Actually, I must admit such a response tends to irritate me, a little, although I do accept the people making it are probably well-intentioned and mean no harm.  But the truth is, anyone who has known me for a long time, and really knows me, would realise that there is nothing sudden about it at all!  It is the outcome of a long journey spent honing my literary voice that began as a small child of the age of six, filling in thrupenny exercise books from cover to cover with made-up stories, whilst more normal well-adjusted kids were outside playing games and having fun.
    
The truth is, I have always been writing, or at the very least, thinking about writing.  Even during the wilderness years in my twenties when I probably wrote less than at any other decade of my life, I was feeling guilty because I wasn’t writing.  The need to write, the desire to write, the intention to write was always there, like a shadow.  I was never free of it.
    
And in spite of strategies to deny or avoid it – and there were many of those throughout the years – looking back I have to admit that I have indeed done a considerable amount of writing. Hours and hours and hours of it, unrewarded, unrecognized.  And in all mediums.  Journalistic articles, short stories, lots and lots of poetry, the odd short play or two, and even a 120,000 word memoir based on my dysfunctional childhood.  Oh - I almost forgot – and a 50,000 novella written in my late thirties that actually made its way to the slush pile at Picador and was returned to me with the comment – You have a strong and confident voice but I’m afraid you would be lost on our lists - or words to that effect!  I’ve kept that letter, filed alongside the more recent one from Maria Rejt welcoming me to Picador, and it seems testimony indeed that there has been perseverance – and progress - of a kind.  I didn’t send that novella out to anyone else.  It went into the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet where it probably remains to this day.  I knew it wasn’t ready.  I knew I wasn’t.
    
And of course there has been the odd reward and accolade along the way to keep me going, to fuel the enthusiasm.  The odd short story found its way into women’s magazines, the occasional poem was published, or won a prize in a poetry competition.  Little monetary reward as such, disregarding the occasional cheque that might possibly subsidise the gas bill.  But what keeps most writers going is those signs and gestures that yes, what you are doing, banged up in isolation at your desk, typewriter, and more latterly, laptop, is not all a pointless fruitless exercise, that occasionally somebody out there recognizes merit in your words.  So the dream is fuelled and persists . . .  One day, just one day that publishing deal will wing its way . . .
    
And then I haven’t even mentioned the time and money spent on workshops, Arvon courses, and the now seemingly indispensable MA in creative writing.  I’ve done the lot.  I’ve given up weekend upon weekend to it.  I’ve gone into my overdraft to finance it.  I’m not sure how much I ever learnt doing all these workshops and courses, but while I was doing them I could keep the focus going, the dream alive.  And then there’s all the demanding career paths I didn’t follow, I didn’t commit to, because to do so would take my energy away from writing, would interfere with this need to ‘follow the writer’s life’. Who knows what exalted salary I could have been earning if I hadn’t had this feckless desire to write?
    
Strangely though, publication success finally came my way when I had given up looking for it, or even thinking about it greatly.  In fact, for the last four or five years before it all ‘kicked off’ I had turned my creative drive to making figurative sculptures.  Then quite by chance, somebody I met for the first time gave me an entry form for New Writing Ventures. It was five days to the deadline. I sent off an extract from the final chapter of the memoir that I had been writing on and off for years – more as a form of therapy than with any serious desire for publication – and it won me a place on a year’s writing development scheme.  Then followed the receipt of an arts council grant.  I decided I could reduce my paid work commitments and try and write a novel – just for the enjoyment of it, just to see if I could. 
    
That was ‘An Accidental Light’.  So in a way success came when I was no longer really seeking it.  But suddenly, out of the blue, unexpectedly?  Well, people can think that if they want.  I know differently!

[An Accidental Light is out now and available here.]

Think of Lost, or Castaway, or any of the innumerable reality shows that beach their participants on palm-fringed atolls and wait for either rice deprivation or booze and erotic possibility to take their course and toll. Their premise is quite straightforward and startlingly effective: isolate people and they will display themselves, often in the most exaggerated form; strip them (and there seems to be an awful lot of stripping on these shows) of access to a mainland and they will quickly reveal their desires and compulsions, their tics and flaws, their resources and lacks. The island works as a kind of poultice: it brings things to the surface. And this idea of the island as a site of revelation is one of the oldest and most durable tropes in all our island imaginings.

