I’m going on a UK book tour for Hunger and Thirst!
I’ll be travelling from North to South and East to West. And I hope that you can join me at one of my stops. If none of them are near you, then you might be able to join me on one of my two online events.
The tour kicks off with a launch in Winchester on 8th May. This two-hour event includes a glass of wine and a piece of cake, and the chance to win some bookish goodies. I’ll be interviewed by author and journalist, Rebecca Fletcher followed by a Q&A and book signing. If you’re local, please do join me.
I’ll be doing two events that include music from Henry Ayling who has written some creepy piano music as featured in the book. My events with him are in Bristol, and later in the year, Southampton.
My two online events are on 12th May hosted by the Bridport Prize when my literary agent, Jane Finigan from Lutyens and Rubinstein will be in conversation; and on 20th May with Bard Books and Blue Pencil. If you can’t make it to an in-person event, I hope you’ll be able to make it to one of these. Booking will be available soon.
And, if you aren’t in the UK, but would like to come to a US-based online event, then I’ll be online on June 4 6pm EDT.
I’m delighted that The Bookseller – the trade magazine for booksellers in the UK – has interviewed me about Hunger and Thirst, and unexpectedly I’m on the cover. Can you spot the extra little fly they’ve added?
I was interviewed by Alice O’Keeffe, who starts with:
Picture a haunted house. What do you see in your mind’s eye? Perhaps a Gothic pile, a ruined tower, some bats? Probably not a suburban bungalow in Hampshire, but that may change once you read Claire Fuller’s genuinely disturbing literary horror, Hunger & Thirst.
You probably need a subscription to The Bookseller to read the rest of it, but you can read it here.
And if it sounds like your kind of thing you can pre-order it here from Bookshop.org, and it will pop through your letterbox on 7th May or thereabouts.
My local independent book shop, P&G Wells is offering signed and dedicated copies on pre-orders of Hunger and Thirst. Order it now via their website and just add what you’d like me to write in the book in the orders notes before you check out. Whether that’s simply your name, and my signature, or something more elaborate, I’ll pop into the shop when they have your book in and personalise it with your request. P&G Wells will then contact you let you know it’s ready to be collected, or they can put it in the post. (If you don’t live in the UK, contact them for postage costs.)
Over on Instagram, I’m running a Giveaway for a signed UK proof of my next novel, Hunger and Thirst, which will be published in May.
Hunger and Thirst is about Ursula, a reclusive sculptor, who in 1987 when she is 16 meets wild-child, Sue. Sue dares Ursula to kill someone and when she actually does, Ursula is haunted for the rest of her life.
The Giveaway closes at midnight 17th January 2026.
“Atmospheric, psychologically vivid, and unputdownable” Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
ARCs and Proofs
ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) and Proofs are the US and UK words for the same thing: a physical or digital version of the book which is sent out to other authors for quotes and blurbs, and to book reviewers, event organisers, and booksellers. This version usually uses the text before the final proofread because of timing, so it often includes typos and sometimes bigger issues in the story, all of which will hopefully be resolved before the hardback is printed.
“I was enthralled, rapt, utterly unable to put this book down. Claire Fuller, a master of psychic suspense, has done it again” Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive
Blurbs and quotes
A blurb is the US term for a quote (the UK term) provided by another author which is usually put on the cover, and sometimes inside the finished version. I get my fair share of proofs sent to me asking for a quote for the cover, and I’m nearly always happy to receive them*, but I don’t always provide a quote, and never if I don’t like the book and don’t finish it.
“Harrowing and tender…the kind of book to clear a weekend for, the kind of resonant nightmare that lingers long after its end” Hayden Casey, author of A Harvest of Furies
Do we need them?
This year (2025) the perennial debate came round again about whether the industry needs blurbs; how time-consuming they are for authors (to read the book and write the blurb), and for editors to ask agents and other editors to ask their authors for blurbs. My UK editor estimated that asking for blurbs takes up 80% of her time!
“An absolute masterpiece. Utter absorbing, genuinely unsettling” Jennie Godfrey author of The List of Suspicious Things
Lots of readers say they never pay attention to blurbs on books, and choose what they’re going to read from reviews or what the book is about. But although blurbs might still be useful to some readers, they are helpful for when the publisher is trying to get a retailer to stock the book and help promote it. Retailers like Waterstones are pitched many many books by publishers’ sales teams or sent catalogues to pick which books they are going to stock, and quotes for these books help guide them. If your book has a quote from Stephen King, say, then they are very likely to take note.
