Longlist

This is exciting. I'm on the Guardian's 'Not The Booker' longlist. As voted by readers who nominated any eligible books. So it's an extremely long list - 47 I think - but there I am, and voted for by some very nice person with excellent taste who I don't know. Always faintly surprising to remember that people I don't know read my books. And he runs a bookshop. (If you're reading this - thank you very much.) My local lovely little independent bookshop are great supporters of me too. Maybe I appeal to bookshop owners. Of course the likes of Mantel, Coetzee and Byatt are also on this list, but I hope they're not too intimidated by joining me. My own feeling is that people should get hold of the books they'd never heard of previously, the ones starved of publicity, probably from small publishers like, I don't know, Salt, they should read them and then, if they enjoy them they should vote for them and encourage all their friends to do so. But that may be just me.