Alex George's Blog, page 3

Birthday Boy.

Today is my fiftieth birthday.

I confess that I have always been rather dismissive of people who pay too much attention to their age. And yet here I am, half a century old, rethinking all this. 50 does feel like a milestone worth reflecting upon, just a little.

If you’d asked me twenty-five years ago where I would be in another twenty-five years’ time, I would have assumed, or even hoped, that I’d be a senior partner in the London law firm where I was then working. I would most certainly nothave guessed that I’d be living in Missouri (because I’d never heard of Missouri), owner of an independent bookstore, author of seven novels, and director of a literary festival. (I am still a lawyer, but most days it feels like I just play one on TV.)

This is not the life I ever imagined for myself – hell, even ten years ago I would never have dreamed about Skylark or Unbound – but I feel nothing but gratitude at all the unanticipated twists and turns my life has taken. There was a time when I seemed destined to follow a particular course. What’s interesting, looking back, is that I was totally fine with that, back then. These days I have no idea what lies ahead – and that feels like a blessing to me now.

In April, the fifth Unbound Book Festival will take place. In May, The Paris Hours will be published. I’ve begun work on the next book and am very excited about that. Every time I walk into Skylark Bookshop, my heart fills up. My family and friends, near and far, complete me. Had I stayed at that law firm in London I would be earning, quite literally, twenty or thirty times what I do now, but this is a life far richer than any I could have dared to imagine for myself back then.

Of course, turning fifty makes you aware of time passing. The future no longer stretches ahead, carelessly infinite. Sometimes I wonder how many books I have left to write. My eldest child has left home, and the others will follow before I know it. I have to wear glasses now. I remember my friends who have died, too damn soon. But I’m not complaining. Instead, I’m learning simply to be grateful for every day. And as I’ve contemplated all this, I’ve come up with a little mantra, which I’m going to do my best to follow from now on.

Work out what brings you joy.

Do that.

Here We Go Again

 

The months prior to a book’s publication be a discombobulating time. There’s always a lot to do to help the novel into the world – articles to write, interviews to give, talks to prepare, newsletters to compose – but these things in service of the book that you actually finished months or even years ago, while important, feel strangely disconnected. I’m a novelist, and if I’m not actually writing a novel then it feels as if a part of me is missing.

Since the text of The Paris Hours was finalized, I’ve been casting around for my next book. I’ve had three competing ideas pinging around my brain for ages, but was having trouble deciding which one to choose. (And that’s a big decision: I’m going to be spending several years with these characters, after all.) In the end I realized I’d just have to sit down and write them out: I can never tell if a story has legs until it appears on the page.

So far I’ve made two false starts, abandoning both efforts after a few chapters.

I often begin new projects while I’m away from home, free from distractions. The first unsuccessful effort was started by the side of a lake in Maine late last summer, the second in a hotel room in Seattle in early January. But I won’t be going anywhere for a while, and couldn’t wait any longer to try again. So yesterday afternoon I switched off the internet, silenced my phone, and began to write. Conditions might not have been perfect (I won’t lie, I miss that lake in Maine) but, well, you know what say they say about beggars and choosers.

In the end I eked out about 600 words. Some of them were OK, although most are probably destined for the delete key at some point. But I’m writing a novel again! Getting to tell a new story every day, even just for an hour or two, grounds me in a way that nothing else can. There’s so much going on right now – the bookshop, the book festival, pre-publication malarky for The Paris Hours – that during the day I barely have time to draw breath. But telling a story forces me to be still, and quiet, and it takes me away from all of the other anxieties of my complicated my life. And no matter what frustrations I may encounter during the rest of the day, nobody can take those new words away from me.

This will, astonishingly, be my eighth novel. I don’t know where this one will take me, but that’s OK. The destination will become apparent over time. Right now, it’s the journey that’s the thing.

Big Book Giveaway!

See these beauties?

Would you like them?

To celebrate the forthcoming publication of my third novel in May, I’m giving away all three books – hardback first editions of A Good American and Setting Free the Kites, and an exclusive cannot-buy-it-anywhere galley of The Paris Hours. I’ll sign them all, of course, and if you want I’ll personalize them however you like. I’m going to give away two sets of books, and I’ll ship them to the lucky winners, anywhere within the United States.

