Another bad week on the book. Not enough words on the page... again.
This time you could say it's my own fault. Can't leave things alone, see. Particularly the bitterly controversial issue of books covers.
"If there anything publishers hate," a publisher once told me, "It's writers who think they know about book covers."
Well, of course, I knew that by then. I'd just been through a Very Bad Experience which it pains me to recount, even now.
From the moment you start working on a book, you have in your head an image of what it should look like. Well, I do anyway. So it's always a bit of a shock when the publishers send you the proposed cover design. They wouldn’t do this - never in a million years would they do it - if it wasn't in your contract that you should get an advance glimpse of the artwork.
Anyway, I once did a novel set in Radnorshire and involving a ruined church. I was thinking, how can anyone possibly go wrong with a thriller involving a ruined church? I could see the jagged outline, maybe moonlit, in my mind's eye from the first paragraph of Chapter One.
However, when the cover art arrived, there wasn't a ruined church in sight. In fact you couldn't see much at all. It looked - I'm not kidding here, and if you ever come across a copy of the long out-of-print hardback, you'll know exactly what I mean - like the inside of a septic tank with a fragment of birdlime floating in it.
It arrived with the usual message. Every cover I've ever received has had this message. It's the stock letter from a publisher enclosing the artwork. It goes: "We are really delighted with this and hope you feel the same."
Decade after decade, they stick to those same fateful words. And up until then, I'd been tactful. Yes, I'd write back, between gritted keys, I'm sure that'll be fine. When it's finished.
This time, however, I just couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't emailed something on the lines of, "The truth is... I think it's awful." (Although I don’t think 'awful' was the actual word.)
The reply was swift and brutal - on the lines of, We Know About Artwork And You Don't, followed by a not-so-veiled threat about my future prospects.
Blimey. I'd never realised they took it so much to heart. But from that moment, I started working under cover, as it were, to get a better design for the paperback. I won't go into how it was finally done, but it involved the publisher accepting a new cover concept which - and this was the crucial factor - they didn't know had anything to do with me.
Because you know you're living dangerously, anything like this always takes hours and hours out of your so-called writing schedule. In this latest case, three days... or 15 unwritten pages.
The book in progress is set in Hay-on-Wye - a town with a castle. The first danger sign was my editor saying, "We're looking at some photos of castles."
Er... (sound of me walking on eggshells) ...as the book's set very much in the actual town of Hay-on-Wye, surely a picture of the Actual Hay Castle might be appropriate...
Hay-on-Wye Castle
Well, OK, the point was taken. A picture of Hay Castle was used on what was, essentially, a really good, rather sinister, cover design.
The only problem was that Hay Castle is on a hill, rearing over the town centre, and this Hay Castle was on the ground. In a field.
They were very good about it. They did another version with a hill. But obviously not THE hill because it was still in a field rather than overlooking the market square. It was a nice balanced cover but it just didn't look anything like Hay and, in my view, would only confuse the reader.
I spent a whole weekend trying to live with it. It was only a small point, surely, the fact that it didn't look like Hay? After all, a book cover doesn't have to be too literal, it just has to look good, leap off shelves, make people stop when they see it in a window. "Admit it," I’m telling myself, "you're your own worst enemy."
On the other hand, they're in London and I have to live here.
Bottom line, three fraught days later, we now have a strategic band of mist obscuring the foundations of the castle, and everybody's happy. Well, I think everybody's happy...
Right then. Chapter 20...
