued to know if any of it is based on real people and events.

JH: From the days when I was trying to write that ‘linked stories’ novel, I had stored all my old material – the half-finished pieces and scraps of ideas – in the same box as the 30,000 words or so that became The Observations. When the time came to write a second novel, I wondered whether the idea might not be unearthed from the same box.

In fact, I found a piece of card in there and on the card I had written a few phrases: ‘Glasgow, 19^th Century, artist’. Initially, I thought I might write about a female painter and her struggles to be recognised in the art world of that era. However, at about the same time, I read an article in a contemporary newspaper about a court case that had just taken place in England. This was in 2004 or 2005. The crime committed was so strange that I was intrigued by it and felt compelled to write about it. I don’t want to say more here as it might give too much away. However, there was no reason why the case could not have taken place in the 19^th century and so I combined the two notions, which meant that my literary novel about an artist became more of a psychological mystery.

There are no real people in the novel, unless you count the artist Lavery who makes a cameo appearance. The characters – like most of my characters – are a combination of invention plus a sort of melding together of the characteristics of various people of my acquaintance.

Some of the events are taken from my own experience. I’m thinking, in particular, of the incident in an early chapter where Harriet intervenes when she sees an old woman collapsed in the street: this is based almost exactly on something that happened to me. I also lived (in Portugal) with an elderly lady who kept two birds in a cage. . . and certain elements of the story concerning these birds are based on real events.

JK: In Gillespie and I you introduce us to another unique voice, that of Harriet Baxter: a more complex character than Bessy and, perhaps, a more unreliable narrator. How easy or otherwise was it for you to develop Harriet's voice and character? And did you like her?

JH: I wanted a different challenge with this second book and so I decided that I would make my new narrator very unlike the first. Instead of Bessy (an uneducated, often undisciplined, rather chaotic and exuberant narrator, who is nonetheless fairly straightforward and who has little notion of the rules of punctuation and grammar and tends to use short sentences), I came up with Harriet Baxter, a highly-educated, controlled, almost anal narrator, someone very precise, who knows the rules of grammar, who over-punctuates and likes to use long, complex sentences with lots of clauses and who is much less straightforward.

I tried to push all these elements to the extreme – Harriet’s precision, control, and so on. I read a lot of Henry James – for the language and for his convoluted sentences. I also tried to bear in mind a few old ladies of my acquaintance – intelligent ladies with a nice line in put-downs but, perhaps, too little to occupy their bright minds.

I’m often asked if I like Harriet. I think she’s a bit of a Marmite character for readers: you either like or loathe her. Personally, I adore her. I spent several years in her company and if I hadn’t liked her it would have been difficult.

JK: When you began writing Gillespie and I, did you know how it would end, and, if so, did you stay true to that ending? Or did you make decisions as the book evolved?

JH: I pretty much always knew how the book would end. The last chapter is very much as I planned it to begin with. Other elements of the book changed a fair bit but I always knew what I was working towards.

JK: Without giving too much away, in Gillespie and I you deal with the disappearance of a child, and the consequences and effects brought about by that disappearance. But we are only ever looking back at events through Harriet's eyes. Was it ever difficult for you to inhabit Harriet's extraordinary perspective?

JH: This book was an enormous challenge to write, I have to admit. There is the surface story – Harriet’s memoir – and then there is a story that is taking place in the subtext, one that (hopefully) readers discover as they go along. In essence, I had to write both of these novels – at least, in my head and in my notes. Deciding when and how to reveal the subtext was extremely difficult. I did, at an early stage, consider a dual narration – from both Harriet and Annie’s points of view – which would have allowed another perspective on events, but ultimately I rejected this because I thought that, if I could pull off the single point of view (which, in this case, was the more difficult option) then the book would be more unique and remarkable. It seems I like to make things difficult for myself.

JK: Who is your favourite character in Gillespie and I, and why?

JH: Hmm – I love them all. That’s like asking somebody which is their favourite child. I suppose I’d have to say Harriet: she carries the whole thing, really, and I enjoy her witticisms.

JK: Would you say your writing is character driven or plot driven?

JH: Voice and character used to be my favourite elements of writing. Some of my early stories were not much more than character studies or experiments in voice. I used to hate plot and the ins and outs of working out what happens in a narrative, because plot is actually the most difficult thing. It’s important to remember that narrative and character are intimately connected, however. Generally speaking, events in a story happen because of how characters act and react, thus moving the plot forward. These days, I am less afraid of plot. I might even be growing rather fond of it. No doubt that will be horrifying to some people, the kind of people that think plot is a nasty word, but there you go.

