Shannon is on sale today!

Today, 10 February 2009, sees the publication of my new novel, Shannon. Some may ask, "What's it feel like?" I have a number of answers. Yes, it's a good feeling - of achievement, of a job begun and completed in that most difficult of occupations, writing; but yes, it's also a nervous moment - as it should be, waiting for responses and sales. Two helpful thoughts now ride in: this is my fourth publication date since Ireland, a Novel in 2005; and I'm by now deep, deep into the next book, Blarney, which will appear almost exactly one year from today.

So good luck to Shannon, and to all who read it!

Shannon, A Novel, launches February 2009

On the 10th of February, 2009, Random House will publish Shannon, as part of my series of Irish historical novels that began in 2005 with Ireland – a novel, and continued with Tipperary in 2007. My intention in these books is to track the twentieth century in Ireland; the action of Shannon happens in 1922, in the midst of Ireland’s appalling and mercifully brief Civil War. The next volume in the series (I'm working on it now) moves on a decade and focuses on 1932 - the year of a famous and tumultuous General Election. It also has a sense of the theater in Ireland, and, always, storytelling, and it will appear in February 2010. To whet the appetite for Shannon, here is the review that has just appeared in Kirkus:

"A rousing tale of forbidden love, civil war, horrible death and other things Irish. Ireland-born novelist Delaney (Tipperary, 2007, etc.) never met a turning point in the Emerald Isle’s history that he didn’t like. With this entry in his ongoing epic cycle of novels, he turns to a big one: the bloody strife that accompanied the birth of the Irish Free State in 1922 and ’23. American priest Robert Shannon lands on Ireland’s shore just as the bullets start flying, and bad luck for him: A former chaplain serving with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, he suffers from a textbook case of shell shock. That malady occasions a characteristically encyclopedic aside from Delaney, just as the book opens, on the etiology and management of posttraumatic stress—and readers who dislike didacticism should be warned that his narrative often pauses to break the fourth wall and explain what’s what: “One of the symptoms of their illness…is a morbid irritability—they tend to become upset and to take offense at the merest trifles—and this leads to trouble with the other patients, the nurses, and the medical officers responsible for discipline.” Morbid irritability being an Irish specialty, Shannon fits right in with the village folk he is called to serve, out in the country in which, the locals say, Saint Patrick himself was afraid to wander. Shannon restructures his shattered life while wandering in places where he’s not supposed to, including the arms of a widow lady—but it would be spoiling things to tell, save to note that Delaney explains, "In the Ireland of 1922, virginity dominated the lives of single women, and the relevant fire and brimstone rained down every Sunday from pulpits all over the country." How this transgression resolves, and how Shannon manages to keep from cracking up in his war-torn adopted country, makes for a fine adventure in storytelling.

"A well-crafted, satisfying work of historical fiction, as are all of Delaney’s novels; respectful of the facts while not cowed by them, and full of life."

One More Time...

Since early October I've been more or less on the road. Once again the Stephen Vincent Benet old poem keeps coming back like a tune. I have fallen in love with American names,/The sharp names that never get fat,/The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,/The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,/Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat. For me it's been Steamboat Springs, and Spring Lake, and Naugatuck, and Cincinnati, and Sonoma and Sag Harbor, and the lovely word Winnetka, and the hometown of Chief Seattle and the Santa Clara Valley. As yet I have resisted the temptation to count the number of appearances, and I slightly regret that I didn't at the outset head to any or all of the many places and inns called Tipperary in the USA.

It's been intensive, it's supposed to be; my head has been down so far I might as well have been in Australia; a book tour is an exercise in concentration. Somewhere on the road I learned that one politico who had travelled with his tome some years ago likened a book tour to a political campaign: A new venue every night but always the same message. I get the analogy - but at least I don't have to eat rubber chicken or tell lies.

Once more I found such delight among the bookshops; the sheer, civilized pleasure of Fran Kielty's Hickory Stick in Washington; the joyful "get-out-and-sell-the-book"-ness of the Clinton NJ bookshop; the fun of Sonoma and the welcome of Corte Madera, where the sun always seems to be shining even if the event is at night; the satisfying bookish-ness of Elliott Bay in Seattle; the warmth and interest of a large Saturday evening audience at the splendid Northshire Bookshop in Manchester, Vermont. And I flat-out recommend the outstanding smoked turkey paninis –all the café, in fact – at R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut. If I try to recall all the venues I'll forget somebody - but there's a wonderful place in Sag Harbor, Long Island named Canio's. It speaks to my private criterion – a bookshop should feel like a combination of the owner's home and a sweet library.

