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Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy direct from the publisher and from Amazon.
Tag: #books
Ann’s Take on Not the Booker
I was so delighted to read Ann O’Loughlin’s post ‘Women Write Great Books’ on the wonderful Irish book blog ‘Swirl & Thread‘ today, that I thought I’d share it on my own blog too.
Ann, like me, has a novel shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize 2017. Her novel is set just outside Dublin and is called ‘The Ludlow Ladies’ Society’. I’m reading it at the moment, appropriately enough while on holiday in Ireland, and it’s a good job I am on holiday as I’m finding it hard to put down. I thoroughly recommend it.
So here’s the start of Mairead’s introduction to Ann’s post, with a link to the rest. I hope you enjoy it as much a I did:
“As most of you are now aware The Guardian plays host to the wonderful Not The Booker Prize, since it’s inception in 2009 by journalist Sam Jordison. This is a literary award decided by the reader and it gives opportunity to many authors to access the type of coverage and notoriety…”
Read more on Swirl & Thread
Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy direct from the publisher or from Amazon.
#MusicTherapyThursday
#MusicIWriteTo
#MeetingAcrossTheRiver
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Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy direct from the publisher and from Amazon.
Not the Booker Part 2 & Sam’s Scathing Review
What a week and a bit it’s been!
A lot has happened since I last wrote about my experiences of being on The Guardian’s Not the Booker shortlist. The main new event is that my novel, ‘Not Thomas’, has been reviewed by Sam Jordison, The Guardian’s book club reviewer.
And the review is pretty scathing – which is exactly how I expected it to be
In fact, I’ve spent the whole time between being shortlisted and his review warning my supporters, and especially my family, that Sam’s review would rip my novel to shreds. ‘Surely not?’ they all countered. ‘Believe me,’ I would reply, ‘I’ve been following Not the Booker for a few years now, and it’s not a friendly place to be.’
‘Why then,’ a good friend asked me, ‘did you want anything to do with it in the first place?’
Good question.
‘It’s a brilliant platform,’ I told her. ‘Let a reviewer tear my lovingly crafted novel to pieces – if it means Not Thomas reaches an audience it would never otherwise have had, I’ll gladly let them do it.’
She didn’t quite get it
And I guess it does sound pretty weird. I suppose it’s not the path all writers would choose to go down. I’m sure there are plenty of authors who would rather cut off their fastest typing hand than launch themselves into a less than flattering spotlight.
But when I was nominated for the Not the Booker, I saw it as a huge opportunity I simply couldn’t waste. I knew my novel would attract negative attention. I knew it would receive a harsh review from Sam. I knew many of the comments from the Guardian’s book clubbers would be damning and brutal, but yet…
I also knew that very many people who had read Not Thomas had praised it.
I knew those readers had recommended it to other people, and they’d liked it too. Word-of-mouth was working well for Not T, but word-of-mouth is a slow process. I needed to hurry things up. I’m over fifty and I may never write another book. This was my one, and possibly, only chance at getting my novel out into the big wide world.
What would you do if you were me?
Well, this is what I did as Sara…
Once I knew I was definitely on the Not the Booker longlist, I set about asking those people who’d already read Not Thomas and liked it, to think about giving it one of their votes.
There were very many worthy titles on the list – some of them from writers I knew personally, some from Welsh writers like me, and some from world-famous authors. I felt uncomfortable asking people specifically to vote for my novel, but I wanted to draw their attention to the fact that this particular prize is voted for by the public. And they had two votes, so if they had a spare, they might consider giving it to Not Thomas.
I sent out that message on Facebook and Twitter, and I waited to see what happened
Thankfully, messages of support started coming in. People who’d read Not Thomas wanted to vote for it, but The Guardian’s Not the Booker voting page was proving a nightmare. At the top of the page it promised a ballot paper below, but at the bottom of the page there was no ballot paper to be seen. Nowhere did it say ‘Vote Here’. You had to click on ‘Join the Discussion’ to place your vote. Even then it wasn’t straight forward.
People who typed their review straight into the comment box often found the review disappeared once they clicked ‘submit’
So I wrote a step-by-step guide and pinned it to my Facebook page. I wasn’t directing people to vote for Not Thomas, of course, but setting out guidance generally about how to navigate the voting page. Despite this, a lot of people contacted me to say sadly they’d had to give up.
