REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

And so…..(in deeply hushed and reverential tones)……They. Have. Arrived. ‘They’ being the books, obviously.

YEAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

It isn’t often that dreams come true (sadly) but I feel as though some of mine have. So much so that I hardly dare believe it. In fact, I don’t believe it. Not yet. The evidence is lined up on my bookshelves, 35 copies of Things He Never Knew; my dream is now tangible, and I still feel as though I’m just looking at it. I’m not living in it yet. At what point will that change? No idea. I’ll let you know.

My books arrived exactly as I had always imagined that they would. Well, almost. Technically, I slept through it. That’s right, I slept through the most exciting arrival of my life (children aside; and it would be impossible to sleep through that) because they arrived at 8:30am on Friday morning. But apart from that, it was exactly how I always imagined. Two, biggish boxes which when I opened them were stuffed full of my books. And I was pleased, I got 35 copies. It’s quite a hard thing to take in, to stare at something that came from my imagination, that I created. Many things exist in my imagination but it is rare for me to see one of them sitting in front of me. One box was full of books and one was half-full of books and half-full of promotional material which was equally as exciting, despite the fact that the posters have a mistake on them. I had already noticed this, as had the production co-ordinator and he’d confirmed that they would be re-printed. When I sent an enquiring email (very difficult to get the tone right; I did not want to sound cross when these people had just made my dream come true) the production co-ordinator replied and said yes, he knew and they are in the process of being re-printed but he thought I’d prefer the wrong ones rather than nothing at all. I thought that was very sweet. And it also shows a deep understanding of my nature which is all about having things NOW NOW NOW. I don’t think I can have been trained very well as a child. I dislike waiting. I’ve also developed a neat technique for dealing with things that I can’t have. I simply make myself stop wanting them – which usually works very well, unless I really, really want something in which case I engineer a way to get it.

my display!

So back to the posters, I think it’s the idea that MY BOOK is being advertised. Those posters are designed for people to look at them and be encouraged to buy my book. Hundreds of people will look at them and this link is what makes the posters exciting. I think. But, to be honest, the whole thing is pretty exciting. And as I remarked to someone via email I spent Friday in much the same state as a small child spends Christmas Day; thoroughly over-excited. This earned me a reply beginning “Hello small child….” , which I suppose I deserved.

But this really is a once in a lifetime experience, I say this in a serious way, unlike Tim Vine up in Edinburgh. The next box of books that I receive will be full of my second book, I will have done it before, it won’t be a totally brand-new feeling. I shall be an experienced opener of boxes of my books, and this first time was something to savour.

It took me a long time to actually unpack the boxes, because of the above feelings. I left them as they were for most of the day, until I had to sort them out properly because we had people coming for dinner. I then swept all the papers, magazines, TV remotes, toys, pens, etc., etc. off our coffee table and underneath it and created a little display with all of the books lined up and the posters fanned out. My husband looked at this, laughed and said “Are you leaving them like that until Rob and Steph get here?”

“Darling,” I said seriously. “I’m leaving them there for the rest of the week.”

His eyebrows were raised, put it like that. Of course I didn’t in the end because the risk of something being spilled and everything ruined was just too high. Especially considering our usual, alcohol-fuelled dinner party behaviour, it’s perfectly possible that a bottle of red wine might have gone flying. I like having Rob and Steph for dinner; she’s worked hard for years to pursue her ambition to become a doctor and is due to graduate in medicine next year. I’m pleased about this because happily for me she comes out with a whole range of medicine-related anecdotes from the interesting to the emotive to the fascinating, plus some truly revolting ones. This week her placement is in obs and gynae which I was hopeful about and she didn’t let me down; “Sarah,” she said, “I had to stare at a vagina for seven hours.”

I think I prefer the way my dream came true.

This will only be a short post and actually I’m doing well to post it at all, because in direct contrast to last Sunday I find myself this week with almost no time to write. This is not because I am busy, in fact the direct opposite, but by staying at my mother’s house in Berkshire I have effectively moved back to the Dark Ages, with my mother being the enforcer of this. By Dark Ages I mean that things like watching television, using mobile phones and especially LAPTOPS are frowned upon. Anything involving modern technology is not popular in this household. If she could make us all go to bed when the sun goes down and use candles she would do. I got a new phone yesterday (pink Samsung Tocco Lite) and the only reason that I’ve been able to look at facebook, email, etc. is because she hasn’t realised yet that I can access the internet on it.

Despite this, I am managing to keep on top of the various publishing commitments that are arising; I have now seen a pdf file of the official promotion poster and I like it! It’s only tremendously exciting if you’re me, though. And there is one mistake on it which needs to be rectified which is unfortunate because they’ve all been printed already. The initial print run for my book looks like being around 1000 copies which seems quite a lot to me. I’m also not sure how they have arrived at this figure, especially seeing as the original number I was given was 500-600, but there must be a method.

I’m beginning to feel quite productive towards my next manuscript. It started well but I seem to have written myself into a dead end which, as any writer will know, is a nightmare. It usually requires a complete overhaul of the entire thing and possible restructuring. Unfortunately I know where I’m going wrong, and remedying it does indeed require many and various changes. Which is not really possible in this house where doing any writing has the guilty feel of an adulterous affair about it – snatched moments when I can sneak onto my computer and type a couple of sentences before my mother passes through the kitchen and says “What are you doing on there?”. Obviously the possibilities in her mind are endless. I’ve batted away any potential conflict quite swiftly so far with much talk of publishers and emails and deliberately asking her opinion on the various issues I’ve been dealing with, but I can see her getting suspicious before long.

Plus it’s very difficult to have the space and peace to be creative here. It’s a large house with quite a few rooms but each one seems to be occupied by one or more of my four brothers at any given time, not to mention my own children and the assortment of pets here. There are: two dogs, a handful of chickens, a tank of tropical fish, a tortoise and a pygmy hedgehog. This last is particularly annoying because it’s in a tank in the room that I’m sleeping in and for those of you not in the know about captive hedgehogs, they like to recreate their outdoor freedom by running fifteen miles a night – in a squeaky wheel. And I can tell you that listening to fifteen miles of squeaking per night becomes very tiresome.

But other than that, it’s quite peaceful here. The Aga is still switched on and therefore chucking out gallons of heat which is completely unnecessary, but at least the fire isn’t being lit every night. And there’s lots of wine to drink; that’s always appreciated. However, due to unforeseen circumstances we will not be attending the Burlesque night so there will be no talk of stockings I’m afraid. Well, I could talk about my own but I don’t think it would be the same.

Next time: to be confirmed!