I find that the book tour has manifold uses for the author. Most unexpected of these is the discovery as to whether the book of which you speak before an audience is actually the book you had in mind to write (or, indeed, the book you wrote – which is the best idea). That isn’t as stupid a remark as it sounds; it's not that unusual to begin the telling of a long tale and then find, not unalarmingly, that it is mutating in the writing. I recall an interview with the English novelist, Alan Sillitoe (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) in which he told me how one of his novels, The Death of William Posters - inspired by the warning on hoardings, Bill Posters will be Prosecuted – was altered entirely by two unplanned characters whom his main protagonist bumps into in a pub.

In the case of Tipperary, I have actually (whew - the relief!) been speaking about the book I intended to write – a nineteenth-century-style novel, for the fun of seeing if I could do it, and because I've read so many; plus a love story about a good man (writing villains is eazy-peazy); plus keeping a history of Ireland rolling onward; it’s part of a loose grouping that began with "Ireland – a Novel" two years ago and will continue with "Shannon," the book I'm working on now, which will be published in February/March 2009.

For this just-published novel, the place in which I was born, Tipperary, lent itself beautifully to novelistic treatment, since it's probably the deepest well that I have. This time around, I wanted to draw up a few buckets of clear water; all I can do now is hope that it refreshes those who drink it. If the readers find the reading of it a fraction as appealing as I have found the writing of it  - I will ask nothing more (other than vast sales).

This is my third book tour in the U.S. and the temptation of inherent laziness tries to turn it all into a blur, but I've enjoyed it too much to allow that. We launched it at Barnes & Noble in New York on Thursday, 15 November and although the intensive part ended in San Francisco on Saturday, 14 December, it murmurs on – I still have some Connecticut gigs to come: Stamford, Litchfield, Washington, Manchester, Falls Village and my home town of Kent, plus two Florida events, Stuart Island and Jacksonville. At the end of it all I shall end up with one of the aspects I am most relishing – a collection of new impressions of the United States.

I saw some brilliant things, in particular the stylish and thoughtful inauguration of the new college President at Foothill, Los Gatos.  Some of the weather in the Midwest threatened to peel my skin off my face. The questions from the audience were excellent – again. And I'm learning stuff: Never say 'Frisco. That's for goobers (a term, I'm told, from Georgia). The prohibition on 'Frisco puzzles me – what about the songs that tell of 'Frisco Bay? And what about the nicknames – there was a crewman on SS Flying Enterprise (see Simple Courage on this website) named Frisco Johnson.

In Seattle I ate sturgeon for the first time; Caviar comes from the virgin sturgeon, The virgin sturgeon's a very fine fish, The virgin sturgeon needs no urgin', That's why caviar's a very rare dish. And I learned the hard way that what Tom Brokaw said on television about the US airline industry is altogether too true – that "it's broken," he said, "from the bottom up and the top down." Out of more than twenty flights on which I was scheduled, only two took off and landed on time.

Once again, I had to pay some attention to what I packed (beyond red socks and pocket handkerchiefs). Meaning: What books to bring on tour?  The road makes specific and very different demands from the armchair; you read in the airport lounge (where I had aeons of time), the aircraft and/or train, and the dinner table, followed by the insomniac night. Think of it as food: Healthy eating, and comfort food, plus a little harmless junk now and then, and at least one rattling good dinner.

I packed Jeffrey Toobin's new book, The Nine – his inspection of the Supreme Court, the aspect of American life that has most compelled, indeed enthralled, me since I came to live here in April 2002. The book is a first-rate example of how to write topical non-fiction, mixing fact, anecdote and interpretation in an entertaining way. Favourite tale? David Souter, one of the nine justices, being mistaken for a colleague, Stephen Breyer and out of good manners going along with it; and, upon being asked, "Justice Breyer, what's the best thing about being on the Supreme Court," he replied, "Well, I’d have to say it's the privilege of working with David Souter."

