Happy Endings - another excerpt

Hello,

My second novel, Happy Endings, will be released on August 15th and so I thought I'd give you another little excerpt to get you in the mood.

The book is written from four first-person perspectives. The main characters are Kate, Ed, Emma and Jack. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post one excerpt from each character. Today it's all about Ed. 

Ed Hornsby has been dating Kate since the end of university. Although he grew up in a poor, working class family in Slough, Ed works in The City and is doing well. However, despite his financial success, he's far from happy - especially when Kate leaves him to travel the world for six months. Ed soon begins to question everything in his life - including his relationship with Kate.

Ed was one of my favourite characters to write because he was so conflicted. He really wants to be a good bloke, and give Kate the world, but at every step his own insecurities and flaws come back to haunt him. Ed's the person who spends his life thinking that money will make him happy, but then when he has it, realises it doesn't. This is Ed's first chapter. Enjoy.

Ed

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Emma from the front seat of her Mini Cooper. ‘It’s only six months and in the big scheme of things that’s nothing.’

I was crammed in the back like a piece of luggage: the price of having trendy friends with tiny cars. My legs were bent at a funny angle and my back twisted so I looked like I was skiing, but not in a cool way. Still, it was better than the journey there with Kate and her backpack squashing me against the window. Outside, the sun finally lost its battle with the gloomy, grey clouds and rain began to pelt against the window.

‘She’s right, mate,’ joined in Jack in his diluted Australian accent. ‘She’ll be back before you know it.’

‘Right,’ I muttered back.

I was trying to work out why I felt so shit about Kate leaving. I mean, obviously, just her leaving was enough, but it was more than that. I was hurt and angry. Really fucking angry, actually. Why did she need to travel the world? I’d promised her on more than one occasion we’d eventually go to Thailand, Australia and Timbuktu, if that’s what she wanted. I really thought she’d come to her senses and realise everything she needed was right here. I think that was why I was hurting. It wasn’t that she was leaving, but that she was leaving me. I was rejected in favour of a needless holiday and it didn’t make any sense.

‘So,’ said Emma, carrying on as though my girlfriend of nearly eight years, the girl I loved, lived with and hoped to one day marry, hadn’t just hopped on a plane to Thailand. ‘I have this meeting tonight, Ed, with the director for this new film – the next Four Weddings type of thing. Rhys Connelly’s already signed on. The script’s amazing.’ She looked at me in the mirror and then crunched a gear into place. The Mini suddenly lurched forward as the engine roared and then we wobbled momentarily into the next lane. I hung on for dear life.

‘Ed probably doesn’t want to hear about the film, love,’ interjected Jack, as always the thoughtful one, the mediator. Emma and Jack, the thespian and the wordsmith, our bohemian mates from west London and my support system in Kate’s absence.

‘Oh, shit, sorry, I …’

‘No, no its fine, Em, really,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Honestly.’

It wasn’t fine though, was it? My life felt like it had been torn into little pieces and then put back together with some crappy Sellotape in all the wrong places.

We were soon outside my house in Wandsworth. The rain had briefly let up and I was leaning on the open window next to Jack.

‘Seriously, Ed, are you going to be OK? We can come in for a bit if you want,’ said Emma. ‘Have a cup of tea?’

‘Of course he’s going to be all right,’ said Jack, with a brisk, manly grin. ‘Aren’t you, mate?’

‘Yeah, course,’ I said and smiled. ‘Now you two bugger off. I’ll see you soon.’ I tapped the door and they drove off, the Union Jack on the roof disappearing through the leafy streets of my salubrious pocket of London.

I stood outside my house and sighed. The two-bedroom Victorian terrace with sash windows and a little blue door had cost us a fortune. It was minutes from the Thames and had stripped hardwood floors, original iron fireplaces and a little garden – it was the house we’d made our perfect little home. The final piece of the jigsaw, or so I’d thought.

I took out my front door key and let myself in, popped the keys in the little tray on the sideboard and stood for a moment. It was terrifyingly quiet. The noise I was going to have to get used to for the next six months. I looked along the hallway and saw the flowers Kate bought last week. They hung down, limply grazing the top of the vase, pathetically drooping as if in a yoga pose. But they weren’t, they were slowly dying and in a couple of days would be tossed in the bin and forgotten.