Why I think writers should say yes to ARCs and proofs
Last week I was speaking to an editor at a large publisher and I asked whether one of her high-profile authors might be interested in a proof of Hunger and Thirst. The editor seemed embarrassed to have to tell me that this author has told her editor and agent to never send her any proofs and never ask if she wants any. Although she writes contemporary fiction, she apparently doesn’t read it. The number of books we’re sent can be overwhelming, I get that, and yet that author was a debut once, trying to find her space in the world of publishing with her editor asking already published authors for quotes. I feel there should be more paying-it-forward going on. Afterall, it’s easy to say yes to receiving a proof but adding the disclaimer that they might not have time to read it. Who knows, they might find a gem.
“A gothic chiller — haunting, artful, suspenseful, complex, and cinematic” William Landay, author of All that is Mine I Carry With Me.
*Which proofs I won’t accept
I don’t like receiving unsolicited physical proofs, if someone knows my address; I’d much rather be asked via email first because there are some genres which aren’t for me: most historical fiction, most comic novels, most science fiction and fantasy. I never accept digital proofs because I work on screens enough already. And I don’t accept self-published books.
“Gothic, disturbing, and mesmerisingly well-written, Hunger and Thirst is like nothing I’ve read before” Lucy Atkins, author of Windmill Hill
Netgalley
In the UK book bloggers, booksellers, librarians, and reviewers can request a digital proof of books they’d like to read, including Hunger and Thirst. You can sign up here, but please do note that the vetting of whether you’re accepted or not is up to my publisher.
I’m really excited to share with you the UK cover of Hunger and Thirst, which will be published by Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin, on 7th May next year. And I’m excited to know what you think of it!
Spot the difference between these two images. Answers below
This is the third part in a series about how my next book, Hunger and Thirst moves through the process of editing to arriving onto bookshop shelves. The first part covered structural and line edits with my UK and US editors at Fig Tree/ Penguin and Tin House / Zando, the second part looked at copyedits and the difference between UK and US editions, and in this part I’m going to look at the US cover. (I’ve seen the UK cover, and it’s very different, but I’m not allowed to officially show it yet.)
Readers ask me a lot about covers: how the process works, how involved I get, whether I get any say; I’ve even been asked whether I design them myself given my art background.
The process starts early with Masie Cochran, my editor at Tin House / Zando asking me to send her any book covers I’ve seen recently that I’ve loved. I don’t know how much these feed into her planning, but I like that it makes me feel like I have some influence! So, I sent her half a dozen, and then a few months later she says she has a cover, and attaches it to an email.
It is the most terrifying moment clicking open on that email. What if I don’t like it? Luckily, that’s never happened with any of my books from Tin House. They’ve all been designed by their in-house Art Director who is now Beth Steidle, and who designed this cover for Hunger and Thirst.
I showed the cover to my husband and I kept opening the email over the course of the next day and I only loved it more. But, I had some very small comments, which I fed back to Masie who passed them to Beth, and then a while later I was sent the revised version.
Did you spot the differences between the two pictures? The one on the left was the first one I was sent and the one on the right is the final cover.
I wasn’t sure about how the sculpture’s right leg lifts up on the left of the cover. It gave her a look of a mermaid, and so Beth removed that.
I wasn’t sure that the flies looked enough like flies, and I wasn’t sure about the fly in the words ‘a novel’. So Beth changed the flies, removed the fly within the words, and put another fly on the sculpture’s arm.
Beth made some changes of her own to the colours and density of the dots etc.
The cover was officially revealed on CrimeReads website, along with an extract from the beginning of the novel (which I edited to make it shorter but still work as a narrative). I also wrote a piece about why this cover works so well for the story:
The main character, Ursula is a reclusive and famous sculptor, and so while the figure on the cover might be one of her carvings, it could also be Ursula herself caught in a moment of turning away from the camera. The first line of the novel mentions a murder and a body, so I love how the red shape on the head implies this might even be the victim. One of the narrative strands is the dares teenagers set each other, and it’s very clever how the fonts bring to mind words scrawled in haste or even graffiti. Another theme is the perception of women’s bodies and in particular body hair, and I love how this striking image picks up on this, not only in the angle of the sculpture to the viewer and the beautiful heft of her, but also how the dots give a subtle indication of hair. And then finally, you see the flies, four of them perched there; an unsettling suggestion that something bad is coming.
