GUY MANKOWSKI

I read a very interesting blog by fellow Legend Press author Ruth Dugdall the other day, who mentioned that prior to the release of her first novel she wished she had taken the time, just before the novel was released, to ask herself what exactly it was that she expected from her book when it was eventually published. A couple of local book signings, a mention in the local gazette? While I was writing The Intimates for the first time in my life I kept a journal, most of which is filled with vague romantic preoccupations and reflections on the copious numbers of gigs I was attending at that point in my life. But flicking through it last night I noticed one or two mentions to the book that would eventually become The Intimates (known as The Fountains at the time, until my editor Lauren wisely instructed me that that sounded like a Barbara Cartland novel). Reading them I was struck by the rather humble ambitions I originally had for it. For it to be ‘a decent impression of a thoughtfu...

One refrain that I often hear from people is that they ‘would love to write, but can never find the time’. Though I’m sympathetic to this statement – because for the best part of a decade I’d wondered when the novel twisting inside me would come out- I also find this question rather frustrating. As I’ve since learnt that the time to write your novel will never come. It will just have to be carved out, rather bloodily, from the series of bewildering compromises that modern life has now become. To find the time to write my novel last summer, I simply had to quit my job. I had no money, and was pretty sure no magical grants were on their way. It was a terrifying but exciting prospect, having two months ahead of me with a growing overdraft and with nothing to do but write. But it had become clear that the book, which would eventually become The Intimates, was going to haunt me until I eventually acquiesced. It had been bothering me ever since I had first thought of the concept for it on...