Working that author thing

Posted by Katy Regan at 08:47 on 11 Aug 2008

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So, I met my new novelist friend, Lola Jaye, for dinner last Thursday. Her touching and brilliant book – By the Time You Read This – is out now and sure to be one of summer’s massive hits.

She is one step further down the line than me and, as such, I am able to ask her incessant questions about the whole process: How did publicity go? Book launch? (My fears that it will be like my wedding – not that I am ever likely to know what my wedding will be like at this rate! – i.e. too much attention, too many people to talk to resulting in the scenario where I actually talk to nobody, were reduced when she advised pre-warning all your friends to bring someone.) How did she find writing the second book? (She freaked out and had absolutely no ideas – and still wrote it – I liked her even more after this.)

It turns out we share many anxieties: will I get any reviews? Let alone any good ones? Will the book sell? Do I actually only have one book in me? A book that was also the result of a total fluke and that was actually written by elves whilst I was asleep?

It also turns out we are both single and both in our thirties and that we also share anxieties that when we tell potential boyfriends we are authors, they may be put off for the following reasons:

a) they think we are delusional fantasists and made this up
b) they think we think we’re something special
c) we are weird and it is only a matter of time before we start sporting a grey, wiry mane of hair, go mad, and start wearing lot of smocks.

None of which are particularly promising.

However, Lola had a really refreshing take on this whole, dating-when-a-writer thing. She suggests we actually start using the fact we have (well, will have) a book out to our advantage. She has already got a pretty impressive track record. Basically her strategy seems to be see man she fancies, get publicist to send them her book! She has even sent Gok Wan a copy after meeting him at an authors’ event. (OK, so she’s unlikely to get a date but she might get a makeover…) And, when she just, you know, bumped into Will Smith at the hotel she was staying at on the night of her book launch, she gave him her card and told him she wanted him cast in the lead of the movie of her book if it were ever made! Now there’s a girl who knows how to work it!

She put me to shame with her proactiveness and since meeting I have realised there is a whole new world of dating potential open to me that I’d never even thought of. As soon as it’s published, perhaps I will send a copy of my debut novel to, for instance, Dave Gorman (I’m sure he wants to go out with me, he just doesn’t know it yet…)

I pondered, for a very, long time last night, what the inscription might say. After much deliberation, this, I think, gets the message across perfectly.

Dear Dave,

I love you. Can my people talk to your people?

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