Publishing in a pandemic

A publication day surprise: an instagram post from Paula Hawkins recommending Little Disasters.

“I’ve got a cough so I won’t hug you,” said my agent, on February 26, at the end of a meeting to discuss the final exciting plans for the publication of Little Disasters. Conscious of covid-19, the rest of us chatted about ginger shots and boosting immune systems, and then hugged each other anyway.

This meeting - just six weeks ago - belongs to a different time. When I next went into London, on March 9, I avoided the tube and walked from King’s Cross to Piccadilly, conscious of the bus drivers wearing masks and an air of fevered, near apocalyptic panic. By March 19, when I was supposed to be filming a youtube Shelfie at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, non-essential travel was banned and it was the eve of school closures. Lockdown came three days later. The world - for all but key workers - had shrunk, swiftly and entirely.

Our plans for Little Disasters, which had once involved buoyant bookshop and supermarket orders, have also radically altered.

At first it seemed churlish to think about trying to promote a book while the UK was engulfed by a virus that, at the time of writing, has reached a daily death tally of 980 - more than any single day in Italy or Spain. My husband is an NHS doctor and most of my anxiety has centred on whether he would have adequate PPE to treat his patients safely - not to mention how to minimise the risk of him transferring the virus, if or when he caught it, to our kids.

But while it has felt a little like shouting into a void, I’ve increasingly felt a responsibility to Little Disasters. The team at S&S have shown such passion and commitment that it felt rude not to champion this book. And, in its detailing of the claustrophobia, anxiety and isolation of early motherhood, the subsequent fracturing of mental health, and the need to look out for one another it could not feel more relevant or relatable to these unsettling lockdown days.

And so, like all of us in this weird new world, I’ve learned to embrace social media. First there was a wonderful, anarchic twitter launch, hosted by Blackwell’s Books and shared with my friend, literary suspense author Lucy Atkins. We’d been due to share four bookshop and literary festival events - all obviously cancelled - but instead have taken our Bad Mothers double act to the radio, with interviews with BBC Radio Devon, here at 1 hour 9 minutes in, and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, at 2 hours 21 minutes in. BBC Radio Sussex is next.

Then came a complete career high when I talked to the warm, incisive and thoughtful Jane Garvey about Little Disasters on BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour. You can listen here. I felt as if she completely “got” my book - an “excellent read” she told listeners - and I am kicking myself that I froze with one quesiton. The answer to the prevalence of maternal OCD is 2-3% in the first year after birth, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I forgot it momentarily but it is, of course, now ingrained.

I’ve also taken part in two virtual festivals, thanks to Zoom. The first with the My Virtual Literary Festival team (@myvlf), see below, and the next as part of the Stay At Home Literary Festival, which was viewed by over 100 people and involved a real sense of connectivity.

Now that I’ve worked out how to film myself and transfer videos, I’ve filmed that Shelfie for Waterstone’s (click here), not in its flagship Piccadilly branch but my study, and a clip of me reading the first chapter of Little Disasters for The Book Depository. I also wrote a blog for Waterstone’s about my favourite bad mothers in literature, click here.

The publishing industry has embraced Zoom and its potential and so I appeared in a literary “event” with debut author Nikki Smith and her editor, Harriet Bourton, discussing maternal mental health with which Nikki’s All In Her Head is also concerned. The interview on the Orion youtube channel is here.

Finally I experienced my first Facebook Live with the incredibly professional Catherine Isaac, a fellow S&S author and former journalist. You can see the resulting chat on her Facebook page by clicking here. I’m hoping to do an InstaLive with Clover Stroud, though it’s fair to say I’m a long way off being sufficiently proficient to host my own.

Meanwhile, the reviews so far have been thoughtful, incisive, and very positive. From The Literary Review to heat, the Daily Mail to the Daily Mirror, Cosmo to the WI’s Life magazine, my novel about the darkest reaches of motherhood seems to have resonated. The novel’s currently £4.99 as an AppleBooks audio book of the week and is, of course, also available as an e-book if you can’t find it at Waterstone’s, Hive, Amazon or Blackwell’s. You can read the first 3 chapters here, read a clip from Grazia Online here, or listen to a four-minute snatch of the audiobook here.

I hope that, if you buy it, it proves an immersive distraction in these difficult times.