Some thank yous

As we say goodbye to 2014, I feel tremendously fortunate. 

Thank you to everyone at Hutchinson for taking such good care of A Song for Issy Bradley, and in particular to my editor Jocasta Hamilton and publicist Charlotte Bush. I had so much fun doing all sorts of things I'd never done before - best bits included appearing on BBC Radio 3's The Verb and Radio 4's Front Row, festivals at Cheltenham, Wells, Sheffield and Dundee, and a trip to Waverton, a village that awards an annual prize for a debut novel. 

Thanks to the lovely writers who read my novel and gave cover quotes. Thanks to BBC Radio 4 for choosing A Song for Issy Bradley to be Book at Bedtime and to my agent Veronique Baxter. And a huge thank you to the fantastic independent bookshops that invited me to participate in events. 

Thank you to my PhD supervisors and examiners for reading my work and encouraging me to stretch myself. 

Thank you to Sunstone and Jenn Ashworth for an exciting few days in August at the University of Utah and thank you to Retreats for You and Sarah Franklin for a lovely week in September.











Thank you to the NHS and Alder Hey hospital for some pretty life changing surgery for one of my children. Thank you to the Ronald McDonald House for giving me a place to stay. 

An anticipatory thank you for the surgery that's due to happen next month for a different child.

Also, big thanks to the NHS for looking after my little sister and performing the emergency cesarean on Christmas morning that saw my gorgeous new nephew Reggie arrive in the world, safe and sound. 

Thanks to my lovely husband for always trying to think up interesting birthday presents (if my sisters are reading this, I can guarantee they're already laughing at memories of birthdays past)... you really outdid yourself this year. The life-size canvas of the Issy Bradley tube poster is, well, enormous. It's also prime short story fodder (a la The Yellow Wallpaper) - I fully expect it to begin speaking to me in the coming weeks: I'm watching you. Think you can write a second novel? Bwah-ha-ha... etc.

Finally, a mahoosive thank you to everyone who read and reviewed my novel. Whether you loved or hated it, thank you for taking the time to firstly think and secondly write about it. I'm immensely grateful. Happy New Year!

Books I loved in 2014

Here are some of the books I read and loved in 2014. In no particular order...

I loved this book. 
Perhaps I loved it because I have driven through the night to be at my brother's bedside. Maybe I loved it because I have listened, with clenched fists, to the news that he has, once again, been discharged from hospital, despite not being mentally well enough to remember to eat or change his clothes. I may have loved this book because I've regularly felt infuriated and hurt by my brother's refusal to make even the smallest attempt to accept treatment. It could be that I loved this book because as I read it I felt the horror of someone else's helplessness and realised that it was similar to my own. This novel made me cry and it made me laugh; it reminded me that humour that can be found in the darkest of places.   

In July 2012 Thomas Harding's fourteen-year-old son Kadian was killed in a bicycle accident. Shortly afterwards Thomas began to write. This book is the result. Part tribute, part lament, Kadian Journal is a precise and heart-breaking account of bereavement. It's a raw, uncompromising and, at times, uncomfortable book. Harding details a loss that is both unimaginable and unbearable - Kadian Journal made me hug my children a little harder, and it made me want to hug Harding and his family, too.  





This is everything you'd expect from Smith: deft, clever and elegant. How to be Both is divided into 2 sections. Some editions begin with one section and some begin with the other. My edition began with Francesco and concluded with George. I'm glad it did. I *think* it's the way I would have preferred it to be. But I'm not 100% certain - how could I be certain, having read Francesco and George's musings about the different ways of seeing and looking, and whether the first thing we see can really be described as 'first'? - I'll never really know for sure. And I like that. 




Clever Girl is a fragmentary novel that follows the trajectory of Stella's life. Written in beautiful, clear prose, and rich with carefully observed detail, it's exactly what you'd expect from Hadley. 









I know, I know - I can't believe it took me so long to read this, either. What an incredible novel. I've rarely felt so enraged while reading. I could have cheerfully murdered Nathan Price - I didn't care about his demons or his traumatic past, I just wanted to thump him. This novel is told by the long-suffering women in Nathan Price's life. It's a gorgeous exploration of the toxicity of patriarchy, the dangers of fundamentalism and the abuses of colonialism.  





