#oldhotradio

Guys, I’m using NaNo as an excuse to work on my second novel. If you’re also doing it please come and add me as a buddy, because camaraderie is my favourite feeling. I’ve just popped the chapter I wrote this morning in as an excerpt. A chapter which takes place in an office, so that’s nice and dull. 

Okay, lads. Here it is. Here’s the cover. My previous post detailed the process of working with my publisher to decide on a cover we were both happy with, so have a click there if that’s of any interest to you.

I’m really glad to have a cover that is (hopefully) neutral, whilst still being relevant to the story. I think it avoids being masculine or feminine, it could be picked up by a reader of any age, and it doesn’t presuppose the type of person who might enjoy the story. When asked ‘Who is the target audience of your book?’ I always think, can ‘people like me’ be the answer? And by that I don’t mean a white female in her 20s, I mean someone who has a crippling fear of death, only likes simple coffee, loves dogs and hates cats, doesn’t want to grow up in some ways but grew up too fast in others, feels most alive when scared, cracks their knuckles, feels trapped by routine, is super into the idea of sea-monkeys, feels guilt from others’ sadness, loves pulling fluff out of their eyelashes, dropped their snack biscuits in a puddle at age four and is still haunted by it, doesn’t believe in ghosts, gets freaked out by them anyway, and at the same time desperately wants to see one so that life and death still have mystery. Just someone human, really.

Whilst I adore pretty books, and I obviously understand the necessity of commercial design, I think reading is so personal, that it seems absurd to subtly suggest a book should be read by a certain ‘type’ of person. If some guy who works in finance and plays rugby at weekends loves Twilight, that’s his prerogative. If there’s some twelve year old girl sitting in a room plastered with One Direction posters, staying up into the middle of the night reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, fine, that’s what she’s into. People are complex, let’s not insult them by telling them what they should read. How the hell am I meant to know who will like my book? If anyone will like my book? I’m going to be grateful to every single person who takes the time to sit down and read it. 

Of course, assuming that a pink glittery book cover would be aimed at young girls, or a stark, black minimalist cover at adult males, is a problem in itself. But right now I’m just showing you the cover of a book I wrote that will be available on real shelves in physical shops. 

Or you can pre-order it on Amazon or the Book Depository :)

A big part in the publishing journey of any novel is settling on a cover. I’ll admit this is what I was most apprehensive of when signing with my publisher. A novel is a lot like a baby, I imagine, I haven’t got a baby and I don’t want one. But I do have a novel and I don’t want people to look at it, squint, and ask if it’s a boy or a girl, only for me to explain that it’ll let me know it’s preferred gender when it’s good and ready.

I had no idea how much input an author would have in the cover of their novel, but I assumed it was minimal/none. Regardless, I made the above design and sent it to my publisher to sort of hint at what sort of style I might like, hoping to influence the style somewhat. 

My book was originally to be published earlier this month (1/9/2015), but when I received the cover proposals I was slightly disheartened. The designs were definitely attentive to my story, and I really appreciated what I was shown, it just didn’t fit in with something I’d pick up in a book shop. And obviously I’d read the novel I wrote, so there was a slight disconnect there. I told my publisher this, and they were so very accommodating in altering one of the designs to something we both thought would work. I was worried it looked too YA for a novel which wasn’t YA, and they obviously wanted it to be commercial. They knew what would work on a shelf much better than I did, and all I knew was that I wanted my novel to look like something I’d own. We eventually settled on a design I didn’t love, but could live with. However, this back and forth meant the release date of When We Were Alive was delayed, and had to be re-shuffled into their catalogue at an appropriate time. 

I want to point out that whilst I didn’t like the cover, I felt incredibly lucky to be working with people who were willing to listen to my criticisms when they really didn’t have to. Over the past few months I came to terms with the cover, and was just excited to one day see it in a bookshop.

Because of the new six month delay, I asked if I could make some small edits to the original MS. Four years had passed since I had first written it, and I like to think my writing has improved, so I wanted to tidy some areas up stylistically before a professional got their hands on it. My publisher said of course, and gave me an October deadline. 

I finished editing a couple of weeks ago and sent it back to them. Yesterday I received an email with some new cover designs. This was a complete surprise. I didn’t expect any, and they certainly didn’t have to do them, but the email said they wanted us both to be happy. I was very grateful. And luckily there was a design which we both loved. It’s very different from anything we had discussed before. It’s ugly. In fact, it’s almost boring. But I really like it. I like how ugly and boring it is, because it’s somewhat different from everything else. It’s adult. It’s simple. It’s gender neutral. And it allows the story to speak for itself. Most importantly, it’s something I can be proud of without a ‘but’. I fully expect some people to dislike it, and I don’t care. I think it will reach the right audience and, most importantly, my publisher and I both love it. 

Today I want to work on my second book #plug #firstbookcomingoutMarch2016 #sorry #thecoverisuglyandiloveit, so I figured knocking a memory out would lube my fingers up right nice.

