'Dear publishers, has it come to this?'
Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall, author of the Electric Michelangelo and The Carhullan Army, writes of a week of manic publicity, work on her new novel and fielding questions about skinny-dipping.
'Neil tells me I’ve got to stop doing events that don’t pay anything. I tell him he should stop fannying around and write a novel. Quid pro quo, Clarice.'
Wednesday
The day begins with a scramble to get my partner, also a writer, to the train station in Carlisle so that he can get down to Cambridge for a series of readings. We've wanged his bag into the car and are sitting in city traffic going nowhere, counting the minutes down until the proverbial whistle blows. With a spot of Italian Job style driving and a somewhat illegal manoeuvre at the taxi rank, he is deposited at the Great Border City's hub, with thirty seconds to spare. A text to say he's made it, but without enough time to purchase a coffee from the filthy-piped coffee barrow. Then it's back home to get ready for the Words By The Water festival in Keswick. I decide to wear my lucky white-and-red striped shirt - previously tested at Bath festival last month (one of my multitudinous foibles is an irrational belief in lucky garments).
The reading goes well, is nicely chaired by our local bookseller who has encyclopaedic knowledge of Cumbria's past four centuries, and the unnervingly instantaneous ability to calculate how many times words such as 'feral' appear in my novels. Nice to read to a feisty local audience. In the crowd is Frank, who is about six hundred years old and has come to every reading I've done at Keswick festival. He asks the first question in the Q-and-A. This is something of a tradition, and these queries often, inexplicably, involve skinny-dipping. Frank's forgotten his copy of Carhullan, so I give him mine, in return for a denture-clattering kiss. A cup of tea in the theatre café afterwards with mum and dad. Dad's just retired and is enjoying a French quota of wine with lunch. I break the news about the Arthur C Clarke shortlist - figuring it'll be announced the following week, and any tattle at the village post office won't make the nationals. What's the wiggle room in these literary embargos?
Thursday
Kickboxing at 9am. Nothing like some post-porridge violence and the beasting of an instructor with thighs the size of Californian Redwoods to get you ready for the day. Then work on the new novel. It needs a new title too. Something not obscure and northern, perhaps? (Overheard at a recent literary event - 'If only more of them could think of titles WH Smith would like.') I'm onto a passage containing incest and a live sex show, which is fun.
Friday
To Essex and beyond. I'm beginning to feel intimately acquainted with Carlisle Railway station. I've arrived nice and early, in my freshly laundered white-and-red shirt, in preparation for an author video recording in London. Sadly today, because of savage wind in the Scottish borders, my train to Euston is cancelled. However, they have held the earlier one. It looks primed to depart. With no time for filthy-piped coffee, I nash across the platforms and the overpass, making a gazelle-like leap into the carriage. I now appear dishevelled and like I've got pleurisy - yes, I'm ready for my close up. We crawl down country through more savage wind.
I'm late to the studio in Soho, then late to meet my friend Christobel. She and I have an hour for tea and cake during which time Christobel awes me, as ever, with her ability to juggle five kids, write grizzly crime fiction, and still look like a debutante. Then it's on to Brentwood, a suspiciously fabricated sounding place, which can be accessed, I am assured, via platform 15 at Liverpool Street. I squeeze onto an over-packed commuter. People seem peculiarly friendly but I can't understand the accent. After disembarkation, I find the Holiday Inn, nicely situated for holidays by the M25, eat a flaccid pasta concoction, and go to bed.
Saturday
A very tall man called Colin collects me and brings me to the Ursuline Convent School where I shall be performing, and attempting to make contact with a man called 'Keef', who apparently used to work with my dad. I invite him to put up his hand before the event. Nobody volunteers. It's a big audience of writing groups. Someone calls me avant-garde for producing literature set in rural England. Dear publishers, has it come to this? Upon request I read from all three books, degrading to a Dot Cotton-esque growl towards the end, then head back to Lundun.
At six (ish) I meet my friend Neil, a windswept, roguish-looking poet, and the only person I know who swears more than me, in a pub near the British Museum. Chuck down a couple of whiskies after a prolonged altercation with the barkeep where I insist, repeatedly, that I don't want ice, thanks. Neil tells me I've got to stop doing events that don't pay anything. I tell him he should stop fannying around and write a novel. Quid pro quo, Clarice. Then I meet Clare, my agent, for dinner. The chance to catch up with her is a rare treat. Living in the north means you're beyond the pale in industry terms, something of a barbarian, certainly not very sociable. It often comes up in interview, politely phrased but accusatory nevertheless - what possible reason is there for a writer not to live in London? Fuck off. I'm avant-garde, me.
Sunday
Early train home again. Jake's back from Cambridge and has angelically brought food into the house. The new series of Battlestar Galactica has arrived via Lovefilm. I'd like to do nothing whatsoever except snack and admire Starbuck's biceps, but I have to reply to email and tinker with an interview for a sci-fi website. 'Tell us about your world-building in the latest book?' Well, you start with a perfectly reasonable, optimistic little island and work backwards. Like the government.
Monday
New novel. More sexual intrigue and un-corseted behaviour from one of the characters. Plus a bit of death. I oscillate between being convinced of my own genius and wondering whether I've been lobotomised by little folk in the night. Into town to get a birthday present for my nephew - a graphic novel featuring weapon-wielding, mediaeval mice. Bravo! Another interview. 'Do readers prefer the novels of women authors to be soft-boiled?' Hope not or I'm screwed.
Tuesday
O Carlisle station, how I've missed thee. To Glasgow for the Aye-Write festival. The event's platform is climate change - I'm supposed to be speaking alongside Sir David King and Mark Lynas, but Sir David has mysteriously pulled out and we need to expand to fill his shoes. Mark Lynas is colossally intelligent, so that'll help. It's too late in the day for dirty coffee. But bizarrely I know the train driver, who is married to an ex Faber rep, and as a bonus for not going south he bumps me into first class. Free tea. There's snow above the border. I wonder if Sir David has seen it and changed his mind. Pathologically, I'm wearing the lucky shirt. And it works. A sympathetic, passionate audience in the gorgeous Mitchell library, and I don't accidentally bite off my own tongue while speaking. Then, late-night curry with other writers from the festival. Their week has been equally demented, though no one has been asked about skinny dipping.
Thursday, 24 April, 2008
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