All you have to do to enter the drawing is to sign up for my newsletter, which you do by clicking here. It takes, oh, about 25 seconds, depending on how quickly you type. The newsletter comes out once a month, is extremely short and occasionally amusing, maybe, a bit. It’s about owning a bookshop, writing books, running a book festival, being an Englishman living in the Midwest, food, and dogs. Not necessarily in that order.

Plus, as a thank you for subscribing, I’ll send you a link to a recording of my reading a very silly story about scary English pies.

The drawing will be open to everyone who subscribes up to midnight on February 26, which NOT COINCIDENTALLY will be the last, vanishing second of my 40s. Yes, I turn 50 on February 27. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.

Here’s the link again. Good luck! And please tell your friends! I’m trying to impress my publisher with how many subscribers I can get, so the more the merrier.

Blue Flower Arts

I’m delighted to announce that for speaking engagements I am now represented by the wonderful agency, Blue Flower Arts. I have worked with Alison Granucci and her team at BFA for several years in my capacity as director of the Unbound Book Festival. Together we have brought wonderful writers like George Saunders, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Jericho Brown and Tracy K. Smith to Columbia, Missouri. It feels a little surreal to have joined their dazzling roster of authors and poets. (Can you say imposter syndrome?)

Anyway, there it is.

Do Me A Favor?

It’s about six months until publication of The Paris Hours, which means that things are beginning to crank up around here. The lovely people at Flatiron Books have developed an impressive marketing plan which they will be rolling out and implementing over the months ahead. Look out for multiple galley giveaways on Goodreads, social media posts, various pre-publication trips to exotic places like, er, Baltimore, and all sorts of good stuff. I, of course, will be toiling away over here, writing things that I hope might be of passing interest.

I’m also planning to start writing a monthly newsletter, because apparently I wasn’t busy enough already. This will be fun, though – just some gentle musings about the literary life as I juggle my author/bookseller/lit festival director hats. And probably some photos of my dog, like this one.

So obviously all very professional and not at all silly.

Anyway, if you would like to sign up for the newsletter, that would be completely awesome, and I would be forever grateful. I promise not to fill up your inbox with too much stuff. I’m way too busy to generate enough stuff to piss anyone off, I assure you.

Thanks, and a happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

PS: While you’re at it, will you please follow me on Instagram, too? I shall be stepping up my game there, also. In theory.

26.2.

So, I did it. The race got run.

I was apprehensive about this year’s New York marathon right up until the moment I crossed the starting line on the south side of the Verrazzano Bridge – finally preparations had not gone especially well. Things were not improved when I thought I felt a twinge of cramp during mile one – but that must have been a false alarm, because in fact things went pretty well.

I was much better trained this time around, but no matter how good one’s preparation, there is always an element of good fortune required when you run a marathon. Sometimes even the most elite runners pull up half way through a race. So, always, the first goal is just to finish.

My run was helped by seeing friends and family along the way. My wife planned her day with military precision so she saw me at three different points over the course of the race (true dedication) and it was great to see the wonderful Mary Morris at mile 7 in Brooklyn whose sign made me very happy.

This year I also put my name on the front of my shirt, which was a tremendous help, as complete strangers yelled out my name in encouragement as I plodded by. It turns out that ALEX is an excellent name for these purposes – it’s short, easy to read from a distance, and there’s pretty much no possibility of mispronunciation. Literally thousands of lovely people urged me on by name. It really was quite extraordinary.

As a result of all that, I managed to knock 28 minutes off my previous best time (a low bar, admittedly.) I had a secondary goal, to finish in under four hours, and I missed that target by 5 minutes. But, to my surprise, I found that I wasn’t especially bothered. All that means, I told myself, is that I still have something to aim for next time.

Now, I really do try and resist the temptation of drawing too many analogies between running a marathon and writing novels, but this one struck me in particular. Yes, marathons are races, but for 99.9% of us who run them, we’re only ever racing against ourselves. We set targets, times to beat – but even when we achieve those goals, there is still always room for improvement. And so it is with writing books. Every book, like every race, is different, but one thing remains the same. We begin each new adventure in the hope that this one will be better than the last.

If I can just work out a way to get a few thousand people to chant my name every time I sit down at the keyboard, I’ll be all set.

The Night Before the New York Marathon

 

This is a picture of the finish line of the New York Marathon. I took it yesterday afternoon. Like many other runners, I did my last training run in Central Park, and when it was over I walked up to the finish and stood there, imagining that moment on Sunday afternoon when my legs will finally stop moving.

