Peter May Author

I have to confess to a certain nervous anticipation about the forthcoming publication of my book, “The Blackhouse”.

This is the first of my books in several years to get a proper launch.  While seven of them have been published in France in recent times, along with the entire China series and (almost) five Enzo books in the United States, their publications have been marked simply by the passing of a date.  The official publication date, from when the books are available in the shops (although, in truth, they are usually on the shelves before then).

French cover

This time it is different.  Although “The Blackhouse” has already been published in France – where it won literary prizes and was described by the French national daily, L’Humanité, as “a masterpiece” – this is its first appearance in English.  And my publisher, Quercus, is planning two launches.  One in my home town of Glasgow, the other in Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh.

My trip back to Scotland for these launches, will be accompanied by a host of press interviews and stock signings.  I will get to meet up with old friends, and readers, whom I haven’t seen for years.  Quite an emotional homecoming, made more poignant by the fact that “The Blackhouse” is the only book I have written which takes place entirely in my native Scotland.

Spanish cover

On its actual publication date, February 3rd, I will be in Barcelona.  For the book is also coming out in Spanish at the same time, as well as in German, and a little later in Italian and other languages.

To mark the Spanish publication under the title “La isla de los cazadores de pájaros”, my publisher, Random House Mondadori, has invited me to the week-long crime writing festival in Barcelona which takes place from the end of January, Barcelona Negra.  There I face several days of press interviews and festival events, along with the opportunity to explore the city – my first trip there since passing through it in darkness on a holiday coach forty-five years ago.

German cover

The trip to Barcelona will, in itself, be quite an event.  I am taking a night-train from Limoges in France, lodged in my own private compartment, and receiving breakfast there as the train draws into the Catalonian capital first thing the next morning.  I believe the railway gauge changes between France and Spain, but I have no idea how or where they effect the changeover.

“The Blackhouse” is the first book in the Lewis Trilogy.  The second is written, and its English title now determined as “The Lewis Man”.  It will also appear first in French, title yet to be decided.  The publishers are so excited about it, they have already decided to launch it at la rentrée, 2011, which is the moment when everyone goes back to work after the summer holidays in France.  And they have asked me to go to Arles, the HQ of Actes Sud, in May to meet the reps before they go out to sell it to the bookstores.

The Nomination

And, of course, “The Blackhouse” has been nominated for a highly prestigious French literary award, the “Prix littéraire Inter CE”.  It is one of ten novels chosen from around Europe and the winner will be decided later in the year.

So it is a time filled with excitement, and not a little apprehension, as the book I wrote five years ago, and which languished in rejection during most of that time, is finally published in its original language.  Even since Quercus offered me the three-book contract for the trilogy, nearly fifteen months have passed.  Fifteen months of waiting and patient build-up.  Cover, promotion, review copies, blogs, interviews.  The book has been taken by two major supermarket chains in the UK, Asda and Sainsbury’s, and the former is planning a special St. Valentine’s Day promotion for it.  This is the biggest hardback print run of any book I have ever had published, and the anticipation is killing.

British cover

But one thing is for sure.  After all this time, February 3rd will come and go, the earth won’t move beneath my feet, the world will keep turning, and I will suffer, inevitably, from a huge sense of anti-climax.

The only uncertainty is how the book will be received by the critics, and therefore the readers.  I will post the good reviews as they come in, and burn the bad ones.

Let’s hope there is a preponderance of the former!

PS:  Just for fun, here is the book trailer made for it by my Spanish publisher…

The Book Depository offers FREE worldwide delivery of the hard cover edition of The Blackhouse (with 25% off the cover price, too).

The world of writing and publishing is full of horror stories about books turned down by major publishers which then went on to become bestsellers – J. K. Rowling and the first of the Harry Potter books being one of the most recent and spectacular examples.

In a European experiment conducted in the last few years, specially prepared modern manuscripts of classic pieces of literature were sent to various publishing houses.  Not only did the editors fail to recognise the works, they were ALL rejected.  Imagine!  Masterpieces like “Les Misérables” might never have seen the light of day.

It makes you wonder what great books might have been written that we will never have the chance to read, what wonderful writers are going unheralded – victims of the “factory farming” model of modern publishing.

My own example is, perhaps, not quite so spectacular, but certainly an indictment of that model.

It concerns my book, “The Blackhouse”, which will be published for the first time in the UK in February.  It has already been out for over a year in France, where it has been hugely successful, winning awards and nominations.

