My dog died, please buy my book

We’ve been on holiday for two weeks, only our dog died the week before we left and this holiday was supposed to be a special highland road trip with him. It wouldn’t have worked anyway because I called the hotel shortly before said dog died to ask about check-in times and they didn’t have a record of our booking so I guess that was some kind of ominous foreshadowing right? Instead we came to my parent’s place where I cried a lot and my husband went on long cycles to brood and then we did a fairly mad road trip up to Edinburgh because I had to kick off book promo at the book festival. We did this in a 1997 Renault Espace which my husband bought for under two thousand pounds because he loves old cars and has a boundless optimism that I do not and will not ever possess. Do you know who loves a Renault Espace? Men in their seventies who absolutely peaked in the 90s. They come over at petrol stations to tell my husband about their Espace, about the road trips they took their families on. They are misty eyed at the memories of New Labour and their youth. The car, despite both of us secretly thinking it would break down or catch fire or maybe just evaporate when driven above 50mph, got us there and back. On the last day I did have to tell my husband that he’s started to anthropomorphise the car because of the dog grief. 

“For someone who hates death, you write about it a lot.” My husband said this to me this morning and he’s right but does anyone LOVE death? I mean, I guess if you’re a necromancer but even then you’re not so much enamoured with death but with what magic you can do with reanimation. It’s more of a job requirement than a passion. But I do hate death! I first realised this when I was 18 and watched a film called Where The Heart Is at 2am. Someone dies in it, I cannot remember who and I won’t watch it again because of the trauma - but they die and in that moment I thought about my grandma and how her death meant an endless loop of no longer being alive which prompted a huge panic attack and made me really weird for a couple of weeks until I learned to crush the idea in my mind-vice. 

You can’t always avoid it. When people I love die, I tend to internally freak out and externally run away. Either way, I don’t behave well. I also always get sick. My sister dreads the day our parents die because we both know I’ll give myself Bells Palsy or break out in a full body rash or suddenly render myself mute. Some people might use that kind of grief to have a meaningful year of reevaluation, I’ll definitely just get gross boils all over my face and feel even more unsafe than I do now! I put the exclamation mark there so it didn’t sound so serious, that’s for both of our benefits. 

Anyway my dog died and it only gave me gastritis this time. I’m going to give myself a B+ on how I’m handling it. I wrote about him for Vogue not here because no offence, but I just thought Vogue was more iconic. Either way the sadness is horrendous and I keep crying when I talk about him or look at photos or yesterday when my husband mournfully said “he doesn’t exist anymore” which I felt was a real low point for both of us. But I’ve also managed to do a fair amount of book promo which is a mental thing to do when you’re sad but is also a contractual obligation baby. My editor had to walk suuuch a fine line when offering her condolences and to be fair she did it well, but she basically had to say: “SO sorry about your dog, I hope you’re doing OK and being kind to yourself” SHIFT OF GEAR, GRINDING NOISE, “I hope the upcoming launch of Claws Out! will help take your mind off things just a little” WIPES FOREHEAD OF SWEAT, TAKES PATS ON BACK FROM PUBLISHING COLLEAGUES, SENDS FLOWERS.

I don’t blame her. Every time I have a book come out I have a mild menty B. Actually sometimes they’re not even mild. Jog On - was pregnant and in an OCD spiral and then wasn’t pregnant but also was still in the spiral. How To Kill - had literally given myself suspected colitis with anxiety (ended up being not that but just inflammation which I think is a cool thing my brain accomplished). What A Way To Go - came off my meds and stopped sleeping and floated off to the sky somewhere for a while. My publishers are used to me freaking out around book launches, they use soothing tones and try to ensure I’m not doing too much or travelling too far. My dog dying is a collective worst nightmare for all of us but for wildly different (my best friend and greatest joy/shark-eyed capitalism) reasons.

Promoting a book is a ridiculous thing to do, that’s how it always seems to me. It involves asking an extremely introverted person who spends 90% of their working life alone, to go out into the world and put on a show for a crowd (which will be of varying sizes - sometimes a great auditorium and sometimes a village hall which is only half full. I once heard a story about a bestselling author who put on a book signing and sat at a table in a library for 20 minutes waiting for someone - anyone - to come over. When one woman eventually did it was only to ask if the author knew anywhere to buy tights). You are your own best publicity machine and the publishers expect you to hustle - be that on social media or travelling to book festivals where you will be outshone by a cartoon book about a horse who loves kindness or a novel about sexy unicorns (I keep wondering what the next genre of horny fantasy is and I’ve landed on unicorns). All the while you are panicking that your upcoming book will flop, will sell five copies and your mum bought them all, will be pulped and made into papier mache lampshades by bored retirees on a two week course. 

“You’re only as good as your last book,” I keep saying manically to my husband when he tells me it’s going to be OK. Then I look at the Amazon pre-order charts even though I have banned Amazon from our home because of - gestures to photos of Bezos in a cowboy hat desperately sucking in his stomach - all that malarkey and panic when I see eighteen books about sexy elves and none about middle class murderers (that’s my book in case you hadn’t got that). Now I’m panicking that Jeff Bezos will read this and end the promotion which means Claws Out! is half price right now. I’m sorry Jeff! I only said it because I’m trying to ruthlessly play to a home crowd, I think you’re doing an amazing job at the Washington Post! I keep doing carousel posts on Instagram about the book and then feeling intensely cynical because people know my dog died and shouldn’t I be grieving and not flogging a novel? So then I post something about him and panic that it looks like I’m flogging my dead dog for book sales. I’m not above that by the way, the run up to a book launch sends me insane as previously mentioned. The least my dead dog can do is sell a few books to offset the churning grief I feel whenever I think about how he used to push his wet nose into my right hand on walks just to check in with me. It’s infinite! He’s up there with my granny in an endless sky loop and I will not have a panic attack about it but I might cry again when I think about how he used to steal kitchen towels off the rail so that I’d tell him off in an overly dramatic way.

Anyway, please buy my book or I’m pivoting to unicorns and I really don’t want to have to write sex scenes involving horns.