For much of the time I was writing My Absolute Darling, I lived on the fourth floor of a falling-down apartment building in downtown Salt Lake City. In the summer, with the heat rising from the apartments below us, it could get to be 106 degrees. We had no air-conditioning, and I’d work hunched on the floor, dripping sweat, slamming redbull, and loving the work. In the winter, if I left a glass on the windowsill, it would ice over. The radiators hissed and steamed and sometimes fountained water like you were in a submarine that had just been hit. I wrote whenever I could. I had no regular hours, no desk, no place save the living room floor, no meditative rituals, no artist’s lifestyle, no coffeehouses I frequented, nothing except the work itself. I wrote whenever I wasn’t in the backcountry and wasn’t at the restaurant. I tried to keep my hours at the restaurant down to thirty a week, and I tried to write for thirty or forty more, which meant getting up and getting straight to the keyboard and working hard throughout the day if I was to have any chance of getting out climbing that night.
The 4thcoming series is all about introducing you to our authors. If you’ve ever wondered what your favourite 4th Estate author is currently reading, listening to or what their writing ritual is, then we’ve got all those answers for you.
Name: Gabriel Tallent
I wanted to write many years before I became good at it. I practiced writing in the same way that a pianist practices scales or a tennis player practices serves. I worked on sentences, then paragraphs, then scenes, over and over, until I got them right. If you want to become a writer, you may find the same is true for you. There is a long apprenticeship before you can write a full-length novel—and ages before you can write a good one. However, you can develop traits in yourself that will make it more likely you will succeed.
I am not saying you can’t be an excellent writer without developing these characteristics—authors’ personalities are replete with bizarre idiosyncrasies, social deviance, not to mention serious drug and alcohol abuse that sometimes obscure the work, itself. Admittedly success for any writer is rare, but here are a few ideas that might those of you who are writing.
We’re all geared up for summer here at 4th Estate so we’ve put together a list of book we’ll be reading during our time off as well as recommendations of some other great reads, that we think should definitely be included in your holiday book bag.
From Tuscan tomato and bread soup to monkfish stew, simple spaghettis or lemon and pistachio polenta cake, Made at Home is a colourful collection of the food that Giorgio Locatelli loves to prepare for family and friends.
Pimiento de piqulllo con crema de queso y mojo verde
(Piquillo pepper stuffed with goat’s curd mixed herbs and mojo verde)
These are really quick and colourful: great for summer parties and picnics. Josep, our executive chef, who came up with the combination, uses goat’s curd from La Bauma, but you could substitute cream cheese or cottage cheese.
We are delighted to reveal the paperback cover for The Transition by Luke Kennard. It’s Black Mirror meets David Nicholls in this dark and funny novel about love in dystopian times.
4th Estate and William Collins writers open up about LGBTQ+ identities
In celebration of Pride in the UK, we have put together a selection of writing by 4th Estate and William Collins authors who have used their craft to represent the lives of those in the LGBTQ community. Whether writing non-fiction, fiction, or something in the middle, these writers have significantly contributed to the demonstration that love is love, by writing complex depictions of individuals outside the heteronormative spectrum (this list is non-exhaustive).
