Four Years

Four years ago this week, my first novel The Stolen Child was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and in the US by Nan Talese.  The whole experience was like a dream that I had been having for forty years.

From as long back as I can remember, I had wanted to be a writer.  Perhaps it was the encouragement of my teachers or the peculiar joy found in stories and books I had read, but I glommed on to the notion that this was my particular path in life.  In college, the bug bit hard, and I wrote plays, poems, and short stories, and I expected to find instant and early success when I went out into the real world.  But the stories I wrote just weren’t right, and life—children, career—intervened. 

At forty years old, I took one last chance and put everything I had into the book.  A few years after searching for an agent, I found one, and he found the publisher, and the book was born.  Seeing it in the shop window on a May day in 2006 was like peering into the hospital nursery.  That’s my baby. 

Now four years later, I have another novel, Angels of Destruction, out in the world.  The third is due to be published by Crown in June, 2011, and I am busy on a fourth.  None of this would be possible without readers.  So thank you, one and all.