Claire Tomalin's new biography of Thomas Hardy is enthralling, as much for its simple style as for the multiple revelations about a life I thought I knew well. In an early moment she tells how, in the 1790's, Hardy's grandmother "had been ironing her best muslin dress when the news came of the beheading of the Queen of France [Marie Antoinette]. She had put down the iron and stood still on hearing of such a momentous event, she said, and she could still call up the exact pattern of the muslin in her mind's eye." A good biography – such as this - keeps you always within a few paces of its subject. To that end, I also purchased the new biography of FDR by Jean Edward Smith; it will take me through to the summer.

On book tours past I made some lasting fiction discoveries – Alan Furst, for instance, who writes the best novels about wartime Europe; the long-gone Hans Helmut Kirst (wry, raw novels of the Second World War from inside the German Army – he wrote The Night of the Generals); James Lee Burke and his flavour, unique as jambalaya. This time, I bought Martha McPhee's L'America, a lush and gifted novel – she's this tour's fiction delight. And I also bought en route The Tenderness of Wolves, thereby fracturing a rule never to read fiction while I'm writing fiction – and arguing with myself that I'm always writing fiction, so if I observed the rule too closely I'd never read fiction again.   

Here's the over-arching point about reading on a book tour: The song is ended but the melody lingers on. Meaning - exhausting though a tour may be, if I can make about it more than just my own book, i.e., if I can encounter and dwell inside other books en route, then a sweet and benign circle completes itself: The writer becomes the reader - which is as it should be. Happy 2008!

Frank Delaney

Learning Curves

Recently I recorded the audiobook of "Tipperary;" the reading will be in the bookshops alongside the novel early in November. My wonderful countryman, Oliver Goldsmith, defined one of his characters by "the love he bore to learning." As they say - I'll drink to that. Not much in life can be so pleasing as new learning. However - reading one's own book aloud in a recording studio is as fast and chastening a "learning" as I have ever found. With every previous book, the words I have written down, the patterns I have made, the edifices I have attempted to build - they were already imperfect anyway, as every author knows. Yet a certain relief at having completed the task in hand, and a modest glow at the achievement carry one on into a place of comfort, or, at the least, a haven of not too much discomfort. The nagging feelings, the doubts at this characterization, or that scene-setting, or the next setpiece – they can be brought under control by means of surrender. I have no more power over the thing because the book is at the printer's.

And then comes the audiobook reading. At the end of the week, in what had otherwise been a most agreeable studio experience, I simply wanted to rewrite the entire book all over again. In fact, out of twenty books that bear my name on the spine I can only identify one, maybe two, that I don't want necessarily to rewrite.

I agree that this is probably an unreasonable position. But this is not false modesty; this is a professional writer, i.e., one who makes his living from his writing, saying out loud, "I wish that I had the chance to write this all over again."

Will it always and ever be thus? And I'm certain there must be others - in fact I know that there are. The late John Fowles published two versions of "The Magus," the second a long time after the first. I might not want to go that far, and I doubt I'd get the chance - but I do understand it. For the moment I'll have to content myself with making a (long) list of all that I've learned from the reading out loud experience, and hope to apply the lessons to the next novel, "Shannon," now well and truly under way.

Oddly, I don't seem to apply such unforgiving savagery to the books that other people write – and if I do find stuff that makes me wince, I seem to be much more understanding of it than I could ever be about one of my own titles. And herein lies another wonderful learning experience – how to be comforted by the works of others. Dr. Samuel Johnson said that Shakespeare never wrote six lines without an error; fine for Dr. Johnson, the uber-perfectionist, who did not, it is true, make many errors himself. Thereby and therein, lies the learning.

I have always been appalled by the spectre of the infamous "Writer's Block" – the freeze that comes over an author and, if worse comes to worst, becomes a permafrost. Chilling stories exist of once-prolific and immensely talented novelists who suddenly stopped: Douglas Adams, Tom Sharpe. We've all seen the movies: Barton Fink, Shakespeare in Love (Is it true that there was a building in Hollywood where the screenwriters worked that was actually called, without irony, "the Writers Block"?) So, I worked out a scheme to head it off and since then I have never been threatened by it. This is what I do, and I recommend it highly:

On those days when the work simply won't start, I take down a book by a favourite author and I begin to copy-type at random. I always type no fewer than two pages, and by then the problem usually has ended. While I'm not totally sure why this helps, I know that I find comfort in it, because I get a closer view of their processes, see that they made errors too, and therefore the anxious writer is not alone.

