As you may have noticed from my somewhat breathless attempts to promote it here and on my various ‘channels’, my new novel LEADING MAN is out next week.
I don’t really write much about being an author. There are many other people talking about their experiences, and doing it so well, that perhaps there’s nothing for me to add that would be informative and useful. But maybe it’s because being an author is strange and I don’t usually stop to take stock of this strangeness. I’m not sure I would know where to begin. As an author, you spend most of your time focusing on the *next* thing, wishing your life away to reach deadlines, or publication dates, or events. And not just your own books, either: you find yourself reading books months before they come out –always an honour to receive an advance proof – so your sense of time is warped. You have two present tenses, almost.
So living in the now is quite difficult, and being on the second round of edits for another book makes it even more complicated… but for the moment, at least, now belongs to Leading Man. I’m so proud of this one; I have huge affection for it. I love writing complicated comedies with grey areas and flashes of fun and hints of darkness too, and Leading Man is all of that and more. Whether the stars aligned, or an algorithm did its thing, or my brain just decided, for once, to let the exact words swirling round inside it to land on the page, I don’t know – but Leading Man is, for me, the best of all four of my comedies. My favourite main character, Leo, a Sondheim-obsessed gay drama teacher with a mum who drops cigarette ash into clean laundry, a big brother who’s attached to his childhood bedroom by bungee rope, and friends who maybe take him a little for granted. Perhaps my strongest supporting cast yet, too. It all just works. It’s very rare that the week before publication date I feel so confident about and, I don’t know, maybe even a little bit in love with the book that’s about to come out, but this time I am. It’s even helping me through the anxiety that nobody will turn up to my book launch next Wednesday.
Anyway, as a thank you for putting up with my ceaseless capitalist shilling, and perhaps even an incentive to grab a copy – it’s only a tenner on e-book if hardbacks don’t float your barge – here’s an extract, from the very first chapter. Plus, after that, a playlist of songs featured in the book, which should give you an idea of how bonkers – but brilliant – it is.
Everybody, please welcome to the stage, my Leading Man…
I wish I looked good wet. You know what I mean. Some people wade out of the sea in full photoshoot mode: a vision, sparkling rivulets of water clinging to their tight torso. Stepping out of the shower is their peak aesthetic; hair wet, smooth and glossy, slicked down their back like paint, or tumbling into perfect, glistening curls. Water gathering at the tip of their nose, yes, but adorable somehow, diamond droplets swelling then falling, gracefully, delicately.
Me? Soaked, I look like I’ve just heaved myself out of the Union Canal, after fighting a dog. My eyes disappear, my face bloats, and my hair spikes into a soft-rock guitarist’s wig. Droplets don’t nestle on my face, water sluices down it, cas- cading off my too-spiky features. Nosferatu auditioning for a shampoo commercial, basically. And that’s how I looked, trying not to appear flustered, strangely drenched from the short walk from cab to pub. I’d not bothered arguing with the cabbie, who was adamant the safest place to stop was halfway down the street and not right outside. So much for June. Foiled again by Edinburgh’s microclimate – never satisfied until it’s found somebody’s chips to piss on. Wherever you live, whatever you think you know about June, it does not apply in my hometown.
This wasn’t one of our usual places, we were at least half a generation too young to be here, and the staff uniform of Hawaiian shirts felt sad rather than ironic. There they were. Daisy and Tam. My team. The crew. My rock and my hard place. I stood and took them in for a few seconds, perched on high stools peering down with amiable imperiousness – two swans realising they’d followed the breadcrumbs into a pigeon coop by mistake – both trying to talk over each other. Daisy gesticulating in chaotic semaphore, Tam shredding his paper napkin in frustration as he failed, again, to interject. Then, the punchline, and the eruption of their bawdy laughter that turned heads three tables away. Followed by the primal urge, mine, not to miss a second more of it, to be right there in the middle of the two people I loved the most. Wet or not, time to make my entrance.