JK: In both The Observations and Gillespie and I, the narrators are women who are transient, without family, parents or home. Both seem displaced. Is there anything of you in that sense of displacement? (You don't have to answer that!)

JH: Only last week I realised that where I live now is the place I have lived the longest – eight and a half years. As a child, I stayed with my parents in one of their homes for eight years, but other than that I have moved around a lot. I have resided at over 35 different addresses in five different countries since I was born (just worked that out). Although my husband and I love our current home so much we can’t bring ourselves to move, I do have an underpinning sense of displacement. Sometimes, I feel that I don’t really belong to Ireland (where I was born) or Scotland (where I grew up) or England (where I have lived for most of my adult life). I think that might answer your question!

JK: It's obvious from The Observations and from Gillespie and I that you know your landscape well, and love it. But do you think you'll ever set a novel outside Scotland

JH: In fact, I’m doing that right now – my new novel is set in the Carribean. I’m enjoying the ‘otherness’ of what I’m doing.

JK: (makes note to pre-order) One of the many things I love about your writing is the humour: sometimes mawkish and dark, sometimes just plain funny; but always from the mouths of brilliant, quirky characters - who live on with us long after the book is finished. How important to you is humour in a novel? What sort of books do you enjoy reading... and who are your favourite writers?

JH: The humour is crucial to me too and I’m so glad you like it! Dark things tend to happen in my books and I like to temper that with humour because that seems to me to be how life is. One of the darkest experiences of my life was working as Writer in Residence in HMP Durham but my time there was proof to me that in the bleakest situations and moments, humour is what keeps us going. The staff and prisoners in Durham jail managed to find humour, even amidst what to me was often a hellish kind of madness.

JK: Finally, I was going to ask you about future projects, 'what's next?' but you've already mentioned another book. Are you enjoying the writing process again?

JH: Yes, loving every minute of it. Don’t want to say too much about it but my main ambition is to write something SHORT.

JK: Thank you, again, Jane. I for one can't wait for the next Jane Harris novel.

JH: Thank you – and I'm looking forward to the next Judith Kinghorn!

Click here to follow Jane Harris on twitter

The Last Summer: a landscape.

To those of you who have read The Last Summer, this landscape might be familiar. The distant South Downs are a clue, I think, to the location.

I saw this image - the setting for much of my novel - in my head, long before seeing this painting. So, when I stumbled upon it on the artist's website (and I do know the artist) it gave me a shiver down my spine.

This is Clarissa Granville's world, and her home, Deyning Park, stands in that valley, somewhere just beyond the brown field; the lake, just outside the frame to the left.

I wonder if any of my readers saw it like this...

(My World, by Jonathon Pocock; oil on canvas. With thanks to the artist.)

Why we choose the books we do.

Two posts in one day: it's got to be a record... but I'm NOT writing at the moment, and that last post led me on to thinking... thinking about why and how we choose the books we do.

I am, I think (yes, being highly subjective here), a discerning reader. Like everyone else, I only have so much time to read, and so I very carefully select the books I want to read. And - like everyone else - I gravitate towards my favourite authors. It just so happens most of them are dead.

I also read around periods. When I was writing The Last Summer I read biographies, autobiographies, non-fiction and novels from that time. As a writer, I'm interested in other writers, and so I like to read biographies of writers. In the past I've quite often become hung up on a particular time or group of people: the Bloomsberries, the poets of the First World War, etc. History fascinates me, so I tend to go back in time. I return to the classics, and - perhaps not unsurprisingly - to female authors, whose voices and stories evoke and depict their times.

I do, occasionally, dip into contemporary fiction, and by that I mean novels set in the present day. But - for whatever reason, and I've always been pulled this way - I tend to prefer my fiction to have an historic context, even if that's the 1980s. I like the backward glance; the distillation time allows. And I like to be transported to somewhere other than here and now. More than anything else I want to read great writing: sublime sentences (which have to be read twice, not in order to understand them, but to savour); dialogue I can hear as I read; and a quietly challenging plot that keeps me turning those pages. I want to read writers I can learn from. I want to read writing that inspires me.