'WHAT A WONDERFUL BOOK' (see what I did there?). Irving explores doubt and faith in this darkly comic novel. When Owen Meany kills his best friend's mother in a baseball game, he convinces himself that he is an instrument of God. This is a long novel - at times I had no idea where it was going, but I didn't really care because Owen Meany was so interesting and strange, and I *really* wanted to know what happened to him. I found the ending incredibly moving (if a little too neat) as several things suddenly made sense. 




Cusk expertly conveys the unsaid and the unsayable in these linked stories. I love her observations regarding the ways in which woman are changed (and, in some cases, ravaged) by motherhood. Take this passage, for example: 'For Martin, her body was like a village that over time had sprawled and grown until it became a bustling centre, cut through with new roads and modern developments, some of them unsightly. It had changed, but it was where he lived.' Arlington Park reminded me of Helen Simpson's delicious prose. I read it while son 2 was in hospital in early November and I found myself playing the 'just one more page' game at night, even though I really needed to get to sleep. 


As Terry Tempest Williams’ mother lay dying she said, ‘I am leaving you all my journals… but you must promise me that you will not look at them until after I am gone.' After her mother died, Williams discovered three shelves of clothbound journals. ‘I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It, too was empty, as was the fourth, the fifth, the sixth – shelf after shelf after shelf, all my mothers’ journals were blank.' The blow of the empty journals was like ‘a second death’ to Williams who describes her own journal keeping as a way of experiencing each encounter in life twice: ‘once in the world, and once again on the page.' This book is Williams' response to her mother's empty journals. 


Twelve elegant, subtle and satisfying short stories from the winner of this year's Edge Hill Prize.












Reading in 2015

Since A Song for Issy Bradley was published I've received numerous novel proofs in the post and more email requests for cover quotes than I can recall. At the moment I don't have the time to read proofs - it's really frustrating because reading is my favourite thing to do and I'd usually relish the idea of peeping at books before everyone else gets to see them. The thing is, I have some corrections to make before my PhD graduation in May 2015 and another of my children is having surgery in January (son 1, this time) which means I'll have 2 slightly fragile teenagers to care for (son 2 is on light duties until early spring), and a daily paper round to complete until son 1 is allowed to ride a bike and carry a bag again, which probably won't be before mid March (argh!). And, of course, I'm supposed to be writing a novel. That leaves me with very little time to read anything other than the things I absolutely *have* to read. So to anyone who has sent, or is about to send me a proof, please don't take it personally if I don't get around to reading it in the near future - I hope to catch up with myself eventually, but it may take some time. 

Costa Shortlist

Well, this is very exciting! A Song for Issy Bradley has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. I'm so delighted, and surprised - I can't believe my book gets to cosy up to books by the incredible writers above, particularly Ali Smith whose writing makes my heart sing. Hooray! 

It's so exciting to see the cover with the addition of a Costa Book Awards sticker. 

At the moment the hardback is only £4.99 on Amazon. And there are other great deals, too. Like the offer in The Book People catalogue that includes all four of the Costa shortlisted first novels for £15.99. 

It's such a good offer that I decided to avail myself of it (I'm not sure whether that makes me a masochist, but I've heard such good things about the other novels that it seems silly not to enjoy them). I was about to go ahead when Neil walked in the room and rather cagily advised me not to (it's my birthday soon and I reckon I know what he's bought me!). 

I've been getting The Book People catalogue since my children were small which means it was especially lovely to see A Song for Issy Bradley on the front cover.

I also recently heard that Radio Four Extra will be broadcasting five of my short stories over the course of a week during January 2015. The stories were recorded a couple of weeks ago - I can't wait to hear them. I'm especially interested to hear what they've done with a story called 'Everything a Parent Needs to Know' which I've never read aloud because it is interspersed with advice from (fake) parenting books.

Best of all is the news that son 2's thoracic surgery in October was a success and he is now back at school. I'll be donating my fee from Radio 4 Extra to the Ronald McDonald House at Alder Hey where I was able to stay for several nights while he recovered. 

*shuffles back to the desk to grapple with the "difficult" second novel*  

Busy Times (otherwise known as swanning around & not doing much writing)

Such a busy few weeks. I had a lovely time at Dundee Literary Festival where I finally met fellow Scott Prize winner Kirsty Logan in the flesh. We discussed short stories, debut novels and fairy tales and during the course of our event we discovered that we both found our agents as a result of writing competitions. 

Kirsty's debut novel sounds wonderful. Here's the cover.