Waking up alone was strange. The bed had never felt so big and in a moment of fitful sleep, just before I properly woke up, I forgot she was gone. It came back to me in a horrifying flash when I reached across to cuddle her, but all I felt was a cold sheet. I looked across and there was her pillow, puffed up and untouched like something straight out of the Habitat catalogue. Kate was an active sleeper and usually by morning most of the sheet and duvet was pulled and stretched to her side of the bed and her pillow was often on the floor. Now, in its current state, it looked out of place. A sad reminder she was gone, and even though it annoyed me how she routinely turned our bed into a jumble sale pile, without it I felt empty.

Despite it being only six o’clock, I decided to head into work early. The tube was quieter than usual. I even got a seat to read my copy of the Metro, instead of having to try and grasp the headlines while being jostled and pushed against the rubbery rolls of a fellow commuter. By the time I got off at Bank station, I actually felt quite relaxed and a bit Zen. I grabbed a large cappuccino and a bacon roll – the breakfast of champions – and headed into work. Even my office floor was bereft of workers; a tired-looking cleaner was emptying the last few bins and then my immediate manager and the Director of Investments, Hugh Whitman, a balding man in his late fifties, strode past me towards his corner office.

‘Early today, Hornsby, eh. Trouble with the missus?’

‘Something like that, sir.’

He chortled and kept on walking, leather briefcase in hand and stomach jutting out like a Swiss mountain face. Hugh ran the office with the cut-throat ruthlessness of an army general. If you did well you were rewarded, but one mistake, one black mark against you and you were gone. Despite being a working-class speck in a sky of upper-middle-class employees, I’d stuck around for seven years, slowly easing my way up the banking ladder towards safety.

I turned on my PC and checked my email. As I drank my cappuccino and ate my bacon roll, I began working on the building blocks of an idea. In six months I could get a promotion. Without Kate and all the distractions of a relationship, I could work harder, longer and better. Maybe Kate pissing off across the globe could be a good thing after all. Kate had her dreams and I had mine. She wanted to ponce about in South East Asia with a bunch of drop-outs, hippies and graduates trying to find themselves, while I would stay behind and make sure everything she needed, we needed, was still in place and working better when she got back. It would also help keep my mind off what she was doing and with whom.

By ten o’clock the office was a tornado of energy: people were working hard, making and losing millions. It was like a beautiful symphony, every aspect working together to produce a capitalist masterpiece. Our floor was an open-plan football field of computers, telephones, fax machines and men in expensive suits shouting at each other for twelve hours a day. However, on that Monday morning at ten o’clock an office of fifty bankers all stopped working as a girl walked across the floor. She was beautiful: every man’s dream in a grey business suit and high heels. All eyes, including mine, stopped scrolling through emails and watched her walk, slowly, gracefully, with Harriet from HR, until they stopped quite suddenly at my desk.

‘Ed, this is Georgina Hays. She’s new and going to be shadowing you for a few days. Make her feel at home and keep the vultures off her back, will you?’ said Harriet with a motherly smile. Harriet was the office matriarch, head of human resources and feared and loved in equal measure by every employee. I suddenly felt like every pair of eyes in the office were on me and when I looked up I realised they were.

‘Hi,’ said Georgina, shaking my hand briskly and then sitting down next to me. ‘Call me Georgie, please.’ She had the poshest voice I’d ever heard, which was no mean feat considering I worked in an office packed to the rafters with Oxbridge alumni. She was stunning. She had long blonde hair – but not just regular blonde, it was pure, clean, almost ethereal – the biggest, bluest eyes and a small, perfectly formed nose with a spattering of freckles. Her face was symmetrical, balanced, refined and she had a flawless body to match. ‘Ed, before we start, I just want to say thank you.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet. I could be awful.’

‘I doubt you’re awful,’ said Georgie with a gorgeous little giggle. ‘Uncle Hugh wouldn’t have put me with someone awful.’

‘Uncle Hugh?’

‘Oh, yes, Hugh Whitman is my uncle, but that doesn’t change anything. I want you to treat me like you would any other employee.’

