Finally made it to my Granddad’s old stomping grounds at White Hart Lane. Well, the stadium is a bit nicer than when he played there, I’m sure. Thanks to @spursofficial for the hospitality and finding some mementoes from his playing days, including his contracts with the club.
Thanks to everyone who came out Thursday night to celebrate Live to See the Day. It was humbling to be surrounded by so much love. Photos by @normalandboring
I’ve been attending the Writers’ Trust gala for ages. But this was the first time I attended as a writer. Thanks to @dplto and the @writerstrust of Canada for the great night. You think a little snow would stop us?
📷 by @georgepimentel1 and Ceta Ramkhalawansingh
I spent hundreds of hours at this table in the back room of @blackponycafebar writing Live to See the Day. It’s out today. If you read it, I hope you like it.
One day, you have an idea. It’s a strange idea, so you start reading, researching, talking to people, finding out if there’s something there. You email an editor, who says yes, there’s something there. You sign a contract. You think it’ll take two years. You are in the middle of planning your first research trip when a pandemic begins. The world shuts down. You sit in your basement office, chipping away at the project, interviewing people on a screen, wondering if this will ever end. If you’ll ever have a chance to finish what you started—ironic considering your subject matter. But it does end, eventually, and you start to travel around the world. You spend months and months and months in coffee shops and libraries and at your kitchen table, writing. More travel. More research. More interviews. You revise. You take a leave from work to revise some more. And then one evening, almost seven years to the day you began this odyssey, the first finished copy of your first book arrives on your doorstep.
Live to See the Day is out on January 6.
I wrote a book. I wrote a book? I wrote a book! After spending so much of my career writing about books, this is a very weird thing to type. But it’s true: Live to See the Day is off to the printer. I never thought I’d write those words, which is fitting considering it’s a book about things that might never happen. It took seven years of work, took me around the world and away from my family (@tasleenadatia held down the fort), and took everything I had in me to write. While I never thought it would take this long to finish, it’s coming out, I think, at the perfect time: We’ve forgotten how interesting and funny and awesome the world is, and how it’s filled with the most fascinating people imaginable. I would love love love it if you preordered it from this link /2jwwuepk, (and in bio) or from your favourite bookstore. Or tell your library to stock it, or tell your friends and family about it, or just pretend to be on the phone on a crowded streetcar and say, loudly, “Oh my God. Have you heard about this book, Live to See the Day? You have to read it. It will change your life.” Live to See the Day will be published on January 6 by the amazing folks at @mcclellandstewart and @penguinrandomca , but it would make an incredible (late-ish) Christmas present — order 1 copy, 5 copies, 10 copies, I will sign them all! Thank you to @katedotdotdotsinclair for designing the perfect cover, and thanks to @kate.beaton and @susanorlean for the kind words. Launch party details TK!