But thankfully, so many more actually managed to vote. I had wonderful support from a whole range of readers. Two book clubs in my town had read Not T and they voted for it, and they encouraged other people to read it and vote if they liked it too. A fantastic group of on-line book bloggers, who had hosted a Not Thomas blog tour the week before, did the same.
A group of teachers who’d all read Not Thomas voted and shared the news about my Not the Booker nomination on Facebook. They encouraged more teachers to read it too, and to vote for it if they liked it. Family and friends got on board, of course, and very touchingly, people from my home town who’d read Not Thomas contacted me to ask how to vote too.
There are accusations every year in the Not the Booker comments thread about how publishers get their staff to vote for books on the longlist. This sort of mass voting results in reviews that are a rehashing of the book’s blurb
Well, I’ll just say that Not Thomas is published by a tiny, tiny publisher – Honno Welsh Women’s Press based in Aberystwyth. Four people work there, all part time. I had their total support, of course, and five authors who are also published by Honno did a fantastic job of sharing my posts, and reminding people which box took you through to vote on the Guardian page. But mass voting and rehashing book blurb it most certainly was not.
All week long, I sat at my computer replying to the wonderful, and sometimes heartbreaking, comments that Not Thomas readers sent me via Facebook and Twitter. Teachers, foster carers and social workers contacted me, all pleased that the issue of child neglect had been raised by Not Thomas. One message particularly stands out, from a person who said she had been a neglected child, just like Tomos. She thanked me for giving a voice to neglected children everywhere. Through my tears, I wrote and thanked her for her kind comments.
It was a very long and extremely emotional week
As it drew to a close at midnight on Monday, 7th August, the last vote and review for Not Thomas came in at 11.58. It was from my lovely 21-year-old niece. I crawled off to bed, exhausted by the whole process, but hopeful that the wonderful efforts of all the fantastic Not T readers had got the novel through to the next stage.
At lunchtime the next day, my neighbour rang to congratulate me. I was still in bed, totally exhausted by the week’s efforts. I hadn’t yet discovered what he was about to tell me – Not Thomas was not only on the shortlist but had the most votes. It was absolutely amazing.
And I’m so grateful to every single person who took the time and had the perseverance to vote for my novel. It was a massive team effort, and I’m so glad Tomos supporters are part of ‘the journey’. I know it’s a horrible term, but I think it’s the right one here.
There’ll be more updates soon about this Not the Booker experience, but for now the comments are coming in on The Guardian’s page in reply to Sam’s scathing review. You can read them here and comment too, if you wish. There’s no guarantee your comment won’t be ripped to shreds by the Guardian’s book clubbers – just as they’re shredding Not Thomas – but that’s all part of the fun.
That’s the result of stepping into the spotlight – and this month, I wouldn’t want little Tomos to be anywhere else
Thanks for reading my (very long!) post. Please leave a comment if you were part of the huge team effort to get Not Thomas onto the shortlist, or even if you weren’t.
Love,
Sara x
Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy directly from the publisher or from Amazon.
Not Thomas & Not the Booker: How We Battled the Guardian Website Part 1
I must have said it a thousand times by now – the last fortnight has been the craziest of my writing life.
During the final days of July, from out of the blue, came a nomination for the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize longlist – an opportunity I could only have dreamt of – and on Monday 31st July I was thrown into a state of total mind-numbing panic.
I had only just finished a blog tour with Brook Cottage Books, and it was Anne Williams of Being Anne that nominated Not Thomas for the Not the Booker longlist after she’d reviewed it for the tour.
It makes me laugh now to remember how nervous I was before the blog tour began. I didn’t feel very confident on social media, and was afraid I’d forget to retweet on Twitter or share on Facebook. I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to message people to thank them for their reviews, and that I’d miss their replies…
I didn’t know the baptism of fire that awaited me.
The Not the Booker longlist was announced by Sam & Lisa, of the Guardian reading group, and we were off – all 192 of us that had titles on there – in a rush for the line, with hopes of getting off the also-ran list and into the winner’s enclosure.
Before the winner could be found though, a shortlist had to be created. It was to be decided by a public poll – a vote for two titles from different publishers and a 100 word review that ‘showed you cared’. The five titles with the most votes would go through to the shortlist, and a sixth title would join them, selected by the judges. There was just one week to rally votes.
So the rules understood, the race began.
Not every author felt like making a charge for the finishing line, of course. The big names, I’m sure, hadn’t even bothered to spare a glance at that long, long longlist. Colm Tóibín, the Smiths – Ali & Zadie – Will Self and Matt Haig probably went about their Monday as if nothing earth-shattering had happened at all. Colson Whitehead has probably never even heard of Not the Booker.