Isn't it beautiful?

The other fantastic thing about going to Dundee was the scenery. Here's a few pictures of the view from the train window.

I also had a great time at the Off the Shelf Festival of Words. My event with Berlie Doherty was held at the Quaker Meetinghouse. It was really refreshing to see a sign like the one below in a place of worship.

I very much enjoyed Berlie's novel, Requiem. Berlie describes it as 'a novel about the influence of religion, family and music on a child's life.' You can watch a video of the evening on YouTube.

I always think of things I should have said once events are finished. I have a tendency to agree with people far too easily, probably because I have a fear of "contention" - I grew up believing that contention (which seemed to mean 'mildly disagreeing with anyone') is 'of the devil' (3 Nephi 11:29). On this occasion, I probably should have pushed back a bit when it came to the discussion of my novel as a loss of faith story. While A Song for Issy Bradley is definitely about loss, it's not really about loss of faith; it could be said that the Bradleys renegotiate their faith, but they don't lose it, and I think, by the end of the novel, they develop some much-needed faith in each other, too.

We had an early Halloween and then, at the end of last week, one of my sons had an operation and as a result I spent four nights in the Ronald McDonald House at Alder Hey Hospital. My son's operation was pretty big - it took almost 6 hours (we were counting the minutes). He had fantastic care during his hospital stay. I thought I'd get some writing done while I was there, but I spent most of the time worrying and eating chocolate. My son is now recovering at home and, for the first time in years, I've been up in the night caring for a child. I feel somewhat in awe of my younger self who functioned while enduring disturbed sleep for months at a time - well done younger self! While I was staying at Alder Hey I had some great news about a radio opportunity (details to follow in a separate blog). I'll be donating my fee from the project to the Ronald McDonald House.

And finally, here's a little bit of loveliness, A Song for Issy Bradley makes an appearance on this list - 'The Best Debut Novels of 2014' at The Huffington Post.

Dundee portraits were taken by Bob McDevitt.

Dundee Literary Festival

I'll be at Dundee Literary Festival on Saturday 25th October at 5 pm with fellow Scott Prize winner Kirsty Logan. We'll be talking about short stories and first novels. 

Kirsty's novel The Gracekeepers will be published in 2015 and it sounds fabulous.

"The Gracekeepers is about a circus boat in a flooded world. North and her bear live on the Circus Excalibur, floating between the scattered archipelagos that are all that remains of the land. To survive, the circus must perform for the few fortunate islanders in return for food and supplies. Meanwhile, in the middle of the ocean, Callanish tends the watery graves along the equator, as penance for a long-ago mistake."

Mitochondrial Donation

You may have heard the discussion about mitochondrial diseases and mitochondrial donation on BBC Radio Five this afternoon (you can listen again here, for the moment).

Mitochondrial donation (aka mitochondrial replacement therapy) is a technique that involves replacing the unhealthy mitochondria in a woman who carries the disease, with the healthy mitochondria from a donor woman, during the process of IVF.

Here's a link to information about the Commons Select Committee Evidence Hearing on mitochondrial donation which will take place on 22nd October.

My second child spent her life in a neonatal intensive care unit because she was born with a mitochondrial disease. As a carrier, and a mother, I support mitochondrial donation. 

Here's a short video about mitochondrial disease, narrated by Bill Nighy.

Cheltenham and Wells Festivals

Here I am, getting ready to do the A Song for Issy Bradley Book Group event at Cheltenham with Cathy Rentzenbrink. I took my phone into the event so I could take a picture of the audience, but I forgot (and the lights were blinding, anyway).

Book group events are interesting. As usual, some members of the audience were furious with Ian Bradley while others empathised with him - it's always funny to watch people argue (albeit nicely) about someone I made up!

By the end of book group events people are relaxed and tend to ask quite personal questions. I don't mind answering, but the questions still surprise me - people expect you to talk about your own life as well as the book, something I didn't realise when I was writing A Song for Issy Bradley.

Cathy was a great chair/host and we even happened to come down for breakfast at exactly the same moment this morning (Cathy had been working on the final edits of her memoir for a couple of hours whereas I'd just got out of bed) which meant that we could carry on chatting. 

I love pretty much everything about being a writer (apart from the actual writing of novel 2, which is not proving to be much fun at the moment). One of the very best bits is being allowed to go into places like the Writers' Room and have something to eat while surreptitiously glancing at people whose books I've read and/or seen on the television.