Unless, that is, the writer whose work I happen to copy-type is Dr. Samuel Johnson. Several years ago, I wrote a book (and walked in the footsteps) that traced his renowned journey with his biographer James Boswell, to the Western Isles of Scotland in 1773. Each gentleman wrote a separate account of the trip, and to try and get as closely alongside them as possible, I decided to copy-type from their pages. Although Boswell was no slouch when it came to good writing, Johnson was – and remains - peerless. He wasted not a word (what is it about Scots writers that makes them so muscularly economical with their prose?); and when, for fun and irreverent mischief, I tried to edit him – I found that I could not get a razor blade into his sentences.

As to word usage: neither Johnson nor Boswell would ever confuse, as seems to be happening daily, the word "rift" with "riff," they would never confuse a split in relationships with a thrilling Chuck Berry guitar whirl (that's this month's word peeve off my chest).

Most of the time, I try not to "edit" the writers whom I'm reading for pleasure; I try to let it flow (which is why the interruptions - and increasing prevalence - of typographical errors are so irritating). This summer, I've been on a tide, so to speak. With, always a number of books running like sound-tracks on a studio desk, it's been one of the best summers of reading that I can remember; the second volume of Hilary Spurling's Matisse biography; a new Lee Childs thriller (his hero, Jack Reacher defines the old sense of the word "cool"); Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," about Lincoln and his "friends"; the Jack Cavanaugh biography of Gene Tunney; and the heightened pleasure of Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World," which should never be read at a faster pace than two pages at a time and then savoured. I have seen way more than a hundred Shakespeare productions (including fifteen Hamlets) and I feel as if all I learned from those experiences in the audience has now been opened out and taught afresh to me. When a writer brings love and knowledge together to bear upon his own passionate interest, the reader's learning curve starts to ascend. This climb, on a subject of which I never tire, is wonderfully, dizzyingly steep.

Frank Delaney

"As I was saying..."

I haven't made an entry in this blog, journal, diary, whatever it's to be called, for almost two years. In effect, I came to a deliberate - and irked - standstill, because I didn't know what a blog like this should be. I even wondered whether it should appear at all. And if so, how often? And what should it contain? Blogging has become such an international sport that there seemed no point in adding another voice without good reason(s) and without something to say that adds a useful touch, however small, to the roll of the planet.

And blogging is so risky. Pomposity can get out over the wall and roam the neighbourhood, unrestrained and boorish. In the film, "Inherit the Wind," with Spencer Tracy and Frederick March, Gene Kelly, playing a newspaperman, has an excellent line: "He's the only man I have ever seen who can actually strut sitting down." Blogging can be seen as - and so often is - strutting sitting down.

I don't want to strut. Nor do I want to seem pompous. I'm back because I now know that this Notebook (the word "blog" sounds uneuphonious and lumpen) is a usefully direct and trustworthy way of sharing. In three ways.

First, readers write to me all the time, and in the reward of their letters I recognise my good fortune. And therefore I can use this Notebook to return some of that reader contact. In which case, given the silence, here's a brief update: When I last wrote anything for my website, I was still in the throes of "Ireland - a Novel" and its publication aftermath. In fact, that aftermath continues, with letters and e-mails every week, and questions and comments from individuals and audiences every time I speak in public. I am deeply grateful for each and every response.

Since "Ireland" I also wrote a non-fiction book, "Simple Courage," the details of which are here on the website too. The intensity of the response to it has startled me. I had always wanted to write that book, had always kept the figure of Captain Kurt Carlsen in my mind, and to my sadness I never met him. But I have now encountered so many people who did know him, and who have spoken of him glowingly - some tearfully - that I feel a different kind of reward from that of "Ireland - a Novel." At library readings, at bookshop signings, even on live radio and television shows, I have heard from people who knew him. They always seem to say, "I had the honour to know - or to sail with - Captain Carlsen." Always that phrase, "the honour to."

Carlsen was extraordinary - and he would have denied it fiercely. I had suspected that he was astounding, mostly in the wide compass between his natural bravery and his deeply-felt modesty. The experience of having written "Simple Courage" confirmed it for me; it has been confirmed multiple times by those who have told me that they knew him - and that confirmation has been further enhanced by coming to know his family, down to the great-grandchildren. They all seem touched with the Carlsen brush - modest, aware people, with strong and decent values.

