Beyond chuffed to share that Liverpool-based Dead Ink Books will publish my fifth novel Lamb this October, and another novel in 2025. Here’s the announcement in The Bookseller.
I’ve admired Dead Ink since reading Naomi Booth’s brilliant Sealed – a novel that manages to make a horrifying apocalypse feel scarily intimate – and feel very lucky to have the team’s faith in my own project.
Because it has been a project, this weird little book. I started writing notes for it back in 2018, and have been round the houses ever since. The finished novel isn’t just a third draft, but the third complete rewrite – and that’s before you count my ‘just-one-more’ passes, structural edits, and the (many) times I stroppily abandoned it.
This owes a lot to my bloodymindedness, of course, but I’m also indebted to the friends who’ve kept me at it. (Never believe anybody who tells you writing fiction is a lonely pursuit.)
Anyway, here’s the novel’s cover, created by the phenomenal Luke Bird. Fun fact: the letters were handcrafted by a florist, then photographed.
Check out the full blurb and pre-order over at Dead Ink’s site.
MATT HILL 