All of which leads me, I suppose, to a revelation of my own; one that has taken me a surprisingly long time to arrive at: after finishing my third book I’ve discovered that I seem to be, whether by hook or by crook, an island writer - although I’m still not entirely certain what that means. It could just mean that I was brought up on an island - the Welsh island of Anglesey or Ynys Mon. Or perhaps it means that that island has dominated all of my books, muscling its way into my imagination not only as a setting but as a character in its own right; and a character, moreover, who none of my other characters are able to avoid or escape. Taking my final peek through Revenant, before it was put to bed between its covers, I was struck by how its protagonists are all people struggling to come to terms with island pasts and memories. And, like them, I don’t seem to be able to stop myself going back to my island - either in person or in mind.

It’s strange, but after a few years of living on the mainland I’ll always begin to suffer a particular pang of homesickness. I start to feel fidgety, restless, confined; to suffer a form of claustrophobia that I can only describe as landlockedness. Oddly enough, it’s almost precisely what appears to effect - at some point - the various castaways on those shows. In an inversion of the revealing island, mainlands reveal me as an islander.

And I guess that’s what being an island writer might really mean - because whether you want to or not, and wherever you go, you don’t ever stop being an islander. It’s taken me a long time to work it out, to find that footprint in the sand, but I know now that there’s no bridge or boat that’ll ever take you away from them. 
     

[Revenant by Tristan Hughes is out now and available here]   

How you mentally approach reading a novel has a huge effect on what you take from the experience. The thriller that raced along when you were lying by a pool in the Mediterranean sunshine, for example, might seem flat and preposterous while you’re negotiating Tottenham Court Road’s traffic on the 38 bus. But it’s about more than just your mood that day: your response to certain books is often a complex balance between expectation, anticipation and naked prejudice.

In 1997 I picked up Junot Diaz’s Drown – a collection of interlinked stories set in the Hispanic communities of New York.  It was a revelation, a book that rescued me from dusty shelves of Dickens and Trollope and reminded me of modern fiction’s ability to surprise and reinvent itself. For years, I checked for any signs of the long-promised novel. And then mid-way through last year The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was announced for publication. I was immediately stricken. Any book that takes that long to write, I reasoned, cannot fail to be a massive disappointment.

By the time I eventually received a copy, my expectations were at rock bottom. But this just made the book – and what a book it is! – easier to read. As I reader I was less impatient, allowing Diaz’s story to breathe its own air. The weight of expectation lifted, I gave the novel a chance to shine.

Nathan Englander’s The Ministry of Special Cases, on the other hand, initially suffered due to the pressures I exerted upon it. It was a novel I’d been looking forward to for many years and I was expecting – no demanding – something life-changing, something dazzling and incendiary. Instead the book started slowly, simply, without linguistic brio or bluster. Disappointed, I put it down for a day or two, then resumed with enthusiasm sufficiently curbed. Only then could I see the book for what it was: a subtle and unshowy masterclass in concise, tight story-telling.

I do try to remain neutral before reading any book, but in some cases this is impossible. Whenever I pick up a new Will Self novel, for example, I feel like a footballer supporter urging on a local lad with great potential. I’ve long held that Self has the ability to become one of our great novelists, and so when a new novel appears, I cross my fingers and hope that this will be the one: the novel that sees Self produce the book that delivers on his potential. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet 

Then there’s the curious case of Ian McEwan. Whenever a new book of his appears, I hit a wall of confusion. On one hand I’m hoping that it fits the pattern of all of his fiction since 1994 – i.e. turgid, self-satisfied, dull – so that his oeuvre can be split into two distinct halves (the early, good stuff; the lousy later books); on the other I really want to be able to say, ‘Look, he’s back! The last fifteen years have been an elaborate literary hoax!’ But after subjecting myself to On Chesil Beach, I don’t think I’ll be saying this any time soon.

In an ideal world we’d approach each book with same enquiring mind, but the world – and the world of books, in particular – is very far from ideal. And besides, you can’t beat that frisson when you open a book to discover whether a novelist has delivered on their early promise, if a series character will live or die, or if your favourite writer has taken a strange, unpromising tack. Which is why I’m looking forward to The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon. It’s a far more commercial proposition to his earlier, brilliant books, and I’m already wondering if he can pull it off. I only have to wait until August to find out . . .

[Stuart Evers is a writer, reviewer and freelance editor]

I had joined the Dominican Sisters because I was so inspired by the combination of talent, holiness and wit that I encountered among the Dominican Brothers during my time at Cambridge, including Fr. Robert Ombres, Fr. Aidan Nichols, Fr. David Sanders and Fr. Timothy Radcliffe whose friendship and writings I continue to enjoy today. The Dominicans are an order devoted to reading, writing, teaching and preaching, where the possession of a rigorous and enquiring mind is highly valued. By the Brothers, at least.

