Hello lovely supporters
So apart from another grovelling request for reviews on the site-whose-name-may-not-be-spoken, but begins with an A and has a Z in there somewhere (I will send you karmic fairy dust to bathe in afterwards, I promise, but it's just so important for 'uknowns') I wanted to share the extraordinary journey that YOU have sent me on. The last few weeks are perhaps best described by my latest blog post about my adventures on the road with Bone Lines:
http://stephaniebretherton.com/2018/11/06/if-its-saturday/
Oh and there’s also been this wonderful review from ecologist and primatologist Julian Caldecott on his blog:
http://www.mostimportantthings.org/2018/10/24/bone-lines-by-stephanie-bretherton/
But since then I have also had a thrilling and terrifying evening at the hallowed Royal Institution in Piccadilly. I was so honoured that my book was selected for the fiction club of the ‘lablit’ society but it did rather feel like walking into the lion’s den, going to talk about my book to a bunch of actual real-life scientists.
I know that Bone Lines will never please everybody, as it does attempt to walk the middle path between absolutes and I knew that at this event there would be some people at the more ‘Dawkins’ end of the scale, whereas my Dr Eloise tries to keep an open mind. Let's face it, she also does go on a bit, I know (and is very indecisive in her personal life), but I wanted her overthinking to stand in contrast to the ‘act in the moment’ vitality of ‘Sarah.’ I had a feeling this might not chime with all those at the sharp end of professional science.
They were all really lovely though, and very understanding of the challeges of a first novel, and while one or two thought that Eloise was not quite ‘their kind of scientist’ it was a great relief to know that I had got the actual science right! While most of the group felt the letters to Darwin were unnecessary from their point of view, they recognised that for those readers not coming from a science background, they served as entry points into some of the issues Eloise was wrestling with. The reading club even offered to be my ‘focus group’ for the next book! So I came out of that encounter honoured, educated and mostly unscathed – and I also discovered that Bone Lines is now in some public libraries, which really makes me feel as though I have arrived.
Meanwhile the ‘Courageous Women, Unusual Stories’ tour of North London bookshops that I set up with three other fabulous Unbound authors continued, with lovely audiences and at the Owl bookshop in Kentish Town, and at the Primrose Hill Community Library.
The nicest thing was receiving a £30 gift voucher from the Owl – though now I have to choose what to spend it on. I’m tempted by the Booker winner, Milkman, and the new Barbara Kingsolver, but as one reviewer remarked that I may have a ‘Rachel Cusk’ type path ahead of of me, I think I may need to acquaint myself with her work?
Thank heaven I have holiday coming up soon so I can get some much needed rest and catch up on all that reading, before I start writing again...