‘Right, will do,’ I said, suddenly terrified of what this training session might lead to. ‘Then you’d better get us both a big cup of coffee before we start,’ I said with a smile, and she smiled back, probably the most perfect smile I’d ever seen.

The next hour was something of a blur. I learnt that Georgina Elizabeth Hays was twenty-two and grew up in Bath. She attended boarding school in some Hogwartian mansion in the home counties, took a gap year and helped underprivileged children in Peru, went to the University of Cambridge, represented England at youth-level netball, was currently single and trying her hand at the world of banking. When Harriet eventually came to rescue her for some mandatory paperwork, she thanked me with a warm smile and told me she would see me after lunch.

On my way out for a quick bite, I shared the lift with Hugh.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why did you put Georgina with me?’

‘Because you’re the only one I can trust not to bang her senseless, Hornsby. My niece, you see, but mum’s the word, eh. Promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Take good care of her. No funny business.’

‘Of course not, sir, no problem,’ I said as we stepped out of the lift.

During the short walk to Pret thoughts of a BLT and images of Georgie in her netball kit clouded my mind. I didn’t know if Hugh trusting me was a good thing or not. Was it a slap on the back? A hearty gesture of goodwill that would garner a mutual respect and eventual promotion, or did he just consider me an unattractive, spineless eunuch?

The afternoon wore on much like the morning had, with Georgie and me in close proximity, knees occasionally knocking together under the desk, while I tried to give her a rundown of what I did on a daily basis. It was a little after six when we started to pack away for the night.

‘Thanks so much for today, Ed, you’ve been brill.’

‘Oh, no worries, my pleasure.’ A few co-workers walked by, loitered for a moment, pretending to fiddle with scarves, and then smiled at Georgie and gave me a cursory, ‘Night, Ed’ before they waltzed away. ‘Does that annoy you?’

‘What?’

‘Men ogling you all day. Making lame excuses so they can try and peek down your top.’

‘Oh that. You get used to it.’

‘It must get a bit annoying though,’ I said, grabbing my bag and scarf.

‘Sometimes, but mostly they’re harmless and it’s flattering when people find me attractive.’

‘As if they wouldn’t,’ I said without thinking. Georgie flashed me a smile. ‘I … umm … didn’t mean anything by that, sorry.’

‘Of course, and bravo, I didn’t see you peek down my top all day,’ said Georgie with a cheeky smile. I suddenly and without warning went a deep shade of red, my face sweltering in embarrassment. ‘Oh, Ed, I was only joking.’

‘Right, well, see you tomorrow?’ I said, wrapping my scarf quickly around my neck with Hugh’s words ringing in my ears, ‘no funny business’.

‘Yes, yes, can’t wait and honestly, thank you so much. I was so nervous this morning.’ I smiled and started to walk away before Georgie stopped me. ‘Actually, do you have any plans for tonight?’

I was caught off guard. I didn’t know what to say. Did I have any plans? The answer was a definite no, unless plans involved getting a curry, a four pack of lager and watching television on my own, which I’m sure is the very definition of a sad twat.

‘No plans.’

‘Then, and just to say thank you, how about a quick drink?’

Had she actually said that? The gorgeous, ultra-posh new girl at work was asking me out for a drink? I stammered like a far less attractive cross between Colin Firth’s King George and Hugh Grant at his upper-class bumbling best.

‘I … I … err … umm …’

‘I don’t have many friends in London at the mo. All off doing the travelling thing or their MAs and you seem like a nice bloke and Hugh trusts you, so you can’t be that dodgy.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ I said for no apparent reason and then I laughed like a bloody idiot.

‘Then let’s have a drink and you can show me how dodgy you are,’ she said with a delicious wide-faced smile.

I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t cheating or even technically wrong. I’d gone out for copious work drinks over the years and yes, admittedly, none of them had been only with women, but still, it wasn’t like anything would happen. For a start, I would never cheat on Kate and, secondly, Georgie would never, in a million years, fancy someone like me. It was just a drink. Mates. Co-workers.

‘Sure, why not.’

‘Fab. I have to pop to the toilet, back in a jiff,’ she said and then skipped off.

