Announcement: I have a novel coming out!!
My second novel, The Edge of Solitude, is coming to bookshops next July!
For those of you who’ve followed me here from Twitter, Instagram, or any of the other platforms I’ve frequented, you’ve probably heard me talking about the mysterious ‘second novel’: posting pictures of a printed manuscript with the title strategically obscured by a pen, or sharing celebratory ‘I’ve finished another draft’ photos.
Well, this is that novel.
I’m so excited for it to be on this next stage of the journey into becoming a book, and I’m looking forward to sharing that pre-publication process on here.
What’s the book actually about?
Fifty years after the collapse of the Antarctic Treaty, disgraced environmental activist Ivy Cunningham finds herself boarding a ship, recruited to a billionaire’s ambitious conservation project. Through it, she seeks to salvage her reputation, in the hope it will mend her broken relationship with her son. Yet as they journey further south, deeper into Antarctica’s beautiful but eerie landscape, Ivy finds herself increasingly tangled in the project’s murky politics, struggling to tell which relationship are worth trying to save.
‘Set in a time of acute climate crisis, The Edge of Solitude is a powerful story about the collision of ambition and principle and its devastating repercussions.’
It’s also about mothers & sons, solitude, and my great big icy love: Antarctica. It’s a novel of ice and isolation, of sea voyages and Antarctic storms, of love and loss and queer families. And at least two seals.
What happens next?
The Edge of Solitude is coming out with Canongate in July 2024. After counting on my fingers, I can confirm that that’s only 9 months away! (Which also means I’m getting married in just 7 months, but that’s its own excitingly frantic deadline.)
During these 9 months – think of it as the book’s gestation period – I’m going to share my experiences on here:
What happens as the months count down towards publication?
When do proofreads happen?
When do I get to see a cover design?
When do those little blurb quotes come in from other writers, and how do I get them?
These are all things I had no idea about in the lead-up to publishing my first novel, My Name is Monster. I sort of knew that they happened, but I had no idea how, or when.
So this time around, I’m going to write a kind of pre-publication diary – partly because I want to share the experience (did I mention I was excited?!) and partly because I hope it might be useful to anyone else out there with a book on the way, looking for some kind of timeline.
(At this point I ought to mention that every book has its own timeline, and while this is mine, it might not be yours. Some books have a much longer lead-in, some much shorter. Not every publisher does the same things, or in the same way. All I can do is share my own experience, my own timeline, and probably my own mistakes, too.)
So here goes.
I’m looking forward to sharing my first countdown-to-publication post very soon – but in the meantime, I plan on toasting the announcement with a bottle of prosecco from the local Co-op.
Cheers!
I can't quite remember how I found your website (and then your substack) but I'm so glad I'm hear and very excited for your book!
Can’t wait 😁😁😁😁