When you have a Pulitzer Prize for fiction I expect a mug from the Guardian doesn’t feature on your wish-list.
Plenty of other not-quite-so-well-known authors decided they would sit back and see what happened. Some were just happy to feature on the list and in some of the comment boxes, and to get a bit of extra publicity for their titles that way. Some had been nominated before and hadn’t enjoyed it the first time round.
But for me, being on the Not the Booker longlist was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
My debut novel, Not Thomas, had been published by Honno, a small female-only Welsh publisher, just two months before. It was receiving better-that-we-could-have-hoped-for reviews, and news of it was spreading by word of mouth. It had been July’s Book of the Month with both Waterstones Wales and the Welsh Books Council.
Despite this, Liz – the PR person who Honno had employed on a freelance basis for the first couple of months of the novel’s life – had had very little luck getting mainstream media outlets to take any notice of Not Thomas. It certainly wasn’t for want of trying or lack of enthusiasm on her part.
But a book from Wales about child neglect & drugs? Well, that’s a hard sell.
She tried the Guardian and the Indy. “If only they’d read it…” she used to say.
“We can’t make them do that,” was always my sad reply.
But here it was, this one-off chance – an opportunity to make someone read it. And that someone was going to be Sam Jordison of the Guardian’s Reading Group – if only I could get it onto the shortlist.
It was a chance for Not Thomas that would never come around again. And so I took a deep breath, tied my colours to the sticking post and became the ‘tiger mother’ Tomos never had but always deserved.
And I let battle commence.
Thanks for reading!
Part 2 coming to this page sometime in the not too distant future.
Until then… Yours,
Sara x
Which novel do you think the Guardian judges will choose as title #6?
Will you be reading and reviewing all the titles on the shortlist?
Have you read ‘Not Thomas’? What did you think of Tomos?
Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas – a story of child neglect and hope – is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy on Amazon.
Not the Booker Madness
It’s been a very exciting week for me – a weird, amazing, crazy three days since I found out Not Thomas has made it on to the longlist of The Guardian’s annual Not the Booker prize.
To be fair, it didn’t have to do anything to qualify, apart from meet the simple criteria that the regular Booker prize entrants meet.
But it did have to be nominated.
I’m very proud to say that Not Thomas was initially nominated by book blogger, Anne Williams. I’m so delighted that out of all the very many books she’s read this year, she chose my little Not Thomas.
If you’ve read Not Thomas too, and liked what you read, you can vote now for it in the public voting stage. This ends at midnight on Monday, 7th August, so not long to go!
There are a couple of rules: you must vote for two different titles & you must review one of the titles you’ve chosen.
Why not go to the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize page and take a look at what people are saying in the comment thread?
And if you’re curious about Not Thomas – a novel for adults in the voice of a five-year-old child – you can find a sample on Amazon.
Not Thomas is available to buy for £2.84 on Kindle today.
Read it by Monday and then if you like it, please consider giving it one of your votes!
I’ve been keeping a nightly diary on my Facebook page since I heard about the Not the Booker longlisting. I thought I’d share last night’s snippet here:
Before I crawl off to bed after another weird but wonderful day, I thought I’d post a quick round-up of ‘Being on the Not the Booker prize Longlist’ Day 3.
It’s been a day when I’ve realised that there are so many people – who I’ve never even met in real life – going that extra mile to support me and Not Thomas.
I turned on my laptop this morning and found the wonderful book reviewer Being Anne’s blog post about why she loves The Guardian’s Not the Booker prize and why she nominated Not Thomas for it. It’s so kind of her to choose Not T out of all the books she’s read this year, and I’m very honoured she did.
This afternoon, the very talented YA author, Amy Kitcher created a wonderful graphic on twitter for Not T, plus a voting & buying link. It’s brilliant! I wouldn’t have a clue how to do it. She’s made one with all four of us authors from Wales on too. They’re on my twitter feed if you’d like to take a look.
There are lots of other instances of people showing their support too – the re-tweets, the shares, the supportive comments. My lovely neighbour kindly put a post on our town’s FB page, and my local post office suggested I put a poster up there.
And then there’s been the votes.
A huge thank you to everyone who’s voted or reminded someone else to vote – the tally was creeping towards 20 when I last looked, far more than I dreamed possible on Monday afternoon, when I first heard I was long-listed.
