My first novel is coming out in six days.
I am full of excitement and terror.
It’s a very peculiar thing to chase a dream all your life and then find you’ve grasped it. Some part of me assumed I would be chasing it for many more years to come; forever, even. Maybe someone two hundred years after my death would come across my notebooks and think, ‘Actually they weren’t half bad, I should publish this.’
At the same time, I hoped. I continued to write and submit things and try my luck in a way that could be described as ‘relentlessly’. I knew the dream was difficult to achieve and so I made myself difficult to ignore. HELLO, DREAM, IT’S ME AGAIN. Every time my dream looked over its shoulder I was another half a millimetre closer. Now I’ve got it by the scruff of its collar and neither of us are quite sure what to do next.
I’ve decided to acknowledge my terror, but focus on my gratitude. I am so grateful to hold my dream in my hands – literally and figuratively.
I am also very grateful that A Fix of Light is the book I am entering the publishing world with. I started writing it when I was sixteen (I’m twenty-six now!) and it sort of grew up alongside me while I figured out how to be a teenager and then a young adult and then a less-young adult. It’s full of all of my coming-of-age angst, but set against the magical whimsy of coastal Irish villages, where I spent my favourite moments of my childhood. It’s not the first book I’ve written but it is the first I wrote seriously.
It’s strange, not hanging out with these characters anymore! Hanan and Pax followed me everywhere for so long. I still feel them with me when I’m by the ocean, or listening to the wind in the trees, or sitting in an indie café. When a fox dashes out in front of my car, I chide it with a, “Pax! Be careful!” When I feel sadness swash in my stomach, I think of Hanan saying, “I am so, so grateful to be alive.”
I miss them, but I am excited to share them with you. I am so happy that the boys get to stride out into the world. I hope they bring you a fraction of the joy they have brought me.