DECEMBER 2002

I'm going to write a Newsletter every couple of months, and here's the first one. I'm not at all sure at this stage what will be in each one, but I will try and cover work in progress, forthcoming books, events, and anything else I can think of. I'll definitely have lists in it, starting this time - as it's nearly the end of the year - with my favourite books for 2002.

Setting up this website has been exciting and I'm greatly looking forward to seeing what happens as a result of it, and how different things are in the future. I'm sure one advantage will be the ease with which anyone who wants to communicate can now do so, and I hope to have lots of email messages in due course. I'm also very excited about the publication of my first adult novel. People have been asking me for years when I'd write "a proper book", meaning one that doesn't appear on the children's list. FACING THE LIGHT is a novel which I hope will be read and enjoyed by my teenage readers as well as adults, just as I always hope that adults will like reading books like TROY or the EGERTON HALL TRILOGY. There's been a lot of talk in the media recently about "crossover books" by which most people mean: teenage or children's books which adults might enjoy. There's never been a problem with teenagers enjoying many adult novels, and it's older people who are learning that there are very many books not published specifically for them but which they'd still love. What's important is not your chronological age, but the sort of reader you are. When it comes to books, an intelligent and avid reader of 14 or so has more in common with a similar reader of 40 or 60 than she has with her non-reading contemporaries.

Back to FACING THE LIGHT. I came to write it almost by accident. I was invited by a friend in publishing to submit a synopsis for "a sweeping women's novel"… that's the novel that's sweeping, not the women! I emailed her one page and she liked it enough for me to write a chunk of the text. All the time I was writing the book, it was known as THE CHUNK and I still think of it as that sometimes. Jane Gregory, of Gregory and Company, authors' agents, heard about what I was doing and asked to see what I'd written. My own agent, Laura Cecil, generously said that Jane could represent the book, and it was sold to Orion in a two-book deal. I was, as they say in footballing circles, "over the moon." I wrote it between May and December 2001 and it's going to be published on 3 March 2003. More on this next time. I'm greatly enjoying the lead-up to publication, which is very different from what I've experienced as a children's writer. I went down to London to speak to the Orion Sales conference. I'm going to meet the sales reps who will be persuading shops to stock FACING THE LIGHT and I'm looking forward to that. The marketing of the book by Orion has been wonderfully imaginative, and has included a CD with Jenny Agutter reading an extract from the novel and some beautiful music. On Friday 15 November, FACING THE LIGHT was on the front cover of the Bookseller magazine. I still can't quite believe my luck.

Work in progress at the moment is a novel called ITHAKA, which will be published by David Fickling Books, probably early in 2004. I am having a good time writing it, but it has been much slower going than usual, because there's been so much else going on. ITHAKA is not a sequel to TROY but a kind of follow-up. Just as it was in TROY, my main attention has been on several invented characters and it's only incidentally that I write about the adventures of Odysseus on his way back to his island after the Trojan War. I'm much more interested in what's going on at home while he's away, and in particular I'm fascinated by the figure of Penelope, Odysseus' wife. The only thing this book will have in common with TROY is the Gods. They will appear in their usual role of meddling in the affairs of humans, and playing fast and loose with the laws of nature. Once ITHAKA is finished I shall move on to my second adult novel, at present called SARABANDE.

I love email and waste a lot of good working time writing to my friends. This is much easier now that we're on Broadband. I'm very untechnologically-minded and the whole thing seems to me like magic. I'm looking forward greatly to exploring the Web. It was quite a business on our old system but soon I hope I'll be bang up to date and very speedy as well.

A word about school visits. For the last 26 years I've gone about to schools and libraries and always enjoyed these trips. But every day out means a day of preparation and a day of recovery, so each visit means I lose three days' writing time. I can no longer do this now that I have very long adult novels to write. So regretfully I'll only be undertaking school and library visits in exceptional circumstances. To everyone who has ever had me at their school, I'd like to say thanks very much and I hope you'll still enjoy reading the books. Also, with a website, I feel children are able to contact me, so I won't be completely out of touch.

Forthcoming books: GOODBYE, TOMMY BLUE is being published by Macmillan in February and you can see details of it elsewhere on the website. There are also details about THE FABULOUS FANTORA FILES and THE FABULOUS FANTORA PHOTOGRAPHS which are being re-issued in the Spring. Watch this space.

Writers are meant to stay at home quietly and for the most part I do, but on 2 December I was at No. 10 Downing Street for a reception given by the Prime Minister and Cherie Booth for children's writers and illustrators. It was a splendid occasion, and more than one writer (though not me!) will doubtless use inside knowledge of the famous venue in forthcoming work. Typically, I missed seeing little Leo Blair in blue pyjamas running through the crowd pursued by his mum, who was trying to get him to go to bed, but the rest of the evening was very enjoyable. In that beautiful room, under a dazzling chandelier, it was good to see so many old friends. As far as clothes are concerned, everyone looked terrific and I noticed that velvet is the new black. Top fashion highlights: Posy Simmonds' amazing diamanté-decorated pointy shoes and Shirley Hughes's fuchsia mohair full-length coat which I glimpsed on the way out. I didn't speak to the PM but did speak to Cherie, who was very charming.

FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2002 (in no particular order):

Anne Tyler: Back When We Were Grown-ups - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Barbara Vine: The Blood Doctor - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road (and his other novels too) - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood - available from Amazon.co.uk

Louise Welsh: The Cutting Room - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Susanna Jones: The Earthquake Bird - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Neil Gaiman: Coraline - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Linda Newbery: The Shell House - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Sally Prue: Cold Tom - available from Amazon.co.uk

I've just finished Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, which is every bit as good as the hype said it was - terrific stuff for anyone who loves Southern Gothic. Over Christmas I'm going to read Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (for which you need to practise your weightlifting - I wish publishers would bring out really fat books in three volumes), and I'm also eager to get to Fox Evil by Minette Walters.

Till next time, goodbye.

Adèle Geras

The Little Friend: Donna Tartt - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

The Crimson Petal and the White: Michel Faber - available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Fox Evil: Minette Walters - available from Amazon.co.uk