I watched her for a moment. Her perfectly formed little bottom was squeezed into a tight-fitting grey skirt above long, slender legs that curved towards a pair of black high-heeled shoes. A couple of men stopped to gaze at her on their way out and ran their salacious eyes over her pert, ripe little body. A knot of fear unexpectedly formed in my stomach and began to work its way towards my brain, making me feel nauseous: the terrifying fear that maybe I was just like all of those other men, and all it would take for me to lose everything would be a solitary word from her soft, beautiful lips and the promise of a glimpse at what lay beneath her glossy white blouse.

Until next time,

Hugs,

Jon X

 

Happy Endings - An excerpt

Hello,

My second novel, Happy Endings, will be released in just seven weeks and so I thought I'd give you a little excerpt to get you in the mood.

The book is written from four first-person perspectives. The main characters are Kate, Ed, Emma and Jack. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post one excerpt from each character. 

Today it's Kate, who is the 'unofficial' lead character. The book is very much an ensemble piece and each character has their own storyline, but as the book evolved Kate emerged as the one with the most to say. I really wanted to make it a true ensemble and I think each story is a little novel in its own right. As with any ensemble, whether it's a film like, Love Actually, or a novel like Mike Gayle's, The Life and Soul of the Party, we always get drawn to one particular story. That's how Kate became my 'unofficial' lead. The funny thing is that my editor loved one of the other stories more, and I hope that is the strength of this book; everyone will have their own favourite storyline - while still enjoying the others.

Twenty-nine year old, Kate Jones, is in a long-term relationship with, Ed Hornsby. They met at university and enjoy a comfortable life together in London. Ed earns good money working in The City, while Kate does well in PR. However, she isn't happy. Kate has yearned to travel the world since she was young, and with her life seemingly set in stone, she feels the need to get away before it's too late. With Ed refusing to go, she sets off alone, the world her oyster, but suddenly she starts to have regrets and wonders whether she's destined to repeat the mistakes of her father.

This excerpt is the first real chapter of the book. There is a prologue before this chapter, but this felt like a good place to introduce Kate's story.


The eBook is released on August 15th and the paperback on October 10th. Enjoy.

 

Kate

‘Love you,’ said Ed, holding my hands gently in his. 

‘Love you too,’ I said. A wash of salty tears, which I’d been trying my best to keep in check until I was at least on the plane, suddenly leaked out and slid down my face. I pitied the unlucky person who had to sit next to me, a blubbery backpacker bound for Bangkok, for twelve hours. ‘I should probably get a move on. My flight leaves in forty minutes and I still have to go through security.’ 

We were at the departures gate at Heathrow: the final goodbye hurdle. People walked past, apprehensive-looking parents with children who clung tightly to their teddy bears, oblivious solo travellers playing with their iPhones, businessmen and flight crew, while Ed and I stood motionless, caught somewhere between the past and the future. It was why I loved airports, because they were neither a part of where you’d been or where you were going. They were a separate entity. A sort of purgatory between states of being that held the promise of adventure and freedom.

‘I just …’

‘What, Ed?’

‘I just wish you weren’t going, that’s all.’

The past week had been the Olympic Games of emotional blackmail. Ed had been quiet, depressed, loud, obnoxious, loving and every other possible state in the hope something would break me down and stop me from leaving. Now he was being morose. His whole being was dripping with sullenness.

Ever since that blustery November evening when I’d sat him down and explained I had to go travelling otherwise I’d regret it for the rest of my life, he’d had the same strained expressions of annoyance and incredulity. He couldn’t understand why I had to do it and, like a lot of men when placed in an uncomfortable emotional situation, he made it all about him.

‘Is it something I’ve done?’ were his first words.

‘Is this about me?’ were his second.

‘How can I change your mind?’ were his third.

I tried to explain it had nothing to do with him: I needed this for me. I conceived the idea after Nan died and left me some money; it wasn’t much, but sufficient for a year away and just enough left over for my half of the mortgage. I’d realised that, at twenty-nine, if I didn’t do something a bit impetuous right away, that would be it. My life would tumble headlong into middle-age and the usual suspects of marriage, kids and a fridge door full of mundane lists that would run my life forever. I needed time to breathe. When I was young I thought I was special and would do something amazing with my life, and then I grew up. I wanted that feeling back. I wanted to be amazing again.