Doing Time

And so it happened I found myself
for the first time in two years
propping up the bar of the Three Tuns
in Borehamwood, not really
my local, only I’d not got
much choice, I was thinking
as I pulled out the only five-pound note
I’d seen all year, uncurling it
on oak like a revelation when
some bloke tapped my elbow
as they would in the days before
I changed my clothes
to white sheets, black shoes.
So where’re you from, love?

I presumed the startled look meant
he knew the place, so as he choked
on his third Guinness I recounted
how, barely an hour ago, I had
unveiled and crept below
the level of the hedge to avoid
setting off the lights, thereby
alerting the nuns who would
otherwise have had to summon
a committee to determine whether
permission should be granted
or not on this occasion; and why
I felt the need to leave the grounds
at all. Why indeed, I thought, as I
tiptoed back to aforesaid hedge
in the only pair of heels

I’d kept. Exactly when
they took against me was
hard to say as I’d scrubbed
enough floors in my time and
cooked a hundred pies, picked up
all the leaves in autumn, one
by one, visited the elderly, sick
and dying, led vespers, sang and read.
The thought I might be,
well, writing a book was
a little troubling.

So when I tried to apply
to travel the two hundred and
sixty miles to spend one day
with my mother who was
dying in the hills, the Superior said
she must be really ill for you
to even think of asking.
When they finally voted me
out, in my own time, of course,
but preferably before the 4th,
I could think of only one reply
as to ‘whether I’d be able
to re-adjust without help’:
not in these shoes.

[This poem is taken from Samatha Wynne Rhydderch’s forthcoming collection Not in These Shoes]

Driving the change is the rise of the internet and a corresponding increase in the time people spend in front of their computers. The PC is the new goggle-box, or rather, Google-box. And it’s all a bit scary for paunchy middle-aged ad agency types who are being forced to reinvent themselves: remembering to wear their baseball caps backwards and learning to speak techno as the world lurches from traditional aggregated media to a more fragmented landscape.

For everyone else it’s enormous fun as we become aficionados of midget Jell-O-wrestling and discover our very own Pentonville handles at prisonbitchname.com (Harry Hung Horse, in case you were wondering). There’s a site for everyone. And his dog.

In many ways the online space is the perfect environment for products like books and CDs - bands like the Arctic Monkeys established a huge fan-base through online file sharing, Suze Orman’s publishers shrewdly allowed a million or so copies of her new book to be downloaded for free through Oprah’s website generating massive buzz. In theory well-marketed niche products can now punch well above their weight without requiring an advertising budget the size of Lichtenstein’s GNP. In theory.

The problem is, the Long Tail. There’s just so much stuff out there.

Authors have been quick to take advantage of the cyberspace opportunity with some excellent websites and blogs. But the question remains, how do we channel potential readers to our little asteroids in the first place?

In truth consumers are actually behaving more like the Princes of Serendip than aristocratic medieval brats - not so much lounging back on velveteen cushions waiting for the world to pop a sugared comfit into their slack jaws, as active, engaged and square-jawed as Dan Dare. They’re out in cyberspace looking for new stuff to trip over.

And this is an important distinction. Consumers prefer to believe that there’s an element of serendipity to their latest discovery. The new generation has become quite resistant to the traditional push dynamic. The trick is making potential readers feel that they’ve found you as a consequence of good fortune and their own sagacity. And what’s more, they’re one of a select and discerning few. 

In cyberspace everybody wants to be Neil Armstrong.
Nobody wants to be…whatever his name was.

For my own imminent hardback launch I’m preparing two websites: one for the novel, the other for one of my characters.

One of the tools I’m planning to use to tempt potential readers is a thing called a QR (Quick Response) Code. It’s basically a 2D bar-code for your mobile phone. If you’re on a 3G network and a groovy young thing you simply point your camera lens at a weird square object and your phone instantly gratifies you by converting it into interesting information.

In my case one of two things can happen: your WAP-enabled phone pops up the url for my novel – or your phone automatically links to a WAP page featuring my first chapter.

The reader now can now bask in that Eureka Moment; ululating with savage joy at being one of the few who have genuinely discovered something wonderful, before rushing to buy my book. Or they can admit to being a numbskull with no taste.

I suppose I ought to point out a third possibility: you’re a sad old technophobe, you point your phone at one these devices. Nothing happens until you remember that your crappy old phone doesn’t actually have a camera. You limp away, shaking your fist at happy young people and smelling horrible.