I have made a short video about it.  Not the story of the book (I will leave the book to tell its own tale), but the story behind it.

Watch for yourself, and tell me what you think…

I live in a country where streets and squares are named after famous writers, inventors, soldiers and politicians.  But I think I have found a new slant on this – and one which has a very personal connection to me and my books.

Château Lastours

A number of years ago, I was drawn to the Gaillac wine-producing region of south-west France.  Two particular wines had attracted me:  the Cuvée Special of Château Lastours, and the oak-aged Syrah of Domaine Sarrabelle.  I had tasted both, and loved them, and so decided to track down the vineyards that produced them.

It was a fateful decision.  Because I fell in love with Gaillac and its wines, and decided to set one of my series of Enzo Files books among the vineyards of the area.

As luck would have it, both Château Lastours and Domaine Sarrabelle were willing to help me with my research, and I ended up using both vineyards (under different names) in the book – THE CRITIC.  Château Lastours became Château Saint-Michel, and Domaine Sarrabelle became Domaine de la Croix Blanche (the white cross).

Wine tasting at Domaine Sarrabelle

I was given full access to both wineries during the harvesting and production of the wine, and in fact spent a morning hand-picking grapes with the family Caussé and their friends on Domaine Sarrabelle – sweet, white Mauzac grapes for the Methode Gaillacoise (the Gaillac version of Champagne).  Afterwards, I lunched with them at a long table in the cellar of their house – consuming copious amounts of good food and wine.

When the book came out and I went to the States to promote it, Domaine Sarrabelle had wines shipped out so that I could offer my readers, at the various book events, a taste of the wines they were going to read about.  And as a reward for my promotion of Gaillac wines abroad, I was made a Chevalier of the Ordre de la Dive Bouteille (the Order of the Divine Bottle).

Vineyards at Gaillac

Domaine Sarrabelle went on to stock and sell English copies of my book in their tasting room, and still do, while awaiting the translation of the Enzo Files into French.

I make frequent visits to the vineyard to stock up on my favourite wines, and have become firm friends of Fabien and Laurent Caussé, their partners, parents and grandparents.

I recently returned for a tasting tour during the autumn wine-fest, and imagine my surprise when Fabien steered me into the huge wine shed and produced two bottles for me to look at – one red, one white, both bearing a white cross insignia and the name Croix Blanche.

La Croix Blanche

They had named two new wines after the fictitious name I had given their vineyard in the book.

I was both touched, and honoured, and consider that having a wine called after a creation in one of my books is an even greater distinction than having a street named after me.  Boulevard Peter May doesn’t really chime.  But to sit round a table with friends at a meal and quaff a bottle or two of Croix Blanche seems to me like the ultimate accolade.

Vive le wine!

PS:  Believe it or not, these wines are now available in the United States, imported by Jon-David Headrick Selections LLC of Asheville, North Carolina.

Ce n’est pas le blog que je projetais d’écrire. Mais j’ai besoin de partager cette histoire – pour en atténuer la tristesse.

Je n’avais que quatre ans quand je suis entré à l’école. C’était en 1956. Je me souviens parfaitement de cette journée. Le matin, ma mère m’a accompagné. Nous avons fait le trajet à pied – environ trois kilomètres. Persuadé d’être assez grand pour retrouver mon chemin tout seul, j’ai refusé qu’elle vienne me chercher à la sortie des classes.

Naturellement, je me suis perdu. Quelle histoire ! Mémorables débuts!

Un autre évènement de taille a marqué cette journée particulière : je suis tombé amoureux. Ridicule, hein ! À quatre ans. C’est pourtant vrai. Amoureux d’une petite fille que je n’avais jamais vue, Jennifer. Elle habitait une ferme, à trois kilomètres de l’école – mais à l’opposé de l’endroit où je vivais.

Jennifer avait un délicieux sourire, des fossettes sur les joues, des nattes attachées par des rubans ; et elle penchait la tête avec coquetterie en me fixant de ses adorables yeux sombres.

Jennifer à 6 ans

Le samedi matin, j’ai déclaré à mes parents que je voulais aller jouer chez elle. À mon grand désarroi, on me l’a interdit – c’était beaucoup trop loin, et il y avait deux grandes routes à traverser !