As a second sharing, I mean to refer here to writing that I've come across, and alert my readers to other books and authors that I've enjoyed. A number of bloggers already do this; I'm glad to join those ranks. I'll be writing across time, because I so frequently return to the books that I read many years ago and find fresh rewards there.

I also want to highlight new gifts from established authors; currently I have the thrill of reading Joyce Carol Oates. Her new novel, "The Gravedigger's Daughter," has, I understand, some family background to it. The writing, as ever, is as strong as gunmetal (I simply can't have read every novel and short story of her immense output - but I have read a great deal of it). Her characters are immediate and lasting; they remind me of the people in Italian mediaeval paintings - meaning that you expect to see them or their recognisable descendants on the streets of the towns she writes about. I have heard that, in Princeton, she is a beloved teacher. Not surprising; over and above her considerable writerly gifts there is a generosity in the work, a kindness, that takes the breath away; like all great writers she loves the humanity she discusses. A just world would give her the next Nobel Literature Prize.

Thirdly, I want to exercise my delight in words. In West Cork, Fish Publishing runs a Literary Festival every year, with Irish writers and others. It's as tight and sweet as a nut, and their courtesy makes it a pleasure to appear there. En route in July, I drove through Bandon and recalled a conversation I had with a woman in Minneapolis a few years back, who said that her Irish grandmother referred to her as "a little dote" and she wanted to know if I knew the word. My next novel, "Tipperary" (to be published early November) has some real-life characters in its pages - among them Lady Bandon, known as "Doty" to her friends. Could it be that she had been "Dotty" from "Dorothy"? Or was "Doty" a childhood pet name, common in Ireland in my childhood?

Dr. Terry Dolan of University College, Dublin, in his (essential to me) Dictionary of Hiberno-English, gives "dote" as "a term of endearment, especially for a child," and "an appetising infant or young child." Professor Dolan also cites some Old Dutch and Middle English root, meaning "silly" or "deranged." I think I'll walk quickly past that - although Lady Bandon was by all accounts sweetly eccentric.

Well, there it is; a silence broken is a weight off the mind. I mean to have this Notebook appear on the first of every month. And I mean to try and keep it close to a thousand words per entry. Perhaps those two disciplines will also help me watch out for any strutting.

Frank Delaney

On the Road

Somewhere between San Francisco and Minneapolis I pause for breath (and other things). This book tour is proving to be an exciting ride, from the east coast to the west, from websites to the windows of bookstores, from booksellers to bestseller lists and now into the north, the Twin Cities and then the Harbourfront Readings in Toronto. So far, I have signed copies to every age, grandparents and grandchildren; some purchasers have, unsurprisingly, Irish roots, most don't; many have been buying multiple copies; a surprising number of signees have already read this (not small) novel.

I have been searching in my head for an image with which I could summarize the travelling, but nothing works. A book tour is not an old-style medicine show, it is not a traveling circus or lectureship, nor is it a whistle-stop of any kind. It has sober marketing purpose but beyond that it turns out to have deep benefits – in fact, it embodies a learning curve as high and bright as a rainbow.

The tripartite rhythm of the library and bookshop public appearances contains the reassurance of consistency - reading, Q&A, then signing copies. Since the twenty minutes of questions can help address what had to be left out or got overlooked in the preceding twenty minutes of talking and reading, thus the learning curve swings in. Axiomatically, we can discover little while we're talking at each other; in their questions, people convey their interests and expectations. Are there still travelling storytellers to be found? (Answer: not in the old way.) Has affluence been bad for modern Ireland? (Answer: anything that dissolved the huge bedrock of Irish endemic poverty can't be all bad.) How much of the novel is autobiographical? (Answer, though at greater length and not flippant: all of it and none of it.)
Some of the other questions still echo in my head, such as: If spoken history is the theme of 'Ireland', and if you were to write 'America – a Novel', what would its theme be? (Answer: integration.) Would you, if asked, be prepared to lead a revolution? (Three answers: Excuse me? Then - When and where? And – I feel I need to think about that.) Who is your favourite writer of all time? (Answer – easy-peasy, William Shakespeare, because he had the largest and most comprehensive soul.) Who is the first person to read your work? (Answer: my wife.) Who are your favourite living Irish writers and why? (Answer: Deep breath: Seamus Heaney for sheer wonder; John McGahern for character-as-atmosphere; William Trevor for inner space; Edna O'Brien for endless accomplishment; Anne Enright for humour in pain and pain in humour; Roddy Doyle for pitch-perfect dialogue; Dermot Bolger for his huge spirit; Sebastian Barry for his daring; Colm Toibin for his amazing reach; Eavan Boland for her heart-stopping observation; Joseph O'Connor for 'Star of the Sea'.) There were others, I can't recall them all.

