Book news and juggling balls

Posted by Katy Regan at 20:13 on 9 Aug 2010

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Today, I opened a document entitled: ‘Dedication and Acknowledgements’.Oh I do love this part of writing a book - the bit where you get to gush about how much you love everyone, how you could never have written this book without them, how your mum, dad, God, the seed and the egg must be thanked for your very existence (I’m joking but one can – if one is not careful – get verycarried away and start sounding like Gwyneth Paltrow accepting an Oscar. Or worse, Tom Cruise, um… accepting a coffee) I vow to not gush too much. It’s going to be hard though since I’m really excited.. There’s beensome excellent news on the book two front. You heard it here first, The One Before the One – my second novel  shallnow be published in November rather than January (pre-order yours on Amazon now!) which means I shall have a book out this year  - hurrah!! 
 
So, at the moment, in fact right now, I am sitting in my local café obviously penning this blog but also working on the final copy edit of my second novel.  SECOND novel. God, that feels good! To think in four months time I’ll have published two novels and I can’t remember writing a word of them. It’s all such a blur of high anxiety and (occasionally) wine in the afternoon. Plus a lot of Facebook, cleaning out the dishwasher and other activities vital to one’s creative flow.
 
For those of you who don’t know, the copy edit is that bit where all the incongruities and inconsistencies are worked upon: Things like characters being pregnant for two years, birthdays changing from September to April, characters coming  back from the dead (ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration but you get my drift). I can’t believe what an amazing job the copy editor has already done on it. Talk about an eye for detail. She hasn’t missed a trick. Timing is not my strong point in my real life or,needless to say, my fictional world either. I think she would probably have liked to rap my knuckles for the pain I put her through but instead, she just delivered several pages of timing inconsistencies that she has fixed already! I love her.
 
I’m feeling quite proud of myself though, that I got this far and that I continue to be able to write and to do what I love (most of the time) to earn aliving.  I’m already really excited about my book three idea. The characters are already forming in my head and their lives – I am finding – is already a place I can escape to when my real lifegets boring/tough/there’s nothing on telly.
 
It’s going to have a bigger cast, be told in the third person using two narrative voices  - something I haven’t attempted yet – and be about friendship. Something, as someone with a close circle of friends I’ve known for two decades, I’ve wanted to explore for ages.
 
So, it’s all systems go for book two’s publication, although pushing everything forward and doing all the things necessary for a book to make it to your shelves (copy edit, proof, marketing, publicity etc) couldn’t have come at a trickier time. It’s school summer holidays at the moment and Egg is away for the rest of them photographing giant vegetable-growers and the like for the Sunday supplements (he is the master of quirk)  so I feel like I’m juggling a hundred balls: sorting out childcare, making sure Fergus has loads to keep him occupied, filling in countless forms and sending countless cheques for this and that holiday camp ON TIME and…..writing. When the hell does the writing bit happen?
 
Sometimes I wonder if Egg forgets I have a job too. I mean he’s great, don’t get me wrong and he is more engaged with fatherhood than many other men I know but I have wondered, these past few days when I have not only booked all of Fergus’ holiday camps and play-dates but organised childcare, taken him to the zoo, the golf course, the cinema and written in any time I have spare, whether most men ever find themselves juggling this many balls on a regular basis or whether they just stick to the one thing ? Like, you know, photographing giant vegetable growers….and there was I saying I was no good at multi-tasking. I have proved myself wrong!

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