But how do you decide what to read? Is it recommendation, the cover, or the blurb on the back? What matters most to you when you choose a book?

Beautiful Books.

For me, books are things of beauty; they always have been, always will be. I still have and cherish a few from my childhood, even the one I decided to scribble all over (possibly in anger at a parent) in blue biro. My home's testament to my love of books, and I realise - now I'm writing this, that there's not a room in my house that doesn't have shelves, or at least one pile of books to-be-read lying out. Fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry, plays, classic and contemporary, leather-bound antiquarian, new and old, they're everywhere. No wonder my kids tell me not to buy anymore.

Of course, I have favourites, such as my glossy green paperback Virago classics, which I began buying as an impoverished student in the '80s. And I love my burgeoning collection of Persephone Books: palest grey and each one numbered. Then there's my dog-eared Penguin paperbacks, which have moved from house to house with me, through what already feels like a few lifetimes. There's my extensive library of reference books, the ones I constantly go back to for research; and the books friends and family (some now gone) gave me as presents, and spent time pondering, selecting for me. Each one contains something within its jacket - information, a story, whatever, but each one represents something more than the sum of its parts (or contents).

Our books, even the ones not so obviously physically beautiful, chart the story of our lives. They remind of us of people and places and other times, and sometimes they remind of who we once were. They take us back to our youth, to forgotten bookshops in dimly recollected towns; they take us back to old loves, and to our former haunts, holidays and homes. Without touching them, without opening them up, each one has a story: the story of how that book came to us, why, where and when.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I haven't (yet) succumbed to a Kindle. You see, I know it can't speak to me, it can't remind me in the way physical books - almost like photographs - can, and do. It could never tell me in a glance what it was like to take shelter from the rain in a London bookshop one winter's afternoon in 1987, or remind me of the fateful party I went on to, later, carrying The Yellow Wallpaper in my bag.

So what happened?

It's a week since the hardback publication of The Last Summer. But last week wasn't the launch of the book, as such, that happens in April - when the paperback's released; this is a limited release of what's known as a library hardback.

So, it's all new to me, and, needless to say, I wasn't too sure what would happen, if anything. Despite the limited bit of the book's current status, it's for sale on amazon, and a few other places, so I was hoping - at least - for a few readers, some feedback.

On the actual day of publication nothing much happened. I worked, received some flowers from my publisher, and worked some more; I tweeted, drank some champagne in the evening, and then, via the power of twitter, received a message of congratulations from Salman Rushdie. Yes, that was probably the high point, and I think I told him I loved him. (I was on a high by then, in love with the world, and fuelled by fizz and others' kindness).

That was publication day. Since then, it's been busy. Busier than I expected. I've received twelve 5 star reviews on amazon, had a surprising number of messages from people who've read and loved the book, and been reviewed on various blogs, including goodreads, 'one more page' and historical novelist, Deborah Swift's blog. I also received some very kind words from the novelist Rachel Hore: words that included sumptuous and absorbing (see column to right for quote).

It's been quite a week, a good week, but but but... I'm still in brace position. Because it's early days, and though all the feedback so far has been positive, wonderful, better than I anticipated, it could change. I know not everyone is going to love or even like my book. I know it's tough out there. I know that twelve amazon reviews does not a Last Summer make. And I know I still have another book to deliver. Which reminds me, I must get back to work.

Under One Small Star.

By Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity

My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.

Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.

May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.

My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologise for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.

I apologise to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.

Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,

your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,

forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.

My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Truth, please don't pay me much attention.

Dignity please be magnanimous.

Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.

Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.

My apologies to everyone that I can't be everywhere at once.

My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.

I know that I won't be justified as long as I live,

since I myself stand in my own way.

Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

(with thanks to Salman Rushdie)

The Last Summer: opening paragraph.

I was almost seventeen when the spell of my childhood was broken. There was no sudden jolt, no immediate awakening and no alteration, as far as I'm aware, in the earth's axis that day. But the vibration of change was upon us and I sensed a shift: a realignment of my trajectory. It was the beginning of summer, and, unbeknown to any of us then, the end of a belle époque.

The new arrival...

Delivered at 2.20pm today and weighing just under 2lbs - my book!

Memory.

It's Twelfth Night, 'the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking'... It's the end of Christmas, time to take down the tired tree, the always-faulty fairy-lights and pack away the decorations for another year.

