Release day!

27 July: RITES OF SPRING paperback release day! As of now, I'm a real Paperback Writer! Amazon has been selling the thing for a while already, but this is the date when it's supposed to hit the physical bookshop shelves.

Time to press on with the editing of no.2 and the drafting of no.3...

5 August

On Saturday 5 August at 2pm I'll be at Waterstones in Richmond, signing copies of RITES OF SPRING, the paperback of which is now springing into life...

The shop address is 2-6 Hill Street, Richmond, Surrey, and it's less than ten minutes' walk from Richmond station (District Line, Silverlink Metro & South West Trains).

Musical reads

This was in The Independent last Monday: I picked out just a few of the novelists whose fiction best captures the intangible power of music, and added Jilly Cooper for the sake of a good contrast.

How to cheer up

No sooner had I vanished into gloom and depression over the state of the outside world yesterday than my own situation brightened suddenly and considerably. My wonderful agent produced the news that I've got my first overseas deal: my second novel, due out with Hodder next spring, has been snaffled for translation by a publisher in Amsterdam! We cracked open some bubbly.

Meanwhile the progress of RITES OF SPRING continues to be encouraging: The Book Place has picked it out in its choice of new popular fiction. It's also in the Amazon 3-for-2 special offer, rubbing shoulders with many wonderful books including two of my recent favourites (Sarah Dunant's 'The Birth of Venus' and Diana Evans's '26A').

Official paperback release date is now less than two weeks away...

Last but not least, I've just signed a second two-book deal with Hodder. Op.3 is already taking shape. And Op.4? Well, watch this space. The pace is intense - a book a year - and that one will probably be happening before you can say "Joanna Trollope".

Dear friends, please forgive me for blowing my own trumpet today. I've spent my whole life working towards becoming a 'proper' novelist and I'm still finding it difficult to believe that such an amazing chance has come my way.

Paperback writer!

The paperback edition of RITES OF SPRING hit the doormat the other day & looks simply wonderful. Release date is 27 July, but it can be pre-ordered from Amazon here.

Island mentalities

I never got round to hitting back at the individual in the US who not long ago took exception to a comment I made in print about the Elgar Violin Concerto being one of the greatest works of its kind. It appears that this person, whose name I don't actually know, thinks all British critics are tub-thumping patriotic morons who will cheer anything British for the sake of it when actually everything British is mediocre, and that just because I like the Elgar Violin Concerto, I am one of those too.

First of all, just as stupid as British critics supporting British artists for the sake of it is American critics knocking anything British for the sake of it and tarring all critics in the UK with the same brush.

Secondly, if you think the Elgar is not one of the great violin concertos, then kindly give reasons for your opinion rather than knocking all the glasses off the shelf in your anger at all us dreadful Brits? I bet you can't. It's a fabulous piece.

Thirdly, I may have been born within the sound of Bow Bells, but I'm not the sort of critic who indulges in automatic Brit-bravoing, having an ingrained dislike of much British period-instrument performing (with some important exceptions), much music by Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi, swathes of contemporary music and a few singers, instrumentalists and conductors who do keep winning prizes but whom I find boring, pretentious, misguided etc. I love Delius, but that isn't because he's British - rather, because he can sound so wonderfully French.

Fourthly, critics write nonsense everywhere in the world.

Last but not least, the article in which my comment appeared was focused on a violinist who isn't British at all, but loves the Elgar Concerto so much so that he was willing to spend painstaking hours in the British Library going through Elgar's manuscripts with a toothcomb, sifting out the differences between them and the printed version of the concerto. This somewhat scuppers any view that you have to be a Brit to like British music.

I could bring American politics and double standards into this, but some of my best friends are American and I'm not going to tar them with the aforementioned same brush.

Please, folks, stop writing twaddle. Life is short. Get one while you can.

Today...

...my book arrived.

I have been waiting all my life to hold my first novel alive and printed in my hands. Today it happened.

To say this is a happy day would be rather an understatement!

Rites of publishing...

UPDATE 3.35pm: OH MY GOD, it's already up on Amazon.co.uk! You can pre-order RITES OF SPRING here right now!

The bound proofs of RITES OF SPRING arrived yesterday. Bound proofs, in case you've never met any, look like normal paperback books but are actually a kind of mock-up, less polished and requiring correction, but useful for advance promotion, book fairs, sales of foreign rights etc. It's the nearest thing I've seen yet, though, to My Novel In Print. Publication date for the hardback is scheduled for 13 March (they promise me it's not a Friday) and paperback should, I hope, be sometime in May. My agent will be taking her bundle of these to the Frankfurt Book Fair in a couple of weeks' time.