I took pretty much the same photo two years ago, when I ran New York for the first time. (Runners love their rituals.) Back in 2017 I felt lucky to be there at all. My training had been badly disrupted by injury, and up until three weeks before the race I did not think that I would be able to participate at all. All that uncertainty (and inadequate training) meant that all I wanted to do was finish. Which I duly did.

This time around, my preparations have gone more smoothly. Training has been hard, but steady. I’ve put in the hours and the miles. And, this year, I have a goal: to finish in under four hours, which is more than 30 minutes quicker than in 2017. I’ve been feeling nervous about it – running marathons is way more fun when you’re not worrying about time and glancing compulsively at your watch.

The thing about goals is that sometimes you miss them.

Because here’s the thing: yesterday’s run in Central Park did not go well. Right now my legs feel stiff and heavy. My knees are sore. My left foot is aching, just a little. As I write this, on Saturday evening, I am full of apprehension. The idea of running 26.2 miles seems impossible. I worry that my body is desperately signaling that all this is a very bad idea.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Rather like writing a novel, running a marathon is, at the beginning, an act of faith. Nobody, not even the most experienced runners, knows for sure how things are going to pan out. Whether it’s adrenaline, or something more mystical, unforeseen factors can come into play – “race day magic”, my friend Pat calls it. For example: two years ago, at Mile 21, I was prancing down Fifth Avenue like a young gazelle in springtime.

Of course, the only way to find out how this particular story ends is to take the first step. So I will get up tomorrow morning and I will catch the ferry to Staten Island. And I will give thanks every inch of the way, no matter what happens. There’s so much to be thankful for. I’m grateful for both my friends looking out for me, and the two million strangers who just like to cheer everyone on. (To say nothing of my wonderful wife, who is going to see me at three different points during the race.) I’m grateful for my fellow runners, all 50,000 of them. I’m grateful that the weather should be perfect. Most of all, I’m grateful that I am healthy enough even to contemplate doing this thing. Yes, I’m scared. But Good Lord, it’s the New York Marathon! I’m going to run my heart out, and see what happens.

The thing about goals is that sometimes they don’t matter.

Zut Alors

I’ve written in the past about the anxious moment just before you click on the email from your editor with the jpeg of your new book cover attached. A similar frisson occurs when you hear the narrator of the audiobook for the first time.

It’s odd, hearing someone else read your words. You quickly realize that even though the words can’t change, there are still countless small decisions to be made, all of which will affect the reading. What does the reader emphasize, where does he pause, or speed up? How dramatic (or melodramatic) is he? And then there’s the voice itself. It’s obviously not yours – but could it be? Does it sound anything like the voice that’s been rattling around your head these past several years?

A Good American and Setting Free the Kites were both told in the first person, by an American character. That, for obvious reasons, limited the available choice of narrator for the audiobook. (I was never in contention for that gig.) The Paris Hours is very different. It’s a third party narrator, and so is not associated so directly with any one character in the novel. Also, since the book is set in Paris (spoiler alert!) there was no call for a particular accent – although I was pretty sure the publisher wouldn’t be looking for a John Cleese-stye turn at the start of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

This week I was sent an audio file of the actor that Macmillan Audio have chosen to read the book, and I’m thrilled. It really does kind of sound how I’d imagined the book in my head. The actor, Raphael Corkhill, is English – but, like me, now lives the US. (He appeared the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and was also in NBC’s The Blacklist.) It sounds as if he must have spent some time in France, too, as he attacks the little bits of French that are scattered about the book with impressive gusto and in an impeccable accent. I’ve had a mixed relationship with my audiobooks in the past – I’ve never listened to much of them. But I’m looking forward to hearing what Raphael does with the text.

So much of putting a book out into the world is out of an author’s hands. All I can do is marshall the words on the page, but for everything else I have to rely on others. It’s one leap of faith (and a lot of finger crossing) after another. But so far – with the cover and now with the choice of Raphael – I feel as if I’m in wonderful hands with my new publisher, Flatiron Books.

Don’t Stop Believin’ (Or Writin’)

It’s been three and a half weeks since I last wrote a word of my new novel. They have not been good weeks. I’ve been listless and irritable. I’ve been sleeping badly. I’ve been feeing blue for no apparent reason. When I don’t write, I lose my center of gravity. I’m untethered.

