Summer of Secrets is four weeks old and I couldn’t be prouder of my book baby than if it had won the Nobel Prize. Publication Day was celebrated with lots of glass-clinking and flowers in the Scott house. I managed not to break Amazon with my half-hourly — heck, who am I kidding, minutely — checking of rankings and stars. And the reviews — trepidatiously anticipated and obsessively pored over — ended up being just the right combination of ‘liked it fine’, ‘really enjoyed’, ‘absolutely loved’ and ‘my favourite book ever, if you buy one book this year, let it be this one’ (needless to say, that one’s going up on my pinboard for daily gazing at).
It’s a constant marvel to me, how differently we all respond to a story, what resonates with us, what we take away after the last page has been turned. Sometimes when I read a book — and this is the best kind for me — I feel like the writer is speaking directly to me. That we’re sharing the world between the pages, that for the duration of the story we catch a glimpse of each other’s souls. And when I surface at the end, I’ll look at the author photo on the back cover and feel like I actually know that person, that in a funny parallel universe we’ve connected because I’ve taken something away from their story that they put there for me to find.
Until I started working on My Mother’s Shadow I hadn’t realised how similar the writing experience really is. Whenever I write, I put something of myself inside the story. My subconscious feeds it with memories and emotions and dreams, with all the things that make me who I am, most often deep down, where I don’t even know they lie buried. Writing is a very vulnerable kind of thing, as intensely personal and intimate in its own way as reading is. And, just like reading, you’re always looking for a point of connection with someone at the other end.
In the rush surrounding publication, the incessant chatter on social media, the juggling of a million to-dos at once, reading the first responses to Summer of Secrets reminded me once again of the unique and breathtaking magic of that particular connection between writer and reader. When someone emails to tell you about something they loved in the story, when a Facebook post or an Amazon review picks up on a theme or a nuance that’s as close to their heart as it was to yours when you first thought of it. When what you put on the page at the beginning of it all, has been found by someone on the other end — that is a gold-dust moment all of its own.
If you read Summer of Secrets and find a little gold nugget, something that’s made you connect with me via the story we shared, then please write and tell me. I’d love to hear from you.
