I've got a new novel coming out

Click on the link below to see the teaser

harpercollinsaustralia

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I’m very excited to share this brilliant reel that my publisher, Harper Collins Australia, has made about my new novel.

It’s not out until December, but they like to start getting the word out early these days, which is thrilling for me.

As you can see, the book is called Would You Rather… as per the after-dinner game (which I adore), but it’s a much more serious question for my heroine, as she has to decide if she would rather be a grieving widow – or a wronged wife.

Not a great choice, eh? I can’t tell you any more now, but that the dilemma she’s faced with. Ooh la la.

If I’m playing the game my go would be something rather lighter, such as: ‘Would you rather have a threesome with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, or Vladmir Putin and Kim Jong Un?’

Hours of fun. I will now spend the rest of the day pondering that, but I can’t put my immediate thoughts in print because they are a bit homicidal.

Meanwhile, I’ve been absolutely blown away and made quite blubby by the lovely comments people have made about the fothcoming book on my Insta post about it.

It is very very up-cheering, especially as this one has been a much harder gestation than my previous ones.

That happened because I’d started writing it and then the big Covid weirdness hit – throwing me into an absolute spin.

I can remember sitting at my desk in March 2020 thinking ‘Do I have to rewrite it all and put social distancing in?’ and wondering how on earth there could ever be the all-important First Kiss, if you weren’t allowed to stand closer than one metre to a person you didn’t live with.

It made me appreciate what it must have been like to be writing a novel in 1939 and not knowing whether the world was ever going to be normal again.

That was the practical side of my tailspin – then my brain went funny and I couldn’t write fiction. I couldn’t even read it.

I’d sit staring at a book, reading the same paragraph over and over and I just couldn’t take it in. I could read books about trees and mushrooms, but I couldn’t read a novel.

What I mostly did was watch Bridgerton.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t write because my brain was in such a state of underlying pandemic weirdness stress, that I couldn’t take off the brake enough to allow the narrative of fiction in.

When you read a novel – and even more so, when you write one – you have to open up your brain and hold the whole thing up in your head, as you go on.

It’s like the fourth wall thing in the theatre, but I think much more so because the only thing you have to keep it there is the words on the page. No props, or clever acting, or sound effects.

If there’s a BOOM! or a CRASH! you have to imagine it. If there’s a very hot guy (and there are a few in Would You Rather…) you have to create their image yourself.

And of course it’s up to the writer to give you the tools to do those things.

There’s quite a lot to that. I always think the process of writing a novel is like creating a new universe out of bubbles, that you have to keep hovering about your head in its entirety, until it’s done. It’s quite an amazing feeling when you get it going.

I certainly couldn’t do it while reality was so oddly off kilter, but gradually as things returned to normal, so did my brain. I trained myself to read fiction again and once I was fully back on board that train, I was able to get back to my book.

My tenth novel.

A whole shelf of my own books. It never ceases to thrill me.

I do find it quite amazing every time I write or say those words: ‘tenth novel’, because it remains absolutely astonishing to me that I’ve ever got to publish one.

How thrilled the six-year old me would have been. The 12-year old, 18, 25… they would all have been so happy.

Although actually I don’t think the six-year old would have been surprised, as she’d already made her mind up that being an ‘author’ was her future.

She used to say it very confidently to my parents’ friends at parties when asked ‘What do you want to do when you grow up, Margaret?’.

I can remember eyebrows shooting up at my answer and thinking ‘What’s their problem?’ as I moved on with the bowl of peanuts I was proffering around. I probably seemed like a precocious little brat, but it really was all I ever wanted to do.

So, thank you, universe, for letting it happen – and a mahoosive thanks to all of you who have bought my books over the years so it could go on happening. It is everything to me.

Six-year old Margaret thinks you’re great.

Two other quick points:

1.     The book is initially coming out in Australia, which is just a weird thing that happened a few years ago with contracts. I don’t know when it will be out in the UK at this stage, but will keep you posted.

2.     I have mentioned that some characters from previous books are to be found strolling around in Would You Rather.

Several people have asked if this includes Uncle Percy from Mad About the Boy. (I wrote a bestselling book with that title many years before Alison Pearson used it for a Bridget Jones, so that was peculiar. You’d think someone would have done a quick check.)

I think it’s best I tell you right out that it’s not him.

I do absolutely love Uncle Percy, he’s one of my all-time favourites of my own characters, but he didn’t fit in here – and he does have a tendency to take over and there was a lot going on already.

Plus there were other people who just insisted on being allowed in, which is the kind of thing that happens when you have the bubble universe fully in place.

Just to go back to Uncle Percy for a moment. I hadn’t planned him for that book, but I reached a point in it when my heroine was at home (in a state) and there was a knock on the door.

When she went to answer it, I had no idea who was there.

She opened the door and there he was. Fully formed. Sometimes it does feel a little bit like magic when you’re writing a novel and I can’t wait to talk to you more about Would You Rather.

Love from Margaret (six and a half) xxx