Diary Of A Short Book Tour
8th October, 2015
My new book is out today. This coincides with the nominal birthday of my cat The Bear (all I really know is that he was born “around this time” in 1995, as he’s a rescue cat). In the post, with perfect timing, The Bear receives a celebratory bottle of champagne and helium-filled balloon. I, meanwhile, receive a reminder about the upcoming renewal of my car insurance.
The publication of this book feels very different to that of my seven previous ones, and especially the first six. A few months ago, I gave up journalism and I’m aware that, partly as a result of this, the book is going to receive almost zero media support. I’ve done just the one interview, with the Liverpool Echo, which has yet to be published; there will be almost certainly no reviews in national newspapers or magazines; no big name writers have blurbed the book or raved about it on social media; the amount of copies ordered by Britain’s biggest national chain, Waterstones, has been bafflingly low, and neither of my two nearest branches have it in stock. I know my publishers tried to get an extract published in the Daily Mail, which is the biggest sales boost a book can get in UK newspaper world, but I wrote to them saying I wouldn’t let that happen, as I don’t want to feel like I have filth all over my body. No other extracts will run. I’m on my own, in other words, relying on my existing readerhip and strong word of mouth. Yet there’s something very liberating about this, early sales have been promising, and I’m looking forward to launching the book with a small tour of independent bookshops, cafes and bars over the next month. The first leg begins tonight at Totnes Bookshop, a couple of miles down the road from my house. The evening seems to go well: the signing queue is long, all the chairs are taken and those who arrive late have to stand or sit on the floor. But I notice just a slight dampening, compared to the atmosphere of my previous few events. I decide it’s because I’m wearing a hat: a wide-brimmed sort, of the kind a pilgrim or 17th Century witchfinder might don. I worry that it hovers over the daft words coming out my mouth like an incongruous black cloud, sombering up the room. Of course, this might be total bullshit. It could just be that a) the plentiful laughter in the tent at my last event, at the Green Man Festival, was more down to alcohol than my comic talents, or b) I’m quite plainly not being funny enough.
9th October, 2015
My dad is arriving today to look after my house while I’m away doing four events in London over the course of three days. This is reassuring in a few senses - The Bear is no longer always brilliantly confident about using the catflap - but also comes with its own worries. I am perhaps chiefly thinking back here to the time my dad broke my shower or the last occasion he visited, when he arrived downstairs, red-faced and coughing, and announced, “I’VE JUST SWALLOWED A LOAD OF RADOX BUBBLE BATH BY MISTAKE.” Later on the second occasion I had rushed down to the kitchen, having heard the raised voice of a female adult, possibly in a state of some upset.
“Who was that?” I asked my dad.
“WHO?” he replied. “I DIDN’T HEAR ANYONE.”
“I heard a woman outside. She sounded angry.”
“OH. THAT WAS JUST ME, EXPERIMENTING WITH VOICES.”
On the plus side, The Bear is almost totally deaf now, so my dad’s noisy freeform outbursts don’t bother him, and before my reading in West Hampstead Library tonight, I receive a text from my mum* to say that the cats have all been fed and are all happily asleep, which relaxes me before what turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyably evening. Danny, the organiser, from the excellent West End Lane Books, says some flattering stuff about me and introduces me as “the cat world’s answer to Robert Plant”. As she does, I stand behind her, shaking my head. I worry, instantly, that this could be perceived as false modesty but it’s all I can think of to do in the situation. I’ve waited years for my writing to improve and be appreciated, almost giving up on several occasions, but now I’m finally getting praise for it I find I don’t really know how to handle it. I suppose another term for this, perhaps, is “being British”.
*My dad avoids mobile phones wherever possible and has never sent an actual text to me himself, apart from one in 2011 which said “HAVE I LFT MY TRSRS AT YR HOUSE”.
10th October, 2015
A reading at Bookseller Crow On The Hill in Crystal Palace this evening: a majestic shop, packed with much of my favourite overlooked American literary fiction, whose events are always attended by people who look like they have impeccable record collections. I’m joined by my friends Alison and Mark, otherwise known as the slightly gothic (but not goth) folk band The Left Outsides, who will play three songs in the gaps in my digressive, shambolic anecdotes. I am a bit concerned about this: what Alison and Mark do is very beautiful and what I do is not. But somehow my silly stories about badgers, cats and my dad, and their gossamer tunes about deserted windswept beaches don’t make for an incompatible union. I’ve been running a fever in the night and barely slept but somehow, I rally, and manage not to fall over, but, starting as I mean to faff on, I realise as soon as Bookseller Crow owner Jonathan introduces me that I’ve left the reading copies of my books in his office. Afterwards, I do an hour’s worth of signing then I and a few others are invited back to the house of a friend of a friend, Pam, who lives on a road behind the shop. For this trip, we are joined by Chuck and Sophia, a slim, impeccably matched couple who look straight out of an early 1970s knitwear catalogue. It’s only upon arrival at the house that I realise that nobody - including me - has actually met them before. Fortunately, everyone loves them. I also meet Rachel, who turns out to live nextdoor to the house I lived in in Blackheath (borders) 15 years ago, near the descendants of a fox I wrote about in a couple of my books. This makes my night.
