Lucy Foley's Blog

Hello Goodreaders!

If you're thinking about reading my novel,The Book of Lost and Found The Book of Lost and Found: A Novel, Waterstones.com have an excerpt up here: http://www.waterstones.com/blog/2015/...

The scene is a Bright Young Things-style party in the grounds of a stately home. Tom, our protagonist, is from a humbler background that most of the guests, and finds himself 'somewhat out of his depth'. Until, that is, he spots someone he recognises...

Hope you enjoy!

Lucy xx

ONLY 10 DAYS until the hardback hits the shelves (and the eBook blinks onto e-readers!). I'm enormously excited, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm a little nervous too. Because really, up until now, it's been quite an innocent time, full of anticipation and possibility. But very shortly, real readers are going to be able to pick up the book, and I will finally get to know what you all think of it...

The arts play an important role in The Book of Lost & Found - the novel opens with a portrait, one of the main characters is a famous painter and another is a photographer. I wanted to find a way of representing the themes of the book visually, and had great fun putting this together...

ttp://uk.pinterest.com/lucyfoley/the-book-o...

I haven't written anything for a while, because I've mainly been getting my head down to work on Book 2 (title coming soon), but some rather exciting things have happened recently. Perhaps the most exciting of which is that UK proofs for The Book of Lost and Found have just arrived on my doorstep!

The talented designer has made them look (very fittingly!) like 'found' objects, with a distressed look and a wash of beautiful antique gold. I don't think I can add a photo here but if you head to www.facebook.com/lucyfoleyauthor or look on Twitter @lucyfoleytweets I've posted pics there.

Even though I worked in publishing before I took up writing full time, I could never quite get my head around the strange alchemical magic of sending off a one-size-fits-all word document and getting it back as a beautiful, tangible, unique object. Somehow it's even more surreal when it's your own word document…

So ... I'm off to HarperCollins towers tomorrow to speak to the designer of my cover. I've been asked to bring along a sort-of visual goodie bag too - basically anything that inspired me when I was writing the book.

As one of the main characters, Tom, is an artist, lots of these are works that might have inspired him, or figures who might have been contemporaries (he begins painting properly in the 1920s).

But there are also locations: Corsica, New York, Venice, Paris and London are all places that appear in the book.

And then there are the periods, as the book spans from the 1920s (flappers, bright young things, cloche hats and beautiful cars) to the 1980s (perhaps not such a must-visit era in visual terms!).

I'm often very drawn to beautiful covers - Tigers in Red Weather, The Rules of Civility, The Goldfinch being some examples. It'll be fascinating to see which angle or which combination of elements are picked... more soon!

My very first Goodreads blog post! And it's January, which seems like a good place to start. At the moment I'm working on my edits for The Book of Lost & Found - which have to be handed in next week to my publishers.

As a fiction editor I'm used to putting together editorial notes, so it's strange being on the other side of things. Luckily I agree wholeheartedly with all of the changes suggested, so it hasn't been too painful a process ... though you do feel you have to take things apart to some degree to make improvements - which can be a little daunting...

Hopefully, though, once I've accepted the tracked changes a beautiful butterfly will emerge!