Yes! I wrote a book. My first novel, FLICK, has been sold to publisher Beautiful Books, who will publish it in many forms in the UK & commonwealth from around April next year.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Simon and the team and owe so much to my wonderful agent Jo, for all her support and hard work getting Flick to publishers and patience in answering my many questions! Jo has today been shortlisted for Literary Agent of the Year by the Booksellers Industry Awards, and I completely and utterly believe she deserves the title.

This was the inside cover for the CD that was sent out with Flick to publishers. Photo by Thomas Bartels, the awesome and dashing german filmmaker/photographer, which I have shamelessly besmirched by my imperfect photoshopping.

I was asked to pitch FLICK a short while ago on my writing blog (which will soon be amalgamated with this one) and came up with this:

“In 2010 in the North of England one witty, acerbic, hot and happening fifteen-year-old scrambles haplessly through his first summer of love (and sex), running into troubles with drug dealing, fate and quite possibly hubris, which all serve to stand in the way of him and his sweetheart getting some serious rolling-in-the-hay-time. Will they make it through? Will he escape from the clutches of the local coke-baron? Will he fuck it all up?? Think ‘Trainspotting’ meets Melvin Burgess’ ‘Junk’ via Richard Milward’s ‘Apples’. A rollicking summer’s good time with philosophical meditations to boot.”

Simon at Beautiful Books has likened it to a modern day Romeo and Juliet, and parallels have been drawn with Skins, Burgess and Milward by readers. I wrote it primarily for readers who would enjoy Burgess, Hunter S. Thompson, Bret Easton Ellis and Kurt Vonnegut, and to supply, hopefully, something that young men would like to read, that truly represents them. I know I’m a young woman, but I’ve canvassed my audience, partially because they make up 50% of my friends, and also because I’ve dated a lot of them.

The back of the CD. Photo also by Thomas Bartels. We have used here, Berlin, as a stand in for Marske-by-the-Sea, Cleveland County.

With a poor education system, arbitrary curriculum and a growing tendency in the press to dumb down content aimed at young males, exacerbated greatly by the burgeoning crop of Lad’s Mags and their active promotion of a culture of ignorance, we are causing a generation of young men to grow up voicelessly, without the ability to articulate their needs, determine their portrayal in literature or influence the literary output aimed at their readership.

My hope is that FLICK does something to offset this balance, not only by addressing this readership itself, but by encouraging more young men and women to take an active role in how they are represented in literature, by writing their own books and by calling for well-written, challenging and provocative literature to be written for all ages and sexes.

FLICK has been described as ’stunning’, ‘insightful’, ’romantic’, ‘oh-so-rude’, ’really sexy’,  and ’very funny indeed’. I do hope it lives up to expectations.

Flick at Conville and Walsh

Beautiful Books

Please also look out for Jo’s other authors, particularly Rebecca James, whose book Beautiful Malice is out this June/July, and Stephen Kelman, whose debut novel Pigeon English will be published around the same time as Flick. We were both in the office signing contracts the other day and it’s all very exciting at the moment. Also Happy Tenth Anniversary to Conville & Walsh! The party was brilliant, even if my memory of it is somewhat marred by an excess of champagne…