Stage Two, and a trip to London

 On Wednesday (30th October) I was down in London at the Raven Books showcase event, in the suitably evocative surroundings of the Gothic Bar in the St Pancras Hotel. I was there to pitch The Unrecovered to an audience of booksellers and books media, alongside the writers Nicola Whyte, Holly Watt, Rosie Andrews and Stuart Turton, who were all there to pitch their books too. There was a brief Q&A with my editor Alison, and then there was plenty of time afterwards to chat to people and sample the free booze. More importantly, it was a chance to meet people from the Raven Books and wider Bloomsbury team who I've been emailing for months now, but hadn't actually seen in person yet. Thanks in particular to Alison, Emily, Abi and Therese for making everything far more enjoyable than I'd hoped, and less stressful than I'd feared!

This kind of thing very much doesn't come naturally to me, and it was a step up from the proof drop experience a couple of months ago. I truly hate the cliche of the closeted neurotic writer, but when you spend a lot of your time on your own, it can be quite a strain to force yourself outwards again and dig deep into an atrophied fund of small talk. It's important to do so though; publishing is a business built on the relationships developed between writers, agents, editors, marketing professionals, booksellers and reviewers, and they're relationships that need to be cultivated. Plus, when a publisher offers to put you up in a nice hotel and buy you dinner, any writer worth their salt will automatically say yes, or I don't really know what they're doing in this business.

I had a meeting with my editor beforehand as well, to go over the next round of edits on my second novel. Everything here is on track, so I'll be getting back to work on it over November/December. This was the first time I've been to Bloomsbury's beautiful, labyrinthine offices, an opportunity worth the trip in itself. 

Next up, I've got 1000 sheets of endpapers for the independent bookshop edition of The Unrecovered to sign, which I'm hoping to get done over the next couple of weeks. I haven't quite figured out my approach to this yet, and I've no idea what my signature's going to look like after 999 previous attempts, but I'm hoping to get about 200 signed a day. Perhaps that's optimisitic, but we'll see ...