Oh what a nice feeling it is to go to the supermarket and see your book upon its shelves...  And tant pis about the big W who didn't want it for their promotion.  I'm done being bitter and am ridiculously, hopelessly, pathetically grateful to the reader who chose it for Tesco and to everybody who made it happen.  I know adverbs are the spawn of the devil, but sometimes you just can't have too many!

"Read the Greengage Summer" said my friend Elinor.  "It's your sort of book.  The sort you'd love to read and the sort you are trying to write." So I did.  And Elinor was right. 

In New York last week I spent a lot of time with a good writer friend.  What do writers talk about when they get together?  Well, it's not potato crops.  "One of the things we have to do," said Lucie, "if we really want to hone our craft, is to read a lot of books by really, really good authors." "And not get jealous," I added.  "Precisely," said Lucie.  Reading Rumer Godden was like one delicious but highly instructive tutorial.  The book is deceptively simple.  The construction just complex enough to create tension and interest, but not so much that it detracts from the immediacy of the story.  Her use of dialogue is masterful and a shining example of how it can be used to "show not tell".  The final line, completely inoccuous out of context, utterly devastating.  A master craftsman.

2 October, and I believe SOME OTHER EDEN must be "live in Tesco".  But I promised myself I wouldn't look.  If I go online I will want to read reviews, and if I read reviews I will get upset.  And if I go into the stores, I will crumble before the sight of the competition.  What a lot of amazing books have come out this autumn!  So I will quietly get on with what writers do and let the book trade do its thing.  I currently have two clueless teenagers falling in love, a battle-hardened soldier with a bad head injury, and a lot of freshly learned lessons to apply. 

So, Tesco Book of the Month but Waterstones have "chosen not to promote your book".  Elation at the first in no small way mitigated by disappointment at the second. Second time round, the publishing process still gives me the heeby-jeebies.  My parents will read graphic sex scenes! My father in law will helpfully list all the stores in which my book is not sold! Friends will tell me they read my book and then glaze over as I look at them with puppy eyes, hoping for compliments...  My private world and the characters I love with a passion, who are more real to me than most of the people I know, are going to be subjected to the public eye.  It's traumatic.  It makes me want to hide away.  It makes me want to cry.

SO WHY DO IT?  Because I can't not.  Because writing is like a drug.  Because, in the words of a dear publishing friend and bookaholic, "I had such high hopes for the world.  Then I grew up, and found it only lives up to expectations in books." Sad, of course, and I do try to redress the balance but... life seems so much more interesting, most of the time, in my made up world. Is it about playing God?  About exercising control?  Maybe that, as well as the private to public aspect, is what makes the month of publication so difficult.  I have no control anymore.  I can write blogs and beg people to buy my book:), but like my eldest daughter walking into her secondary school playground for the first time this morning, I have to learn to let others take over its care.  But in changing schools, my daughter goes from a class of 18 to one of 33. I suspect the ratio of individual attention for the average paperback is higher... But stop! That way madness lies...

Let it go.  Focus on the next book.  Do what you can to help this one along its way and remember the piece of advice given to me by another dear publishing friend.  "A writer writes, Natasha.  Damnit, a writer writes!"

Phone call from my agent just as I landed in Oviedo airport two and a half weeks ago (and for anybody who doesn't know northern Spain, Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia, the Picos de Europa and Santiago de Compostella - all I can say is: GO THERE! Or rather don't, because I want it all for myself...).  Anyway... phone call, which I almost ignore on the basis that I am on holiday and don't want any bad news to spoil the atmosphere.  But no - she is calling to tell me that Tesco Book Club have chosen SOME OTHER EDEN as their book of the month in October!  Thank you, nice Tesco "real readers" judging panel!! I am thrilled!!!  Also mightily relieved, as this may let me off my strategic blackmailing campaign of everyone I know in the hope of selling at least a few copies...  Still, all you dear friends out there - this doesn't let you completely off the hook!

This is all anyone needs to know about me for the next two weeks.

Where I'll be: Picos de Europa national park in Northern Spain

Weather forecast: rain

What I'll be reading:

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

THE GIRL WITH THE MILENNIUM TATTOO by Stieg Larsson

THROUGH SIBERIA BY ACCIDENT by Dervla Murphy

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILLYICH and THE COSSACKS by Leo Tolstoy

ORADOUR: LE VERDICT FINAL by Douglas W Hawes

An eclectic mix  but all I can say is, bring on the rain!

A recent child-free weekend took my husband and I to Kent, to visit Chartwell and Sissinghurst - both inspirational places for writers.  I almost wept with envy at the sight of Vita Sackville-West's writing room - the desk! the view! the little fireplace, the sofa, the cushions and rugs and paintings!  Above all, the isolation!  I share my little office with a landscape designer, and I am going back to Sissinghurst with her in the Autumn. More and more, thanks to Claire (said designer), I am beginning to consider gardening as a form of art, of which Sissinghurst is the living proof.  What fabulous materials to work with!  Organic, living things, which spring from the imagination of the gardener but take root in real soil, grow a life of their own, mature and develope in accordance with sun and rain. Could one draw parallels with writing, thoughts which are born in the writer, which flower on the page to mature in the minds of the reader?  I think so.  You make your own luck, but even so, I think Vita Sackville-West - the VS-W of Sissinghurst and gardening and poetry - must have been one of the luckiest women alive.

As for Winston - well!  538 paintings, x number of bestselling books, three wars, five children, twice prime minister, saviour of the free world...  I am going to pin a photograph of the man above my desk to shut me up the next time I moan about not having enough time...

Or that they were watching slugs give birth? (and yes, I know NOW that slugs don't actually Give Birth.  They Lay Eggs, and believe me if my subconscious had been aware of this fact last week it would have saved me a lot of trauma).  The Malteser dream and the Slug dream are two of the more memorable examples of recent night-time vagaries of my wandering mind. Another - almost, but not quite as good as the Malteser, which was glorious in its simplicity and also because, I now realise, I have never loved myself more than as a perfectly formed piece of cheap confectionery - was the train ride from New York City to Washington DC with Barack Obama.  I woke up from that one feeling quite at peace with the world.

Small wonder, as I get stuck into my third novel, that I find myself writing yet another dream sequence.  All my books have them.  And here's the question: should I stop myself now, or accept that my urge to write about dreams is an inevitable consequence of the fact that for me, going to sleep is just an excuse for entering a weird uncontrollable world?  And is the fact that I CAN control my characters' dreams - but not my own - just a form of transferred therapy?  Vent for the subconscious, attempt to make sense of real life events, literary device...  For one who dreams almost every night and who always remembers her dreams the next day, I have only just now asked myself the startling question: what, exactly, are dreams for?