Because I'm going to Wells Literature Festival tomorrow, I stayed in Cheltenham today and went to some really interesting presentations, including Marina Warner's Once Upon a Time, A Short History of the Fairy Tale (above) and Blood, Sex and Death - Ancient Greek Drama (below).

Deirde Le Faye's Jane Austen's Country Life took place in the gorgeous Spiegeltent, and there was afternoon tea. Lovely.









Tomorrow morning I'll be at Wells Literature Festival with Gabriel Gbadamosi, Fay Weldon and Emma Craigie. Can't wait.

** Edited to add...

I had a fabulous time at Wells Literature Festival. It was lovely to meet Gabriel Gbadamosi and Emma Craigie whose novels Vauxhall and Chocolate Cake with Hitler I really enjoyed. It was also fantastic to meet Fay Weldon who is not only extremely accomplished, but is absolutely charming and very kind.

The Bookshop Book

Today Jen Campbell is visiting the blog and answering some questions about her writing, her work in a bookshop and her new book, The Bookshop Book, published by Constable (Little, Brown). Jen grew up in the north-east of England and went to Edinburgh University. She now lives in London where she works at an antiquarian bookshop. Her first book, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and she’s also an award-winning poet and short story writer.

How long have you worked in a bookshop?
Seven years now... I think! I started at a new independent bookshop in Edinburgh (The Edinburgh Bookshop), working part-time when I was a student, and now I work at Ripping Yarns, an antiquarian bookshop in north London.

Is it something you always wanted to do or is it something that happened by chance or serendipity? 
I’ve always loved books and writing. To me, bookshops are magical places full of infinite possibilities. The emotional ties we have to stories fascinate me, and as a bookseller working to match people up with books and worlds that they might fall in love with... well, that sounds like a pretty damn good job to me. Mix it together with being a writer, too, and I’m a happy lady.


You write poetry and prose. Which came first and which do you enjoy the most? 
Poetry came first, though I love them both. (Please don’t make me choose!)

How did you get the idea for The Bookshop Book?
I think it was born out of my ‘Bookshop Spotlights’ blog posts that I started in 2012, featuring bookshops I really liked. But the idea really took hold after my first book was published. It was called ‘Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops’ and was a collection of all the bizarre things that get said to booksellers: misheard book titles and children asking if they could get to Narnia through our bookcases (when I said no, they nodded wisely and said that their furniture didn’t work for getting to Narnia either, and that their dad said it was because their mum had bought it at IKEA.) Bookselling is a bit of a mad world. I love it.

I spent a lot of time doing events for ‘Weird Things...’ in wonderful bookshops, talking to inspiring booksellers and sharing bookish tales. And while I’d written about the weird things that happen to booksellers, I hadn’t written about the magical feeling of bookshops and how books affect people. I hadn’t spoken about the history and wonder of ‘houses for stories’ (which is what one of my youngest customers calls bookshops, and I adore it.) My editor said: ‘Think about how you would write about that. How you’d capture it. Then send me something.’ So I did. I wrote a proposal about a book that explored all the fantastic bookshops around the world: bookshops on trains and on boats, and even bookshops in the middle of a jungle. A book that had interviews with authors about their favourite places, and facts about the history of the written word. And my editor liked it, so The Bookshop Book was born.

What was the hardest thing about compiling The Bookshop Book?
The deadline... I think (isn’t it always)? And the vast amount of material I could choose to research (which is also a positive). And the fear that I’ve missed out something very important. (I don’t think I have... I hope!)

What are you working on now/next?
I’m writing a novel. It’s eating away at me (which I think is a good thing.) I’m hoping to finish it by next summer. It’s not about bookshops, but it is about the power of stories and the frightening things they can make us believe. I’m excited about it.

Jen’s website

The Bookshop Book

Twitter

Facebook

Audio Book Giveaway

I'm giving away one copy of the unabridged audio book of A Song for Issy Bradley. It's a box of 9 CDs (a total of 11 hours) read beautifully by Emma Gregory. If you'd like to be in the draw, just click on this link and

a). "Like" my Facebook page (if you haven't already) 
b). Make a comment on the post about the giveaway. 


The draw will take place on Sunday 5th October. 

You can click on this link to listen to a small excerpt of the novel.

