'Vixen' is out in paperback!

Launched in London on 10th February at Bar Wotever, and in Manchester on Friday 13th February (lucky for some!). There are many more launch events and readings coming up in February / March 2015... check out the Gig List page for details of one close to you.

Thank you to all the wonderful folk who have already turned up to the readings. Your support is incredible!

I was delighted to be asked by Waterstones Bookshop to be a guest contributor to their blog- and here it is. Strange things have been happening since I embarked on my second novel, Vixen... read on!

Coincidence and synchronicity

Was Rosie Garland really being stalked by foxes because she'd just finished writing a book called Vixen- or was something else going on?

When Alex Allden, designer at HarperCollins, showed me Lindsey Carr's remarkable painting of a fox in a tree and suggested it as a cover for my forthcoming novel Vixen, I knew it was perfect.

That's when it started. Since then I've noticed foxes wherever I go – appearing in cathedrals, airports, pubs and museums; on ink cartridges, matchboxes and dashing across supermarket carparks.

I have no idea what's happening, if indeed anything is. I am not superstitious. My grandmother was so bitten by its bug she could barely walk up a flight of stairs without hanging on to a rabbit's foot, which put me off at an early age.

But there is so much foxiness going on. Logically or not, it feels like more than coincidence. As Auric Goldfinger remarked to James Bond, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action".

Maybe coincidence is different to superstition. After all, Albert Einstein said "coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous" (The World As I See It) and he knew a thing or two about how the universe works. Conversely, Vladimir Nabokov remarked how "a certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That's what I like about coincidence" (Laughter in the Dark).

I noticed the first outside the post office (sending a copy of my first novel The Palace of Curiosities to the USA). Browsing a craft stall, I was presented with a woodcut of a fox on a village green. How pretty, I thought, buying a set of vulpine greetings cards. What a coincidence when I've just finished a book called Vixen.

It escalated. After performing in York with my band The March Violets, I took a detour to visit Beverley Minster. On the north wall was a medieval carving of a fox disguised as a pilgrim. Standing on its hind legs, flashing its fangs in a broad smile and brandishing a hefty staff (for self-defence of course).

I needn't have gone as far afield. Manchester Cathedral boasts two wonderful fifteenth-century carvings of foxes: one teaching its cubs to read and the other poring over a book. After 28 years of living in this fair city I didn't know they existed (call myself a medievalist? I should hang my head in shame).

It's not just up north. A Hampshire pub surprised me with a Victorian etching of foxes dressed in pink hunting jackets, seated at a table groaning with roast pheasant and grinning slyly as they toast each other, joking about huntsmen tumbling into ditches.

It occurs to me that I'm not tripping over 'straight' representations. All my sightings (and these are a tiny selection) are of trickster foxes, camouflaged and hoodwinking foolish humans. None of them are what they ought to be. Which, 'coincidentally', are some of the themes of Vixen.

Are sly foxes really dogging my footsteps? Is it all a load of old cobblers or is it connected in some way to the imminent publication of my novel? Carl Gustav Jung would have said yes. In the 1920s he coined the word synchronicity to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." To put it in (slightly) simpler words: synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related.

Hmm. Perhaps I should call my next novel 'Finding Viking Treasure in the Garden'. Sadly, I don't think it works that way.

They aren't done with me yet. A couple of weeks ago I landed in Seattle and headed for the information stand to grab a city map. Amongst the brochures was a museum guide with a cover image of Jenny Andersen's enchanting 'Fox Spirit Travelling with the Human Soul'. So - if I am being followed by foxes, they are the most benign of guardians. Even if I don't believe in coincidence, maybe it believes in me. I have decided to enjoy their benevolent appearances.

As for synchronicity, I'll leave the last words to The Red Queen; my favourite character in that under-rated book on quantum physics, Alice Through The Looking Glass.
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'
'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first -'
'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'
'— but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

Rosie Garland, for Waterstones.com/blog

Click to go to Carl Jung site

Click for Lindsay Carr's artwork, Morpheus

Click to see Jenny Andersen's Fox Spirit artwork

Click to go to Waterstones blog

The Palace of Curiosities is number one in the Waterstones hardback fiction chart!

This is amazing news. Picture snapped 16th April 2013 at Waterstones Deansgate in Manchester. If you look VERY closely there's a black sticker on each cover, reading 'Signed By The Author'.

However many readings I've done (and I've done plenty over the *ahem* years) this one was different. This was The Big One. I was so nervous I couldn't sit still. Seventy tickets pre-sold, and 30 more folk turned up on the night. The room was packed: standing room only. I found out afterwards that Waterstones had to shift the event to the largest room they had.

There was my novel, stacked on a table. Posters with my name. No, I didn't think I'd ever get to this point, yet here I was.

The audience were, in a word, wonderful: so much love and generosity. What an astonishing launch event. I honestly don't think it could have been better. Waterstones even sold out of books! I thought no-one bought hardback fiction any more. Clearly I was wrong. The manager emailed me and said the event was 'one of the best of Deansgate's history'. What, me? Yes, I'm stunned.

There's been some great feedback – the mistressful Elizabeth Baines has posted a blog review of the night, here:

http://elizabethbaines.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rosie-garlands-launch-of-palace-of.html?spref=fb

And what a sign-off! 'The characters are fascinating, and Victorian London is vividly captured, and of course the language sparkles like sharp-cut jewels.'

The Palace of Curiosities is number one in the Waterstones hardback fiction chart!

This is amazing news. Picture snapped 16th April 2013 at Waterstones Deansgate in Manchester. If you look closely there's a black sticker on each cover, reading 'Signed By The Author'.

The Vixen paperback launch continues!

Thanks and gratitude for the wonderful welcomes and enthusiastic audiences so far.

