The goodness of 2013

I should’ve known this year would be a good one. I started it under the stars by a campfire up in the Vietnamese mountains, drinking whisky, feeding birthday cake to the farm’s guard dog each time he came around. The next day my friend and I walked the deserted hills of the national park, found a tiny deserted café where I wrapped a tiny black kitten in my tartan scarf and drank hot sweet Vietnamese coffee. We got lost and then we ran full-pelt down the biggest hills.

From there I returned to Hanoi and then to Bangkok and Chang Mai where I filled up on sunshine after the long cold winter months in Vietnam. I returned to my beloved Hackney, to the energy the edge the sullied beauty of my city that is always home to me no matter how often I leave it.

I took a lot of planes and trains and buses this year… to Hanoi to Bangkok to Chang Mai to Liverpool to Chambery to Bonnie Balloch to Northumbria to Seoul to Gongju to Busan to Edinburgh to Budapest to Northumbria and home again. I taught at Cambridge University with National Academy of Writing and with the British Council in Korea. I’ve ran along the River Han and the Thames, the sky stretching above and me feeling like I was flying. I started to meditate. I moved next to a bakery and ate a lot very good bread. I was able to give up my salary job and make a living as a writer.

Tony Hogan came out in paperback and continued to do me proud with good reviews and a few more prize listings. I won the Scottish First Book of the Year. I sold my second novel Thirst and worked and worked and worked to make it as good as it could be. I judged the Green Carnation Prize with a wonderful group of people.

It has been a year of all of the good stuff – big and small – I’ve been able to devote myself to writing. I’ve worked hard and been very lucky and hopefully I’ve passed along some of that good fortune too.

And the new year? I’ve just started the first draft of my third book – that blissful run of imagination and freedom and the blank page and I’ll be working on that for the next twelve months. In January the French edition of Tony Hogan will come out with Editions Phillipe Rey (somehow wee Janie’s made it to French Elle and Harpers and Bazaar) and then in February with Penguin US (likewise the Ryan women have had nice mentions in Publishers Weekly and Booklist). I’ll be teaching a lot in 2014: for Arvon, The Norwich Writers’ Centre, back at Cambridge with NAW. I’ll perform the first section of the Tony Hogan play in London with Spread the Word.

At the end of January I’m going to move out to the romantic post-communist gorgeousness of Budapest for spring (coming back to lovely London regularly for talks and teaching and events) to properly hunker down and enjoy every moment of filling that blank page with a story.

And then…in July…Thirst will come out. It’s had some early reads – people have wept (in a good way) I hope to bring the reading pubic to happy/sad tears regularly in 2014. And here, hip hip hooray, is the amazing cover.

So that it really. No resolutions. No regrets. Lots and lots of gratitude for what I’ve been given this year. If I have any wish for 2014 it is for more of the same: working hard to make good stories, running and swimming, traveling, being grateful for the interesting brilliant people I know and meet, eating good bread, drinking coffee and petting dogs in the street. Small, simple, good pleasures, a life lived fully and with kindness and curiosity.

Here’s to 2014 you lovely lot – lets make it a smasher.