This Is How It Starts - The Story of a Book Deal

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I’m currently reading This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon and I’m engrossed. Fantastic characters, immersive plot, strong writing – a real treat. It’s the kind of book that once you start, you just can’t put down and I’m already looking forward to getting back to Addie and Brunos’ tale this evening. It’s set in Dublin and is a love story with a difference. The main characters are thirty-eight and fifty and have the battle scars to prove it. It reminds me in a way of The Bridges of Madison County, another love story with a seam of melancholy running through it. I re-watched the film recently and I was struck by the simplicity and timelessness of the story. This Is How It Ends is very much set at a particular time (just before Obama was elected), but MacMahon's writing has the same classic feel to it.

Over the weekend I read an interview with the writer, a journalist in RTE. In the interview (an excellent piece by Róisín Ingle of the Irish Times) she explained that it wasn’t her first book. She has been writing for eight years now, and had wanted to write a book since she was ten. As Mary Lavin’s granddaughter (the Irish short story writer), she felt the legacy held her back. “I spent a lot of time thinking about writing,” she says in the Irish Times, “but I had to find my own voice. I think if I were doing it ten years ago I might have been trying to impress others. In my family people wouldn’t just be delighted that you had written a book: they would be saying, ‘But is it any good?’ ”

But eventually she decided to put her misgivings and doubts aside. She wrote a novel, The Sixth Victim which landed her an agent, Marianne Gunn O’Connor (via Cormac Kinsella, a well connected literary publicist who recommended her to MacMahon). Gunn O'Connor is highly respected and also represents Cecelia Ahern and many other internationally successful writers. The book was never published although it came close.

MacMahon says in the Irish Times “At the time, Marianne was very disappointed and I was very relieved. Because I thought, Oh no, I am going to have to tell people I am writing now. I was looking around the newsroom in terror. It felt like I was going to have to stand up and take off all my clothes.”

But MacMahon tried again. She wrote a second book and once again sent it to her agent. This time things were a little different. Little, Brown paid £600,000 for a two book deal at last year’s London Book Fair (the deal of the Fair) and the rest is history.

There’s a lesson here for all writers. You get knocked back and you get back up again. You get rejected and you fight back with something even stronger. You try again (multiply by however many times it takes) and you get published. It does happen. Kathleen MacMahon is living proof. Her first book was rejected so she wrote a better book, it’s as simple as that. Her ‘better book’ happens to be an exceptional piece of work and now she has a glowing career ahead of her as a writer.

As Samuel Beckett once said: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Yours in writing,

Sarah XXX

Ode to a Bookshop and a Very Special Bookseller

I was saddened to hear last week that one of my favourite bookshops in the whole world, The Exchange Bookshop in Dalkey, South County Dublin has just closed. The lovely owner, Michael has decided to retire and it’s uncertain as to what will happen to the shop. Will it become yet another coffee shop or restaurant; will another enterprising (and brave) bookseller take it over? We will have to wait and see. In the meantime I wanted to celebrate the shop and what it meant to me as a child and as a teenager growing up in Dalkey. When I was younger Dalkey village had a small children’s library that was housed in the Town Hall. Once a week special green wooden shelves would be rolled out and we’d be taken there to pick our books. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a range and, as I became a more confident reader, I craved more choice. So Mum took me to The Exchange Bookshop and we looked through the second hand books together, searching for novels that would be suitable for a young teenager.

Gradually Mum allowed me to rummage on my own, and I managed to unearth some gems that she might not have ‘approved’ of had she know the contents, Flowers in the Attic example which I devoured, staying up all night to finish it, racing through each page like a teenager possessed. Michael in the shop did sometimes question the ‘suitability’ of the books I picked, but to his credit never stopped me buying them.

James Herbert, Stephen King, The Outsiders by S E Hinton, books about possession, haunting, vampires – this was my staple reading diet as a teenager (YA or teen fiction was only in its infancy in those days and many of the books were far too ‘worthy’ for my strangely blood-thirsty teen taste). They were interspersed by Maeve Binchy, American teen novels (Sweet Valley High), Judy Blume and the classics, but only ones concerning love and relationships, especially doomed relationships, most notably Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Jane Austen. Darkness and light, black and pink.

From the age of about eleven I read passionately and voraciously and The Exchange provided much of my story fuel. Unusually it sold both new and second hand books and had a special ‘exchange’ system (hence the name) whereby you could bring back books you’d read and ‘swap’ them for other books. And yes, I admit I ‘exchanged’ many of my mum and dads’ books for Stephen King novels.

Without The Exchange I would not have read so many books as a teenager, it’s as simple as that. And those books – both black and pink - made me the writer that I am today. So I owe a lot to Michael and his wonderful bookshop, as do many other readers (and writers) I suspect. And I wish him all the very best in the future. Maybe now he’ll have time to read himself for a change!

Today, on Shakespeare’s birthday and leading up to World Book Night later, I give thanks for Michael and all the other amazingly hard working and booking loving folk who power the bookshops of Ireland. Booksellers, I salute you! I’m proud to be an ex-member (and hopefully a future member in years to come) of your fold.

Yours in books,

Sarah XXX

Write a Story That Matters

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I've just finished reading The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler, one of my favourite writers. I was struck (as always) by her wonderfully simple yet evocative language. She's a genius with verbs; makes them work. She paints pictures with her words:

'I tilted my face up and squinted against the sunlight to follow the arc of the spray, which sashayed left, sashayed right, like a young girl swishing her skirts as she walked.'

Her sentences have the power to make you gasp. And you can tell that she's mad about her main character, Aaron despite his glaring flaws.

It's a masterful book and it got me thinking about fiction and why writers write.

I have a great fondness for first novels. Writers throw everything into their first book - passion, joy, heartache; hopes, dreams, failings - it's all there in one heady mix. With a first book you have years to craft your sentences. Once you are a published writer deadlines sneak into the writing equation.

You also think about your readers - will they like your new book? Your editor - what will she/he think? Reviewers - if you are lucky enough to get reviewed. The page is never fresh.

But there is nothing jaded or knowing about The Beginner's Goodbye. Anne Tyler is telling the story that she wants to tell in the her own peerless way. She is writing for herself, telling a tale that she just has to share. And that is how we should all write - telling the story that we just have to tell, regardless of readers/editors/deadlines. We need to get back to the voice of our 1st book and reclaim the joy that we felt, the sheer wonder at creating a fictional world and living, breathing characters.

It is not enough to write a story that you like. If you had three months to live what would you want to tell people? Write that book - a book that matters.

Yours in writing,

Sarah XXX