Update: I am on my way to the USA and Canada!

Good news: slightly later than expected, but only by 48 hours, I am on my way to the USA. I will be touching down tomorrow, publication day, and I really can't wait to be there. Along with my publishers, I've been preparing for this week for more than two years, so I am somewhat relieved not to have missed it (as you can see in this photo from the bus to the airport, where I am also giving thanks for extra-strength antibiotics...).

​I will keep you updated via my Twitter and Facebook page about what is going on this week, but for any readers who are already reading the book, I wanted to share a few special extras that my publishers have made to celebrate publication day. The House at the Edge of Night, to me, has always been a book about community, so from the beginning we wanted readers to feel like they were part of that community, as though we were all participating in a virtual book club where we could sit down together (or, via social media!) and connect across distances and borders over a shared love of stories.

First of all, this is a map of Castellamare, the island where the story takes place. It was quite uncanny for me to see this, because I'd spent so long picturing the island that to see it as a real, full-colour map was like watching it come to life for a second time. Castellamare is five miles off the coast of Sicily, south-east of Siracusa, in the Strait of Messina where the legendary Scylla and Charybis once stood, and these are some of the physical places where the story takes place.

This beautiful map is all the more remarkable given that this was the original map that I drew in my writing notebook three years ago when I first began writing the book, so my publishers really didn't have a lot to go on...

And secondly, if you are already reading the book and want to join the Castellamare community via social media, here's one way: with this Ambassador of Castellamare button. The story of the Ambassadors of Castellamare is genuinely one of the most remarkable things that has happened to me in the two years since writing this book. When my publishers first decided to publish The House at the Edge of Night, way back in winter 2014, only a very few people in the world had read it. First of all, I was a new writer, and publishing houses are big - not everybody reads or knows about every book, so word of mouth starts slowly. But in the case of The House at the Edge of Night something amazing happened: those first few readers began to share it with a few others, then Edel Rodriguez and Robbin Schiff's beautiful cover design got other people curious, and soon people in Penguin Random House who weren't working directly on the book had started reading it too and had begun to share it with with family and friends outside the publisher. A little while after that, this growing group of the book's very first readers decided to create a book club. Spontaneously, the Ambassadors of Castellamare were born. One of the highlights of my year was getting to meet the first Ambassadors in February, and I'm looking forward to seeing them again this week. As a writer, I believe and have always believed that to commit to reading a book is a huge act of generosity and open-mindedness on the part of a reader, and so the discussion which forms around a book should be a democratic one, which offers something to the reader beyond the story on the page: a group of people sharing a love of writing, reading and books in an open and kind environment, which is exactly what the Ambassadors of Castellamare are about. If you want to be part of the discussion, we'd love to have you!