It was all going so well, too. I’ve been planning this new book for months, but finally began to put words onto the page while we were staying in a small lake house in Maine this August. Once we got back to Missouri I settled back into my usual routine – up at 5 a.m. for two uninterrupted hours of writing, fortified by several cups of espresso along the way. After some weeks of this, I was at about the 12,000 word mark. When you write as slowly as I do, that represented a pretty decent return. By my standards, I was flying.

And then I hit a slight bump – a small plotting detail I needed to work out, but couldn’t. The sensible thing would have been to put it to one side and push on, but instead I stopped completely. Nothing got written for several mornings. I was still getting up at 5, but now I read, or did other work. I told myself this was all fine, a healthy break. I would return to the book in a day or two. Except I didn’t. Doubts had begun to gnaw at me. I wondered if this was really the book I should be writing. I flicked disconsolately through the pages that I’d printed out, reluctant to actually read any of it.

The thing is, I need to write. I’ve never been too bothered by how many words get written each morning – what matters is that something is getting put down on paper. Progress, even if small, is still progress. Each morning’s words are in the bank. Whatever other frustrations and disappointments the rest of the day might hold, I’ll still have them. That’s a huge comfort. But when I stop writing, I no longer have that ballast to steady me when the waters get choppy. And then things don’t go so well.

Of course, there’s an obvious fix: sit down and start writing again. But what’s so interesting – and so infuriating – is how difficult that can be, even after all this time, seven books in. Over the years I’ve become very creative in coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t get back to work. (The house is very clean right now, and we’re up to date on laundry.) Indolence descends, then calcifies, then crucifies. Suddenly the idea of switching on the laptop and opening that document seems utterly impossible. I know, I think, I’ll write a post about this writer’s block that’s afflicting me. And then I don’t do that either. It sounds like a joke, except it’s really not. Another day, another week passes, and still no words are written.

I still don’t have a solution to that little plot problem that stopped me writing a few weeks ago, but that doesn’t matter any more. I’m a writer. So I’d better bloody write. Bum, meet seat. The two of you are going to reacquaint yourselves. This post is where it starts.

THE PARIS HOURS – cover reveal!

It’s been an awfully long time since I posted here, but I’m thrilled to post the cover of my new novel, THE PARIS HOURS, which will be published next May by Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan.

THE PARIS HOURS will be the seventh novel I’ve published. Each book has come into the world with its own unique set of challenges, quiet satisfactions, and toe-curling embarrassments, but some things never change. One of these constants is the overwhelming anxiety that descends when my inbox chimes and I see an email from my editor titled simply cover.

The cover of a book is important. I mean, super-important. A beautiful, arresting image can inspire excitement within the publishing house; it can attract the attention of booksellers and generate buzz pre-publication – and, of course, it can tempt book buyers into picking the book up as it sits on bookshop tables and shelves. A lot rests on the cover, in other words. But as an author, there’s something more profound at stake than just marketing and sales. As I open that email and the cursor hovers over the jpeg attachment, a more elemental question skewers me: did they get it? When a cover captures something essential in the book, the writer feels seen and understood. And that feels wonderful.

My new publishers sent me a whole questionnaire about the cover. They wanted to know what covers of recently published books I liked, and why. I was asked to provide a commentary on the jacket designs of my previous novels. Did I have any thoughts about the new book? (Oh, did I have thoughts.) I labored over my answers, but everything I wanted could be boiled down into one simple, if desperate, request: please don’t put the Eiffel Tower on the cover.

I should explain. The novel is set in Paris in 1927, and takes place over the course of a single day. I went to school in the northern suburbs of Paris when I was thirteen, and a decade later I lived and worked in the center of the city as an attorney in a large international law firm. But even though I know the place quite well, it’s difficult to write about it without tumbling into crowd-pleasing cliché. People are already so familiar with the city’s landmarks that it can be a challenge to present a fresh perspective on all that beauty. I did my best, but still I worried that all my efforts would be in vain if the world’s most recognizable architectural structure appeared on the cover of the book.

Anyway, as you can see, it doesn’t.

I love everything about this cover. The green is quite gorgeous. I adore the sinuously curving staircase, the interplay of dark and light. I love the fabulous slash of orange on the right side of the image. I love the (literal) interiority of the thing. In other words: they got it. I’m thrilled to share it with you, and I hope you like it. Drop me a line in the comments and tell me what you think.