CLIO GRAY'S winning book, now entitled GUARDIANS OF THE
KEY, is published by Headline, 2006
When I was short-listed for the Harry Bowling Prize and invited to the Award Ceremony back in 2004, I almost didn't go: it was in London, it was too far, it was 12 hours on the train, and anyway, I couldn't possibly have won. But I did go, and I did win, and I was so surprised, it took a lot longer to sink in than it did to lug that huge bouquet of flowers all the way back through three train changes to Inverness and home.
And then came the tricky bit. Laura at MBA asked for the rest of the novel, which I hadn't actually written. I'd finished others, but nobody had been interested in them, and this was the one they wanted. I did have a pile of notes and a woolly sheep of a plot in my head, but it took three weeks of panicking and scribbling before I had the thing hammered out.
After the initial shock, writing it came quite easily, and was sent down in monthly episodes for Laura's comments. Six months in and all was done. Four months after that, and Headline decided to publish, and I hardly told a soul in case I jinxed it all and ended up back on the bottom of the pile.
Even now, at the end of May 2006, with the book actually in my hands and coming out officially next week, it all feels like it might be snatched away and those invitations to booksellers' dinners and publisher's parties had just somehow arrived up at the wrong address.
It's a scary business, and completely new and I feel horribly unprepared and ridiculously privileged all at the same time. I have no idea how long it will last, if people will like my books or even read them, if I'll be allowed to carry on writing for as long as I want to, a process which seems so integral to me now that I couldn't bear to stop.
At bottom of it all, I am extremely grateful for the chance to try, and don't think I am the only HBP winner who will have cause to stop and say, Thanks, Harry.
Clio Gray
