THOMPSON
After my exile in
in Co Wicklow last month
I fled back to Dublin feeling the way Nicole Kidman must have felt when her
divorce from Tom Cruise finally came through (remember that iconic
photograph of her punching the air?) I had thought that being stuck out in
the sticks with no transport would mean that I’d get loads of work done, but
no muse descended from the Sugarloaf to keep me company while I was there,
so it was very lonely. (I spent a lot of time in
lunching solo at Avoca. Excellent open prawn sandwiches you get there, but
there’s only so much of your own company you can take).
SOCIAL LIFE
The first thing I did
when I got back to town was to organise a social life So May was spent
catching up with old friends. Honestly – you would think that I’d been in
solitary confinement while I was out in
,
but I promise you that that’s how it felt sometimes. When Malcolm came out
to visit at weekends, I was as pathetically pleased to see him as a puppy. I
never minded being on my own when I spent the winters in Roundstone and the
summer months on Clew Bay, but I guess that’s because both of those places
have fantastic views of the sea, and that would work wonders on anyone’s
mood.
fright
Being house-bound in
meant that I spent a lot of time bemoaning my plight on the telephone, and a
lot of time surfing the internet, where I came across a positive fright of a
bitter and twisted blogger who had plenty of gratuitously nasty things to
say about me. Initially, I felt a bit shaky - as Jane Gray aka
Pixie
Pirelli (the heroine of Sex, Lies & Fairytales) feels when
something similar happens to her, but then I realised that this particularly
witchy blogger had spent most of her life working in RTE and she lives near
,
so no wonder she’s bitter and twisted, and to be pitied, really. Now that
I’m back in Dublin and soon to be heading off to the blessed west coast (yay!)
I can afford to be magnanimous
☺
R&R
After
my prison term in
, R&R beckoned big time.
Went to the opening of the RHA annual show, where my favourite painter of
all time, Eithne Jordan, had three works on display. Eithne’s house in the
Languedoc was the inspiration for Madeleine’s house in my novel Love
Lies
Bleeding – which project has taken off very nicely (click
here for info on Love Lies Bleeding. It’s a www indie publishing
first!) To those of you have written asking if there will be a follow-up, by the way, it’s very difficult to tell you that no, there won’t.
I really am sorry, but the publishing world is changing so radically that
everyone is looking for the next big thing and dropping midlist authors like
me, even though I have a loyal fan base (thank-you, all, as ever, for your
support).
I’m
digressing. In that very sociable first week of May I even saw some terrific
theatre! And, yes! That exclamation mark is pertinent, because I have seen
and participated in some bloody awful theatrical events in the past. I was
once in a production of a classic Greek tragedy that was so bad it was
risible, but because it got inexplicably rave reviews (Fintan O’Toole in the
Irish Times loved it), the cast got standing ovations every night.
The best thing about it for me was that the character I was playing
committed suicide half way through the show, so I got to spend the
second half in the dressing room drinking wine and reading Hello!
magazine. This was in the days before
magazine, you
understand.
My reading matter of choice today would certainly be
because
it’s irreverent and it makes me
laugh. Also,
magazine loves my books, and
reviewed Love Lies Bleeding even though it’s not available to buy
through the usual outlets. So I am a staunch supporter, and always put
in my
novels (in Love Lies Bleeding,
Rory McDonagh is torso of the
year☺)
Anyway, the show I saw in the first week of May got a standing ovation on a
Monday night (unusual in theatre), and it was only right that it did.
It’s Sweeney Todd, it’s on in the Gate Theatre, and it is fantastic.
I say this even though I am not a big fan of musicals, or Stephen Sondheim.
new book
In
the second week in May, things changed and I could no longer be sociable,
because an idea for a new book came dripping into my head, and pretty soon
it became a tsunami. I’ve hit a point where my typing can barely keep up
with my thoughts, and at the end of the day my brain is so tired it feels as
if it's dissolved. In the days when I was an actress, the most commonly asked question
was ‘How do you learn all those lines?’ Now that I’m
writing, the most
commonly asked question is ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ and I’m
afraid the honest answer to both questions is that I haven’t really a clue.
All I know is that for the past couple of weeks I have spent so many hours
at the computer that the housework remains undone and the ironing pile is of Matterhorn proportions. I had hoped to
get round to the ironing once Big Brother 8 hit our television
screens (I don’t feel so guilty about watching it if I’m ironing: Irene, you
will relate to that!) but I have a suspicion that those pink twins are going
to have me lunging for the ‘off’ button on the remote.
Talking of new books - two new book jacket looks this month: a German book club for The Blue Hour and the Czech translation of Sex, Lies & Fairytales. I love them both - the German one is so romantic, and the Czech so quirky!
COMA
At least I’m not working in the attic these days. I’m working at a desk in the front sitting room because my laptop went into a coma and gave me an awful fright. Malcolm took out the hard drive and transferred a load of files onto his computer, and it was a weird feeling to see the hard drive sitting on the desk beside his Toshiba like an exposed brain. It’s gone now, my beloved little laptop, to the computer hospital, and I had to delete loads of folders, in case anyone snooped around. For instance, I had Marian Keyes’s brand new novel on my hard drive because she’d e-mailed it to me (it’s not due until next year, and rest assured it’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!!!), and I suddenly thought ‘Yikes! What if someone in the computer hospital leaks out Marian’s novel?’ Poor JK Rowling must live in terror of that happening to her. So Mal and I spent practically a whole day going through files and folders, spring-cleaning my laptop and it was so boring I wanted to cry.
THE WEST
Off
to the west! And this time I have Cathy Kelly’s brand new unpublished novel
to read. Oh, I am a jammy bitch! But I guess I deserve it, after three weeks
in
......
COMPETITION
The competition continues this month, because there were so many entries, and I wanted to give those who had only just ordered the first 25 chapters of Love Lies Bleeding a chance to order the Clandestine Chapters.
The prize is an unabridged audio book of my last novel but one, Sex, Lies and Fairytales, narrated by your truly.
To listen to a sample on audible.com click here
The audio book will go to the first person out of the hat who can quote me the opening sentence of Chapter 26 of Love Lies Bleeding, and the winner will be announced in my next newsletter at the beginning of July.
Please send your answers to:
*For details on how to order Love Lies Bleeding, please go to:* www.loveliesbleedingthebook.com
THANK YOU
I hope you are all having a jammy time, too, and, as ever, a million thanks for your fabulous, fabulous letters - and many thanks, too, for taking the time to read this.
♥♥♥
from
Kate
PS: ORDERING BOOKS
to buy
By the way, while Sex, Lies and Fairytales is available to buy or to order in all good bookshops in Ireland, the UK and the Commonwealth, its companion piece Hard to Choos is available to buy direct from booksellers only in Ireland at present. Should you wish to buy the book from Amazon, clicking here will take you straight to the sales point. You can also order Hard to Choos from Pixie's site. Lots of you are wondering where my backlist can be purchased. Amazon is good, of course, but my Transworld titles are also available - with free P&P in the UK - at Bookpost. (Just key in the title name in inverted commas - ie: "More Mischief")
to buy
© Kate Thompson, 2007
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