THOMPSON
Hello!
March was a funny (as in unsettled - not funny-ha-ha) month. There was yet
more publicity to do for project Love Lies Bleeding (click
here to find out what all the fuss is about) and I
was kept very busy sending the novel out all over the world (I’m glad to say
that quite a few men are buying the Clandestine Chapters)The
feedback
from readers has been absolutely sensational - but there was an awful
niggling feeling inside me, the feeling I get when a story is creeping into
my head going ‘Write me, write me! Come on! You know you want to…’
CREATIVE JUICES
So back up into my attic I went, and opened a file that hadn’t been looked at for over a year, and lo! I found myself thinking that this story wasn’t half bad. I don’t want to say too much about it yet, in case I jinx myself, but suffice to say the creative juices are flowing again, and that’s when I’m happiest. This new project is also involving a lot of research, so I’ve joined my local library for the first time since my daughter was a child - indeed, since I became a writer. I’d forgotten what lovely, calm places libraries are, and what a pleasure it is to wander round them - and it was even more of a pleasure to find that my books have lots of gratifying stamps on, which means that readers have been borrowing and – hopefully - enjoying them.
PAINTERS
Last month I told you
about my friend Robert Armstrong’s exhibition opening in the Kevin Kavanagh
gallery. This month another friend – Mick O’Dea - had an exhibition opening
in the same space. Like Daniel Lennox – the artist who appears in both
The Blue Hour and Love Lies Bleeding - Mick is a portraitist, and
he was able to give me invaluable advice when I was working on LLB.
Mick has recently returned from Paris where he spent several months working
on a series of really fine portraits of Irish people based there. I guess my
fascination with the art world stems from the fact that my grandfather was
an artist – to this day, the smell of linseed oil brings me straight back to
his studio. He, too, spent a lot of time in Paris. This is an extract from a
letter written by my grandmother on 11th April 1920, when she and my
grandfather travelled through France and Italy on honeymoon - prototype
backpackers! ‘To-day has been a real working day -' she writes
'– we have been wandering through smelly alleys and foul slums – talking to
wee French kids,
who are all very friendly – and terribly anxious to be
drawn. So Scotch, having got a “wee spot” to paint, stands and paints and I
hold the box and the water pot – you see, we can’t very well sit down in the
streets there as they chuck all their rubbish out of the window and leave
the water to wash it down as best it may.’ Here’s a reproduction of one the
children my grandfather painted. I have masses of his landscapes, but I really
wish he’d painted more family portraits: all I have is a photograph of a
painting he made of my grandmother, and a pencil sketch of my mother as a
child.
GLENROE
Last month a reunion was organised by some of my actress mates with whom I used to appear in the television soap Glenroe (I was the evil seductress Terry Killeen). We enjoyed lunch in the Octagon Bar of the Clarence Hotel, and had loads of gossip to swap since we hadn’t seen each other in such a long time. There was an extra girl there – Martha - Eunice McMenamin’s delicious six-month old baby girl, who has the wickedest eyes in the world. I did an interview with Declan Meehan of East Coast Radio recently because a website has been set up to bring the soap back ;-) Go to http://official--glenroe.bebo.com/ to check it out.
FANTASTIC BOOKS
What else happened? Two
book launches for two fantastic books by two fantastic new writers (both
actresses!) The first was Karen Ardiff’s beautifully observed and
exquisitely written The Secret of My Face (a really, really poignant
book). The Secret of My Face was launched by Conor Mullen, who was
seen most recently on BBC television as the maverick horse trainer in
Rough Diamond. (Trivia: Conor was once a neighbour of ours here in the
Liberties – we used to babysit each others’ children when they were wains –
and I did a tour with him yonks ago of Alan Ayckbourne’s Bedroom Farce.)
