Jane, Edward and I

[steepholm]

Today I'm a six-novel author, with the publication of The Lurkers (albeit Amazon.co.uk has decided - perhaps knowing something I don't - that it's to go straight from 'Not Yet Published' to 'Possibly Out of Print', thus skipping the tiresome period of availability my books usually enjoy).

Six is an important figure for me. When my first book came out, my euphoria was punctured slightly by my agent saying to me, in a way she intended to be encouraging, 'No one thinks you're a one-book man, Charlie'. From that day forth, the fear of being a one-book man haunted my footsteps like the Ancient Mariner's frightful fiend. I wouldn't even have the slight comfort of being a flash in the pan, since my first book was signally failing to ignite. Flush down the pan, more like...

Eventually I completed my second book. But, within a few days, I heard an interview with Gore Vidal in which he carefully distinguished those dilettante authors with 'only one or two books' in them, from true professionals such as himself who had been born 'writers for life'.

So, out came books three, four and five, forced to the light at least in part by the volcanic power of my own insecurity. But all the time, I held to my breast the precious fact that Jane Austen and E.M. Forster, two of my favourites, had published only six novels each. And no one doubted that they were real writers, right? Possibly even realler than Gore Vidal! Okay, so I hadn't got Addison's disease, or fallen in love with a policeman, but I did have my own problems to explain my relative lack of prolificity... I decided that, if I could only make that quota I could relax, and treat anything else as a bonus.

I will slide over the inevitable comparisons between my Book 6 and theirs: Persuasion, A Passage to India and The Lurkers do not make a natural threesome. But never mind the quality - just count them!

Comments

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

That's the book I wrote while dogged by the ghastly spectre of being a one-book man - I wonder if it shows?

The only dogged spectre in that book is Timon... It was the first of your books that I read and is easily the most scary (though Calypso Dreaming comes a very close second...

I'm going to treat myself to a leisurely chronological re-read of all your books in the New Year once I'm free of the ghastly spectacle of the Cybils Longlist ! It's my treat to myself for reading 70 or so brand new books. I may even take one or two home for my Xmas break as I'm having a re-reading stint over the holiday ("The Dark Is Rising" sequence and A Christmas Carol are top of that pile of books to take to Gloucestershire.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Nice choice of Christmas books! I can hear the fire crackling now (with an eerie blue flame that gives no heat...)

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

It would have to be a fire with an eerie blue flame and no heat as my parents have got central heating ! ;-D

I'm looking forward to re-reading both - not least because it's been a while since I read them. Once I've re-read TDiRS and Mandrake, which an acquaintance kindly loaned to me, I believe I'll be able to say I've read ALL of Susan Coooper's YA fiction (and quite a few of the children's books too) this year...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking Mandrake is not YA, though it's the kind of thing I would happily have read as a teenager, in the same way I enjoyed John Wyndham. I'll be very interested to see what you think of it!

[scholars-blog.livejournal.com]

Oh is it not ? Well I shall read it anyway since I have a copy lurked about this book-filled-to-overflowing room ! And you can expect a review to appear in due course !