Picture this. It’s a rainy day in Newcastle, streets awash, gutters overflowing. Mud everywhere. You’re driving an old black van with trade gear rolling around in the back. The rain is so heavy that you can barely see the road, and you desperately hope that other drivers can see you. Finally, you arrive at your destination and as luck would have it, there’s a carpark just across the road…

You pull a heavy cardboard box out of the back of the van, wait for a gap in the traffic and bolt across the road. You’ve made an attempt to look less scruffy than usual, but by the time you get to the other side your hair has gone back to its default setting of Mongolian Rat Catcher and the mascara is limbering up for a sprint.

This, however, is one of the most exquisitely liminal moments of your life…

Your destination is a bookshop, Betty Loves Books at The Station in Newcastle, to be precise. And the cardboard box contains 38 illustrated copies of your newly printed book, The Nights. For any writer, this is a proud, proud moment…

The Nights began life as a series of private journal entries way back in 2009 when I had a new born baby and was recently separated. It evolved over time, finding life first as an artist’s book exhibited at The Lock Up in Newcastle, then at the heart of a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Newcastle, an audio book narrated by the brilliant Kelly Burke, and now as an illustrated book. It’s been quite the journey!

Thanks so much to book designer Lucy Jones, and for these gorgeous illustrations by Abbey Hindmarch, Jacqueline Rheinberger and Phoebe McMillan, respectively. And thank you to Betty Loves Book for being the first bookshop to take my book x