Hello folks, and apologies for the recent radio silence. I go through phases where I feel terribly old fashioned about the Internet and want to do all things with pen and paper, and perhaps a graphite stick or two. I’m writing my third novel at the moment and it’s all being done in scruffy notebooks with green ink. I can barely read my own handwriting, so it’s going to be a devil to type up, but more on that in the far future.
It’s time, I think, to spill some of the beans on The Man Who Rained. Last week I sent back the proofs to the publisher, which means that I’ve made my final set of tweaks and my work on it is done. As we get nearer the release date (January 1st), I’ll have lots more to share with you. For now, here’s the splendid cover design by Rose Cooper, and beneath it the blurb from the back cover.
From the Desmond Elliott prize-winning author of The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical novel of love, discovery and nature.
When Elsa’s father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape – from New York, her job, her boyfriend – to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart.
For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest – drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens.
In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest – can they survive at all?
The Man Who Rained is a work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination, a modern-day fable about the elements of love.