For some reason the term has a romantic, magical nuance to me. Shakespeare? Perhaps. Or maybe because it's evocative, triggers my memory and takes me back. My memories of Christmases past are not so much about the presents as the visual feast: the lights, the colours, the textures. In my mind's eye, I see a tree in the hallway of my childhood; red lights - kept on all night - which I looked down on from a landing. I see the home of my grandparents, another tree - in a bay window, with illuminated opaque glass pears and apples hanging from it. And I see my grandmother, standing on a twilit doorstep, smiling, waving to me, to us, as we drive away. I'm waving back at her and I don't want to leave: never want to leave her. I watch her through the window in the back of the car as she grows smaller and smaller, her hand still raised, until I disappear from her, until she disappears from me. And now I remember her hands, the feel of them, her skin; her manicured nails, their shine, their shape. And I feel them again in mine, a lifetime ago, and now.

Christmas is over for another year, but our memories of it - the one just gone and each one before - remain with us. We can revisit them anytime we wish, even on the hottest summer's day. It's all there, stored away, we just have to take ourselves back, remember.

Memory is a powerful tool in writing. Perhaps the most powerful. We have within us a treasure trove of sights, sounds, textures and colours to draw upon and paint pictures with; to evoke, stir, and transport our readers. But to take them to that place we must first take ourselves there: see it, smell it, hear it, feel it.

Beryl Bainbridge said she didn't believe in imagination. She believed everything a writer drew upon came from their own experience, from memory. When I first pondered that (and I blogged about it here), I didn't completely understand, wasn't convinced, but now I am. Because I've realised that we can take our own experiences - our memories - and place them anywhere we want. We can transpose them, merge them, mix them. Then, writing from memory, drawing upon our own experience, our words have resonance, colour, shape and form.

The road to publication: being read.

There are so many different stages on the road to publication... and it's a long and, sometimes, bumpy road.

Securing an agent - one who's passionate about your work and will shout about it from the rooftops - is a beginning, not an end. Getting a book deal seems like a huge result at the time, but it's the start of another lengthy - pre-publication - phase. Each stage is another hurdle crossed, another cause for celebration. But being read is the goal. Has to be the goal. Until then, until a writer has readers, we're not heard; we have no voice, no audience, no feedback. And surely that's what we all crave?

So here I am, finally, almost two years after writing a novel - being read.

Proof copies of The Last Summer have been sent out. ( In fact, my publishers tell me they're having to print more proof copies. They tell me this is a Good Sign. I hope so.) My characters have gone off into the world and belong to others now. And my story, the one I invented and lived and breathed, is out there. Not everyone will like it. I know this. But The Bookseller did, and yesterday - in a column titled 'Ones to Watch' - said:

'an enchanting debut... big storytelling stuff of social and political change spanning the First World War and beyond. It's a glorious read, highly recommended.'

It's my first review, and I couldn't ask for more.

Meanwhile, the first seventeen chapters of my new book are also being read - by my editor. I'm excited, nervous, daunted; I feel exposed and liberated at the same time. Thrilled and delighted to be read, but anxious as well. The crises of confidence never abate, are never far away; like another dip on a roller-coaster ride. And so I feel wobbly, and yet immensely grateful to be here, at this stage: being read. Oh to be read at last.

Pondering on Penelope's Punctuation.

I slept badly last night. Mainly due to the window-rattling gale force winds sweeping the country... and also because I was preoccupied by commas. (Yes, I can see you yawning already).

Like colons and semicolons, and adverbs and adjectives, everyone has a different opinion and, I know, a different style. But at two o'clock this morning I found myself reappraising and reevaluating commas. You see, I think I've been too liberal with them in the past, allowed them to have too much say. And it was Penelope Lively who started it. My pondering.

Some of the best prose in Moon Tiger is devoid of punctuation. Lively uses simple short sentences. Full stop. And she uses long sentences that could have easily been paced by a few commas but which roll and tumble onwards without a single comma in sight and are really quite sublime to read.

It made me realise how punctuation can actually get in the way of reading. How restrictive it can be. And how liberating it feels when removed.

Of course the comma has its place. As does the colon and the semicolon (for me anyway). Twenty-first century punctuation is a matter of conjecture and debate, and - like hemlines, hats, gloves, and even manners - punctuation has always been prone to changing tastes and fashion. It's an issue of style, personal style: it's subjective. For some, there'll be too many commas in those last two sentences; no need for a colon; that last semicolon entirely unnecessary. And as for ellipses...

