Christopher Shevlin's Blog

I had a dream last night in which I bumped into a friend in a shop. She said she’d just come from a new women’s yoga studio called HerLimberLimbs. ‘Hurlimbalims?’ I said, not understanding what I’d just heard. ‘Her Limber Limbs,’ she said slowly and clearly. ‘Oh! Right,’ I said. ‘Good name.’ Isn’t that a […]

The post On mishearing myself in a dream first appeared on Christopher Shevlin.

I’m constantly surprised by the existence of time.  I mean, I understand intellectually that time ticks by relentlessly in a one-way fashion, drawing us all on to our doom. But I notice that deep inside, at my core, I don’t expect time to pass. I expect it to stand still.  That means I expect the […]

Welcome to my newly remodelled and refurbished website. This prime internet property is under active owner-occupation, and is not – as it may have appeared while I was writing my last book – abandoned. While you’re here, allow me to give you a quick tour of the place, pointing out some of the recent upgrades. […]

Christopher Shevlin was interviewed by imaginary Guardian journalist, Libby Hesketh-Myers, about the life-or-death struggle behind the writing of Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed. Libby: So, let’s get this out in the open right from the outset, this is a fake interview, isn’t it? I’m a character that you made up, and I’m asking you questions. […]

When I put my first book out, there was no easy way of finding a professional cover designer. And I was sure it would disappear without trace anyway, so I decided to do everything on the book myself. Designing and drawing the cover was the bit I enjoyed most. But I’ve always suspected that people […]

Well, this is odd. I’ve just stumbled upon this huge blog post that I wrote when I left London, but which I obviously felt too ashamed to post at the time. It is fearsomely long, and probably only of interest if you are me. But I suddenly feel like posting it. After all, no one […]

Sorry, I haven’t written this post yet. I’ll update it soon. Sorry, I haven’t written this post yet. I’ll update it soon.

I couldn’t face using a picture of the Brandenburger Tor

On the 11th of May, I left London, where I’ve lived since 1998, and came to Berlin, where I know no one and have no job or place to live. I don’t know when I’ll return. This may strike you as mystifying and stupid, or life-affirming and exciting, depending on your temperament and mood. My own temperament and mood are highly unstable, so I veer between the two.

I made the decision very quickly, by my standards. In March, it was a pipedream – one of many things that I could do and would notionally like to do, but which I comfortingly won’t ever do. A bit like my dream of becoming a carpenter and building my own house.

But on the ninth of April I woke up thinking it was the only viable option, and two days later I gave my month’s notice to leave my London flat. This isn’t really the sort of thing I do, so it shocked me. For two nights I couldn’t sleep. My whole body was flooded with alternating waves of fear and excitement. For about a week after that I was stunned: I mostly just sat about, staring into space and being surprised that I’d done something so disastrously bold.

Over-explaining my need to explain

I had a need to explain myself to people. At first I just talked to friends and family. But then it felt like such a big decision that I found myself explaining it to strangers too. There was a man who knocked on my door collecting for charity, and I told him more or less my whole life story, and how it had come to this. If you smiled at me just fractionally too long when selling me a sandwich in Pret, I would begin to explain that I’d had a long illness and what with insane London rents and having saved the money my book earned me, it was now or never…  Anyway, since I find I have a blog, it struck me that I may as well use it to get this need to explain out of my system.

I can see where the need to explain comes from: in November 2014 everything was finally going well. My book had a quietly spectacular year, I’d had perhaps my most profitable year of freelancing ever, I was in a comedy show that did pretty well at the Edinburgh Festival, and I was just about to move into my (long-overdue) first nice, grown-up flat in London. I felt like I’d finally prevailed against impossible odds and was no longer a total failure. But six months later I left it all behind to come to Germany.

The decision doesn’t really fit the script I had written for myself, and lots of people seemed a bit baffled by it. ‘Oh right,’ said one friend when I told him, ‘I’m assuming you’ve got mates out there.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anyone. That’s one of the things that makes it so stupid.’

The explanation’s quite long, so I’m going to put it in a separate post, to make it easier for you to avoid reading it. I might never get round to posting it at all. Perhaps it was just something I needed to write for myself. Or maybe, more plausibly, it was a successful strategy for avoiding writing the book that I’ve left London to finish.

I’ve had lots of good things happen to my book recently. Actually, they’ve been happening since Christmas, which is how long I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for. But today it was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award, and it has pleased my head clean off. They say the book “cleverly combines intrigue with comic, astute observation which made me laugh throughout.”

It was Viv Groskop who told me to enter, after she saw a tweet from them saying they’d like more comic novels. It was also Viv who put me in touch with Colin Midson, the book PR supremo who got me my Guardian review. Viv is basically a fairy godmother to everyone who knows her, and implausibly lovely. She’s also, as her funny book “I Laughed, I Cried” inadvertently reveals, superhuman. Let’s just say that if the Ukraine were friends with her, there’s no way it would be in its current position.

Anyway, my book started selling much better at Christmas. In fact, its Christmas present to me was to get into Amazon’s top ten bestsellers for humorous fiction. It’s been in and out ever since, and last month it sold its ten thousandth copy. With that milestone out of the way, I risked putting the price up, which seems to have increased sales slightly. Last week, for the first time, the book brought in a liveable weekly wage. That has finally made me stop feeling embarrassed about having self-published. (The nice reviews and messages have also had a huge effect. Should I admit that I re-read them when I’m feeling low?)

The result of all this is that I’ve been feeling confident enough to start a sequel to Perpetual Astonishment. I’ve got it planned out and have written three chapters.

I’m very grateful for all of this.

I’ve just realised, with a pang of disappointment, that Lana Del Ray (Wool of the King) is singing “Every time I close my eyes, it’s like a dark paradise”.

Previously, I’d always heard it as “dog paradise”. It seemed an odd affliction to mention in a song, when all her others are about disillusioned American kids sexing each other to death in cars, but one that helped to explain her state of mind.

Imagine, I thought, every single time Lana Del Ray closes her eyes she sees a world crammed full of balls, sticks, squeaky rubber things, open car windows and tummy tickling. That might be charming the first time it happened, but if it was a permanent thing then it would definitely make you want to get into a burning car with a man who has all-over body tattoos, no shirt and a rifle.

But no, it’s just a dark paradise she sees, like the rest of us.