THE EDGE, Publishing November!

In my last post, I was heading off on submission for the first ever time with my psychological thriller I’M HERE FOR YOU, and I didn’t know what the outcome would be. Would any editors want to see the full novel? Would I get an offer? Would I be going back out on submission with a new book sooner than I realised? I just didn’t know.

Well, as it turns out, submission was rather successful!

I’m thrilled to announce (late, as I already broke the news on Twitter, then Instagram, then Facebook) that my debut novel, now called THE EDGE, was bought by Thomas & Mercer last year, and will be published in ebook, paperback, and audio in November 2022. That’s two months away!! And here’s the cover!

Publishing is so strange, as authors often have to sit on secrets for months, if not years at a time. I signed with Thomas & Mercer (the crime and thriller imprint of Amazon Publishing) last autumn, but it’s only in the last few weeks/months that I’ve been allowed to publicly talk about it. I really can’t express how odd it is to have received the best news of my life, but for it to feel utterly unreal because nobody knew!

I also have a few other pieces of news to share, but I’m not allowed to speak about them yet. (Secrets, man!!) But let’s just say my bookshelf is destined to have more than just one of my own books sitting on it in future…

I have lots of thoughts about the emotions, the ups and downs, and the realities of the publication process — particularly the editing, oh gosh, the editing — but I’m going to scrape those together for some individual posts at some point, rather than bombard you today. For now, I just wanted to check in with an update.

Yes, submission was a success. Yes, I’m going to be published. And yes, you can pre-order THE EDGE today!

Thank you to my agent Hannah Schofield for championing this risky book, to Leodora Darlington for fighting for it while she was still an editor with Amazon, to the Amazon team for all their editorial help, and to my friends, family, and supporters who’ve made all this a little easier.

As someone with social anxiety, I absolutely detest the feeling of being in the spotlight in any way, so announcements are incredibly difficult for me — hence why I sat on this one for months and months rather than posting about the publication announcement and then the cover reveal… (Marketing, who’s that? Never heard of her!) Amazon’s approach is very algorithm-based rather than author-do-a-blog-tour-based, so I feel like I’ve found a really good fit for me and my specific weirdness.

Despite my EXTREME FEAR about people reading my work, hating it, misunderstanding it, leaving bad reviews, and thinking badly of me, I’m still excited that I’ll have a book out in the world — and hopefully THE EDGE will find its fans.

More news soon (I hope!), but for now, here’s me looking incredibly smug — because why not, right?