The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

It gives me chills to cast my mind back to a momentous Friday afternoon in 2006…

4pm: Imagine, if you will, Transworld's headquarters in West London (think Bridget Jones's Diary without the glass, or the Hugh).

I glance at the time and decide to spend the last couple of hours of my working week whizzing through the Teetering Submission Pile on my desk.

4.25pm: Submission 1. A good but nothing new detective novel.

5pm: Submission 2. An epic historical with a narrative that sweeps across the centuries, and out of my head.

5.30pm: Submission 3: I pick up an enormous tome that is blocking sunlight from my window. Let's see… It's called Heart's Blood. It's by an author called 'Sharon Bolton'. It is topped with a letter from an agency called the 'Ampersand Agency', and a lady called 'Anne-Marie Doulton' who informs me it is a debut.

Ok, I think, I'll read a few chapters before I head home. Might just spin out an email to Anne-Marie explaining why, sadly, HEART'S BLOOD isn't for us.

5.35pm: Suddenly feeling quite cold. Positively chilly. Has someone opened a window?

5.37pm: What a cracking opening that was! Let's see if she can keep it up…

5.45pm: Crikey, this is good. Really good. Turn the page, turn the page….

7pm: Alone in office. Security guard just asked if he could turn lights out (this is a publishing house on a Friday, not a city law firm). Plead with security guard.

Maybe just one more chapter before I'm plunged into darkness…

7.30pm: Evicted by security guard. Now sitting on Central Line. Ignore pain as fellow passenger stands on toe with stiletto heel. Turn the page, turn the page. Will the script stay this good, or transform into space opera in second half?

8.30pm: Highbury station: nearly come a cropper reading and juggling pages as I fail to notice top of escalator.

9pm: Back home on sofa. Boyfriend asks question. Boyfriend is hungry. Boyfriend realises he needs to go to pub to find food and conversation.

9.30pm: Begin to plan Monday morning phone call to Anne-Marie Doulton.

***

So, that was just one afternoon over 3 years ago. Now let me bring us back to the present.

Heart's Blood, for those of you wondering what on earth I'm on about, was published as Sacrifice in 2008, and Sharon (or rather S. J) Bolton is now the author of not one, but three, outstanding thrillers… and one on the way. Oh, don't worry, she got her 'Blood' in the title in the end: check out her brand new novel Blood Harvest. It is sensational.

I'm certainly not alone in my praise for Sharon's writing… Since 2006, publishers around the globe have signed up S. J. Bolton. One company has optioned Sacrifice for film. In America and Europe Sharon has been nominated for major awards. The Times believe she deserves to sell copies in their millions. Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen claims her writing is 'mesmerising'.

And her editor?

Well, her editor is pretty lucky to be her editor, and each year she receives a new tome from Sharon and Anne-Marie, and it blocks out some light in her office . . . but somehow still makes it significantly brighter.

She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed

Great to meet up with Belinda Bauer (Blacklands) and Christopher Fowler (The Bryant and May series) last night at The Serial Killers Panel at Radlett Library as part of Hertfordshire Libraries Literary Festival. Not forgetting, of course, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, who also turns out to be She-Who-Is-A-Refreshingly-Good-Moderator (editor Sarah) and half the publicity department from Transworld. We didn't attract the crowds that mobbed Lee Child the previous week, but we were up against the UK's first ever televised political debate.

We got to talking about real-life crime, whether we'd ever been the victims of it, or indeed committed it, and how it might have affected our writing. By a strange coincidence, Belinda and I had both experienced intruders breaking into our family homes when we were teenagers. She distinctly remembers hearing the phone line being cut as her mother was trying to summon the police. She describes climbing out of the window, with her mother, to get in the car and drive to the police station as the longest few minutes of her life.

Come my turn, I decide to gloss over the time I stole a dinghy in Newton Ferrers and instead chill the audience with my own tale of terror.  At age seventeen, I'm woken by the sound of my bedroom door handle being turned. Assuming it to be my mother, I ignore it. I drift off again, only to feel something under the bedclothes touching me. It's the cat, I think. I reach down to push her out and take hold of another human hand.

I turn to see a dark, masked man standing over me. I do the only thing possible. Scream the bloody house down.

Maybe it isn't coincidence that both Belinda and I have such stories. Maybe you have to experience real-life terror for yourself to be able to inspire it in others. Christopher, on the other hand, told the story of getting to work one day following a burglary and finding the office full of pigeons. They'd come in through the broken skylight and couldn't get out again. He spent the morning trying to explain to Apple why the computers were covered in pigeon sxxx.

Christopher's most enduring memory of crime could explain why his crime novels are a little bit wackier than the norm.

It strikes me that people attend these events because they are curious to find out what makes a crime writer tick. What inspires us to write the way we do. And I can't help but wonder whether, by talking to each other, by comparing notes and sharing stories, we who write are going someway towards answering the same questions for ourselves.

Margaret from Wigan, and friend Richard, it was lovely to see you there. Believe me, we are truly and deeply flattered by the lengths people like you go to, to meet us and buy our books. Thank you.

