Today I have mostly been excited about the Dutch publication of Mantelpiece – next week! In fact, if your loved one speaks Dutch and has a penchant for children’s fiction, perhaps you could buy them a copy of my book as it’s out in Holland on Valentine’s Day. I am *sure* that any girl would prefer it to a sparkly set of earrings or a dozen red roses.
The promotion of Mantelpiece in Holland is in full swing. Pimento/Mistral, my publishers over there, had a nice stall at the Dutch press fair:
And there are a few bits and bobs online. If you speak Dutch and have nothing better to do, you can read them here and here.
In other news, we are in the process of moving house. After twelve hours of packing boxes and frantic cleaning, we managed to get out of our last place last Friday – only to find we couldn’t move into the new one. I won’t bore you with the details for fear I might smash the computer in frustration. Suffice to say, we’re now at my parents’ house, squeezed into my old childhood bedroom with all the boxes we need and couldn’t put in storage. With the deadline for Ketchup Clouds and the USA edit deadline for Mantelpiece fast approaching, I have no choice but to work, so am currently spending my days hunched over my laptop on my bed, propped up on pillows like some sort of hospital patient and trying to ignore my mum’s mad dog. I bet JK Rowling didn’t write Harry Potter like this. Still – it is lovely to be here. Food made. Cups of tea brought. Fresh towels put in the room. Awesome.
Today I have mostly been sitting in the Covent Garden Hotel trying to prepare for my first ever My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece event this evening. And by prepare I mean making tea in the little teapot, staring in the mirror and trying to conquer my nerves. Orion have organised a bit of a shin dig for me and some literary folk to premiere the book’s promotional trailer (you can find it on the books page if you’re interested). The director and actor did a great job capturing the spirit of the novel so I’m delighted with it! Hope the reviewers etc like it too. I’m then going to do a small interview type thing hence the reason I’m on my third PG Tips, practising my answers. ‘Hi, I’m Annabel, author of The Mantelpiece Lives on My Sister…’ Never done anything like this before. Will let you know how it goes.
Earlier this week I was in Suffolk at a book signing. When my publicist said I would be signing 1500 books, I imagined a long line of excited school kids and me perched at a table with a brand new fountain pen, discussing literature with enthusiastic teenagers. The reality was somewhat different. I did sign 1500 books, but in a cold printing factory not a book shop. Still. It was amazing. Up there with my life highlights actually. Up until then, I hadn’t seen a finished copy of the book, let alone 1500 of them, all piled up and brand new and ready for the shops. It even had a blurb. A blurb. On my story! I guess I can finally say that Mantelpiece is a proper book and not just a manuscript on A4 paper on my IKEA desk in Yorkshire. Exciting times.
Today I have mostly been scared of my new 40 inch TV. Inspector Morse is massive. Like having the real John Thaw solving crime in the corner of the living room. And it’s faulty, which makes the characters’ faces quiver ever so slightly, almost like they’re leering. We’re sending it back and getting a smaller one. A 40 inch Simon Cowell, false teeth the size of marble tomb stones, is too horrifying a prospect. Annoying really, especially as this TV was supposed to be A Treat. My husband and I have been struggling with our massive ten-year-old box for about a million years and we had, up until last week, resisted the urge to get a brand new sparkling flat screen. Even when the ‘on’ switch broke, rather than replace the TV, we invented a contraption to jam the button in. So what if you had to grab the Bible, wedge an old crutch against it on the carpet and balance the other end on the broken switch to hold it in place? It only took ten minutes to set up. When Curry’s come to collect the faulty flat screen, we’ll have to go back to the old wind up one for a while. Hope the NHS can spare the crutch for a few more weeks.
Today I have mostly been trying not to suck my thumb. It’s always one of my New Year’s Resolutions, and I always fail. I have tried everything – salt, foul tasting ointments, plasters – and nothing works. May have to chop them off this year. Twenty eight is too old to be a thumb sucker. So’s ten, truth be told. Must try harder. Get the Domestos. Couple of mouth blisters might put me off.
Happy New Year by the way. Oh, and welcome to my blog. I’ll update it twice a month or if anything interesting happens. 2011 is going to be an exciting one for me as my debut novel’s out on March 1st. This time last year, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece had been rejected by the first agent I had tried and getting a book published seemed like an impossible task – up there with all those other things I want to do but secretly know I never will (run a marathon, become fluent in a language, stop sucking my thumb). I was feeling particularly downhearted because, despite liking the book, the first agent turned it down on the grounds it was ‘commercially disastrous’. Eeek. It never occurred to me to consider anything so Dragons’ Den as commercial viability. I just wrote a story – one that I found funny and sad and as true to life as I could possibly make it – without doing any research into Market Gaps or Current Trends or What Young People Like To Read Nowadays. I thought I’d made a huge mistake, devoting months of my life to a story that would never sell, and was consequently in something of a sulk last January.
That all changed a couple of weeks later with a phone call from the Felicity Bryan Literary Agency to tell me the agent Catherine Clarke had liked the start of my novel and was interested in reading more. Cue much squealing and cheering. I was in the ladies’ loos at work at the time and had to write the contact details of the agent on toilet paper. I kept it though. As you do. One day I’ll eBay it for thousands and give the money to charity if I can resist the temptation to buy a cottage in the Lake District. Catherine read the rest of my book and called me back. I answered nervously, expecting to hear the damning news that the novel was a commercial catastrophe. Thankfully, she said something rather different and so began the most exciting year of my life to date. Here’s hoping the next twelve months will be as good as the last.
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