As she always did, Daisy waved exaggeratedly like she was welcoming me back from the Somme. I returned my usual greeting, a coquettish wave and a clutch of my imaginary pearls. We revelled in our clichés. As I approached, her smile briefly dropped in recognition of my sodden frame, realising this was perhaps her fault. Rain couldn’t dampen the swell of joy I always got from seeing her, though, so we kissed hello, exaggerating our ‘mwah’ like fashion designers.
‘Leo! You’re never late! Hang on. Oh God. I’m sensing this drowned rat look is down to me.’
‘Please never get a job as a satnav. You said to meet in the bar where Tam got the two investment bankers to pay our bill. In the West End.’
We never called bars or restaurants by their actual names, only labelling them according to whatever scrapes we’d got into last time we were there. The Bar Where Daisy Threw Up Into a Martini Glass. The Pub Where Tam Lost a Shoe.
‘Are you mad at me? Please don’t be. Sorry. I forgot that happened twice. You know how bankers love a bit of Tam. I meant East End, obviously. I was sweating over a seat plan for a work barbecue and texting at the same time. Big beer company thing. My head was up my hole.’
Tam finally glanced up from his phone. ‘Literally organising a piss-up in a brewery.’
‘It’s a private garden, actually. For four hundred people.’ Daisy didn’t usually get things wrong. She was hyper-organised; it was her entire living. Her kitchen had fancy cupboards that unfolded into all kinds of impressive origami formations. We’d spent many afternoons at university eating instant noodles and watching extreme organising programmes featuring people who couldn’t throw away receipts from 1977, and Daisy had been categorising her socks ever since. She could locate any item in her flat within forty-five seconds. ‘Four hundred! And three hundred and ninety-five of them are men. They all call me sweetheart, and instead of choking them to death, I have to giggle. Giggle!’
‘Our Daisy does not giggle, not even for us.’ Tam leaned in for a kiss but recoiled slightly from the wet fabric of my coat. ‘Poor Lion, you’re soaking. Don’t get my shirt wet or it’ll be nipples o’clock.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, disrobing and trying to wring out my fringe at the same time. ‘Then everyone will be looking at you, your worst nightmare.’ I blew him a kiss to neutralise the dig, and he blew one back in mock consternation.
Daisy slid a glass to me, dripping with condensation and the ghost of an ice cube inside. They’d been waiting ages. ‘I asked the barman if they had anything . . . y’know, booze-free, and he laughed and told me to suck the juice out of his bar cloth.’
‘Maybe he’s practising jokes from his Fringe show,’ I said. ‘You should’ve marked him out of ten.’
Tam beamed the watery smile of a man two drinks ahead and not listening. ‘You know, there’s an alternative timeline out there where Leo drinks lager. I wonder which one is having a better Friday.’
Bloated by gas and gluten? Not in this cardigan. Tam was always invoking the multiverse theory to cajole us into spoiling ourselves. Having an extra pudding (Daisy), blowing half the mortgage on denim (him), and getting reacquainted with tequila (me), even though I hadn’t drunk in years.
Daisy giggled. ‘Maybe I should’ve sucked his cloth. Can kitchen spray make you high? Lion, remember we tried to sniff aerosol when we were thirteen but did it wrong and I sprayed Lynx in your eye?’ I’d known Daisy a long time. Half the scars on my body came from bumps and dares she made me do.
After a quick dash to the loo to blast my soaking bones with the hand dryer, I properly took in their crooked smiles and glassy stares. The eternally naughty schoolchildren. And hammered ones at that. It was 7 p.m.
‘Are you two day-drunk?’
‘Oh my, Miss Falconer,’ squealed Tam. ‘I love that “why haven’t you done your homework” voice! Only thing I miss about teaching. We’re not day-drunk. Are we, Daiz?’
‘No! More . . . um, afternoon tipsy. I knew you’d be snowed under with last-day-of-term shit. I had a half day and Tam’s consultation fell through.’
‘Memorial Japanese garden, big job.’ Tam shrugged. ‘Customer’s inheritance was smaller than they thought, so they didn’t fancy remembering the dear departed after all. So we met for coffee.’
‘Which you . . . poured into a martini?’ I was joking, these sly digs were our main energy source, but even after all these years, I sometimes felt tiny prickles of jealousy when I arrived to the fun a wee bit later than everyone else. The more I looked at them, the more elastic their movements became. This was the trouble with not drinking: watching the world turn to jelly before your eyes. ‘End of term is next week, by the way. I’ve been loitering with zero intent in the staffroom since about half-two.’