That's Bar Wotever (London), Manchester Waterstones, The Book Case (Hebden Bridge), Booka Books (Oswestry), the WI Manchester & The Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank!

Coming up - Word at the Y (Leicester), Waterstones Bradford, Polari at Huddersfield Literature Festival, INCITE (London), Watford Central Library for Herts Litfest 2015 & Literary Death Match in Shoreditch, London. Check the gig list page for details...

Oh yes - I've never had an entire window painted in my honour before - thanks to the amazing artistic skills of Louisa Jones at Booka Books in Oswestry!

Jill Abram presents

Stablemates

Conversation and poetry with Henry Normal, Rosie Garland and
Jackie Hagan of Flapjack Press.

Wednesday 18th October,
6.30pm. Readings start promptly at 7pm

Waterstones Birmingham,
24-26 High Street, B4 7SL

£5 advance booking https://www.waterstones.com/events/stablemates-with-flapjack-press-featuring-henry-normal/birmingham

Raining Upwards is Henry Normal’s first all new poetry collection in over 20 years. In the meanwhile he was making comedy for TV and film, including The Royle Family, Mighty Boosh, Gavin & Stacey and the Oscar-nominated Philomena. Earlier this year he was honoured with a BAFTA Special Award but Henry has retired from all that and returned to his first love – poetry!

Rosie Garland is a novelist, poet and singer with post-punk band The March Violets. She also performs twisted cabaret as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. She was described by Apples and Snakes as one of the country’s finest performance poets. As In Judy is her sixth poetry collection and goes behind the scenes in her life and mind.

Jackie Hagan’s first solo show Some People Have Too Many Legs, written while she was in hospital having her leg lopped off, won the Saboteur award for Best Spoken Word Show. Her second, Jumble Soul, is about to premier at Contact Theatre, Manchester. She is one of three inaugural Jerwood Compton Fellows for making a significant contribution to the poetry community.
Flapjack Press explores the synergy between performance and the page.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/stablemates-with-flapjack-press-featuring-henry-normal/birmingham

Waterstones Newcastle
Emerson Chambers,
Blackett Street,
Newcastle, NE1 7JF

Tickets are £3, available in store or online.

The Night Brother
We are thrilled to welcome Rosie Garland in conversation with Kaite Walsh to discuss her new book, 'The Night Brother'.

From the author of The Palace of Curiosities and Vixen comes a bold new novel exploring questions of identity, sexual equality and how well we really know ourselves. Perfect for fans of Angela Carter, Sarah Waters and Erin Morgenstern.
Rich are the delights of late nineteenth-century Manchester for young siblings Edie and Gnome. They bicker, banter, shout and scream their way through the city's streets, embracing its charms and dangers. But as the pair grow up, it is Gnome who revels in the night-time, while Edie wakes exhausted each morning, unable to quell a sickening sense of unease, with only a dim memory of the dark hours.

With echoes of Orlando and Jekyll & Hyde, this is a story about the vital importance of being honest with yourself. Every part of yourself. After all, no-one likes to be kept in the dark.

We look forward to seeing you there.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/rose-garland-and-katie-walsh/newcastle
Situated in a beautiful building opposite Grey's Monument, designed by celebrated architect Benjamin Simpson, the booksellers of Emerson Chambers love nothing more than to share their love of reading with our customers.

An Evening with Rosie Garland

Waterstones
91 Deansgate,
Manchester, M3 2BW
Wednesday 31st May 18:30

Waterstones Deansgate is thrilled to welcome Rosie Garland to the store for the launch of her new novel, 'The Night Brother'. Join us on Wednesday 31st May at 6:30pm to hear Rosie discuss her fantastic third novel, before answering questions from the audience and signing copies of her books.

From the author of The Palace of Curiosities and Vixen comes a bold new novel exploring questions of identity, sexual equality and how well we really know ourselves. Perfect for fans of Angela Carter, Sarah Waters and Erin Morgenstern. Rich are the delights of late nineteenth-century Manchester for young siblings Edie and Gnome. They bicker, banter, shout and scream their way through the city's streets, embracing its charms and dangers. But as the pair grow up, it is Gnome who revels in the night-time, while Edie wakes exhausted each morning, unable to quell a sickening sense of unease, with only a dim memory of the dark hours.
With echoes of Orlando and Jekyll & Hyde, this is a story about the vital importance of being honest with yourself. Every part of yourself. After all, no-one likes to be kept in the dark.

Tickets are £5/3 and available online and in store.
https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-rosie-garland/manchester-deansgate
For more information, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or tweet us @waterstonesmcr
We look forward to seeing you there.

WATERSTONES BRADFORD
Wednesday 4th March 2015
The Wool Exchange,
Hustlergate
Bradford BD1 1BL

Time: 5.30pm for 6pm start
Tickets: ring in advance or buy on the door. Coffee, cake & book purchase special deal available for £10

An Evening With Rosie Garland

Writer, performer and Waterstones favourite Rosie Garland joins us to celebrate the paperback release of her stunning second novel 'Vixen' by discussing the writing process and answering any questions you may have. We loved her debut 'The Palace of Curiosities' and Rosie has managed to follow it up with a novel that's equally strange and compelling.

Further details: 01274 723127

WATERSTONE'S MANCHESTER DEANSGATE
Friday, 13 February 2015
7:00PM
£3 (discounted on book purchase)

An Evening With Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland
Writer, performer and local favourite Rosie Garland joins us to celebrate the paperback release of her stunning second novel 'Vixen' by discussing the writing process and answering any questions you may have. We loved her debut 'The Palace of Curiosities' and Rosie has managed to follow it up with a novel that's equally strange and compelling.
Tickets can be bought by calling us 0161 837 3000

Or emailing: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Click to go to Waterstones event page