Two Years of Fine

 I was so busy celebrating my anniversary back on the fourth of November, I missed another one. November the fourth was the second anniversary of my first novel, Fine. It seems a lot longer. The publication of the book chimed with the start of Trump's second presidency, which might well be why it seems so long ago. What a long strange trip it's been. 

You cannot imagine my joy, on waking up in a Brighton hotel, to read in a long and generous e-mail, that somebody did, finally, want to publish my book. The day before I'd just been happy to be in Brighton. Now I was in Brighton as an author. I immediately went out to buy a cravat. I did not, in fact, though cravats are freely available in Brighton. What I did was walk from Brighton through Hove and onto Portslade, through Victoria Park, and up the hill to the Old Shoreham Road, turning right into the Library at the bottom on the road where I lived from the age of five to thirteen. This was the place where I first learned to love reading. While the neighbourhood kids were out doing bunny hops on their Choppers, handlebar tassels trailing behind them, I snuggled into the cosy prefabricated greyness of the library, deciding what to spend my hairy blue tickets on from the infinity of books. It was a small, damp-smelling local library and the choices were, in fact, extremely finite, but I found so much to love there: Agaton Sax, Asterix, The Eagle of the Ninth, Bobby Brewster, C.S. Lewis, Snoggle, The Hitchhiker's Guide, The Size Spies, The Phantom Tollbooth, Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Black Cauldron, The Sword in the Stone, The Ghost of Thomas Kemp, The Usborne Book of Ghosts, The Beaver Book of Ghosts, anything I could find about ghosts. 

Do children still read these books? I'm not sure The Size Spies or Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory have lingered long in the public imagination. No one remembers Agaton Sax fondly any more. Harry Potter and David Walliams' oeuvre appear to have devastated children's publishing. No one ever said children's authors had to be nice people. But I remembered them and, on that day, in a state of bubbling euphoria, I had to go back to the place where I'd learned to love books. 

It was shut. 

Worse, it wasn't shut. It was shut to me. You needed to be a member of the library to actually enter the building. Presumably, this was another council initiative to stop homeless people ever getting warm anywhere. This was the studded shop forecourt. The dividing arms on bus shelter benches. They'd closed the library. I squinted through the glass. There was no one working there either. They were keeping the librarians away too. So this was the future: empty, unmanned silos of literature? These places used to be the heart of the community, and in some places they still are. But not in Portslade. It was a book repository. A book bin. A proseleum. On any other day, this would have been depressing. But not that day. On that day someone wanted to publish my first novel. 

Fine got some great reviews. 

The New York Times called it a "witty and tragi-comic debut". The Spectator said I had a "stand up comedian's for banal details" which was definitely supposed to be a compliment. The Irish Examiner admired my "light, comic touch" and enjoyed my ability to make the reviewer "laugh and cringe with recognition". The Arts Fuse proclaimed me a "deft writer, whose prose displays a spare lyricism", while Popmatters called the book "both gut-bruisingly funny and achingly sad". 

I mean, I could go on. I really could. There were quite a few.   

Since signing my initial contract, which was for Fine, I've published two other books, both memoirs, and I've subsequently signed two other contracts, one for another memoir - three of them now, not bad for a man who can't remember where his phone is - which is due out in the spring of 2028, and another novel, How Ghosts Affect Relationships, which is out in March of next year. That's less than five months away. My second novel is nearly here. If I were pregnant, I would already be showing. 

You never forget your first time. I'd waited half a century for my first book to come out, it was the culmination of literal years of work, of self-doubt and misery, of tireless...no, I was constantly tired, hidden, effort. All that furtive scratching away, like an anchorite with chicken pox. Publication was more than a business transaction. It was a vindication. The positive reviews were just icing on the cake, just shiny bunting festooned over my website. The true gold of this was that it was a spur to more work. I knew I could do it. I could improve. I could get better. It gave me, finally, in my waning middle-years, a measure of confidence. 

I'm very proud of all my books. They're all good. But they're not all Fine. My first born. The permission to proceed to the rest of my life. How Ghosts Affect Relationships is out soon, and I'm very proud of that book too. It couldn't have happened without Fine.  

I wouldn't have described myself as "a Belfast based playwright", but fine. I've run out of copies of the book now, but they're still available online, from all of the usual suspects. Or you could order it from any good bookseller. Just because I have a new book coming out doesn't mean you shouldn't buy my old ones. Complete the set. 

Including the new one too, of course.