I think I’ve talked about this in a vlog, but it came up again yesterday when discussing how in touch we were with empathy as kids. Some children have a great capacity to feel for others, you know, the smug little selfless ones from viral hits. From my mild misanthropic tendencies now, I assume I may have been somewhat deficient in two of the big three ‘pathy emotions. Is apathy an emotion? It’s the lack of emotion. Is the lack of an emotion an emotion? Probably not, a lack of pizza isn’t a pizza. And that’s something we all have to come to terms with.

So, we were trying to figure out the first time we felt genuine empathy. My first recollection of a sadness, which didn’t involve my own emotions over Homeward Bound, was when I was thirteen. My best friend had been dating a guy in the year below us at school. His name was Jeremy. I didn’t understand why she liked him, because we were thirteen, and he was just a sort of schlubby nothing we hadn’t even really spoken to. He certainly wasn’t from the group of popular boys we were friends with in our year, or the not-so-popular (but older and therefore acceptable) boys we knew from two years above. He was a younger, soft bodied indistinct with one friend. 

I didn’t spend much time with Jeremy. Whenever my best friend and him were together we'd be in a group so I’d just go off with someone else. Also she went to his house once, they made out a lot whilst he played Cher’s Believe on repeat. After that incident she told me she never wanted to listen to Believe again, which was a personal tragedy because this was during the time I’d go to skating discos on Friday evenings at the sports centre, and my anthem from those wonderful nights was, you’ve guessed it, Believe. 

Not long after that, Jeremy’s mother died of cancer. I never spoke to him about this. I don’t know if my friend did. I don’t know if Believe came before or after the emptiness from his mother dying. But one day we were standing on the grass next to the playground outside our school’s Holkham house. There were four of us; my best friend, Jeremy, his best friend and me. No one was saying much. Jeremy had a packet of Hula Hoops. He was really enjoying those Hula Hoops, he was chubby so he always seemed to be enjoying his food, when he dropped them. A few rolled out of the packet onto the grass. His chin did a little twitch. The ‘I just dropped something’ twitch. And I cried.

Looking back, I’ve always said, ‘His mum died, and then he dropped his crisps, so I cried. Those soiled potato snacks were the final emotional straw pushing me into empathy.’ But, writing this, I’ve just realised that the crisps probably came before the death of his mother, because after she died I don’t think I saw him around at school for a long time. And when she died I thought, ‘First he dropped his crisps, and now this, how much tragedy can befall one person?’ 

There’s a Reddit thread right now about 90′s music nostalgia. I listened to a bunch of the stuff they posted, most of which conjured memories of many hours on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. But it also made me feel that weird sad-happy excitement that only comes with nostalgia. It’s addictive and beautiful, that feeling, so I went to Spotify, searched for Reef - Place Your Hands (the club anthem of one of my greatest, but lost, true blue friendship groups - Charlie, Billy, Chris, & Andy - 2011) and commenced upon a glorious ‘related artist’ linked journey through some of the best years of my life.

I don’t have enough of a passion to actively search for music any more, but between 2004-2009 I had a constant soundtrack, and I had completely forgotten about so much of it until tonight. Going through related artists, band after band came up, and song after song. If I didn’t recognise the title I’d play it anyway, and immediately all the words would come flooding back. Words to songs I'm convinced I’d never have thought of again. Songs like Our Lady Peace - Clumsy, Matchbook Romance - Tiger Lily, or Mest - Chelsea.

Oddly, the song that brought back a memory I thought I’d lost to time was a song which I still listen to, but which comes from those same days of Good Charlotte, Fenix TX, Alter Bridge, Less Than Jake, et al. It’s Stone Sour - Through Glass. For me, Through Glass was one of those songs you hear once and it immediately takes up home in your heart, never to leave, attaching itself to a time and a place irrefutably. Tonight it dislodged a memory which, the night it was made, I remember feeling that I was living life the way movies always tell us to. 

My memory of it is hazy now; all that remains are character names and a shot from a montage sequence. 

Third year of university. We’re in the woods behind campus. I’m with Cat, Beth, Rob, Louis, Phil, and Simon. I live with Phil, Lou, and Simon at 1 Friends Road. Cat and Beth live directly across the street at number 2. How cute, right? We took the F.R.I.E.N.D.S dream literally. Rob lives somewhere... I remember he has a couch and a door...  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We have a pretty decent bonfire, and we’re sitting drinking in a circle around it. It’s cold at our backs so I’m sitting huddled up to Rob. I can see Cat and Beth doing the same across the fire, Simon is sitting a bit further away to my right, and Lou and Phil are to our left. In a moment of silence, someone quietly sings, I’m looking at you through the glass, then someone else joins in, don’t know how much time has passed, then we’re all singing. We’re all singing and hugging in our pairs and smiling at each other like we know this moment is special and there won’t always be days like these.