This time last year

                                          

I love the Man Booker longlist announcement. Not because I have usually read many, if any, of the longlisted books (I don't usually read books that are newly out) and not because it kindles some long held dream (though who doesn't dream of that?) I love it because it marks the moment my life spun on its axis and I managed to find myself here. 

This time last year I was working a job I was miserable in. It was enormously high pressured to the point that I felt like I couldn't breathe. It was also the time my first novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma went on submission. Going on submission is like bungee jumping; terrifying and thrilling and all you can hope is that after the ups and downs everything will turn out fine.

Around Man Booker longlist announcement time, last year, after a particularly gruelling string of meetings, project assessments and Gantt chart drafting's in the day job, I got an email from my agent saying that an editor was interested in Tony Hogan and was discussing it with her colleagues. The next day, a Friday, I got another email to say that a different publisher was doing the same. That evening my partner and I went to Shoreditch Park to watch the Philharmonic Orchestra and fireworks with a bottle of wine. As the music played and the fireworks whizz-banged, my mind was whirring; I couldn't believe I might be on the verge of having my dream come true. I'd written a book and signed with an amazing agent but the idea that my book might actually be published still seemed like, well yes, a dream.

One of those emails was from Chatto & Windus. Chatto had two books on the Man Booker longlist last year (Lisa Moore and Rose Tremain) and that summer I would go into bookshops, with their impressive Man Booker displays, walk the aisles, pick up beautiful books by Chatto, with their distinctive logo of two studious cherubs, then shake my head in disbelief and walk out.

I left that awful job soon after but before I'd signed with Chatto – an act of impulse that I've never regretted. Soon after those emails I met with the editors and publicity team from Chatto and Vintage and Tony Hogan will be published with them next year.

One year on I am on the second draft of my second novel Thirst. I've just returned from Russia which was made possible through an Arts Council England Grant and Chatto have another book on the Man Booker longlist (D.J. Taylor for Derby Day). Needless to say, I am still going into shops to look at their wonderful books and shaking my head but this time in happy disbelief that mine will be joining them…around this time next year actually.

Next: Photo-journey