How Winning Friday Night Live Led to My Debut Book Deal

Summer 2023 feels like a lifetime ago. In fact, very few things about my life remain the same from that period. I no longer live on a canal boat, or in the same part of the country. I’m in a different relationship, and I’m now a mother. The one constant is that I am still a writer, and the extract I nervously read live at Jericho Writers’ 2023 Friday Night Live is now printed in hardback, about to be released as a lead title for Bantam, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Looking back, the extract I read that night was far, far from its finished form. But sharing my work publicly, and winning the competition, gave me the confidence to keep going. The prize — a manuscript review, which I chose to have with the brilliant Debi Alper — gave me vital guidance on how to strengthen the novel before I started querying agents. Debi’s notes were both validating and constructively critical, and once I’d put them into action, I felt confident that I’d done the best I could before I hit send. I know having the FNL win listed in my covering letter helped catch agents’ attention. It signalled that other people believed in the work, and that I was prepared to put myself out there as a writer, even before I had the stamp of approval from the industry.

I was thrilled to sign with Megan Staunton at Bergstrom Studios, who sifted my query from the slush pile and replied with such enthusiasm that I knew she’d be the perfect champion for the story I wanted to tell. After another round of edits and changing the novel’s title from Emotional Transport to The Carrier (thank you Megan!) we went out on submission. The wait was excruciating. There were months of silence, a string of enthusiastic-but-no thank you passes, and then, finally, an offer from Thorne Ryan, Deputy Publishing Director at Bantam Books. I was six months pregnant at the time, taking Megan’s call while looking around a prospective rental flat with my now-husband. The estate agent looked a little perturbed when he saw me crying on the phone in the garden, but was patient enough to let me gather my thoughts and relay the information to my husband, before we politely declined the lease. The offer felt like a dream, but one that came with a note of caution, Thorne was clear that while she loved the premise, there was significant work to do to ensure the novel fitted firmly in the thriller genre. I was more than happy to do this, viewing it as another opportunity to learn from someone far more experienced than me, but I was also nervous about the practicalities. I had three months before my baby arrived and was still working full time. I didn’t know how I’d feel after giving birth, or if I’d have the headspace to write with a newborn baby.

We managed to complete a structural edit before my son was born, and then another pass after his arrival — possibly more than one, the postpartum period is a little hazy in my memory. Eventually The Carrier was ready to go to copy edit, and the marketing and publicity team got to work planning the launch.

Now accurately packaged as a feminist thriller, The Carrier imagines a society where, if you’re wealthy enough, you can pay to outsource unwanted emotions to an underclass of women known as the Carriers. It’s been strange to watch something that began as a daydream on a long drive, morph into something with a team behind it. It takes so many people to release a book into the world, from the editors, to the proof readers, the cover designers, sales teams, publicists and printers. There is so much that happens behind the scenes to get a book onto the shelves, and I still find it hard to believe mine is one of them. Described by Pandora Sykes as “timely and fantastically compelling,” The Carrier is currently making its way into readers’ hands and I’m so excited, and a little anxious, to see how it will be received.

If there’s one thing this whole journey has taught me, it’s that the path to publication is long and winding. There are potholes and detours, and it can be tempting to give up. Opportunities like Friday Night Live helped keep me on track. Even if I hadn’t been shortlisted, or won the prize, entering still gave me something to aim for and a milestone I could celebrate along the way. And that probably is the best advice that I could give anyone currently wrestling with a first draft or waiting to hear back from agents or editors. Celebrate all the wins along the way, because if you wait until your book is on the shelf, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. Finishing a draft is worthy of celebration, as is hearing from an agent, or being longlisted for a prize. Even abandoning a novel that doesn’t quite work deserves acknowledgement, you still put time and energy into creating something from nothing.  In a world full of distractions that are goading you to consume, giving your attention to writing and creativity is a brilliant and quietly radical thing to do. So keep going.

The Carrier is out on July 2nd, with Bantam. You can preorder it now.