Catherine Banner's Blog, page 4

On being reviewed

Over the past few weeks, The House at the Edge of Night,which was written like this, alone in a room, has gone out into the world andstarted to receive reviews. Some of these have been from other novelists (like Nicholas Christopher, Peter Nichols and Sara Gruen, whose work you should check out because they are not only generous people but excellent writers). Some are from newspapers and magazines (like The Express and The Pool), others from book blogs (for examplehere,hereand here). An...

The House at the Edge of Night is officially launched!

The House at the Edge of Night was published in the UK exactly a week ago, and now that I am back at home in Italy I thought I would tell you a little about it...

OnMonday 16th May,ahead of publication, my publishers and I hosted a book launch at Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop in Notting Hill. We served Italian food and sweets, Italian drinks and generally had a very happy evening celebrating the end of almost three years of work on the book. I made a short speech, and what I spoke about was co...

Publication week begins...

Exciting news: I am in London. I arrived on Wednesday and will be here for the whole of publication week. The House at the Edge of Night is out in just four days, which is hard to believe - like all long-awaited things, a book publication seems to approach at different rates the nearer you get to it. Publication day on Thursday 19th will be the culmination of three years of hard work, not just my own but also that of all the dedicated and passionate people who have embraced the book and becom...

May update: what’s happening this month with The House at the Edge of Night

Real copies arriving in Italy last week. Soon these will also be out in the wild in UK bookstores... The House at the Edge of Night is printed, ready and coming out in just thirteen days in the UK. So I thought this would be a good time to post an update about what’s going on with the book this month!

On Saturday, I’ll be packing my suitcases and travelling to London for publication day. The book is launched on the 16th, and the official publication date is the 19th, so the book will be availa...

Finished copies of The House at the Edge of Night

Today I wanted to share this: the first finished copy ofThe House at the Edge of Night, which just arrived from my publishers in the UK. It's a moving moment to see the final book, which holds within its pages all kinds of hopes and expectations, and which contains the sum total of all the writing, redrafting, editing, collaboration, thought and love that have been poured into it - in the case ofThe House at the Edge of Night- over more than three years. It's definitely been worth the w...

The #yearinthelifeofawriter project: one week on

Last week I launched a project on Instagram called #yearinthelifeofawriter. It started out as a personal experiment in telling stories through social media, so I've been surprised by the number of people for whom the idea of chronicling a writing life a day at a time seems to have struck a chord. So this week I thought I’d share some more information about what the project is, how I'm doing it, and where you can join in. Here are the questions people have been asking so far!

I’m new to the #ye...

Photo Project: A Year in the Life of a Writer

Today I'm very pleased to announce a new project. Starting today, and for the next 365 days, I am going to attempt to honestly document a year in the life of a writer. Each day I’ll take one photograph, write something about it, and upload it to Instagramunder the hashtag #yearinthelifeofawriter (as well as sharing updates via my author Facebook and Twitter and here on my blog, for anyone who wants to follow along but doesn't use Instagram). This is a project I've been thinking about for a lo...

What (one) writer's desk looks like

This week I've been working hard on a new project. The last four months I've been immersed in research, and the new book is just at that critical stage when it stops being notes on a page and starts becoming the fragile beginning of a story. Often when writers document the writing process, it ends up sounding rather mystical and elusive. But it strikes me that the objects that we keep around us are concrete things which can illuminate the process. So this week, I thought I'd show you wh...

What I've been reading so far in 2016

I was reflecting the other night, as I finished yet another excellent book, that 2016 has been a very good year in reading so far. Between new releases by favourite authors, a string of spot-on recommendations and a streak of good luck, I've found myself reading not one bad novel since Christmas. This week I thought I'd share some of the highlights.

January

The year got off to a good start with one old favourite writer, Anne Tyler, and one new favourite writer, Elena Ferrante.In January I...

A trip to New York, in pictures

I just got back from New York, where I went last week to visit my US publishers, Random House, and attend a special event for The House at the Edge of Night. It was an intense week full of meetings, preparations, jetlag, burritos, conversations about reading and writing, and many great people, some of whom I already knew, and lots of whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. Here are five pictures that, for me, sum up the trip…

1. Day One. On the way from the airport to the city....