If all this sounds a bit overly techno, it’s not. A QR Code is simply a machine link between print and online media, or if you prefer, a printed device which enables people in the real world to dip in and out of cyberspace using their phones. It’s a glorified barcode, albeit one which contains about 300 times more information than the stripy things in Tesco.

QR Codes are de rigueur in Japan, almost mundane, and they hit the UK around August 2007. The first big promo to use them was the film premiere of 28 Days Later where they erected a gigantic QR Code billboard. Underneath was a printed url for their website, which is more or less a classic example of belt and braces. 

But just so you know that I’m not mad, the Beeb is using QR Codes for programming right now so they’re good for early adopters. Personally I think there’s still enough intrigue attached to make them worthwhile for us first-time authors to engage with a young-ish target audience. They can be printed up as stickers, leaflets, T-shirts, scarves, underpants, temporary tattoos, anything you want really.

My launch will take place at the wonderful Goldsboro Books in Covent Garden in May. I shall have all of these things available, including QR-tattooed maidens and studs.

I’ll be the guy whose phone doesn’t work.

[Sion Scott Wilson is the author of The Sleepwalker’s Introduction to Flight. Visit the book's website here.]

I have a solution and it comes from Catalonia. There, Sant Jordi is celebrated on 23rd April with gifts and romance: the day is known as el día de la rosa or el día del libro. Temporary stalls selling books and roses spring up all over Barcelona and it’s customary to give either flowers or a carefully chosen book to your main squeeze.

This strikes me as a lovely tradition. Not only does it solve the St George dilemma, but it also provides a bearable alternative to Valentine’s Day for those of us who spend every 14th February hiding under the duvet, trying to block out the sounds of Celine Dion and feeling queasy. And, of course, it’s another excuse to buy books.

So, off you go – enjoy – I’ve given you the idea for free. And be thankful that you aren’t obliged to spend the day in a silly hat drinking Guinness and singing rebel songs, like me.

[Caitriona Row works at Pan Macmillan]

Most publishers view slush less enthusiastically than Captain Jack – at least he can use it for greasing his capstan. Far from being seen as essential to the sound sailing of the ship, the slush pile is usually treated with the kind of affection normally reserved for obscene spam. An inconvenience and an irritant and an occasional cause of head-shaking despair. Why? Of course ninety-nine per cent of unsolicited submissions are crap – but then, as Sturgeon’s Law goes, ninety-nine per cent of everything is crap. And anyway, isn’t it a publisher’s job to identify that one per cent? Or am I thinking of agents?

You could, of course, remember the truism that every published writer once languished on a slush pile of one kind or another. You could welcome unsolicited submissions rather than just enduring them with a weary hmph. You could reclaim the role of gatekeeper.

You could – even – accept typescripts by email. No more mountains of beribboned and stapled and paper-clipped A4, no more jiffy bags disgorging their foul wadding into your coffee, no more worrying that you are not the first to lick this particular SAE.

It is, anyway, time publishers recognised that the slush pile is more than just a means of keeping this week’s work-experience placement occupied. In other words, don’t think: ‘seething meat-fat’; think: ‘full of flavour and fun to drink.’

[Will Atkins works for Macmillan New Writing]

But for every great book from the unsolicited submissions pile, there has necessarily to be a huge amount in there that simply isn’t up to scratch. Whenever I hear the phrase ‘slush pile’ now, used by someone who doesn’t or hasn’t worked on one, I always want to explain what the other stuff is like: the bulk and substance of the paper landslides which the (mostly junior) publishing and agency staff have to deal with. So here goes.

Although I don’t work on ‘slush’ or unsolicited submissions any more, I did spend one summer doing so – doing nothing else, in fact – at a major London publisher. As a graduate trainee, I spent three months working my way through the editorial departments with the sole exception of reference books. When I turned up I would introduce myself, be thanked in advance for my efforts, asked if I might have a look through the slush pile, and, giving simpering thanks for the opportunity, back away with an armload of manuscripts towards a spare desk, and begin working through them. I should say here that, like most trade publishers, this one did not officially accept unsolicited submissions, but still received them almost every day.

Quite soon (by, say, my third slush pile of ten), I had identified the main groups into which the authors of slush fell:

1. Nice, normal people

Probably the largest proportion of slush manuscripts came from this group. They were usually people who had recently retired and had more time on their hands, and had taken to looking back on their lives and the times they had lived through. I doubt anyone reaches retirement age without accumulating an amount of experience which they find astonishing, and worth telling people about. But this in itself does not equate to an ability to write with insight. Nor is time on one’s hands a reason, in itself, to write a book, and these books were always straight retellings of the events of their lives and nothing else. I used to tie myself in knots tryin