So that’s the end of Day 3. Thanks for your support. Dare I say this? I’ll whisper it:
If voting carries on the way it’s going, with nearly 20 votes at the end of today, maybe there’s actually a tiny, tiny chance of getting Not Thomas onto the short-list. A tiny chance. Tiny tiny…
Thanks for reading. There’ll be an update of Day 4 on my Sara Gethin Writer Facebook page tonight. Until then…
Sara x
Here are those voting and Amazon links again, just in case I’ve tempted you…
Not Thomas Brook Cottage Books Blog Tour
This week is a very exciting one for me as my debut novel for adults, Not Thomas, goes on blog tour with Brook Cottage Books. I’ve never had a blog tour before and so needed to have the whole thing explained to me very carefully and slowly by Helena who’s responsible for marketing at Honno, my publishers. I think I’ve got my head around it now.
For the whole of the week, book bloggers will be promoting and reviewing ‘Not Thomas’ on their own websites, and also posting on twitter and Facebook – all co-ordinated by the wonderful Brook Cottage Books. There’s also an interview and competition to win copies of Not Thomas hosted by Boon’s Bookcase.
Today I’m going to feature here on my website the review by BeingAnne.
Not only did Anne write a review that made me cry – in the best way possible – she also nominated ‘Not Thomas’ for the Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker‘ prize. I’ve followed that award with interest for a number of years now, and to think that my little novel will be on the longlist come next Monday (provided it meets all the requirements) has absolutely made my week! So a huge thank you to Anne for taking the time and trouble to nominate Not Thomas, and for believing it worthy.
Here’s Anne’s review:
“Every so often, a book comes along – without any great fanfare – that makes me want to shout about it from the rooftops. Not Thomas by Sara Gethin – published by the consistently excellent Honno Press on 15th June – is one of the most stunning books I’ve read this year. As I finished reading, I immediately nominated it for the Guardian Not The Booker prize – if there is any justice in this world (and I do hope there will be) this book should be on mainstream prize shortlists everywhere. I’m just so thankful that Sara chose a blog tour with Brook Cottage Books to help bring it to people’s wider attention. Had she not, it might have passed me by entirely… and what a loss that would have been.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of reading about the ugliness of this world, drug culture, violence, neglect – but that’s the world you’ll find in this book, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. And if you’d told me that I’d sit, totally rapt, reading a book written in the voice of a five year old child, seeing that dreadful world through his eyes and from his unique perspective – well, I really wouldn’t have believed you.
I could do with a thesaurus to come up with some new adjectives – the best ones have all been used. Let’s try powerful, moving, heart-wrenching, poignant, shocking, emotional, enthralling, and maybe a bit exhausting – but let’s not forget uplifting, life-affirming, and sometimes wonderfully funny too. The impact of this book was exceptional. Tomos’ voice is absolutely authentic and compelling: you find yourself smiling at the way he expresses himself, immediately before being in tears at some new piece of cruelty that he dismisses as the norm. The detail of his world becomes part of yours – the borrowed coat, the damaged truck, the coin, the black chair – and long after finishing reading, those small details will stay with you.
Standing back from the story and its content a little, the mechanics of story-telling are superbly handled – overheard adult conversations, not always fully understood by Tomos, move it cleverly forward and disentangle the threads around past history and the adult relationships. The story itself is strong, with real narrative drive and unexpected twists and turns – much more than an unflinching view of a suffering child.
There’s a whole range of humanity in this book – exceptional generosity, love and kindness sitting alongside ignorance, cruelty and neglect. And you’re left with that aching feeling that someone should have seen what was happening and intervened more forcibly – and then wondering how many other children might be suffering in a similar way.
The author, in one of her blog posts, says of the reader: I hope… their mouths will have smiled, as Tomos might say, even if their eyes have cried. That summed this wonderful book up absolutely perfectly for me. A unique and unforgettable experience – and one I’d urge everyone not to miss.”
Thanks to Anne for her wonderful review. You may like to check out all her other reviews on her website Being Anne. And here’s the link again for Brook Cottage Tours – where there are opportunities to become involved with book blogging, if you love reading. And why not enter the Not Thomas Giveaway with Boon’s Bookcase?
More posts from the blog tour to come, and I’ll keep this site updated about the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize too.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this. Let me know what you think.
Love, Sara x
Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas is published by Honno Press in paperback and as an e-book, and is available to buy on Amazon.
Music to Make Me Cry – My Not Thomas Playlist
I love listening to music when I write.