11th October, 2015
Two events today. The first, to a small crowd at a cat cafe London Cat Village, with diffusers and ventilators rendering the air hazy and pedigree kittens sprawled on the floor, feels slightly surreal: like a not completely fitting attempt to bring somewhat animated and profane literature to a feline opium den. I love being around cats, but I worry that they are whispering about me under their breath, so in a public speaking context, I’m more comfortable directly afterwards, across the road at The Strongroom Bar, where I’m again joined by The Left Outsides, and by Jack Sharp, the singer of my favourite modern band, Wolf People, who plays exquisite Nic Jones-esque songs about hares, dogs and the Bedford lace industry. Some of the proceeds from this event will be going to help homeless cats at the Celia Hammond Animal Trust. I’m aware Mark and Alison heard me talk the previous night so, in an attempt not to bore them, I change my story about badgers slightly, and do a new bit about a hare, to try to fit in with Jack’s song. It is possibly my favourite event all week, but they’ve all been great, in their own way, and pleasingly packed out.
There are so many nervous moments and frustrations involved in having a book published. Books that don't get off to a quick headstart can suffer a commercial death very quickly, and be forgotten forever: I've got dozens of in them my collection, all by writers more talented than me. There’s still not a sniff of a review in a newspaper or magazine and, as I haul my bags around London and check my phone for the first time in several hours, a stream of tweets come in from my readers telling of not being able to find the book in their local branches of Waterstones all over the country, but I’m struck again by that freeing independence I mentioned earlier: I’ve set these five events up myself, plus three more next month, and I’ve promoted them myself on Twitter. I would like, ideally, to be the opposite of “big on The Internet” but I am glad of the way Twitter and Facebook have given me the chance, as a stubborn country bumpkin outsider, to find a small group of (at least for now) loyal readers who relate to what I’m doing. I’ve still got no guarantee that this book will be successful enough to keep me writing the books I want to in the future, which is my main aim, but there’s something very reassuring about finding such a nice audience without going through any channels I’m uncomfortable with. The high regard that I had for independent bookshops has also increased: each of those I’ve visited this week have been staffed by brilliant, passionate people.
I’m exhausted but relaxed on the train home, only really chiding myself for the moment this afternoon when, in tiredness, I suddenly forgot how to pronounce the phrase “Toyota Yaris”. My mellow bubble is punctured by the train conductor, who tells me off, quite rightly, for leaving my wallet in a bag in another part of the train. I like trains and wonder about whether I’d make a good train conductor, imagining the greater security and more regular pay cheques, compared to the life of an author, but I decide I’d be crap. “Is this ok?” I could imagine passengers asking me, as they handed me bits of lint or old raffle tickets. “Yeah, fuck it,” I picture myself replying.
I’m exhausted but relaxed on the train home, only really chiding myself for the moment this afternoon when, in tiredness, I suddenly forgot how to pronounce the phrase “Toyota Yaris”. My mellow bubble is punctured by the train conductor, who tells me off, quite rightly, for leaving my wallet in a bag in another part of the train. I like trains and wonder about whether I’d make a good train conductor, imagining the greater security and more regular pay cheques, compared to the life of an author, but I decide I’d be crap. “Is this ok?” I could imagine passengers asking me, as they handed me bits of lint or old raffle tickets. “Yeah, fuck it,” I picture myself replying.
As usual, late on a Sunday evening is a hard time to get a taxi in rural Devon. The first three companies I try all just give me an out-of-office voice message. “Sorry, we’re all done for the night,” says a man who works for the fourth.
“Oh no!” I say, hoping he’ll take pity on me. “I was really counting on you, as I’ve got four really heavy bags and no other way of getting back.”
“Let me call you back,” he says.
Two minutes later the phone rings again. “Ok, look. We’ll send Steve,” the same voice tells me.
I cannot help but speculate who Steve is: An actual taxi driver? A sentient car? Or perhaps an overenthusiastic fox who just happens to have his own vehicle and helps the company out of a tight spot from time to time? I am slightly disappointed to find that he is just a man, albeit a very personable one. After he drops me off, I stagger up the path to my house. It is nearly midnight on a windy autumn night and the Devon countryside seems amazingly dark and mysterious, after two nights in London. No household appliances are broken in any obvious way, although some brief detective work suggests my dad has eaten at least one of his evening meals out of a cat food dish. I am reassured to find all four of my cats present and correct, but when I look out through the living room window I jump in terror, as I see a human head, apparently disembodied, staring into the room at me. Looking again, I am relieved to discover it is only The Bear’s birthday balloon, bobbing about gently in the breeze.
Read my new book.
