Book 12 - The Lake House Children

(Unless we give it another name.)

Hello, and a bit of a catch-up email today. Spring has sprung here in Cantabria, and everything is coming into verdant green life, but we’ve finally seen the weather we’ve been told this area is famous for. It’s rained pretty much for ever, and it’s raining as I write this.

Loki doesn’t seem to care...

Even so, life feels good at the moment. I’ve finished my 12^th novel and sent it off for line editing. That’s the stage after copy editing, when my editor throws my ‘completed’ manuscript back at me with the words: “can you just change chapters 2 through 59?” It’s nice to have that behind me, at least until the next book.

Book twelve – working title ‘The Lake House Children’ – is a bit hard to introduce. It’s one of those where, if I say too much, it ruins the surprise. So I’m going to be careful here and not say too much. If you liked Little Ghosts (currently an Amazon deal of the month in the UK, so grab it at 0.99p) then it’s sort of in the same general area, in that it flirts with the supernatural, but it doesn’t require you to be a ‘believer’ for it to make sense. With both books the plot can be understood from both perspectives – a character really is a ghost, or that scientifically-accepted explanations exist to make sense of everything that happens. This book goes a bit further than Little Ghosts though, and it’s been very interesting to research. And it’s probably fair to say it’s changed my outlook on life in a fairly substantial way.

The book focusses on the relationship between three grown-up sisters, and the setting (as the name suggests) is centred around their lives and the lives of their children in-and-around a lake house in a fictional town near the east coast of the United States. There’s also a crime, or two, or at least enough that the FBI are investigating. When I think of a better way to describe it, I’ll get back to you!

I’m never that sure what I feel about a book once I’ve finished it. I know I ought to tell you how brilliant it is, and that you should drop everything the moment it comes out. But honestly I’m usually so exhausted by the process of getting it over the line, and so fed up with redoing chapters 2 through 59 again and again, that I just don’t know. This one is no different, but I’m also just nervous because I think a fair few people will consider that I’ve taken at least partial leave of my senses. And quite possibly I have – the world of a novelist does involve a lot of time alone listening to voices in my head.

But not always. I have been getting out and about a little bit in our newly adopted home. Specifically I’ve been asked to do a couple of talks, as part of World Book Day (as celebrated in the next town over), and the Festival of Books in our nearest town. I haven’t done much public speaking before, and what I have done hasn’t been very impressive. But what made it even harder this time around, I had to give these talks in Spanish.

We’re coming up to our two-year anniversary here, which means I can confirm that time flies just as quickly here as in the UK. But also that being a middle-aged Englishman who spends his whole day writing books in English, it’s very hard to learn the local language. I am trying though, which is the main reason I said yes to these talks.

It's tricky writing this. I know it will be read mostly by English speakers in the UK and America who, like me, are ‘not good’ at languages. But also by quite a few people who are bilingual or trilingual. For some reason I’ve always thought that the ability to speak foreign is nearly impossibly cool. Perhaps it objectively is. After all, it’s a well-known trope of the 007 franchise, where Bond slips effortlessly into the local dialect, before slipping even more effortlessly into bed with the local hottie, who just happens to be passing and in need of a shag. Anyway, my point is, I find myself somewhat awkwardly between the two camps. To people like I used to be, I realise I must now appear really good at Spanish. I can watch Spanish TV, read Spanish books, and have Spanish conversations with real Spanish people. I just do it all very slowly, and only understand 70% of what’s happening when I do so. But to those people who are actually bilingual, I’m still absolutely rubbish. To anyone who remembers Fawlty Towers, I’m the English equivalent of Manuel, the hopeless waiter from Barcelona.

So I said yes to these talks, partly as a way of pushing myself to improve my Spanish a bit, and partly because it’s just incredible to be asked. Honestly, if someone had told me three years ago, when we were considering moving to Spain, that in a couple of years we’d not just be here, but I’d be giving talks about my books, in the local town, in Spanish, I wouldn’t have believed it. It still feels a bit like a dream.

Reality is never quite like dreams though. I’d be lying if I said there were large crowds on either occasion. The first was held in the library one wet afternoon, and there were about a dozen people in the audience. I would guess that nine of them were there to shelter from the rain. The other three were Maria and the kids, but I still think my faltering explanation of how we came to be here went down well. The second talk was outside, and mercifully it was dry. This time I wasn’t the only author on the bill, but one of several smaller authors to support Mikel Santiago, who is one of the most successful novelists in Spain. He drew about eighty people, and gave a talk that I only understood about 70% of, and then went off to sign books for about an hour. I then got on stage and did my thing, and there were about eight people left, but I was genuinely delighted.

Rafa was very excited to meet a genuinely famous author and asked Mikel Santiago to sign his ‘Dog-Man’ book (not written by Mikel, but that didn’t bother Rafa).

But it’s a pretty cool autograph. I need to improve my book-signing game…

Onto other topics: I mentioned in my last email that my brother Jono has unveiled a new adventure, and I want to update on that here. I know a lot of you have read his book Long Standing Ambition in which he describes his voyage around the UK by windsurfer, sleeping under his sail and scavenging seagull eggs for sustenance (he only did that once, mostly he seemed to feed himself on fish and chip and Snickers bars). Anyway, this time around he's flown half way around the world to windsurf around Japan. And this week he set off, from the Chiba peninsula to the east of Tokyo. If everything goes well, it will take him around a year to get around, and following him is a really interesting way to learn more about a country (be honest, did you know that the Chiba peninsula even existed?) You can follow Jono in real time, seeing the actual track he’s taking, and he’s going to post regular updates on his website. Good luck Jono, and good sailing…

Jono’s website:

https://japan.onebubble.earth/

And the tracker to see where he is in real time:
https://japan.onebubble.earth/tracker

Right. It’s stopped raining for a half hour, so I’m off to take the dog for his walk.

Edit - One more thing before I go. Last time I wrote to say there might be exciting things on the horizon, but I couldn’t talk about them. One of those is now over the line, so I can say that we’ve signed another agreement to try and get The Things you find in Rockpools adapted for TV. That absolutely doesn’t mean it will get made, it’s just being taken around the studios and offered up to see if they like it. And most books that get shopped around like this don’t end up on Netflix. But on the other hand, all of the ones that do, have to go through this stage. So I can dream about it. And if you enjoyed reading about Billy, please do keep your fingers crossed!

Gregg