But in writing there are no rules. Or if there are, surely they're there to be broken?

My favourite reads of 2011.

I've just finished reading Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger and it's right up there in my list of favourite reads of this year. In fact, I think it and a few others from this year are in my favourite books ever list. But it's another book that for some reason took me a while to get to... It won the Booker Prize in 1987.

Moon Tiger is a compelling read; complex, evocative, and perfectly structured: comparable, I think, to Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, and a lesson in novel writing. So, if you haven't yet read it, it's truly a must-read.

Anyone who knows me or follows this blog knows that I'm a voracious reader. I'm not sure how many books I've read during 2011, but I think I've read more than any previous year. So, in no particular order, here's my pick of the best - from the novels I've read during the last twelve months. These are the ones whose words made my heart sing, made me smile and laugh and cry, and make me want to be a better writer.

Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

Journey into the Past, by Stefan Zweig

The Observations, by Jane Harris

The Rector's Daughter, by Flora Mayor

Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst

Master Georgie, by Beryl Bainbridge

Today, by David Miller

Fiesta: The Sun also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Girl Reading, by Katie Ward

AND YOU CAN LISTEN TO PENELOPE LIVELY TALKING ABOUT MOON TIGER HERE.

Colm Toibin on simplicity, pleasure, and reading.

Edna O'Brien on poetry and prose and books.

V. The Soldier.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke, 1887 - 1915

Writing women, and the C21st.

I am, even as I write this, distracted by a book. Namely, the one I'm writing.

It's the one I've been writing for a few years, the one due to be published in February 2013, and the one due to be delivered to my publishers by... next May, at the latest. So, really, I'm rewriting a book.

The great thing is of course that I'm doing what I love, what I'm totally addicted to. I'm now paid to spend my time writing. It's a full time job, and the job I always wanted. How cool is that? I feel blessed, I feel lucky.

The bad thing - yes, like ying and yang, there is always bad with good, I think - is that I've fallen foul (as usual) of my obsessive approach. I can't switch off, can't leave it, can't back away. This feels like a failing: all the professional writers I read about are disciplined with time: they write during certain hours, then, somehow, walk away. But not me.

Consequently, I'm a hopelessly unreliable friend, a distracted mother, neglectful daughter, and an absent (in mind, at least) wife. Family and friends are patient and tolerant. They make allowances, know what I'm like, try to understand that this is the way I work: the only way I work.

But how does a writer maintain that difficult and delicate balance between the demands of the real world and the world we're creating, and inhabiting during our waking hours?

I have no answers. But one thing I do know is that once upon a time lady novelists were just that: ladies, with time on their hands and hours to fill. Did Jane Austen, or Charlotte or Emily Bronte have to break from their writing to cook supper? Did they have school runs, homework, bath-times and bedtimes to supervise? No. And neither did Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Nancy Mitford - and so many others. Their babies were their books: their invented children. Real children - God bless 'em all - rather interfere with writing.

But then so do husbands... Which might explain why so many successful nineteenth and twentieth century women novelists remained unmarried. Those who did marry and had children often struggled. Jean Rhys was estranged from her husband and only child; Rosamond Lehmann sent her children off to boarding school as infants and had a string of unsuccessful relationships; Daphne du Maurier - almost a recluse in her shed - had nannies and servants to see to her family; and Sylvia Plath - estranged from Ted Hughes and left alone with two children - killed herself. Okay, that last one's very bleak. But you get my point, I hope.

It's tricky for women writers in the twenty-first century, trying to be good mothers, good partners or wives, trying to be good friends, and good daughters, whilst creating another world, other people. Because all of this - and all of them - require time. That one thing we can't buy, can't save or recycle, and the very same thing we need in order to create. Tricky.

Remembrance day poppies, & my German cover.

O Mio Babbino Caro

The Sense of an Ending.

'When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world.' Julian Barnes

This week saw Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending win the 2011 Man Booker Prize. And if you follow me on twitter you might just know that I was thrilled it won.

I read it about a month ago and, for me, it's a masterful piece of writing: compelling, concise, with each and every word in the right place, and not one of them extraneous. Its 160 pages are a lesson in how to plot, how and when to release information, and how to be succinct. And its ending? Well, let's just say it leaves you thinking.

Here's what the man himself had to say about his win.

And here's a podcast of what two critics had to say.