Under the covers

Things you probably didn't know about Don't Make Me Laugh

Julia’s big face. (Photo: Julia Raeside)

My first novel - Don’t Make Me Laugh - has been out in the world for almost two weeks.

I have held it in my hands, sipped champagne next to it, taken bites out of it in cake form and seen it in real book shops on real shelves next to other real books.

You can read the whole story of how it came to be a book in my publishing diary:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

I thought, while I swing my legs on the chair of uncertainty (how has it gone and by whose estimation must we judge this?), that I’d tell you some titbits from behind the curtain, the stuff you can’t tell when you see it in WH Smiths next to the one about the air-fryer and the other one about, I don’t know, sudoku.

The title

Firstly, the novel hasn’t always been called Don’t Make Me Laugh. I know, it seems so obvious when you see my epigraph - a quote from the legendary Gilda Radner which almost literally uses the phrase - but it took quite a while for the penny to drop.

Originally, it was called *drum roll* The Sausage Factory. I liked that title for a long time and even sent it out to a few agents as that. But you won’t be surprised to hear, none of them could quite see it, so, once I’d done a bit of a re-write and changed the ending (it had a different ending!) I sent it out to new agents with the new title and hey presto, they liked it.

I don’t think the title was necessarily the problem. But I think, when I finally came up with it, I got this solid feeling in my fundament that I’d hit the right one.

I can’t tell you what the original ending was, but if you read carefully, you might spot some clues I’ve left in the book. I was setting up something quite ‘out there’ but the ending I eventually wrote really felt right to me. Just like the title - a feeling of everything slotting into place. So satisfying.

The cover

The absolutely gorgeous cover of the hardback, designed by the genius Luke Bird, was one we all agreed on pretty quickly. But he sent over a variety of beautiful designs, some photographic, some more plain graphic to choose from. His use of colour is so original. I love that feeling of having no idea how someone else’s brain works, so different is it to your own. He sees things the rest of us cannot see.

I thought I’d give you a sneak peak of some designs he sent that we didn’t use. It was like opening a treasure chest, opening that email: one beautiful concept after another. As you can see, the first is the design we went with in a different colour scheme. I love it, but I LOVED the red of the original more and felt it went better with the darkness in the book. Still, phwoargh though.

Cover designs for Don’t Make Me Laugh by Luke Bird.

The second is so cool, same font as the final cover and features a more explicit broken mic cable, which also made it to the final design but you have to look more closely for it. And the last one is so impossibly cool, I worried the story might not live up to it. Maybe if the book comes out in the US? Look at that font. And the lilac, black and yellow together. I couldn’t believe the choices on offer.

What I can’t show you yet is the insanely gorgeous cover he has designed for my paperback (out 14th August, pre-order now) but more of that soon. I thought it would just be the same as the hardback but floppy. But oh no, it is another eye-popping combo with echoes of the original that I would absolutely pick up in a book shop. SO excited to show it to you when I am finally allowed to.

The gossip

As mentioned in my piece for The Times, the gossip around the characters in Don’t Make Me Laugh is arriving to my DMs, thick and fast. As new people finish reading, they’ll sometimes send me their theories, particularly if they work in comedy or adjacent fields. My favourite message from a comedian was from a woman saying, ‘I bet [insert name of popular stand-up comedian] is sh*tting himself.’ I had literally never heard a bad word about the man she mentioned. But I’ll be more cautious of him in future. Some of the theories are wild and suppose the text is littered with clues pointing to real people.

I’m all for people finding their own fun while reading, but honestly, no real comedians were harmed in the making of this book.

As Don’t Make Me Laugh (keep saying the title and it’ll convince them to buy it) finds its way out onto the Kindles and bookshelves of the land, I look forward to more wild theorising on this tip. Endless fun.

Photo by Haroon Niaz on Unsplash

What else can I tell you? After my first book event last week, a man bought the book and then came up to me for a chat. He wanted to know why women were obsessed with men who didn’t love them back and why that seemed to be a theme in more and more books lately. (I was appearing alongside the brilliant Emma van Straaten whose wonderfully unnerving book This Immaculate Body is about a cleaner who falls unhealthily in love with the owner of a flat she cleans, having never met him.)

It’s a good question, book shop man. But one I don’t have an answer to. I think women (in particular but not exclusively) have written about impossible love for as long as books have existed though. But that book event may have given the impression it’s a recent ‘trend’.

I was actually asked during the event why women love bastards. God, if I knew that. Answers on a postcard.

In the mean time, I hope you’re enjoying the book if you’re reading it. (Only £4.99 on Kindle.) And if you’re waiting for the paperback, I don’t blame you. It’s incredibly fit and will look amazing on your lap this summer.