Once upon a time I was happy to use cooking oil for suntan lotion. These days I prefer factor 30. Maybe that’s why my holiday ‘glow’ has worn off so quickly; or maybe it’s the rain, sliding us imperceptibly from summer to autumn. Weather aside, there is a poignancy to this time of year which I rather relish – the turning colours, the darkening days, the mulchy smell of dead leaves – it makes the writer in me open my eyes and prick up my ears and be glad that my job is to find words to describe such things – all from the safety of my study with a biscuit and a steaming mug of tea!
And nothing can lower my spirits anyway, since it is now a mere five weeks until my thirteenth novel, ‘Life Begins’, hits the shelves. My normally indolent summer has been peppered with spurts of work to ensure that I will have some press publicity round the great event – articles, short stories, interviews (look out for them) – some days I have felt quite the hack. What happened to reviews selling books? What happened to the mysterious anonymity of the author? When did writers become dancing bears?
Another solace for dank afternoons is the exciting news that ITV Productions (an autonomous affiliate of ITV), have bought the rights to the first of my two Harrison novels, Relative Love, with a view to converting it into a three part drama. I keep telling myself that most such projects fall by the wayside, but my hopes will insist on bubbling up anyway. The best fun, I have discovered, is watching telly with a view to casting my own story…Benedict Cumberbatch for the role of Stephen, Sarah Parish for Helen, maybe Eileen Atkins as Pamela…in my dreams of course, but dreams, I find, are wonderfully sustaining.
Life Begins has been assured slots in many illustrious places – Waterstones, W H Smiths, Sainsburys, Asda, Tescos – and I have a modest list of scheduled appearances to look forward to across London and the south. So I hope one of us catches you somewhere, either for a smile or a chat (if it’s me), or, (if it’s my book) for the longer privately intense ‘conversation’ that constitutes the pleasure of reading. If there’s weather to escape from, there’s no better way.
