Publication day, and a book launch

 Thursday 13th February 2025, a day that shall live in infamy...

Yesterday my debut novel 'The Unrecovered' was published, and we had the book launch at Golden Hare Books in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. (A short informative sentence that encapsulates pretty much everything I've been working towards for about 25 years.)

In the afternoon my editor Alison took me around various bookshops to sign stock (which made me feel like a proper writer) and then in the early evening we headed to Golden Hare.

Mary Paulson-Ellis was the best chair I could have hoped for, an incredibly astute reader who steered the conversation into very interesting terrain. It's a strange thing to discuss your work like this, because it forces you to examine much of what is either inchoate or intuitive in your writing, teasing out themes or correspondences of which you might not have been consciously aware. I also did a short reading and fielded questions from the audience, and the hour was over much faster than I thought it would be. It was great to catch up with old friends and to see the novel firmly launched into the uncertain seas of literature. And then to start drinking heavily afterwards.

I have heard other writers speak of a strange sense of anti-climax once a book has finally been published, but it definitely feels like a point of culmination for me, having spent so long trying to get here. Reviews and sales and so on are all out of my hands now, and not really worth worrying about (although obviously I hope for colossal critical and commercial success...) The reviews so far have been great and hopefully there are more to come, but the book is the thing. It's out there now, for people to spot on a table or a shelf in the bookshops, to read if they choose, or to pass over in favour of something else. I certainly hope people take a chance on it.