It’s publication day! First US book tour event day! The day I finally start meeting my American readers face to face!! So much to celebrate!
Can we stop for a moment for this picture - the crazy, overexcited author who is, for the first time, in the US on the same day as her book is published! This was taken today in the garden by Swami’s Beach in Encinitas. I have never been in America during the publication period for any of my books, so I’ve never had that immense pleasure of walking into a bookshop in the US and seeing my book sitting amongst all the authors I admire. I’m so happy that I get to do this for THE CHATEAU ON SUNSET!
I arrived in LA yesterday and drove down to just outside San Diego to stay with my agent, Kevan Lyon, which is fabulous. I’ve met my agent once before on a writing retreat with my agency sisters in Hawaii, but I’ve never had the chance to sit down with her and chat properly one on one - other than on Zoom - so it’s been wonderful to have dinner with her and spend time with her.
She’s been so instrumental in my writing career and I never feel that I thank her properly for all she’s done, so this is such a nice way to celebrate publication.
My husband is here with me as my driving partner (we have a LOT of ground to cover) and general support person. Since we had our first child twenty years ago, we’ve never gone overseas together, just the two of us, without kids. My gorgeous oldest daughter suggested that she come back from Sydney, as it’s mid-semester break for university, and look after my son for the three weeks I’m away so that my husband could join me. It was such a nice thing for her to think of and to offer and we jumped at the chance!
I also think that she and my son are really looking forward to hanging out together for 3 weeks! And it means that on the couple of occasions where I have a spare day or two between events, my husband and I can do some fun things, including staying at Jekyll Island in GA for a few nights, which I’m excited about. It’ll be fun to see parts of the country that I’ve not visited before.
And it will be fun to meet you if you’re coming to an event!
Here are all my event details if you haven’t yet got your tickets:
San Diego, California: June 2 at 6.30pm
Launch event with Adventures by the Book at Library Shop, Mission Hills
Lexington, Kentucky: June 3 at 7pm
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Toldeo, Ohio: June 4 at 7pm
Toledo Lucas County Public Library
Cincinatti, Ohio: June 5 at 7pm
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Kenosha, Wisconsin: June 6 at 4pm
Blue House Books: History Through Stories with Melanie Benjamin
Franklin, Indiana: June 8 at 6.30pm
With Wild Geese Bookshop at Coffeehouse Five
Greenville, South Carolina: June 9 at 7.30pm
Books Over Drinks with M. Judson Booksellers
Richmond, Virginia: June 10 at 6.00pm
With Fountain Bookstore
Pawley’s Island, South Carolina: June 12 at 10.45am
Lunch at Caffe Piccolo with Litchfield Books
Vero Beach Book Center, Florida: June 15 at 5pm
Fernandina Beach, Florida: June 16 at 12.30pm
Literary Luncheon with Story & Song
Venice, Florida: June 18 at 6pm
The Island Bookshop
You might remember that I was at my beach house just over a week ago to work on the edit for my 2027 book, GIRL OF THE YEAR. It was hugely worthwhile and, while I don’t have everything figured out yet, I’ve done enough that I can let all of my questions sit in my head while I’m on the road in the US and hopefully, at the most unexpected moment, the answers will come.
Of course, it didn’t help that I had a huge brainwave that will make the book better, but that has also required me to rewrite large sections of the book. The thing about being a writer is that you have to not be scared of the hard work, not be terrified of dismantling your book in order to incorporate a new idea, not be afraid of how long it might take you to see your book anew.
Revision literally means re-seeing. Re-seeing your own book is difficult. Re-seeing is also very different to tweaking a sentence here and there. Re-seeing is finally getting closer to understanding the story you’re trying to tell and setting your limited powers as a writer to work on trying to capture it in words.
It’s both the most challenging and the most rewarding part of the writing process. Some days I’m convinced it’s all coming together, other days I know I haven’t quite achieved what I’d hoped. But I keep turning up to the computer each day and giving myself a chance to have a good writing day.
One of the most fun parts of the process over the past couple of weeks has been really digging deep into the 1980s storyline, which has meant revisiting some 80s trends, like Kissing Potion! I posted about this on social media because I was overcome by a wave of nostalgia as I worked Kissing Potion into a scene.