For the moment, I'm staring at the spine of this almost-book that bears my name, the title and the immortal words HODDER & STOUGHTON, trying to get my head around the fact that I've 'done it' . I have to try, however, not to look inside at the text because every time I do, I find something I want to change. And now I can't.

"Artistic fulfillment", for want of a better expression, is very different in writing from that of music. A musician works for weeks, months, sometimes years towards a performance: then, on the day, you're on the spot, producing the goods and feeling the energy coming back to you from people listening. In writing, however long you work on something, when you finally release it to its audience, all you can do is sneak an occasional glance at them while they're reading and say daft things like, "Where are you up to?", "Do you still like it?" or "You know that bit where....well, do you think it's believable?" The immediacy of emotion that you feel in performance is missing; on the other hand, if you've written well enough, the impression you convey has a much better chance of being what you set out to convey in the first place. And unlike a concert, the book on the shelf will be there forever. It's a tad scarey to reflect that RITES OF SPRING will be gathering dust in a library somewhere long after I'm pushing up the daisies........

Dreams come true...

...in stages. The proofs and cover design of my book have turned up. The book will be 375 pages. The cover is perfect. I'm bowled over, because I have very little design imagination - when asked whether I had any ideas about how I wanted the jacket to look, all I could come up with was 'for goodness' sake, no lemon yellow, shocking pink, lime green or champagne glasses'! Now someone in that company, somehow, has come up with an image that is strong and simple and that says what needs to be said. The photo, font and entire style is very classy but entirely immediate. I can't quite believe how thrilled I am with it - yet have a seriously odd sensation that I always knew in some strange corner of the brain that my first novel was going to look like this. How? no idea.

Please excuse me for a couple of days while I go off to proof-read...in France.

Oyyyyyyyyyyy

I reckon it's the beginning of the end.

I've been reading what I initially thought was a wonderful book, published in a serious literary imprint, with an exotic setting and a nice arty photo on the cover. I was riveted from the first page. But a little way in, the brakes screeched: I was reading - and I'm not making this up - the words "he was stood". The hero was standing in a doorway. In a literary novel he should not have "been stood" anywhere. In NO novel purporting to be written in halfway decent English should one see the expression "he was stood" - or anything similar. Nor was this a one-off accident. Later, I found a reference to a bunch of characters who "were sat" in a bar. It's not as if this writer was trying to create a colloquial local voice (the novel's hero is supposedly a writer himself and would probably rather have died than use this moronic construction). And the author's biog suggests he's someone who should have known better.

No doubt there'll be plenty wrong with my own book - but at least not that...

I would like to excise from the current use of English the following turns of phrase"

"was sat/stood" - in every permutation;

"concertize" - you don't concertize. You give a concert. Please note that I use 'z' here and not 's' for a reason;

"I'm, like,....and she's, like,....and then I'm, like,...." as a way of explaining who said what;

"Buy your CD's here" - note incorrect use of apostrophe. Not long ago I had an email from a youngster working for a reputable music agency who didn't have a CLUE where to put his apostrophes. If I were the artist he's working for, I'd be worried about my chances.

Oh heck, there has got to be a better way than this to spend a Saturday evening...

Booked up...

I spent yesterday afternoon at an event associated with the London Book Fair, which is in full swing from today through Tuesday at Olympia. The Daily Mail Book Club sponsors a set of 'masterclasses': a conference hall of would-be writers gathers to scoop up pearls of wisdom from those in the industry. (Oh joy! I no longer have to go to the one called How To Get Published!!) Yesterday afternoon, two of my favourite writers, Rose Tremain and Graham Swift, were there to talk about contemporary fiction, though in the event the questions were more about the process of writing a book, especially the inner processes and the emotions associated with them. About 300 of us lapped up every word as Rose Tremain described finishing 'Restoration' on a diet of toast, yogurt and sherry and recalled how the pencil-scrawled draft of her second novel met a leaking bottle of olive oil in a suitcase on her way home from holiday.

Asked about narrative structure, Graham Swift described his approach as musical. He feels his way through the structure according to emotions, he explained (this is a rough paraphrase, by the way), and suggested that the emotional charge associated with different parts of the book is something close to music because it is beyond the words themselves; it has to exist as a driving force before the words come into being.

This does ring some kind of deep bell at the back of my mind and somehow relates to my pre-caffeine musings about the relationship between music and writing the other day. Would a composer set out to write a piece of music without having a pretty good sense of the kind of structure he/she wants to create?

For my new book, I've mapped out a detailed skeleton of What Happens When to guide me through the maze. RT and GS yesterday both said that they don't do this, however. A novel is an adventure and must be approached with an adventurous spirit, suggested Swift. They both have a good idea of where their story is going, but are willing to be diverted to some extent as they make discoveries along the way. I was reassured to hear that Malcolm Bradbury used to go for the skeleton approach!

