Glastonbarby ... and the significance of sixty (4th July 2014)

Perhaps I shouldn't admit to this. Maybe I should post a youthful photo and pretend to be thirty five. Oh dear. This is harder than I thought it would be. 
Deep breath.
Here goes ...
... in four days time I shall be sixty. 
Ouch!
It might be easier if the birthday cards were kinder. Instead the convention seems to be a comical card with a sting inside. 'At your age it's a good idea to test your hearing,' reads one. 'So I bought you this musical card.' (Hint: It isn't a musical card.) 'You're at a wise age,' headlines another. And inside, 'wise my hair falling out? Wise my memory going?'
Oh well.
We had a fabulous party, (Glastonbarby) with sixty (natch) wonderful guests. We set up our mini-marquee and my brilliant son-in-law Ian fixed up a live link to the Glastonbury Festival on a colossal screen and we all ate hog roast, and drank Pimms and countless bottles of wine to the sounds of Metallica and Brian Ferry and we all partied ridiculously late into the night. Mike (Plymouth to Banjul) Taylor set off the biggest firework display I've seen for ages. Sue made an amazing cake. And our kids showed an embarrassing surprise video montage (Sixty Years in the Making) with photographs of me from childhood to bloated old age (including a picture of me in a frock as Mariana of the Moated Grange in a school production of Measure for Measure - not the sort of family photo I'd normally choose to share.) There were surprise guests. There were balloons. There was bunting with my face and age. There was an awful lot of hugging. Actually it was just about the best barbecue night I could imagine. Twenty one people stayed the night and the next morning we barbecued bacon and sausages and black pudding and Sue made a huge trough of scrambled eggs and the sun shone. Thank you to everyone who came, who helped with food and tents and loads of other stuff. It was awesome. You were awesome.
And here's the thing. I don't feel sixty. Really I don't. I've figured out that it isn't a milestone at all. It isn't this big deal. It's just a day, and hey, tomorrow will be another one. Two of our best friends bought me a T-shirt that reads 'Old Guy,' on the front. 'It fits perfectly,' I've told them. 'But I've put it in the drawer. I'm keeping it for when I get old.' 

A New Cover Revealed (15th May 2014)

I don’t imagine Dickens lost an awful lot of sleep worrying about the cover designs for his novels. ‘Bleak House,’ he might have thought, ‘let’s go for a plain cover, in brown leather, with the title embossed in gold.’ ‘Ah Charles,’ the publisher might have said, ‘we’re toying with a plain red cover with a silver embossed title.’ Controversial. 

But these days - covers matter. They matter a lot. It can be irksome for a writer who has spent two years working on a novel to discover that the cover is the main topic of interest for the local book group. But publishers too, get very exercised by cover designs. Of course they do. A good cover can sell a lot of books. A poor cover can consign a book to the remainders store. Enter one of the most important people in the business - the cover designer. The cover designer has to be an artist, an alchemist, and a magician. He or she has to capture the essence of a novel in a single image, has to make it striking, compelling, and simultaneously unique. It has to be a cover you wouldn’t be embarrassed to be hiding behind on the tube, but a cover that will catch your eye on a book shelf. It has to scatter hints on genre and location and mood. It has to be serious. It has to be light. Who, I wonder, would be a cover designer?

 I love the hardback cover for ‘The Coincidence Authority.’ The plain image of the seagull and the sharp blue of the background seem to capture the whimsical essence of the story in a clear, eye-catching way. I also love the dreamy, faraway qualities of the US cover So I was a little surprised when Orion’s brilliant paperback editor Gail Paten told me that she was commissioning a redesign. Did it need one? ‘Yes,’ she told me. And she was pretty emphatic. Paperbacks are different creatures to hardbacks. The rules change. We talked about some of the ideas. Should it reflect the African themes of the story? Or something else?

Today W&N have revealed the new cover, and Gail has blogged about the hard work that went into the design. It is humbling to discover just how many people and how many ideas and how much talent went into the new cover.  But for me it is perfect. It captures, with the wheel of fortune, the essential mystery of chance that lies at the heart of the book, with echoes of the fairground where the young Azalea is abandoned, and hints of a buried romance; and it does all this in a brilliantly colourful way. The tag line if perfect (She believes in fate. He believes in fact. What are the chances of a happy ending?) It is so good, I wish I’d written it myself. So thank you Gail, and Steve and Edward and everyone else who contributed. I absolutely love the cover.

What do you think? Please let me know …

Father of the Bride (20th Feb 2014)

I hadn’t expected to be quite so emotional. I know I’d written a teary speech, and I’d joked to one and all that I’d be welling up, but deep inside I thought I’d sail through with my usual jolly demeanour. And then, five minutes before collecting my beautiful daughter, Zoe, from her room, one of the bridesmaids brought me a gift. It was from Zoe. A watch. On the back was engraved, ‘Dad – Forever your little girl.’

And that was it. I was in bits.

I went to collect Zoe and when she emerged, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, she was so beautiful I was crying like a baby.

Giving a daughter away should be the hardest thing in the world, but it’s the easiest. I’ve never seen Zoe looking so lovely, or so happy. My hand was shaking when I walked her up the aisle. I’m so happy for her, and I’m happy for my wonderful new son-in-law Ian (whom we all love).

It was a spectacular wedding. We took over the Wordsworth Hotel in Grasmere right in the heart of the English Lakes. In practice we seemed to take over the whole village. This was February. No one else was there. Every time I crossed the square I bumped into wedding guests. It should have rained – but it didn’t. The sun shone. The Prosecco flowed.  We had a brilliant cartoonist (Christopher Murphy), a stunning band (Superfreak), an amazing cake (Val Cooper), heart-stopping floral displays (Gill Maxim) and a whole load of wonderful guests. I only left the dance floor once in three hours. So thank you to my lovely wife Sue (who also looked gorgeous), to all our friends and relations, and to everyone who helped make the day go so well – the bridesmaids were fabulous – the best man was hilarious – the fireworks were awesome – the photographer was a genius - the flowers were spectacular; but thank you most of all to my stunningly beautiful daughter. I will never forget the day I gave you away. Forever your Dad.