Daisy blinked rapidly, realising she had, again, dropped a clanger. ‘God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Of course it’s next week. Lion, I’m worse than one of those mums who gets on the news for sodding off to Zakynthos and leaving her kids with only a loaf and squirty cream to last them two weeks. I’m so sorry!’
I was graciously accepting her apology – knowing it wouldn’t be the last of the evening – when we were interrupted by one of the bar staff, looking horrified to be carrying a silver tray, upon which wobbled three glasses of prosecco.
‘Have we walked into a wedding dress shop by mistake?’
The waiter looked at me with murderous eyes. ‘Aye, very good. Guy over there sent these. With his compliments. For you in particular, apparently.’
I didn’t know what to say. Not that it mattered, he wasn’t looking in my direction – the target was Tam. Obviously. A few tables away, an attractive man – a good decade older than us, out of my league but nudging the underbelly of Tam’s – raised his own glass of prosecco and smiled. Daisy already had a flute halfway to her lips when Tam gently grabbed her wrist.
‘Nope, don’t drink that. Sorry. Send it back. Thank the, uh, gentleman but I can’t accept.’
Tam had never turned down a free drink in the decade-plus I’d known him. He was a sucker for a compliment, especially from a stranger. Tam could easily have acted in a soap or worked the changing rooms at the big H&M if he hadn’t gone into teaching. He had peacock tendencies, but I suppose if I looked like him I’d have fanned out my feathers too.
‘I’m a new man.’ He looked very serious. ‘No more drinks from randoms.’
I laughed. ‘You’ll be dead of dehydration by August.’
Tam’s eyelash fluttering and ability to tune out dull conversation had kept us in gin and tonics throughout our twenties. Nobody could resist telling Tam ‘this one’s on me, gorgeous’.
Daisy made a desperate grab for the tray but the barman was already backing away with a shrug. ‘Whoa! Let me drink mine.’ Tam peered over his shoulder to see if the man was still look- ing. ‘No! Because he’ll come over. It should just be us. Tonight is about Leo! Here’s to the end of term!’
I tried to calculate how many martinis were swimming inside them, and how long I had until they were talking back- wards. ‘Again, you’re a week early.’
‘Besides, if he’d really wanted to impress me, he’d have sent champagne.’
This would sound arrogant to casual eavesdroppers, but Tam attracted ice buckets like picnics drew wasps.
‘I don’t think it’s the kind of place where they have champagne on ice, Tam; they just run the prosecco under the cold tap for ten minutes.’
Music featured in (and inspired by) Leading Man:
PRE-ORDER LINKS FOR LEADING MAN: Waterstones, Bookshop.org, Amazon (ignore the cheaper paperback version, it’s a mistake, it’s hardback only), Bert’s Books, Foyles, and Lighthouse Bookshop.
Early reader reviews:
“This is easily one of the best books I have ever read. This is the kind of book you recommend to everyone you know, because it is a gem, and they will find something in it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
“You really care about [Leo], his choices, the people he ends up with. And there are twists and turns galore, even in the final pages of the story. Six stars out of five.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(⭐️)”
“I like when I do not expect what’s going to happen, and I GASPED several times while reading Leading Man.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
“Leading Man is funny, heartfelt and full of meaning.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
“This book was a really great read – not at all what I was expecting!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
Amazing, right? I’m blown away by the response to Leading Man. (Obviously some people didn’t like it but that’s none of my business.) Thanks to everyone who’s left a review open NetGalley/Goodreads – and if you haven’t yet, then do!
Thank you for your patience during this promotional period. Next week: back to talking absolute sh•te about celebs or whatever. Oh no, hang on, it’s publication day next week. I’ll keep it brief.
Joan Jett’s You Don’t Own Me right after Lesley Gore: nice, deft touch🤷🏻♂️….and any playlist with Ben & Tracey is a winner.
Best for the coming week. xx
Ooo...great playlist! I love the deliciously wicked Mein Herr.