My book is coming out in America this week

So I am feeling every feeling under the sun about it and also thinking about... what else?!... Rejection Years

I am finishing this piece as I wait at the gate to board a plane to New York where I will be doing something that I truly never dreamed I would be doing. I will be visiting my book (my 6th, a novel called Where I End) in American bookshops. What?!?! Is?!?!?!? Happening?!?!?!?

I’d like to be the chill girl about this but I don’t have a ‘chill’ cell in my entire body, so why pretend? This is a career moment that eight years ago when I started writing books, I wouldn’t have even bothered daydreaming about, it would have seemed so farfetched. Yet a number of events – happy accidents and lucky coincidences – unfolded in just the right way to bring me to this point.

Where I End is a strange book so it’s fitting that it had a strange journey across the Atlantic. It was first published in the UK & Ireland in October of 2022. Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff of Tramp Press originally commissioned Where I End and I will never stop pinching myself that I got to work with two such incredible and talented editors. Where I End was warmly praised by critics and hundreds of readers wrote to me to tell me how I’d completely f*cked them up! Even better were all the reviews online, many of which started with some variation of “what the hell did I just read?!” – which is obviously a dream response for a horror writer.

Then the book somehow made its way into the hands of the incomparable Ellen Datlow, an American editor and general horror maven extraordinaire and she championed the book in the US which led to this absolute creepshow of a book set on an island off the west coast of Ireland being shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award in America in 2023 despite not even being available to buy over there! Being nominated among the best horror writing of the year was unbelievable and it genuinely didn’t cross my mind that I had a chance of winning. And, then, I did win. Crazy. This series of unlikely events led me to my amazing American publishers, Erewhon, and my wonderful editor, Diana Pho who became another champion of Where I End. And all of these random and, of course, brilliant things led to my sitting here in this very seat at a departures gate typing to you.

So how does it all feel? Well, typically, the last weeks have not been amazing for me. I’ve been really sick and missing deadlines as a result. I’ve been stressed about leaving my kids for the longest time I have ever left them (12 days) and I’ve also been feeling a sort of self-conscious dread about the book’s release that I guess might be some relative of Imposter Syndrome. An annoying by-product of this is that I cannot bring myself to say much of anything on my social media… and like, I really need to, it is literally part of the job. This happens every time I have good work news to share on social media, I become completely and utterly paralysed.

I want to share, I swear I do. And not just because it is such an important part of the job of being a writer now – unless you are literally Sally Rooney (just a few more hours to go till Intermezzo drops guys!!!) you need to be on social media saying things about the stuff you’re doing.

I want to share because I want to acknowledge all the amazing people who champion me and make my job possible. I want to share with all the amazing readers who make my job a joy when they shout me out and tell people about my books. I want to share to mark the milestones of my journey as an artist.

So what the fuck is my problem?

I honestly don't know. I have some theories. One is that it’s just who I am. I continuously oscillate between wanting to be visible and wanting to be completely invisible. I want to share (hence I write) and I want to be hidden (hence I hide), ironically this second desire is the main (only?) thing that facilitates the first.

I. Love. Being. Alone.

And thank god because being alone is the primary state of being a writer, or certainly a novelist at least. 'Writer' is a job where for 99.9% of the time you go around being a total nobody (perfect) but then 0.1% of the time you must act like you're a somebody (ick) in order to sell books. Or, at the very least, attempt to convince others of your somebodyness (Ick, ick, ick).

So look, here I am sharing the good thing. My book is going to be on bookshelves in a whole other country and I will get to see it and, for once in my silly little life, I’m trying to actually stop and take stock. As I said, this is not my natural instinct.

My usual MO would be to absolutely STEAMROLL over any of the positive feelings and immediately jump to fretting about the next thing. God I love my brain. Because I am not a person who takes stock, I am using a bit of a mantra to try and help me: Remember when you wanted the thing you have now.

Remember when you wanted the thing you have now.

This uncharacteristic stock-taking has had me thinking about the last eight years and in particular the many days of relentless disappointment. The two years of rejection between the publish of my first book and the release of my second. The years of feeling so thoroughly outside of the writing world that I so desperately wanted to be a part of. The years of trying to convince others to take a chance on me and my work. The 'thanks but no thanks' emails and 'thanks but no thanks' phone calls and 'thanks but no thanks' meetings that left me raw and often teary. I find it hard talking about this phase of my career in case it alerts someone (who hadn’t noticed yet) to what a loser I am.

I will say this about that time, I got really good at rejection and things that once would cast a pall over an entire week, I can now dispatch to the ‘forget about it’ pile in a matter of hours. But I think an unfortunate lasting effect of that time is a sense that I still don't measure up. I still have a collection of sour little moments, the micro humiliations, that I can call up at a second’s notice as evidence of my unworthiness.

I remember a literary agent at a book party asking me in a vaguely disbelieving tone if I'd actually come up with the story for my first novel by myself.

I remember a newspaper reviewer listing the authors I wasn't as good as.

I remember the sting of accidentally coming across unkind comments online after I’d written an extremely honest account of my alcoholism.

All the small things that cut just a little and ultimately make up the very convincing argument that buzzes in my mind when it comes to my work. 'You don't have it, you'll never be good enough, when are you gonna give in and just quit?'

Annoyingly all the wonderful moments I've been lucky enough to experience haven't been nearly so sticky. I have to make a conscious decision to walk myself through them.

I once got a rave in the Guardian.

I once met an academic who had actually studied one of my books as part of her research.

I have won literal awards (and delivered accompanying deranged speeches).

I try and keep these little glimmers closer to hand than the crappy dud moments. Though, as I said, the mental gymnastics my brain is capable of in its quest to keep me feeling shitty is truly astounding. In an attempt to remedy this, I even once embarked on a project to collect all the amazing letters from readers that I've received over the years into a folder. Mortifying. At the time of writing, I have never opened that folder but I do have some vague notion that I'll force my sons to do dramatic readings from these letters at my deathbed so that I can be the most obnoxious almost-dead person of all time.

Anyway here I am now adding to the list of glimmers so that for my next ‘thanks but no thanks’ email or ‘thanks but no thanks’ phone call, I’ll have it within reach: I once went to New York and saw my book in a bookshop.

Thanks as always for being here at Death Is Coming.

XXX

S

Buy the American edition of Where I End here.

If you are in New York and would like to come and see me in a bookshop, I’m going to be in Watchung Booksellers, 7pm on September 26th in conversation with Laura Sims. All info here.

And in Greenlight Bookstore, 7:30pm on October 1st in conversation with Alex Gonzalez. All info here.