We Are All Creatives

With fellow writer Isabelle Broom at The Old Swan festival site I’m just back from an exhausting but absolutely brilliant three days at the Harrogate Crime festival and thought I’d sit down with a cup of tea and a box of Cheeky Little Rascals (the signature scones from the famous Betty’s Tea Rooms,) and scribble all my thoughts down before I forget them. Not just because there were so many brilliant moments.

I first noticed it in the South of France during the Cannes Film Festival. Burberry’s stylish takeover of the Belles Rives terrace and beach club I’d met my friend Elaine for a drink at the beautiful Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins, which is one of the Cote D’Azur’s most iconic hotels. Fitzgerald began writing Tender is the Night there, and nearly a century later the place hasn’t lost any of its old school glamour. We Are All Creatives is a reader-supported publication.

I love disappearing down publishing news rabbit holes to see what’s happening in the world of books. (I like to think of it as productive procrastination.) The really interesting stuff often isn’t in the headlines, but in the little stories tucked away in trade magazines, earnings reports, bestseller lists and interviews. They’re like clues - one on its own might not tell you much but put enough of them together and you start to see where the industry might be heading.

Welcome to That July Feeling, a collection of things I've bookmarked for the month ahead. Books, recipes, places, ideas and anything else that has caught my eye. Think of it as the sort of recs I'd pass on if we were having coffee together. Later in the month we’re going to Glyndebourne, and although the opera is always fabulous, the picnics are the best bit.

Books, books, books. How many should you publish in a year? One of the less surprising things about moving from a bestselling traditionally published career into indie publishing is how many questions I get from other writers trying to make sense of a rapidly changing industry. Should I self-publish? How does Kindle Unlimited work? Why has my advance fallen? How many books do I need to write each year? Should I start a Substack?

I saw an interview with Aidan Turner the other day. I watched it for entirely shallow reasons, but he made a throwaway comment that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. Aidan Turner is Declan O’Hara in Rivals He was talking about being recognised in public. ‘How you get recognised on the street changes depending on the show that’s out at the time,’ he noted. ‘But since Rivals I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting recognised by 16 to 30s and I haven’t seen those guys for a while.’ WHAT?

This is a great read if you haven’t tried it. Different authors compete for a spot on the list - who will get there? Hello from Morocco I’m writing this from a rooftop in Marrakech, with a glass of mint tea by my side and the Atlas Mountains hazy in the distance.

Chef, broadcaster and author Rachel Khoo joins me to talk Paris, self-publishing and the power of owning your creative work. Rachel Khoo has long been one of my favourite TV chefs and food writers, not just because of what she cooks, but because of the wonderfully unconventional way she built her career.

Why authors should go, plus a 'spotter's guide'. I’ve been coming to Cannes for the film festival on and off for the past 30 years which makes me feel old. Experienced. I first came in 1996 as a rookie journalist when I interviewed newcomer Rachel Weiss, got invited to a party by Harvey Weinstein (reader, I went - although thankfully didn’t see him there,) and gatecrashed the Trainspotting after-show, which lives on in festival legend as one of the all-time great Cannes nights out.

Who’s seen Devil Wears Prada 2? What did you think? I enjoyed it. It’s fun and glamorous, (Lake Como has never looked better,) and Stanley Tucci’s Nigel still deserves his own spin-off. But I didn’t quite love it, partly because my expectations were too high. Beforehand, someone had told me it was an insightful look at the decline of magazines and the changing economics of media. It’s not. Not really. After all, it’s a fashion industry dramedy, not a New Yorker investigation.