By the way, if this is being read by any current (or former) members of the law enforcement agencies, I put the dinghy back!

We're back from the frozen north. And I don't mean that figuratively. I woke up on launch party day (31 March) to find the moors that inspired Blood Harvest had turned white as far as the eye could see.

Immediate panic. Partygoers needing to cross the moors probably wouldn't make it. The Transworld train would freeze to the track somewhere south of Birmingham. Husband, child and dog would get stuck in a motorway snowdrift. I needn't have worried. As younger, infinitely more glamorous sister (who looks surprisingly like the rest of us in her dressing gown) points out, the bin-men have just been round and, if they'll brave the roads, just about anything else will sail through.

She and I and Sam, my eldest nephew, spend the next few hours chopping salads, carting boxes of champagne, washing glasses, arranging flowers, stealing ivy, getting stuck in lifts and being rescued by burly policemen. (OK, he was a PCSO who'd popped in for a coffee, but he was still macho enough to make it a pleasurable experience) It is feeling increasingly like a wedding, only without a sulky, difficult groom to worry about.

Chief page boy, I mean son, arrives with a massive wad of chewing gum stuck in his hair. I leave them alone for five minutes! Still, I suppose I should be grateful. Last time I left the men in my life to their own devices, one of them got electrocuted. Chewing gum will not be removed without kitchen scissors. Son now looks like he has mange.

Air in the kitchen is taking on a decidedly blue cast. The glamorous one, whose language is frequently worse than mine, cannot set her jellies. I don't mean that figuratively either. Delia's summer fruit terrines (six of them) are currently Delia's sloppy red mush and glam one's cheeks are turning a very similar colour.

We get regular reports from the Transworld contingent. They've missed their connecting train so cancel the lift from the station. They made their connecting train after all but have jumped in a taxi. Taxi is lost somewhere on the moors. They've arrived in the village and are ensconced in The Black Dog.

'The Black Dog!' Brother-in-law is slack-jawed with disbelief. 'You've sent three posh London publishers to the roughest pub in the area?'

Like I had anything to do with it!

The party is at 7.30 and I plan a dramatic film-star entrance at 7.27pm. 'Get real,' says the formerly-glamorous-but-now-with-her-hair-in-rollers-one. 'It's Lancashire and you're offering free drinks. They'll be banging on the doors by 7pm.'

Publicist Lynsey, currently going down a storm in The Black Dog according to later reports, phones to say that Lancashire Life want to interview me and send a photographer to the house the next day. 'Shit and corruption!' yells the one-now-resembling-a-drug-addled-harpy. 'We're knee deep in crap here and Lancashire Life are coming!'

Zero hour arrives and we head down the moor.  Sure enough, people are waiting for us and I have to start the meet and greet in my track-suit bottoms and jelly-stained tee shirt. Sam's Champagne Bar moves into top gear and his Blood Harvest cocktails, a fabulous red-gold blend of champagne and pomegranate syrup go down surprisingly well among folk who think a drink not called Boddingtons is for southern puffters.

I squeeze into my new Karen Millen oyster satin number and glamorous one (looking very fetching herself, despite being up to her elbows in poached salmon) graciously concedes defeat.

The party is filling up. Four old school friends arrive and promptly start entertaining Editor Sarah with stories of how I once ran through Blackburn Town Centre in my nightie. Even I'd forgotten that. Bless 'em, before they leave they promise to dig out the footage and post it on YouTube. And to think I'd had my doubts about inviting people I haven't seen for twenty years!

Publicist Lynsey is now going down a storm with every man in Crawshawbooth under the age of 21. Probably most of the older ones as well, they're just being more subtle about it. Note to self - Lynsey at the cash register boosts sales by about 50%. Transworld Nick and brother-in-law have bonded over tales of Northern beer and start hatching plans to tour the local hostelries once the party is over. Glam one puts her foot down.

Four hours later, it's all over with. Everyone's gone to bed but glamorous one and I are sitting at her kitchen table sharing a left-over bottle of wine. It has been my biggest, glitziest launch party yet and, nightie-in-Blackburn-town-centre stories aside, difficult to see how it wasn't a fabulous success. Food eaten, wine drunk, speeches made, books sold and signed (I really have to start taking a pen to these things) and no fights broke out.

All we have to do tomorrow is a whistlestop tour of Waterstones northwestern branches and a photocall with Lancashire Life.

'Blood and sand,' says tired and emotional one, 'Get your pinny on Shazza. We've got cleaning up to do!'

A massive thanks to everyone who came, to the Crawshawbooth Community Association and Lancashire Libraries for allowing us to use their beautiful building, to the two Louises for superb organization and fabulous food, to the Transworld folk for braving the weather and Northern hospitality, to Grant for taking photographs, to Transworld Martin for his time and kindness the following day, to the Waterstones managers who made me welcome and to Amanda and Kirsty, two charming ladies from Lancashire Life, who pretended not to notice the crap swept hastily under the carpet.

I'm so glad these launches only happen once a year.  But not nearly as glad as I am that they happen at all.