I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’ve met quite a few authors who prefer to write with no distractions, but music works for me. I find it creates a background emotion.
There are some songs I return to, time & time again, when my creativity needs a boost. These are songs I play to remind myself that ordinary people can transform themselves into songwriters and create something fantastically beautiful out of thin air –and lots musical talent, of course. When those songs come on the radio, they make me want to drop everything and write.
Songs like Hozier’s ‘Take Me to Church’ and Stereophonics’ ‘Graffiti on a Train’ make me turn up the radio to full volume and surrender to their inspiring brilliance.
There are other songs, though, that remind me of something I’m already working on. They help ease me back into that piece of writing, and keep me in the mood I’m trying to create. They’re the ones I play quietly in the background while I tap away on my laptop.
I had a playlist when I was writing ‘Not Thomas’.
The most-played song on that list was Kate Bush’s ‘Moments of Pleasure’. In a previous post, What Wuthering Heights did for me – the confessions of a Kate Bush fan, I wrote about how playing that song helped me evoke the feelings of Tomos, the little boy who’s the central character in my book. I’d hear the music and feel the emotion, even if I hadn’t written about Tomos for months. But there were other songs that helped too. Here’s a few of them, thanks to YouTube.
Calon Lân, a well-loved Welsh hymn, was one of my starting points for ‘Not Thomas’.
In fact, for quite some time the working title of ‘Not Thomas’ was ‘A Pure Heart’ – the English meaning of ‘calon lân’. The title eventually (and thankfully) got changed, after I listened to the advice of my writing group. (More about the failure of ‘A Pure Heart’ as a title in What’s in a Name?)
Tomos sings Calon Lân near the start of the book. He’s been taught the words by Nanno – his beloved ‘foster gran’. This version, by Cerys Matthews, is my favourite on YouTube.
It’s the childlike quality of her voice that gets me every time.
In the case of Calon Lân, the lyrics loosely suited the theme of the book, particularly – and rather sadly – the opening line ‘I don’t ask for a life of luxury’, as Tomos is living in terrible poverty.
But most of the songs I listened to didn’t have lyrics that connected to the subject matter. Instead I chose them for the way the music or the tone of the singer’s voice affected me.
It was the emotion the singer conveyed that was important.
Like this one:
I only have to hear the opening chords of ‘Talk to Me of Mendocino’ by Kate & Anna McGarrigle for my eyes to fill with tears. The music and their voices manage to convey, so beautifully, that sense of longing to be somewhere else.
It’s perfect for Tomos, as he constantly longs to be back in the love and safety of his foster parents’ home.
And since I’ve already blogged about how important ‘Moments of Pleasure’ by Kate Bush was to me when I was writing ‘Not Thomas’, I ought to include another song of Kate’s which I played a lot too.
‘This Woman’s Work’ is an obvious choice, I suppose, when you think of songs that conjure up vulnerability – it was used by the NSPCC in one of their TV adverts.
Again, the opening notes get me every time.
And finally:
This last song, ‘Lost Boy’ by Ruth B, is a cheat.
It came out in 2016 and I’d long finished writing ‘Not Thomas’ by then. I was in a dress shop in lovely Llandeilo when I first heard it playing on the shop’s radio. It stopped me in my tracks.
I knew by this time that my book would be published and that Tomos’s story would see the light of day, something I’d thought for so many years would never happen. And the realisation that my novel was actually going to be published hit me.
I grabbed the nearest frock and hid in the changing room until the moment of realisation – and the tears – had passed.
Had Ruth B’s ‘Lost Boy’ come out ten years before, I’d have been playing it as I wrote. It’s Tomos to a tee. I think it’s beautiful.
All these songs have something in common – lots of emotion. One comment from an early reader of ‘Not Thomas’ said it should be printed on plastic to save the paper from tears.
Maybe my playlist explains why.
Thanks for reading.
Love,
Sara x
If you’re a writer, do you ever listen to music while you’re working or do you prefer silence?
If you’ve read Not Thomas, can you see any influence from the songs above in the novel?
Do you have a single piece of music or a song which you always find inspirational?
Sara’s debut novel Not Thomas – a story of child neglect and hope – is published by Honno Press and is available in paperback and on Kindle directly through the publisher and also from Amazon.
The lady’s here. The lady with the big bag. She’s knocking on the front door. She’s knocking and knocking. I’m not opening the door. I’m not letting her in. I’m behind the black chair. I’m waiting for her to go away.
Sara Gethin 