My Accidental Book Deal

A while back, one of Terry’s clients1 kindly sent him a bottle of very nice champagne as a thank you for a project he’d just completed for them.

Now, champagne is my Very Favourite Thing to drink, but because we are poor, we very rarely get our hands on the Good Stuff and have to make do with either cheap Cava or Prosecco instead, on the rare occasions that ‘fizz’ is deemed appropriate.

Like peasants, basically.

But now, here we were, somehow in possession of The Good Stuff. (Well, I mean, technically Terry was in possession of The Good Stuff, but, fortunately for me, he agreed to share, so…)

“We have to think strategically about this,” I said, once again proving beyond doubt that there’s literally nothing I can’t ruin by over-thinking. “We don’t want to waste The Good Stuff on a random Tuesday in February, do we? We should save it for a special occasion.”

Now, there is, of course, a very strong argument that a random Tuesday in February is exactly the time you should be pouring yourself a glass of the good champagne. Someone wiser (and possibly richer) than me would surely tell you that you never know what life has in store for you, so you should make the most of every opportunity that comes your way; a kind of ‘dance like no one’s watching’ philosophy, which would no doubt include other nuggets of ‘profound’ wisdom like…

• Wear the dress.

• Light the expensive candle.

• Stop saving things for a ‘best’ that might never come.

• Drink the damn champagne, woman.

But I did not drink the damn champagne: possibly because it arrived at a particularly low point for us (We were — and still are — broke, the car needed fixing again, it was winter, and it felt like things would never get better…), and I wanted to believe that the best WAS still to come: that it was, in fact, coming.

Or possibly just because I’m an uptight fun sponge who hasn’t figured out how to unclench for long enough to actually enjoy herself?

Because, let’s face it: that’s a possibility, too.

Either way, we decided to keep the champagne for some mysterious point in the future that we’d deem worthy of it. We didn’t know what this point would be, but we figured we’d recognize it when it arrived, and that would be the moment we’d finally pop the cork on that champagne bottle. We knew it wouldn’t be Christmas, or New Year, or anyone’s birthday; not because those things aren’t special, but because they don’t actually change anything — and what we badly needed was for something to change. But what would that change be?

“We’ll know it when it happens,” I said vaguely, unable to even imagine what it would take for me to consider opening that bottle of champagne. Unable to picture a time when it might feel like things were getting better instead of worse. And then we put the champagne into the fridge, where it stayed for the next 12 months, without so much as the suggestion of ‘something good’ happening that would allow us to open it.

Instead, we had an ongoing list of ‘something bads’. The car finally broke down for good and had to be sold. We got deeper into debt in order to buy a new (old) one. We weren’t earning enough from my books to cover our outgoings, and I decided enough was enough; that the book I was working on at the time would be my last, and that, as soon as it was done, I’d start looking for that ‘real’ job I had tried literally everything to avoid.

(Well, it was either that or finally enter the Victorian workhouse that haunts my nightmares, and I’m pretty sure that’s not actually a ‘thing’ any more, so... )

I felt completely and utterly crushed; like I had failed spectacularly at life, and, no matter how hard I tried, things just kept on getting worse. I expected things to continue like this indefinitely.

I did not expect to ever have a reason to drink that champagne.

Back at the start of February 2025 (almost exactly a year ago) I finished writing what, at the time, was my eighth book — a romcom set in the Highlands of Scotland. About two weeks later, and completely out of the blue, I got an email from Clem Flanagan — an editor at Edinburgh-based Black & White Publishing, who are an imprint of Bonnier Books — saying that she was on the lookout for Scottish books written by Scottish authors, and had come across my work online. She wondered if we could have a chat sometime?

At the time, Clem didn’t actually know I had a completed book just waiting to be published. But I did. And it just so happened that it was set in the Scottish Highlands … which was exactly what she was looking for.

The timing of all of this was just so incredibly serendipitous that I still have to pinch myself to make sure it actually happened. The fact was, I shouldn’t even have had a book to show Clem at all at this point. No, had everything gone according to plan, I’d have finished that book long before then, self-published it, and then given up writing altogether, just like I was planning to. The End.

If everything had gone according to plan, in other words, I’m not sure I’d ever have had a reason to crack open that bottle of champagne. Maybe Max’s 18th? Or his wedding? I don’t know.

But, fortunately for me, life doesn’t always go to plan, does it? To cut a very long story slightly shorter, a few weeks after that initial email and video call, I sold that book to Black & White, as part of a two-book deal (the second book being the one I’m working on now):

And, after that, we finally got to drink the ‘good’ champagne. 2

Um, this is not me drinking the good champagne, by the way. This is me drinking an unknown brand of Cava, because I signed my contract while we were on holiday last summer, and we naturally had not brought the champagne with us. But that’s another story for another time.

For now, I’m SO excited to finally be able to share this news with you, which I’ve been keeping to myself for almost an entire year now, and while I know quite a few of you have either guessed or already know the reason I’ve been so cagey lately, I hope you’ll forgive me for all of the incessant talking about it I’m about to subject you to. Apologies in advance for that.

(And, also, of course, to open up some champagne, good or otherwise…)

Thanks for reading,