Alors, le samedi suivant, je suis parti en douce, sans rien dire à personne. J’ai traversé la première route en faisant très attention, et emprunté des chemin de terre jusqu’à ce que j’aperçoive la ferme au loin. Pour éviter la deuxième route, j’ai coupé à travers champs – et couru en moulinant des bras devant un taureau médusé avant qu’il ait le temps de me capter dans sa ligne de mire et de charger.

Jennifer et moi, on a joué dans la grange au milieu des balles de foin. C’est là que j’ai eu droit à mon premier baiser. J’ai renouvelé mon escapade plusieurs week-ends de suite, jusqu’au jour fatal où la mère de mon amie s’est mis dans la tête de téléphoner chez moi pour demander si je pouvais rester déjeuner. Mon secret était dévoilé !

Terminées les visites en cachette à la ferme. Mais nous avons continué à nous fréquenter par intermittence pendant les sept années de l’école primaire.

Jennifer à 10 ans

Lorsque notre tour est arrivé de passer en secondaire, Jennifer et moi étions justement en froid à ce moment-là. J’ai invité une autre fille, Irene, au Qualie Dance (le bal de qualification), la soirée fêtant cet événement.

Une semaine avant le bal, Jennifer m’a envoyé une lettre. Elle ne comprenait pas pourquoi je ne lui avais pas demandé d’être ma cavalière et suggérait que mon ami Derek me remplace auprès d’Irene. Malheureusement, je ne pouvais plus faire marche arrière. J’ai gardé sa lettre signée : « La fille de la ferme ». Et je regrette encore la peine que je lui ai causée.

La lettre

Je suis donc allé au bal avec Irene. À la rentrée, Jennifer et moi sommes partis dans des lycées différents.

Plus tard, devenu journaliste à Glasgow, j’ai lu un article sur la première femme autorisée à conduire une voiture de police. C’était Jennifer. Puis, peut-être un an après, je l’ai croisée au tribunal où je couvrais un procès pour homicide ; elle accompagnait, de son côté, un témoin mineur. On a échangé quelques mots gênés, et je ne l’ai plus jamais revue.

Retour au présent. Il y a quelques années, après avoir achevé ma série des thrillers chinois, je me suis attelé à un roman complètement différent situé en Écosse, aux Hébrides, où j’avais tourné pendant cinq ans une série de dramatiques pour la télévision. Dans ce roman, les souvenirs d’enfance du personnage principal, qui a grandi sur l’île, occupent une grande partie du récit ; je me suis naturellement beaucoup inspiré des miens.

Jennifer y tenant une place importante, elle est devenue le personnage de Marsaili. Les visites défendues à la ferme, le baiser au milieu des balles de foin, et même la lettre de « La fille de la ferme » sont immortalisés dans ce livre, « L’île des chasseurs d’oiseaux », qui paraîtra en anglais le 3 février 2011, aux éditions Quercus. Il y a quelques mois, je me suis dit qu’il serait amusant de retrouver la trace de Jennifer pour lui annoncer que nos aventures enfantines étaient entrés au royaume de la fiction.

Je n’ai rien trouvé sur le net. J’ai seulement réussi à voir sa maison, depuis chez moi, en France, grâce à Google Street View. Reconvertie en élégante résidence haut de gamme, elle n’a plus rien d’une ferme.

J’ai tenté de la contacter par le biais du site « Friends Reunited », sans succès.

Finalement, je me suis connecté aux archives nationales d’Écosse où il est possible de consulter les registres des naissances, décès et mariages.

À mon grand étonnement, aucune Jennifer n’était née entre 1950 et 1952. J’ai élargi la recherche, en me disant que Jennifer était peut-être son deuxième prénom. Rien. J’ai écrit à notre ancienne école. Pas de réponse. Comme si elle n’avait jamais existé.

Il y a quelques jours, j’ai tenté à nouveau une recherche, en recoupant cette fois mariages et dates de naissances ; et j’ai découvert qu’une Janet portant le même nom de famille que Jennifer, née en 1952 dans le Lanarkshire, à Carluke, non loin de la ferme, s’était mariée en 1977, puis remariée quatre ans plus tard. Les deux mariages avaient eu lieu dans le district de Mearns and Eastwood, où elle avait grandi.

J’étais certain qu’il s’agissait d’elle. Il n’y avait pas d’autre possibilité. Peut-être avait-elle reçu le même prénom que sa mère ? Dans ce cas, on l’avait appelée Jennifer pour éviter toute confusion. Je ne trouvais rien d’autre, nulle part. Pour en être absolument sûr, j’ai décidé de procéder à une dernière vérification. Dans la liste des décès.