Lovely Stuff

On Wednesday I read at Bad Language at The Castle Hotel in Manchester. It's a great literature night. The performance space is lovely and the crowd is enthusiastic and friendly. I really enjoyed the open mic readings by Stephen James, Jasmine Chatfield, Alex Webb, Brandon Bissell, Bissell, Roger Fenton, Stephen Quinlan, Anna Percy, Ros Ballinger, John Lean and Dave Hartley.  If you fancy an open mic slot at Bad Language, check out their website (see link above). 

On Thursday I read at Urmston Bookshop. Frances and Peter who own the shop are absolutely fabulous. Not only was there a special, Issy Bradley window, they'd also asked the lovely Cath Martin to bake an Issy Bradley cake.

I got to meet Naomi Frisby, book blogger extraordinaire, for the second time (Naomi was one of the first people to read my novel). And afterwards, Peter drove me to a more distant station so I could get an earlier train home than planned. I waited on a bench on the platform surrounded by presents: a cake box, a lovely notebook and a copy of The Miniaturist - it felt like my birthday.

On the train home I finished Ali Smith's How to be Both. I don't know whether I've ever written about the first time I came across Ali Smith (if I have, I'm about to repeat myself) but it was while I was doing my BA. She was featured in an Open University DVD about Sunset Song and she was so genuine and enthusiastic that I went down to my local library (which was knocked down a couple of months ago - ugh) and borrowed her short story collections. She's such an extraordinary writer - playful, clever and original. How to be Both is all those things, but it also deals with bigger themes - grief, mortality, love - in a really thought-provoking way. The novel is divided into 2 sections. Some editions begin with one section and some begin with the other. My edition began with Francesco and concluded with George. I'm glad it did. I *think* it's the way I would have preferred it to be. But I'm not 100% certain - how could I be certain, having read Francesco and George's musings about the different ways of seeing and looking, and whether the first thing we see can really be described as 'first'? - I'll never really know for sure. And I like that. 

School Shoes - Follow Up

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about school shoes. 

While I was away last week someone from Clarks replied to my daughter's letter.  

I asked my daughter what she thought of the letter and this is what she had to say.

I don't know why they called me Ms Bray when I told them I'm 10 years old.  They didn't read my letter properly because they said thank you for your email - I didn't send an email. They didn't answer any of my questions and they made pointless excuses. The boys get durability and the girls get style - it makes me angry! I don't want to buy shoes there any more. 

I'd like to add that it was also disappointing for me to read the letter from Clarks. I was particularly irritated by the mention of 'gender equality and individuality'. Let's think for a moment about what gender equality might look like - would it mean identical boys' and girls' shoes? No, of course not. It would mean shoes that are equally fit for purpose. Different children like different things, and so you'd expect a wide range of styles. BUT, the following features:

comfort
durability
whether the shoes are suitable for physical activity (can you climb trees, play footie?)
whether the shoes are waterproof (when it rains are your socks guaranteed to get soaked?) 

should NOT depend on the gender of the child. This is not equality. And attempts to fudge things by referencing 'individuality' won't wash with this generation of Mighty Girls.

The Imaginary Writer

At some point during the 2014 New Year celebrations - on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, if I remember correctly - I bought a subscription to The New Yorker. It was an optimistic purchase, made during a moment when I was visualising myself as the writer who exists in my imagination. This writer has a strict routine and an organised desk. She reads The New Yorker over coffee, before beginning work and, by a process of literary osmosis, goes on to write her second novel in spare, elegant prose. She dashes off a thousand words a day and never eats a sharing bag of Maltesers for lunch. Etc. 

A few weeks later, copies of The New Yorker started arriving in the mail. I read the first couple and then they started to build up. Small, unopened piles of magazines sprouted around the house - on the dining room table, on my treadmill desk, beside the microwave. 

Last week I went on a writing retreat. As I left for the station I stuffed a pile of plastic-wrapped magazines into my laptop bag. 

Along with the imaginary writer, there are other, better versions of myself; the imaginary mother, the imaginary runner, the imaginary meal-planner etc. Unlike the imaginary mother, who doesn't really exist (apart from fleetingly in photographs, and perhaps in the carefully edited highlights of the annual family Come Dine With Me competition) the imaginary writer has just enjoyed a blissful, five day existence. 

A massive thank you to Deb and Bob at RetreatsForYou for allowing me to spend a few days being the writer of my imagination. The one who writes at a tidy desk and reads The New Yorker every morning before she starts work.