The second launch I attended was for Tana French’s In the Woods. Now,
when I was putting the finishing touches to Hard to Choos (the book I
wrote under the nom-de-plume Pixie Pirelli) an e-mail arrived one day
with – in the subject bar - the following: Hard to Choos Editorial
Notes. The sender was one Tana French, whom I had never met. ‘Huh,’ I
thought to myself, ‘what do you know about editing, you so-called “Tana
French”?’ Oops! I had to eat my words, bigtime. Tana’s editorial notes were
insightful, clever and incredibly helpful. So, when we finally met, I was
delighted to learn that she had
signed a peachy book deal with Hodder, and
is a new literary star in the ascendant. Her novel – In the Woods –
is masterful: nay, mistressful. I lost myself in the book (and it's a big
book: a 485 pp trade paperback) for almost 36 straight hours. I just could
not put it down. It’s beautifully written, with characters you will really
enjoy and (most importantly) care about. The plotting is taut and pacy,
there are excellent spooky bits and the story keeps you second-guessing (and
yearning!) right up to the end. I don't own a Philip Treacy titfer,
but if I did I would eat it with relish if Ms French does not become the
huge success she deserves to be.
booktribes
Talking of books – I recommended a wonderful site – www.booktribes.com – last month, and I am thrilled to say that I have won a prize!!! (they give out prizes on a regular basis to reviewers) I have hardly ever won anything in my life, so I am looking forward to receiving my copy of Black Swan Green by David - Cloud Atlas - Mitchell.
ELLA THE DIVING HORSE
My web master has great fun checking my web stats sometimes. Among the key Search Phrases he has found are ‘pixie sex’; ‘strimming sex’ and ‘ella diving horse’. That the first search phrase – ‘pixie sex’ - pinpointed this website wasn’t hugely surprising since I write under the nom-de-plume Pixie Pirelli, and Pixie’s writing is – according to bestselling author Cathy Kelly – ‘so, so sexy!’ But the other two search phrases were more of a puzzle. Who was Ella the Diving Horse, and what had she to do with my website? Aha! But of course - the heroine of my third novel Going Down is a scuba-diver called Ella, and somewhere in the novel is a dark horse: so that made sense. Strimming sex – ahem? This was seriously weird… until I remembered that some time last summer I’d mentioned that I’d had to wear ear-plugs while I was working, because the noise of Malcolm strimming in the garden was driving me insane: so that finally sorted that one out - someone had stumbled across an old newsletter. But whyever would those phrases be entered into a search engine in the first place? ‘Pixie sex’ - hello? Does someone out there believe that pixies exist, and that – if they do – that they have sex? ‘Strimming sex’? Ow, and why?! As for ‘Ella the Diving Horse’ – ooh - I want to meet her!
MISCHIEF PUBLISHING
Last month I wrote my first cheque as director of Mischief Publishing (it was for the 9,000 bookmarks we'd had printed with the Love Lies Bleeding and Hughes & Hughes Bookshops logos). It looks like the next cheque I write will be for a reprint - we're running low on stock - yay! Every time I see the words 'Notification of Payment Received' in our PayPal account, my heart sings a little song. Mal & I took a huge risk on this venture, and it now looks as if it's paying off :-D In a recent interview on RTE's Drive Time, Dave Fanning described us as the Arctic Monkeys of publishing, which was ironic, because the first domain name we looked for was Cheeky Monkey Publishing. Alas, that name was already taken - but in fact, Mischief Publishing suits us better, since the very first two novels of the series were called It Means Mischief and More Mischief.
THANK YOU
To finish, I just want to say a really heartfelt thank-you to everyone who has written such lovely, lovely letters, and to those of you who have recently posted comments on Amazon for Sex, Lies & Fairytales . I now have twelve twinkling 5-star reviews up there (click here to read), and Pixie is proud to have four. And don’t imagine for one moment that I pen them myself, or ask mates to write them. I once read a cautionary tale about Canadian Amazon when something drastic happened to their privacy settings and all the real names and addresses of the people who’d posted reviews were displayed online. Apparently loads of authors had written glowing reviews of their own work, and really shite reviews about all their rivals’ novels (that’s partly where I got the idea for a plot device used in Sex, Lies & Fairytales). So you can appreciate that I don’t want my name attached to a review of one of my own books that goes: ‘This is the best book ever written in the history of the Universe!!! No exceptions!!! Buy it now!!!’
♥♥♥
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, 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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