The First Time

The venue was gorgeous, the revamped Booths Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye. The new owner, Elizabeth, had clad it in wood panelling, littered it with sofas and a group of incredibly handsome American women.

I walked on to the stage to Marc Bolan and T Rex’s Get it On. With a main character and a novel called Diamond Star Halo it was inevitable and it was great.

David Bowie

‘How important is David Bowie to you?’ Peter Florence asked and I rambled on, trying to get back into my obsessed, teenage mindset. We jumped from Bowie to John Irving, and I was glad; I was on familiar ground.

It’s strange talking about what you’ve done, but as a contemporary writer, you have to. The interview, the reading group, the bookshop, the festival circuit, they are all part of the deal. You often formulate the hows and the whys and the great ‘what is it?’ while you are actually up on that stage. Sometimes it’s nice to think on the hoof. Sometimes it isn’t. At this event I realised that, among other things, I’d written a novel about the domestic side of rock n’ roll, because Diamond Star Halo is dominated by women; women who look after these roaming men, these rock stars. After all, the novel begins in 1977.

We talked about the difficulty of capturing the moment of live music on the page. We talked about the dead horse Crazy Love who has to be buried again and again in the novel. We talked about the family I had created; Halo, Vincent, Molly, Ivan, Dolly, Nana Lew, and of course, Fred. We talked about the process of writing and re-imagining other books in your own work. We talked about Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and we played Kate Bush’s song. It was lovely to hear Kate again.

Kate Bush

Finally, one of the handsome American women at the back asked me what my favourite song was. It’s a hard question. As hard and impossible as ‘what’s your favourite book?’

‘The Flying Burrito Brother’s version of Wild Horses' I told her.

‘Can we hear it?’ she asked.

‘You know it’s a very long song,’ I whispered to Peter.

‘6.22,’ a man in the front row said.

‘Sorry?’ I asked.

‘That version of Wild Horses is 6 minutes and 22 seconds.’

‘We’d better fade out,’ said Peter, ‘or we’ll be up here all night.’

Listening to Gram Parsons, I wouldn’t have minded.

Diamond Star Halo has been chosen as The Hay Festival’s Book of the Month for January 2010.