The most interesting moment for me, as ever, comes when signing books, as I frequently ask people what they read. In amongst the comforting mix of classics and modern familiars, I learn the names both of people's giants and quieter heroes; David McCullough, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, Reynolds Price, R.K.Narayan, Joan Didion, Paul Theroux, Colette, Adam Gopnik and, over and over, Alice Munro.

A book tour may be tiring but it's never dull. Focus is all; even when not 'on', the next event always looms large. I recall an episode of 'Seinfeld' where Jerry claimed that people have a greater fear of speaking in public than they have of dying. If I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that (as Samuel Beckett remarked when somebody greeted him, 'Good morning'), I know what Jerry meant. Still, if you stumble - and as they can do all across life - books break your fall.

Publication Date!

The silence of my early winter is almost over. On February the 15th, HarperCollins US will publish 'Ireland -a Novel' all across the continent of North America. This is the moment where an author divides - between the need to be silent and thinking, and the necessity to get out there and talk! All the early indications suggest an exciting publication; the previews have been encouraging and complimentary, with some reviews starred and the reader interest already has me answering questionnaires for Barnes & Noble Reading Groups and the HarperCollins readership. Which, by the way, is for me the most enjoyable part of promoting a book - connecting with actual readers, answering questions that go deep beneath the surface of the text, gathering on-the-ground, no-axe-grinding responses to a piece of my work.

Nothing sorts out a writer - nothing sorts out me - more quickly or beneficially than reader response. Book reviewers have their own profiles to consider when commiting their opinions to print - readers in book groups have no such considerations to inhibit them and consequently they offer unvarnished and immensely useful opinions. If you have failed your reader, a book group member will tell you. If you have rewarded your reader insufficiently, a book group member will suggest how you might have gone farther or in a different direction. If you have gratified a reader, they tell you too and the effect it has on me - in all cases - is to do better for the reader next time.

I am already scheduled for a number of events across the US and Canada in the coming months, beginning in Boston on Sunday and Monday, the 16th and 17th of January at the American Libraries Association midwinter conference. All details of all such appearances will begin to appear here on the website and if you find one about to happen near you, please come along and speak to me, mentioning the website. After all - no readers, no writers.

'An Account of Every Idle Word…'