I’m delighted to reveal the US cover of Hunger and Thirst which will be published by Tin House, an imprint of Zando, on 2nd June 2026. I love it so much: the boldness of the yellow font, the sculpture (the main character in the book is a sculptor), and the flies… I won’t tell you how the flies come into it; you’ll have to read it find out.
Yesterday, CrimeReads revealed the cover on their website, together with a piece I wrote about why this is the perfect cover – designed by Beth Steidle – for Hunger and Thirst.
They also published an excerpt from the beginning of the book, so if you’d like a taster before you pre-order, you can read it here.
And if you’re in the US here’s a list of places that you can pre-order it from, or of course you local independent bookstore.
For those in the UK and Canada, you’ll have to wait a little longer to see these covers. But let me know what you think of this one!
About the book 1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job delivering mail at a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and—delightfully— some new friends, including wild-child, Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist this hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behavior and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry—for food—and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging, carries out her friend’s terrible dare. And, for this, Ursula finds herself literally haunted.
Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker, Emma Zahini who is digging into an unsolved disappearance. But it is not only the filmmaker who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.
This is the second part in a series about how my next book, Hunger and Thirst moves through the process of editing to arriving onto bookshop shelves. The first part covered structural and line edits with my UK and US editors at Fig Tree/ Penguin and Tin House / Zando. And in this part I’m going to be looking at copyedits which I’ve just finished checking for my US editor.
What are copyedits?
Copyedits are done on a novel to check for inconsistencies, missing words, repetition of words, that the publisher’s house style is being used, and many more things. Is a character’s eyes blue at the start of the book and brown at the end? Are capital letters and italics used in the right place? I’ve even had a copyeditor spot a plot hole in a previous book that no one else had. They are life savers.
A question I get asked many times is how the process of editing works with my UK and US editors: what if I don’t agree with what they say? Isn’t it my book to do with as I like? What about editors in other countries – do they have any input? What if my English-speaking editors don’t agree with each other? Who makes the changes? And then when I answer these, often another question comes: What happens next?
I thought I would start a regular post about how the process has been working for my next book, Hunger and Thirst, due for publication in May 2026. Keep in mind, though that this is me and this book, and my editors. The process won’t be the same for every published author, and isn’t exactly the same for every one of my books.
And also keep in mind that I’m describing the process after I’ve done all the self-editing I think I can do, and after my editors at Fig Tree / Penguin in the UK, and Tin House / Zando in the US have read the book, bought it, and read it with their editing hats on.
What I got from them both were editing notes. The first round came only from my UK editor (as my prime publisher), and later I got notes from them both. They didn’t particularly confer, but as we got further down the line they talked together before they talked to me so they could agree on what changes they were going to suggest, so I didn’t face too much of issue of conflicting opinions. (Although this was a challenge at some points.)
I’m emailed editing notes by my UK editor. At this stage they’re very high level, and they’re general questions, things for us to discuss. For example, ‘The ending feels a little too rushed’, ‘I would love us to work out how best to weave in both the art and the moments when we zoom out of Ursula’s story and into the narrative about the filming of the documentary’, and, ‘Ursula’s strangeness. Just how weird is she!?’ There were seven pages of notes like this.
We meet to talk through them, resolving some of the questions as we talk and agreeing that some might be sorted out on the page. We wonder what will the impact on X be if I change Y. And so on, for a few hours.
I spend several weeks working on these suggestions – the written ones and the things we discussed in person. Agreeing with most, disagreeing with some, or realising as I edit that something else now needs to change.
I send the revised draft to my UK editor, and there is another round of edits. More in depth than the first.
My US editor now sees a draft and is now also involved in making suggestions, and giving me editing notes.
I do another draft and receive more notes; another draft, and more notes. Sometimes I make too many changes and have to replace what I took out earlier, sometimes the story is too clear, sometimes too opaque. We all feel we are getting closer to the finish line.
The last round are line edits – minor changes to make sure everything links together, the pacing is right, the themes work, and more.
This whole process takes about a year.
And then the manuscript goes to copyediting.
I’ve just received the manuscript back from my US copyeditor, so watch out for a post next month about how this next stage of the process works.
Any questions? Or anything I’ve missed out? Let me know either in a comment on this post, or send me a message here, and I’ll try and cover them next time.
(The image used at the top of this post was strangely influential in writing this novel. I found it online when I was looking for an old-fashioned medicine bottle. It informed one of the character’s names, the name of some medicine another character takes, and even the year in which most of the book is set.)