Et là, en 2002, enregistré dans le district de Mearns and Eastwood, figurait celui de cette même Janet.

J’avais encore une chance de me tromper. Or, par un étrange caprice du destin, le même jour, j’ai enfin reçu une réponse de mon ancienne école. Quelqu’un connaissait la famille de Jennifer. Mon espoir, un instant regonflé, s’est immédiatement brisé : mes recherches dans les archives nationales m’avaient conduit à la bonne conclusion.

La petite fille dont j’étais tombé amoureux dès mon premier jour d’école était morte. Une petite partie de moi-même est morte aussi quand je l’ai appris.

Dans le roman, mon personnage principal, Fin, revoit Marsaili – dix-huit ans plus tard…

Il ralentit, tourna dans l’allée des Macinnes, et arrêta la voiture à la porte du garage. Au-delà de la maison, un rayon de lune éclaboussait l’océan de fragments argentés. Il y avait de la lumière dans la cuisine ; par la fenêtre, Fin aperçut une silhouette devant l’évier. Il tressaillit en reconnaissant Marsaili, ses longs cheveux blonds un peu plus foncés maintenant, strictement tirés en arrière, retenus en queue de cheval sur la nuque. Sans maquillage, elle paraissait un peu lasse, pâle ; des cernes soulignaient ses yeux bleus dont l’éclat s’était terni. En entendant la voiture, elle redressa la tête ; Fin éteignit aussitôt les phares de façon qu’elle ne puisse distinguer autre chose qu’un reflet d’elle-même dans la vitre. Comme déçue par ce qu’elle voyait, elle se détourna rapidement. À cet instant, il eut la vision fugitive de la petite fille qui l’avait ensorcelé dès le premier regard.

Je n’avais aucune raison de nous croire immortels.  Pourtant, sans savoir pourquoi, j’avais toujours pensé que je la reverrais.

J’ai pris contact avec ses deux fils et l’une de ses sœurs. Je tenais à ce qu’ils sachent que, même si Jennifer a disparu depuis huit ans, elle vit encore à travers les mots que j’écris et mes souvenirs de ces journées à la ferme.

Traduction de la lettre de Jennifer

Cher Peter

Je ne sais pas pourquoi tu as invité Irene au Qually tu pourrais dire à tes amis de dire à Irene que tu ne veux pas y aller avec elle et laisser quelqu’un d’autre l’emmener comme Derek par exemple.

J’espère que tu vas te décommander.

P.S. Tu pourrais toujours m’inviter

Envoyé par La fille de la ferme

xxxxxxxxx

Traduction du blog, grâce à Ariane Bataille

This isn’t the blog I planned to write.  But it’s a story I need to share, a kind of spreading of the pain.

I was just four years old when I started school in 1956.  I remember that first day well.  My mum walked me to the school.  It was about two miles.  But I figured I was a big boy, and could find my own way home.  So I insisted that she didn’t come to get me at the end of the day.

Of course, I got lost.  And there was a great hullabaloo.  Memorable first days!

But there is something else that sticks in my mind about that particular first day.  I fell in love.  How ridiculous is that!  Four years old.  But I did.  With a little girl I had cast eyes on for the very first time.  Her name was Jennifer, and she lived on a farm a couple of miles away in the opposite direction from where my house was.

She had a beautiful dimpled smile, and pigtails in ribbons, and she used to dip her head coyly and look up at me with lovely dark eyes.

Jennifer aged around 6

Come Saturday morning I told my parents I wanted to go to the farm to play with her.  And to my dismay I was expressly forbidden.  It was too far, and entailed the crossing of two busy main roads!

So, naturally, the following weekend I made a secret trip to the farm without telling a soul.  I carefully crossed the first main road, and then walked the rest of the way on farm roads till I could see her farm in the distance.  To avoid the second main road I took a short-cut across the fields, running with arms windmilling past a startled bull before it had a chance to take stock and charge at me.

Jennifer and I played games among the bales in the barn.  And I had my first ever kiss there.  I went back over several weekends, until one fateful day her mum took it into her head to phone my mum to ask if I could stay for lunch.  And the cat was out of the bag!

No more illicit visits to the farm.