One of the most useful writing tools is the human voice – the writer's own and the intended reader's. We read not so much with the eye as with the ear (and the spine, an early warning of boredom). Not a few of the great and famous authors are known to have read their work aloud before signing off on it. It's an ideal aid, an extra editor, provided there's time. If there isn’t, a punishment may await, especially if you are one of those writers invited to read your book onto tape.
I've just completed for HarperCollins a recording of the US unabridged version of 'Ireland – a Novel'. In optimum circumstances, with superb production staff, I read one thousand pages of manuscript to which the text had been re-ordered so that every page could end on a paragraph, thereby obviating page-turning difficulty.
Did I find it easy? No! Did I enjoy it? Yes, and much more than I expected. And did I learn anything from it? Oh, boy! And how…
The lighter rhetoricals first: I didn't find it easy because it wasn't. Sustaining a narrative in acceptable vocal delivery, keeping in all the cliffhangers, acknowledging all the inflections, personifying all the characters – no, that wasn't easy. Nor was keeping up the energy, although that is where talented and experienced colleagues help; they know immediately if the voice drips or drops, they catch the tiny, tiny slips to which a tired voice is prone.
As to enjoying it – to my astonishment it proved full of ideas. Though strenuous to fell an ox the whole effort ramped up my enthusiasm for the act of writing. Inside most writers there probably is a performer of some kind – writing in itself is a kind of performance. Therefore, to sit and literally breathe life into one's own sentences – how could that not be enjoyable, whatever the natural extrovert/introvert split that seems to cleave some of us?
But now comes the cost - although it could also be called 'reward' because it arrived in the form of learning. The reading-aloud required to record an audiobook feels far more intense than the reading-aloud one does before letting go of the text. This is a different level, as demanded by the form; extra concentration on every word, sharper awareness of every sentence's flow, essential scrutiny of each paragraph's leadership. Consequently, the text of the book becomes subject to far greater 'exposure'; every cadence, every nuance, every rhythm is laid bare.
Here comes the wounding part - every flaw gets magnified. Only a superhumanly confident author can read his or her own book aloud into a microphone for commercial sale and not wince and cringe from time to time at infelicities, solecisms and – to me, worst of all – missed opportunities. Oh, if only I had developed this thought! And why didn't I package that image more succinctly! Lord! but there's a lame simile. Or – ouch! another damned adverb. Hey! See how the energy of the writing dropped at the end of that chapter?
A stark experience presents few choices; this one offers two. You can either cringe onwards, wallow in the wincing, flagellate yourself at your incompetence and turn away in shame – or, having tried some or all of those exercises, you can grab the opportunity with both hands as a learning experience without parallel.
That's what I mean by ramping up enthusiasm for the act of writing. One of the many wonderful aspects of authorship is how it forgives the author. By this I mean – 'The next book is always the best.' 'Great improvement is just around the corner.' 'You were right when you told yourself that depression is the seedbed of creativity.' 'See how much you've learned from your mistakes on this one.' In other words, the act of reading what you've written with the expectation that people will buy the recording (which comes out in Spring 2005 from HarperCollins Audio) can improve by leaps and bounds the intent to write better.
Many years ago, as a young reporter in Dublin, I interviewed a visiting American bishop, the famous Fulton Sheen. He was a practised communicator, smooth as satin, not afraid in a televised sermon to leave a pause hang for up to ten seconds, an aeon in terms of air-time. As I set up the tape recorder in his suite he said with studied wryness, 'I see that I shall have to render an account of every idle word I speak.' I smiled, impressed at how aptly he found the appropriate quotation.
Ten years later I interviewed him again – the satin had been ironed further, the oil flowed thicker. And once again as I arranged the equipment he looked at the microphone in my hand and repeated the phrase; 'I see that I shall have to render an account of every idle word I speak.' I was less impressed this time; he obviously hauled it out as often as a politician shakes a hand.
Not until now, though, have I valued what must have been his original thought on the first day he used the line.

Out Loud

The notion of reclusiveness has huge attractions for many writers; to live in a small house by a big wood and simply work – but, and here's the problem, we have to sell the books we write. This cranky issue is at the top of my mind at the moment because I've just come home from the UK and Dublin publicity tour for 'Ireland – a Novel.'

What to do? Forget the solitude; it's an old idea and it's a romantic idea - but it's no longer a practical idea. You have to get your show on the road.

I've always done it, I've always been available to promote my own work and for years and years it gave me pain. Even though I love the company of publishers, booksellers and librarians, even though I love the book world, I always found it embarrassing to talk about my own work, because I had been raised with old rigid canards:- 'It's vulgar to talk about yourself'; and, 'Don't show off'.

And in years of interviewing myriad writers I've met few authors who relish this part of the job. I still find the awkwardness difficult to shake off but I have had to get over it, change my thinking, shape up to the realistic demands of the market.

My way of addressing the entire, difficult issue is to turn it around and make it positive. First - acknowledge that publicity is a writing tool. No author wants to go unread and, seen through this glass, publicity helps fulfil that desire. In fact, I can go further and say that if you know you have to publicise the book you're writing, a useful discipline can then arise; you become even more aware of your reader.

Secondly, for an author there is no satisfaction like reader satisfaction; to have a reader come up at some public event and say one's book has meant something to them is an unmitigated pleasure.
Thirdly, there is a kind of arrogance, a selfishness in assuming you, the author – correction, THE AUTHOR – is above such lowering prances. Lose that attitude; our job is also to provide an extra service of communication to our readers and for our publishers. In any case, who are we to disparage such opportunity? And who would not want to hear what our readers have to say?

This website, for instance, is an extension of what I have learned (resistantly, to begin with) about the need to publicise. I hope it becomes even more than that:– a means of thinking out loud, of observing the world in which I work, of celebrating writers I enjoy, of considering reader (and, if interesting, critical) response. Please contribute your opinions, always provided you do so thoughtfully and in a spirit of decency.

Starting a website

This is a new website and in the next few days I will write at greater length about it. For now - welcome everybody!

And I hope you enjoy as much as I do the elegant work of MEIER and the Goodwin brothers who designed the site and brought it into being.