If you read the acknowledgements for Sanctus you may recall how I described the whole process of writing a first book as being like throwing a huge party and having no idea if anyone will come. Well praise be and hallelujah people came, so firstly I’d like to bow deeply and doff my cap to all those who read Sanctus and occasionally lifted my day by contacting me on Twitter or Facebook to tell me how much they’d enjoyed it. In fact if you ever feel an urge to contact a writer and are feeling a little shy or worried that it might be an imposition, just do it. We spend much of the year locked up inside our heads in small rooms and so messages from readers are like chinks of sunlight in our dark, uncompromising prisons.
Second books, I have now discovered, are also like throwing parties. Only this time you are labouring in the shadow of the last one you threw, constantly hoping that the same people who came to that one will also come to this and not leave early. In preparing this one I have to particularly thank my incomparable agent at LAW, Alice Saunders, who is agenty in all the right ways and non-agenty in all the rest, as well as Mark Lucas and Peta Nightingale for that well-timed lunch at Ping Pong. I also owe a huge debt to everyone at ILA who, quite literally, spread my words to the rest of the world – as well as George Lucas at Inkwell Management who keeps the fires blazing in America.
At HarperCollins I am very lucky to have two smart and lovely editors in my corner in the shape of Julia Wisdom in the UK and David Highfill in the US, as well as a genius team of editorial staff, designers, marketers and sales folk who put the right looking book in the right people’s hands.
I also want to thank all the international publishers who bought Sanctus, many of whom I have met and all of whom I want to meet so I can buy them a drink and grin at them like a drunken fool.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my inspirational children, Roxy, Stan, and Betsy Bean, and my wife Kathryn for all the love and support, without which none of this would be possible and everything would be pointless anyway.