I can still taste that icky strawberry flavour! I also had mint, which was just as bad, but I felt so cool with my roller ball of sticky gloss that never lead to me kissing anyone, but I loved it nonetheless.
We’ve had great fun on social media talking about other 80s trends we recall from our 80s childhoods. Some of my favourites were covering my school books with pictures I’d cut out of Cosmopolitan and Dolly magazines, Cutex nail polish, frosted pink lipstick, Loulou perfume and Madonna. Let me know in the comments what were your favourite 80s things - that’s if you’re old enough to have been there!
What’s delighted my eyes and ears this week? Well, to be honest, there’s been more thought-provoking going on than delighting. And here’s why.
I finished Yesteryear and I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very readable and quite compelling but I don’t think it delivered on the premise. I was expecting a satire of the cult of the tradwife influencer, a novel that was interested in looking at the psyche of these women and the culture that encourages them.
Instead, it’s a book that skims above the surface of these issues, afraid to to dig in too deeply, a book that doesn’t quite do the work. Substacker Jerusalem Demsas articulates some of my thoughts about the book much better than I would, especially in the following quote (which contains a slight spoiler, so only read the quote if you’ve read the book!):
“Most tradwives are not suffering from psychotic breaks; they are promoting a new social conservatism compatible with just enough female empowerment to allow them to pursue commercial success but not enough to cast off their central purpose as submissive wives and mothers. But if Natalie is just a crazy woman disconnected from her religious community, then what can she reveal or say about any of this?”
ICYMI, the New Yorker conducted an investigation into Strangers author Belle Burden and chastised her for not being more transparent about her financial situation in her divorce memoir. The online discourse around this has been extensive and I think this Slate article is the most representative of my feelings - that the New Yorker rather missed the point of the book. Slate captures the point in this quote:
“When people fight about finances in a divorce, it’s rarely actually about the money. It’s about dignity and safety. Burden felt, for a time, that she had neither.”
I don’t think anyone reading her memoir ever thought she was going to be out on the streets, living under a cardboard box, begging for food. But we did all recognise her fear. That’s what she catalogued, and that’s what made her memoir so beloved. I don’t think any reader would choose a cataloguing of all her trust funds over her capturing the universal terror of having given up so much to someone who could not be trusted.
Both the New Yorker piece about Burden’s memoir and Yesteryear have generated a slew of words online. Some of those words are about whether or not the New Yorker would have bothered to conduct such an investigation and write such a lengthy article if a man had authored Strangers, which again seems to miss part of the point: by and large, in our society, a man would never need to author such book because it’s generally women who give up their careers to take care of home and family and who are generally more likely to be in the dark about the finances. (I recognise this isn’t an absolute and some families are different).
However, I do understand that it’s worth interrogating whether female authors are more likely to be investigated, criticised, taken to task and piled on by the online world. As well as the Burden story, there are quite a few articles doing the rounds right now that question whether a woman criticising Yesteryear shows a lack of support for female authors.
I actually think the key issue is that there are just so many opinions available to listen to right now. Everyone has a Substack or a TikTok or an Instagram account and anyone can make a reel talking about what they do or don’t like about a book. Some of those takes are going to be negative, some positive. Just like mine here about Yesteryear.
What’s important is to not get caught up in forming our opinions too quickly. To not just look at one article and decide we’re not going to read a certain book because the author of the article we read didn’t like it. We shouldn’t give out opinions on books we haven’t read. We shouldn’t just hate something - we should think about why we hated it and then discuss that. It’s also good to talk to real people, not just those we follow online. Talk to the people who work in our local bookshops. Those people are smart.
Opinion is cheap these days. So make yours worth something.
The lovely people at Katie Couric Media had me write a piece about why reimaginings of classic novels are so popular right now. I have a theory that maybe the romantasy genre has primed us for this moment!
I was also a guest in my friend Eliza Knight’s History, Books and Wine podcast - a great combo of our favourite things! You can listen here.
Thank you for letting me share a moment of my publication day with you! Can’t wait to meet you over the next couple of weeks if you’re in the US!
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