Regulars to my page may notice it looks a little bit different up top…The artwork for my debut eco thriller novel has been completed. Incidentally, my author copies of the actual physical book have hit my doormat and are now safely in my hands.
It is absolutely beautiful and everything that could have hoped it would be. My wonderful publishers did an amazing job, while listening to my long wishlist and patiently answering my endless questions (a former journalist never stops asking!).
This cover is more than just a cover – it is the culmination of 6am starts, lunchbreak writing in my car with a laptop on my lap, and gone midnight finishes (when the kids are in bed and I should be too).
My novel started life in a graveyard – where else? I had been given a writing task by my local writers’ group to come up with something on the theme of ‘autumn’ – I was sat on a bench in my lunch break and I looked down at a leaf…a brown one with holes in it and I thought ‘what if all the trees were dying an it wasn’t really autumn at all?’ I have had an idea festering for years in my mind about acid rain – I love films and I’ve seen disaster films about volcanos, twisters, floods and the second Ice Age (The Day After Tomorrow) and I thought why hasn’t this been done yet? I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and learning about rainforests being massacred and the Greenhouse Effect. True enough, acid rain is generally no more acidic than lemon juice, but I thought it would be worse if you combined the man-made effect of water pollution and weather cycles to heighten the danger – so that it would affect not only buildings, but also have a catastrophic on the brain…what would it turn you into?
I didn’t win the competition – my first draft was awful. But, I felt I had the start of an intriguing idea. I ended up writing the bare bones of it while I was pregnant and was watching a lot of The Walking Dead, and one of my favourite films is 28 Days Later – a true zombie film, that came out when I was living and working in London. The thing that resonated with me was the main character walking through the deserted streets of the city and I have only experienced that once – when I was walking in my lunchbreak through Farringdon and it was just before a World Cup match and England were playing. The streets were deserted and it was beyond eery to see a city turned into a ghost town. I kept imagining what it would be like to walk streets empty like that and not know why, where everyone had gone and what danger was lurking round every corner. All of the above is certainly what inspired me when I wrote the scenes of the escape from Whitehall. I won’t say too much for fear of spoilers!
So, back to the book cover…I should point out that I had to insist on several trigger warnings on the cover and the inside pages. If you’re faint of heart, this book really isn’t for you. But if you love the thrill of a chase, the extreme consequences of climate change playing out, enemies to lovers, the fear of unrequited love, and zombies…a lot of them, then hit the ‘pre-order’ button…
I will be doing a follow-up post about the evolution of this book cover and the decisions behind it. So stay tuned. My novel is coming out on 23rd January 2024, which incidentally is my eldest child’s birthday. This was the date given to me by my publishers and is symbolic in itself. This book is essentially my first baby – it was created from within myself; every cell is my own DNA. If I hadn’t kept going and dusted it off during lockdown to revitalise it, certainly it would be languishing on my USB stick at the bottom of a drawer somewhere.
A lot of people have asked me how I did it; how I wrote a book…well, my house didn’t get cleaned for about a year while I met the publisher’s editing deadlines and we only had clean dishes but for the sterling efforts of my dishwasher (I had to say goodbye to my old Indesit of 15 years at the beginning of the summer – may you live on happily in Silicon Heaven). Other than that, it was my sheer stubbornness that kept me going after multiple rejections from agents and rousing words from the husband who gave me a metaphorical kick up the arse when things got tough – I gave up approaching agents after nearly a year of trying in 2022, and went directly to publishers instead…a mix of large and small ones. A lot won’t even entertain submissions of unagented authors. But just after Christmas, around the time I was hospitalised with pneumonia, I was offered a contract. While I was getting better, I looked over my contract and happily accepted to go with an independent – Cranthorpe Millner, who have been brilliant with me from start to finish. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be writing this now.
I can recommend The Writers and Artists Yearbook to find lists of agents and publishers, Writing Magazine to keep up to date with writerly news, and joining The Society of Authors.
It’s not over yet, time will tell whether or not this whole thing works – sales and reviews (and pre-orders) are the proof of the pudding. But I’ve done my upmost best to make my novel the very best it can be, and for anyone who reads it, I hope they enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it (even after the 100th time of editing it).
For now, there are various things coming up…a Bookstagram tour, reviews from my ARC readers, a few more videos/posts on my various social media channels – Facebook (Lucy Ghose – writer), Instagram and Tiktok @lucyghose – follow me to keep up with my writing news! We are planning a signed book giveaway before the book launch in January/Feb, so I will be releasing details nearer the time.
In the meanwhile, my novel is available for pre-order at Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, WHSmiths and all major bookshops. Thank you all for your support on my writing journey as the story continues…
Lucy Ghose - writer 