Mark Billingham’s bizarre rituals

Sorry, I couldn’t resist, but the lede in this new profile by the Bookseller definitely made me chuckle:

Mark Billingham has evolved a little ritual for the publication day of each new book. Every year, he sneaks into the office of his editor at Little, Brown, Hilary Hale–by pre-arrangement, she is out of the room making a cup of tea–and puts the finished manuscript of next year’s novel down on her desk "like the Milk Tray man. Then I leave without speaking to her, and she’s always read the manuscript by the time of the launch party that evening." That way, Billingham says, he can enjoy all the hullabaloo of publication, knowing that his next deadline has already been safely met.

Somewhat unfortunately, in order to perform this yearly ritual, he has to finish the books on time and that’s proving a tad more difficult:

He knows that "every lucky thing that could happen to a writer happened to me". He sent out his first novel, it reached agent Sarah Lutyens, and she did the deal with "the right publisher" who "published it with a capital P, really spent money on it, which is the name of the game". That first book, Sleepyhead, astounded him by going into the top 10.

But now he finds each book tougher to write. "There are some commercial pressures–though I’ve never had an ounce of pressure from my publisher. Of course you want the book to sell more than the last one, to get higher in the charts, to be nominated for more awards. At the same time, you’re trying to write a better book, to come up with more engaging characters, to have a better plot. Each book has been personally harder to write and it was a horrible surprise to me. I spoke to two or three writer friends, and they said, ‘Welcome. That’s exactly as it should be.’"

The next book — the fifth in his series — is called LIFELESS, and it’ll be available in the UK in early June. And, no doubt, the cover will be plastered all over tube stops around the country, which amused me no end a couple of years ago as I’d go to work every morning and voila! There was an ad for SCAREDY CAT or LAZYBONES. Hopefully his US publisher, William Morrow, can cook up similar plans here…