The simple truth was I wasn’t completely happy. It wasn’t one thing in particular, but the combination of every aspect of my life not equating to a big, happy whole. My job in public relations was stressful and the initial excitement I’d felt when I started the job after university had been replaced with depressing feeling of inevitability. I looked at the people higher up the corporate ladder and I didn’t want to become them: crushed by the weight of a career that sustained a life I wasn’t even sure I wanted. Every tiny facet of our lives seemed so depressingly settled in a way I hadn’t ever intended. I needed to get away. I needed a break. And, of course, there was the tiny fact that I’d really thought Ed would come with me.

‘I’ll be back before you know it. It will fly by,’ I said, trying my best to keep our last few moments together as civil and upbeat as possible. I wanted Ed to be happy for me. I wanted to see a spark of something in his eyes other than the lingering disappointment and bitterness that had kept me awake for the past week.

‘It will for you. You’re off travelling the world, while I’m going to be stuck here in depressing, miserable London, working like a dog for twelve hours a day just waiting for you to come back.’

‘You could have come too,’ I said, finally losing my patience as he made the same cloyingly annoying face he’d been making for the previous two months.

‘You know why I can’t come,’ said Ed in that oh-so-patronising voice of his.

I hated it when I felt like I was talking to city banker Ed. I imagined him at work in his giant phallic office, shouting at other miserable-looking suits and telling people to buy this and sell that, while nervous-looking secretaries served up coffee and biscuits, terrified of being scolded because the FTSE was down against the Yen. It wasn’t the Ed I knew and the Ed I loved.

‘But don’t you see. All the reasons why you’re saying no are the same reasons why I have to leave. I know you love me – I love you too – but it isn’t about that. I can’t keep going along pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. I don’t want to wake up at forty and blame you for me not doing this. I want to be happy and this is going to make me happy.’

‘So what you’re saying is I don’t make you happy anymore,’ said Ed glibly.

‘Don’t be like that, Ed, please. I know this isn’t what you had planned for us and you think it’s a giant waste of time, but I don’t. Look, I don’t want to leave on an argument; can you please just be happy for me?’

‘Promise me one thing,’ he said, a sudden cloud of vulnerability descending upon his face. He reminded me of one of those children of the war, fleeing London during the blitz for the safety of the countryside. A sad little schoolboy standing by a steam engine while his parents cried and handed him a jam sandwich for the journey. All he needed was a raggedy old teddy bear under his arm and a pair of short grey trousers. ‘Promise me you won’t change.’

I suppose what he meant was, don’t cheat on me and not come back. I had no intention of cheating on Ed though and even if I was I wouldn’t have needed to go to such extreme measures. Plenty of men at work had shown enough interest in me and hinted that if I ever wanted to turn public relations into private relations, they would happily oblige. My trip wasn’t about men. It wasn’t about sex, Ed or having a quarter-life crisis, it was about me. It was something I had to do. For me. 

‘Of course I’m not going to change. It’s just a six-month holiday, Ed, not six years in a kibbutz.’

‘Good, you’d better not. I want to marry the girl you are right now,’ said Ed, forcing a smile.

‘Come here you two,’ I said, turning to Jack and Emma, who had been standing dutifully behind Ed, waiting for their moment to say goodbye. We’d done everything with them over the last five years. They were our couple of choice: the two additional sides who made us a perfect square. They waded in and we had a group hug. Four late-twenty-somethings at Heathrow airport; it could have been a Richard Curtis film – except for the distinctly un-romantic-comedy air wafting towards me from Ed.

Emma had been my best friend since primary school and the one person who when I said I wanted to go travelling didn’t scoff or look disappointed, but supported it wholeheartedly. She encouraged me from day one because she knew what it meant. I would miss her and our chats terribly, Saturday mornings at Starbucks catching up on the week, bitching about the boys and gossiping about everything and nothing.

‘I love you all,’ I said, trying to stem the rising mass of tears that were forming a less-than-orderly queue behind my eyes.

