Well, this one was a dramatic delivery! I started it in March 2022 and finished it in September. You’d think that twenty-one books down the line you’d have a handle on how you write and how things happen and what it takes to get a book onto the page but, like children, every book is different, and everything that you learned writing the books that came before it counts for NOTHING when you’re confronted with a new universe to corral. And thus it was with this one. I didn’t know I could write this fast! I worried that I wasn’t doing the things I normally do, like creating a dual timeframe or flashbacks; where are my teenage points of view, I kept thinking? Where is my male character? What is this book? And why am I writing it so fast?
So really I think I would like to thank Will Brooker first and foremost, who even though he wasn’t writing a book about me writing a book this year, was still keen to read my latest work in progress just for fun and who, at around the 30,000 mark when I was feeling dizzy with uncertainty and fear, wrote back to me to say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s f***ing delicious.’ This singlehandedly got me through the next 60,000 words. Thank you, Will.
I’d also like to thank my sister, Sacha, for the chat in her kitchen back in February when I said, ‘There’s an old man in a window at a laptop, and there’s someone in a room down the hallway behind a closed door and I don’t know who it is yet,’ and she said, ‘What about a teenage girl, who’s a gaming addict?’, immediately bringing the whole thing to life in my head. The littlest things can have the greatest impact.
Thanks as ever to my editor, Selina Walker, who went above and beyond with this one – I’m not sure how many times she read it, but it was a lot – and to everyone else at Century in the UK who works so hard all the time on my behalf, especially Najma (much-deserved award-winning publicist of the year, no less!) and to Claire Bush and Sarah Ridley for all the background bells and whistles that help make books successful. Thank you also to Claire Simmonds for working so hard on my sales. Thank you to Jonny Geller, my agent at Curtis Brown, for always steering the ship in a straight line and letting me sit at my desk making stuff up without having to worry about the other things, and thanks to the rest of the team – to Viola, Ciara, Kate and Nadia. To Deborah Schneider, my agent in the US, thank you for every minute of everything you’ve done for me over the years. You are incredible and I am eternally grateful to you.
Thank you also to the excellent team at Simon & Schuster in the US, to Lindsay Sagnette, my fantastic editor, and to Ariele Fredman, my not-yet-award-winning-but-bloody-well-should-be-because-she’s-amazing publicist, thank you for working so hard and tirelessly on my behalf and helping me build such a brilliant and loyal readership on the other side of the pond. Thank you also to Jade, Dayna, Karlyn, Camila and Libby. You’re all superb.
And the usual thanks to all the people who facilitate reading: the librarians, booksellers, bloggers, Bookstagrammers and teachers. I am so grateful to you all. And to you, the readers of course, thank you for picking up my books and sharing them and talking about them and making me feel like what I do is important.
And lastly, thank you to all the people who make up my day-to-day world, the world that brings me these stories and allows me the time and space and inspiration to write them; to my friends, family, neighbours, fellow writers and, mostly, to the intriguing strangers in windows, on beaches and on the street who spark ideas and birth worlds and will never know that someone wrote a whole book about them.
Thank you!
Nathan’s friend’s name, Giovanni, was given to me by the winner of an auction to raise funds for the charity Young Lives vs Cancer. Here is a little about what they do:
When a child is diagnosed with cancer it threatens everything, for them and their family. At a time when they should be busy being children, enjoying their rollercoaster teenage years or finding their feet at uni, life becomes full of fear. Fear of treatment, but also of families being torn apart, of overwhelming money worries, mental health stretched to breaking point, of having nowhere to turn, no one to talk to.
At Young Lives vs Cancer, we get that. We are the charity that helps children and young people (0-25) and their families find the strength to face whatever cancer throws at them.
We know everyone’s different, so we work hard to make sure each family has what they need to get through cancer. It could be a financial grant for a parent struggling to keep their child warm through their treatment or for a young person who can’t afford to get to hospital. Or helping a family stay together at one of our free Homes from Home close to the hospital where their child is having treatment.
And if we think families aren’t being heard by the whole system, we’re not afraid to raise their voices or shout on their behalf. Children and young people with cancer deserve the same opportunities as anyone else. We’ll always have their back, because we’ve been there before.
Powered by the kindness of our supporters, we’ll face it all together.