Jennifer aged about 10 or 11

But our relationship continued off and on through the seven years of primary school.  The final dance, before heading off to secondary school, was called the Qualie (qualification) Dance.  And it just happened to coincide with one of our off periods.  So I asked a girl called Irene to go to the dance with me instead.

The week before the dance I received in the post a letter from Jennifer.  She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t asked her, and suggested that my friend Derek could take Irene and I could ask Jennifer instead.  It was signed “The Girl from the Farm”.  I still have that letter today.  But it was all too late, and I have regretted all my life the hurt I caused her.

The letter

I went to the dance with Irene, and Jennifer and I went on to different secondary schools.

Years later, working as a journalist in Glasgow, I saw an article in the paper about the first ever policewoman to take charge of a traffic patrol car.  It was Jennifer.  And then a year or so later, I met her in the High Court when I was covering a murder trial, and she was accompanying a child witness.  We exchanged a few awkward words, and I never set eyes on her again.

Fast forward to a few short years ago.  I had finished writing my series of China Thrillers, and started work on a new, totally different novel set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland where I had spent five years filming a TV drama series.  In the story, much of the narrative involves the main character’s recollections of his childhood, growing up on the island, and for inspiration I drew heavily on my own childhood years.

Jennifer featured prominently and became the character called Marsaili.  The illicit visits to the farm, the kiss among the bales, became immortalised in the text.  Even the letter from “The Girl on the Farm”.  The book is called “The Blackhouse”, and it will be published by Quercus on February 3rd.  So a few months ago I thought it would be fun to track Jennifer down to let her know that our childhood adventures had made their way into fiction.

But when I went searching for her on the net, there was no trace of her to be found.  From my home in France I managed to track down the farm, and look at it courtesy of Google Street View.  No longer a working farm, it has been converted into an elegant upmarket residence.

I searched “Friends Reunited”, where former pupils and workmates reconnect.  No sign of her.

Eventually I accessed the National Archives of Scotland online.  At the ScotlandsPeople Centre, it is possible to track down the registration of births, deaths and marriages.

To my astonishment there was no record of Jennifer’s birth between 1950 and 1952.  I widened the search, figuring that maybe Jennifer was her middle name.  Still no luck.  I wrote to our old school.  No reply.  It was as if she had never existed.

Then a few days ago, I tried searching through the marriage records and cross-referring them with birth records.  Which is when I discovered that a Janet with the same surname, born at Carluke in Lanarkshire in 1952 (not that far from the farm Jennifer’s father tenanted), had married in 1977.  Then four years later, she remarried.  The marriages were registered in the Mearns and Eastwood district where we had grown up.

I was almost certain that this was Jennifer.  There were no other possibilities.  Maybe her mother was called Janet, and they had used the name Jennifer to avoid confusion.  But not another record could I find of her anywhere.  And so in an attempt at absolute verification I tried one last place.  Registration of deaths.

And there, in 2002, recorded in the district of Mearns and Eastwood, was the death of that same Janet.

There was still an outside chance that I was wrong.  But then, by a strange quirk of fate, that very same day I finally received a reply to the query I had sent to our old school.  Someone there knew of Jennifer’s family.  My hopes were raised, only to be dashed almost immediately by the news that my searches in the national archive had brought me to the correct conclusion.

That little girl whom I’d fallen in love with on that first day at school, was dead.  And a little bit of me died too, when I learned that.

In the book, my main character, Fin, gets to see Marsaili again – eighteen years later.  Here is the moment…

He slowed and turned down on to the Macinnes drive and stopped the car in front of the garage doors. A blink of moonlight splashed a pool of broken silver on the ocean beyond. There was a light on in the kitchen, and through the window Fin could see a figure at the sink. He realized, with a start, that it was Marsaili, long fair hair, darker now, drawn back severely from her face and tied in a pony tail at the nape of her neck. She wore no make-up and looked weary somehow, pale, with shadows beneath blue eyes that had lost their lustre. She looked up as she heard the car, and Fin killed the headlights so that all she could see would be a reflection of herself in the window. She looked away quickly, as if disappointed by what she’d seen, and in that moment he glimpsed again the little girl who had so bewitched him from the moment first he set eyes on her.

I don’t know why I should have believed that any of us is immortal.  But somehow, I really always thought I would see wee Jennifer again.

I am in touch now with her family.  She is survived by her sister and two sons.  And I wanted them to know that even although Jennifer passed away eight years ago, she lives on in the words I wrote, and in the memories I have of those days on the farm.