The part of getting published that has scared me the most

Plus: the Irish presidential election, book two, and sobriety

Hello!

Some Substack posts come easier than others. This one, however, I’ve mulled over for a few weeks, unsure about how much I can or should share. But I set up this Substack to be honest about the process of getting a book published, to offer a bit of insight, and also because writing is my therapy. So let’s get into it: book publicity!

The Lies Between Us will be published in four months time. I can’t quite believe that I’ll see it in bookshops so soon. Just 16 short weeks. I’m so grateful, just absolutely buzzing. Because we are now within six months of publication day, the publicity chats have started with the lovely team at Penguin Sandycove. They are complete pros, and I do genuinely feel like I’m in the safest of hands.

But! I have spent the last 18 years asking other people questions. Up until the last few years, I deliberately suppressed my personality because I so strongly believed in being impartial in journalism and somehow, for me, that meant keeping who I was out of everything I wrote. It sounds obvious because it is. You report on things that happen to other people, not yourself. Only once have I really written about something I was deeply affected by, and that was when I wrote a first person piece about being stabbed on O’Connell Street. I went on the Late Late Show to talk about it and nearly fainted with the nerves of it all. It took around ten years for me to open up again, and that was on the Inside Politics podcast for The Irish Times, and that only really happened because I was so tired covering the pandemic that I stopped giving a damn about saying something wrong.

The aim of the game now, for me, is to try my best to make this book a success. I want to write until the day I die, so it’s really important for me to get this right and to give it everything I have. So I want to throw myself into publicity, to say yes to any interview request, to completely put myself out there. But it’s really scary, too. I’m worried about messing it up, I’m worried that I’m kind of exposing part of my soul. First world problems, right? Plus: what if no one wants to interview me? Lol.

This has turned my mind towards ways to manage that anxiety. I decided to take a month off alcohol, which might be normal for most people but let me tell you… people say drinking in journalism doesn't really happen any more. Well they’d be wrong. I often meet contacts for a pint, and other journalists are truly great craic over a glass of wine. Taking the month off was eye-opening. I didn’t miss drinking at all, except for in stressful moments. I loved being able to drive home from birthday parties and work events. Yet. I found myself feeling really awkward without it as a crutch. Contrary to my expectations, I did not spring out of the bed at 6am and power my way to the gym. Turns out I am just tired and cranky with headaches, regardless. But I did have a clearer head and it helped with balancing things: work, publicity plans for The Lies Between Us, and writing Book 2.

Book 2 has been… interesting. It just feels very different to the process of writing the first. I’m writing it thinking: but someone really might read this. Are you sure you want to go there? Etc etc. The challenge for me here is to remember the joy of it all. To just write and enjoy it and keep that space sacred.

Which is all well and good when there isn’t a presidential election ongoing. For anyone reading outside of Ireland, we are coming up to the end of an election campaign for Ireland’s tenth president. There are three candidates on the ballot paper, but one has effectively pulled out of the race, Fianna Fail’s Jim Gavin. Duking it out are the Independent candidate Catherine Connolly, who has the backing of the left-leaning parties, and Heather Humphreys, who has the backing of the centrist parties. More or less. (Fianna Fáil are still smarting over Gavin’s campaign implosion, and Fine Gael honestly don’t seem overwhelmingly enthused by their candidate. I know they would disagree with me but honestly, this is the vibe I am getting.)

It’s my first election as a political editor at a Sunday newspaper. It feels a bit like rewiring your brain, trying to figure out what people will want to read on Sunday instead of today. There’s also a lot more organising in the role. I’m really enjoying it, and it’s a learning curve. I have a lot of thoughts about what happened during the campaign and what it says about the state of both Irish politics, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear that here, right?!

So basically the situation is right now that I am spending my day writing about the presidential election, my nights committing imaginary murders and typing typing typing, the small hours of the morning reading other authors’ books, and my dreams hoping that everything goes well in the lead-up to publication. It’s definitely an intense workload but I know how lucky I am. Sometimes when I wake up, it is to a notification on Instagram that a book reviewer has received the novel. I can’t tell you the joy this gives me. I think I’m about to hit 200 subscribers on here, and the readership figures for the posts are many multiples higher. So thanks to you for reading and for being part of this, a most exciting and challenging time. As ever, if you have any questions I would be so happy to answer them.

Much love, Jen xxcx