‘Just make sure you’re back in time for my wedding,’ said Emma, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘You’re a bridesmaid, remember?’

‘I’ll be back by then. Promise. And fingers crossed for the film.’

I gave Jack a quick peck on the cheek and Emma a long tearful hug before I took one last look at Ed. I was afraid I’d forget what he looked like, which was crazy because I’d seen him every day for the past eight years. But it felt like once I stepped onto the plane his face would be wiped from my memory forever. The thick, dark hair with the schoolboy haircut I publicly mocked, but secretly quite liked. The steely blue-grey eyes, the long, thin nose, the high cheek bones, the slightly narrow mouth and the chin dimple; the sort of face that would look good on a coin. His weekend-casual outfit, which wasn’t actually that casual, as though he could never quite let go of his weekday self: navy blue V-neck jumper over white work shirt, khaki chinos, boat shoes and a long wool coat. Ed didn’t really do casual. At weekends, while I would slouch around the house in pyjama bottoms and old T-shirts, Ed wouldn’t go less than a pair of dark jeans and a freshly ironed polo shirt.

I filed a mental snapshot and gave Ed one last kiss before I turned around and walked away, too afraid to look back. Too afraid the life I was leaving behind was not only better than the one I was heading towards, but also that it wouldn’t be there when I got home.

As the plane turned to begin its take-off, I looked out of the window. It was a typical drab winter’s day at Heathrow. Sullen clouds drifted across the runway, making everything seem like a dream. England’s green and pleasant land was hiding behind a smokescreen of cheerlessness. I kept thinking back to what Ed said in the airport about not changing. I promised I wouldn’t, but I knew it was a promise I wouldn’t be able to keep. 

As the plane took off, slowly gaining altitude above London, fighting through the dark, leaden clouds to the bluer skies above, I began to cry. For months all I had wanted was to be on that plane. I had been so excited to leave and begin my adventure, but finally, sitting alone, all I felt was a terrible sickness and a craving for what I was leaving behind. I had wanted the change. I had wanted to feel the ripple of its excitement touch me again and move me the way it used to. I had wanted to travel, but now I was terrified it was a decision I might regret for the rest of my life.

Until next time,

Hugs,

Jon X

Jon meets...Ben Hatch

Hello,

I'm super excited because I've been trying to get Ben to do this for a while, but he's been busy writing and flouncing about Europe (and being a Daddy in Brighton, of course). So here it is, the Ben Hatch interview.

Mr Hatch and his famous hair

Hello Ben. For those people out there who don't know and love you, tell us a bit about your background and how you became a writer?

I spent years messing around in various jobs – postman, recruitment consultant, unemployment benefits worker, insurance salesman, lawnmower salesman. I worked in a video shop, a bank. I set myself up as a private detective for a while and I was a painter and decorator. Then I became a journalist. It was 1997. I was 28 and a reporter on the Leicester Mercury newspaper. It was a job I enjoyed. It was great fun. It taught me how the world was run. I loved the people I worked with and I had a girlfriend I was thinking of asking to marry me.
 
Then my mum died of cancer and everything blew up. Within the space of three weeks I’d been to her funeral, my girlfriend had left me, I’d quit my job, moved to London and I was homeless and sleeping on the floor of friends’ houses. It felt important to make something positive come out of my mum’s death so I decided to write a novel; to do something that would have made her proud of me. The novel took a year to write. I sent it off to literary agents the day before I left the country to go backpacking, using up the last of the money my mum left me on a round-the-world ticket. I didn’t want to be around for the rejection letters. I’d been gone 6 months and was just preparing to beg for my old job back when the very last agent I’d sent the book to contacted me. I was sitting in an internet café in Thailand. It had a mud floor. The email was from an agent at Curtis Brown. He liked the book and wanted to sign me up.

Did you always want to write travel books or was that something you just fell in to?