Meanwhile spring is beginning here in London. The daffodils are coming out and Solti the cat is going nuts (even though he's been 'done'). It's a time for hope and for clearing out the filing cabinets and for thinking ahead rather than back. Nice...

One year on...

Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of my blog! I still can't get over the fact that I can type this in the comfort of my south-west London study at 8.38am and by 8.48 am some total stranger may be reading it on the other side of the world.

I don't know exactly how many visitors I've had during this time because I've had some ructions with webcounters along the way (there's now an invisible one!), but currently I'm averaging about 100 visitors per day. There's usually a dip at weekends, which suggests most of you log on at work! :-). I had my highest number of hits when I posted a picture of my cat, Solti!

There have been hits from 59 different countries from Los Angeles to Taipei to Chile to Kyrgystan.

I've discovered that bloggers are marvellous, strong-minded, helpful and idealistic people! You're marvellous, the lot of you! Some will go to extraordinary lengths to help out other people whom they've never met and wouldn't recognise if they bumped into them. Everyone experiences - I think - a sense almost of relief that blogs exist. This is a medium in which you really can speak your mind and nobody can tell you what your opinions ought to be.

Having so said, I'm still astonished at the way anonymous viewers hiding behind self-appointed watchdog-type nicknames are simply waiting to leap out of the woodwork to tear you to shreds the second you dare to admit that you don't like Christmas...

My most unlikely referrer was probably: http://ecksteingirlsbasketball.blogspot.com/. And some of the strangest Google queries that have led people to the site have been, in no particular order: 'Where can I find magic mushrooms in Scunthorpe'; 'latkes en francais' (please note, they taste the same in both languages!); 'Serkin rowing' (did he?); 'Ukranian poppyseed cake'; 'Real tomcat meow recordings sound effect download' (is that what my husband is doing in his spare time?!?); and last but by no means least, 'violin fetish' (erm, not unreasonable, this...)

Of course, the danger is that one uses a blog as a way of keeping friends and family scattered all over the place up to date with one's news - so apologies to anyone who's found they get fewer e-mails from me these days - don't worry, I still love you all!

Finally, I wish I could say that my book deal is the result of blogging, but it isn't. I started that book over a year before starting the blog and the fact that it's going to be published is the result of little more than a fantastic agent and some extremely good luck!

Celebrations...

We DID have a nice evening yesterday... Started off at the cashmere sweater shop, where I plumped for the purple in the end. Then on to the Savoy for a glass of champagne followed by dinner at the Savoy Grill. Beautiful food; the most elegant surroundings with plenty of space; and superlative service, all just perfect for the occasion. I regret to say I became quite emotional from time to time, since I've been dreaming of this evening - buying my cashmere sweater and celebrating the imminent publication of my first novel - for 20 years or more. Tom handled it all very well, bless him.

I do have to stop daydreaming and do some serious writing now...life goes on and so do the music magazines!

Valentine news!

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! Here's my news. My first novel is going to be published next year and I now have one year in which to write the second. RIGHT NOW I LOVE THE WHOLE WORLD!!! :)

Details will follow in due course. Tom and I are treating ourselves to a very posh dinner to celebrate, but not until Thursday.

Reading?!?

Nice feedback today from my friend Beate in Vilnius. She's been showing off the piece I wrote for The Strad (February issue) about musical life in Lithuania, one of the articles I was able to do as a result of my visit to the Vilnius Festival last June, and it seems to be going over well with many of the individuals and institutions involved.

This is a great relief, because trying to encapsulate an entire culture, a whole history and its associated personalities and triumphs and tragedies after only 5 days in the place is no easy task - and squeezing even 5 days' worth of experiences into three pages is just as problematic (especially experiences like that!). I can't help remembering that the whole of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place in one day.

It's weird, but after 15 years in music journalism, I still find it terrifying to think that anyone actually READS what I've written. Writing these days is a remarkably odd process (perhaps it always was...). You sit in your study, type away at the computer, brush and hone and chop and change and try reading things aloud and eventually you get the word length about right; then you press a button and off it goes...and you forget about it until, a few weeks or months later, there it is in the programme/newspaper/magazine and you can't even remember what you wrote or how you wrote it. I did some programme notes for an LPO concert last week and it was pretty alarming to see people in the audience sitting expectantly with the relevant page open on their knees. The most frightened I've ever been on such an occasion was once when I'd written the notes for a song recital at the Wigmore Hall and on the night I spotted Vikram Seth, one of my favourite writers, sitting across the aisle, leafing through...

Blogging, by contrast, is in real time. Plus, you can go back and change things if you need to. And you don't have to watch while people go 'tut tut tut' and shake their heads sadly over your remarks. Much more friendly.