It was an accident. My wife Dinah’s a travel journalist and was commissioned by Frommers, a US publisher, to write a guidebook about family-friendly attractions in Britain. My son was one at the time. There was some debate about whether we should go. I wanted to. Dinah wasn’t sure. She was still breastfeeding at the time. Anyway I arranged this massive five-month itinerary and persuaded her that it was the chance of a lifetime. So we went. At that time I was a stay-at-home dad. I’d had novels published a few years before but Dinah’s job was the more secure one so I’d abandoned the writing to look after the kids. It was an incredible trip. All sorts happened. My daughter was almost blown up in a field of live ordnance in Otterburn. I wrote the car off. My dad died. Yet despite all that it was one of the happiest times of my life because my family were altogether on this adventure. When we got back from the road-trip Dinah was swamped with work. Phoebe started school and Charlie nursery so I had more time. Basically I stole the guidebook commission from Dinah and wrote it myself. Then a couple of year’s after this someone suggested it might make a good travelogue, the story behind writing the guidebook. It had never occurred to me. That’s how I came to write Are We Nearly There Yet? The follow up Road to Rouen, which has just been published, is about a similar 10,000 mile road-trip round France. If anything even more went wrong on that trip from crazed donkeys to weird Americans claiming to be soup barons and a death-cult obsessed with aliens.

Obviously The Road to Rouen is a very personal book. Were there any things from the trip you either couldn't or weren't allowed to put into the book?

It’s partly about our marriage. My wife is amazingly tolerant and easy going which is very lucky for me. From my point of view when I write a non-fiction book the way I get around the embarrassment of imagining people reading about intimate moments is to believe that the book will never be published. It’s only the day before it hits bookshops generally that I start to panic about things I’ve written. My wife reads my books first and it can be a tense time. There’s always the odd thing she will bridle at (“You cannot say that about a sexual pulley system!”) But normally she’s Ok.

What's next up for Ben Hatch and anymore family holidays planned?

There are a few things on the horizon. I’ve just completed a sitcom treatment for my first novel The Lawnmower Celebrity for BBC3 that I’m hoping will lead to a script commission. Look at me using the word treatment there! Are We Nearly There Yet? has been optioned by Island Pictures so I’m hoping that gets made into a movie. And this summer we’re off to Italy on another road-trip. I have tried as always to minimise the chaos although there are already a few activities I can imagine tripping us up – truffle hunting in the middle of the night with dogs on an Umbrian mountain top, for example.

One last thing, as I have two young kids myself, any tips for travelling with children?

1) Always carry treats. Travelling with children minus treats is like walking through a vampire-infested grave-yard after midnight without a wooden stake. You might survive, but why take the chance?

2) Enthuse your kids about where you’re going. Although never oversell the destination as we did in the Auvergne region walking inside the crater of the strombolian volcano Lemptegy, where instead of learning about the awesome power of nature and fragility of our world that we’d talked up to the kids, we were shown a video about pouzzolane – a porous volcanic rock useful in road surfacing. It turned out our kids weren’t that interested in road surfacing.


Thanks so much to Ben for giving me an interview. Ben is truly a very funny man and a brilliant writer. I urge you all to stop reading this right away and get Ben's books forthwith. I have even included some handy links below. 

Ben's brilliant trek around Britain

Ben's equally brilliant trek around France

Until next time.

Hugs,

Jon X

HAPPY ENDINGS

Hello,

I'm sorry it's been so long but I've been a busy bee. 

Firstly, I've been writing the follow up to This Thirtysomething Life, which I'm super excited about. It's called, This Family Life, and will hopefully, he says with crossed fingers, be out in 2014. 

Secondly, I've been finishing up, Happy Endings, which is now completely and utterly done. It's taken me nearly a year and a half from start to finish and I'm super excited for it to be released. 

When I started writing Happy Endings, I was still an unpublished author, dreaming that one day I might get a lucky break. Now it's finished and being published by Hodder and Stoughton - it really is a dream come true. 

I'd like to share the cover with you. The wonderful designers at Hodder have done another brilliant job with this one. I also have to give credit to my amazing ex-editor, Harriet, who helped design this - the mugs were her idea - so thanks Harriet! Here it is - he says proudly.

the front cover

the front and back

There you have it. The eBook will be released on August 15th and the paperback on October 10th. I'll be writing a few blogs before then about the book and hoping to have some publication day fun as well. Let me know what you think of the covers. 

Until next time.

Hugs,

Jon X