When author David Shannon’s debut novel was accepted by a leading literary agent, it came as a huge surprise – not only to him, but also to his wife.
London-born Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo OBE had no idea her husband had finished the novel he’d been working on for years – believing his hours spent in their study were filled with playing on computer games and watching football.
Bernardine, 61, made history when she became the first black woman and the first black Briton to land the coveted literary award in 2019 when her eighth book – ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ – jointly scooped the gong. Her celebrity fans include Barack Obama, who ranked the novel among his 19 Favourite Books of 2019.
Meanwhile bashful David, 64, secretly completed HOWUL: A Life’s Journey while shut away in the upstairs study of their home, after seeking his esteemed wife’s opinion on the early concept.
When author David Shannon’s debut novel was accepted by a leading literary agent, it came as a huge surprise – not only to him, but also to his wife, Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo OBE (pictured together)
He then ‘tortured’ her with endless first drafts before buckling down and completing the book on his own. David also shied away from revealing who his world-famous wife was when approaching agents and publishers, preferring HOWUL to be judged on its own merits. He told Bernardine he’d completed the book after being signed by top agents A M Heath.
David told FEMAIL: ‘I did think at one point when I kept showing her early versions, “She is going to get so sick of the sight of this!” It reached a stage where I kept quietly pressing on with it, and I was far more furtive with the later drafts.
‘One reason was because, when Bernardine passed very useful comments to me on it before, I would be all kind of macho-defensive and justify all the b******* I had been writing. So, I felt I had to protect her from that.’
Bernardine said: ‘I used to think he was watching football or playing computer games in his study. How wrong I was!’
HOWUL tells the story of a socially awkward, self-deprecating character trying to overcome life’s hurdles in flooded, post-apocalyptic north Wales.
David came up with the story for HOWUL not long after an earlier attempt at writing a crime novel failed to spark interest within the literary world
Uncomfortable in his own skin, Howul also finds other people a struggle. Recently widowed, he worries he’s not being a good enough father to his daughter.
Despite feeling useless and a failure, he battles to overcome the many obstacles placed in his path, often with comic results. Like the character played by James Stewart in the classic Hollywood film It’s a Wonderful Life, Howul’s negative perception of himself is very different from how others judge him.
Bernardine said: ‘I am so proud of my husband for writing this extraordinary novel, which dares to be so different and plunges us into a strange and gripping alternate universe.
‘It shows us what can happen to human nature when society’s sophisticated structures and systems are no longer in place and people are left to fend for themselves amid new power dynamics.’
Bernardine, 61, made history when she became the first black woman and the first black Briton to land the coveted literary award in 2019 when her eighth book – ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ – jointly scooped the gong. Her celebrity fans include Barack Obama, who ranked the novel among his 19 Favourite Books of 2019
Also a professional actor known as David France, David came up with the story not long after an earlier attempt at writing a crime novel failed to spark interest within the literary world.
He explained: ‘Publishers didn’t like the fact that it was quite suburban and domestic. They seemed to want something a bit more extreme, bloodthirsty, and violent.
‘My characters were solicitors, accountants, senior managers and golfers. I think if they were paranoid schizophrenics who went around slaughtering young women it might have done better. Also, to be fair, it probably wasn’t any good.’
Undeterred, he continued to make a living fitting in other acting roles around his main line of work: creating, running and performing in hugely successful Murder Mystery evenings, which took place all over the country about twice a week.
But his dreams of one day being a published author were reignited in early 2006 when he finally arranged to meet face-to-face with a lady whom he’d been conversing with on an online dating site.
David, 64, secretly completed HOWUL: A Life’s Journey while shut away in the upstairs study of their home, after seeking his esteemed wife’s opinion on the early concept
That lady was Bernardine. Keen to impress his date, he Googled her and subsequently read one of her globally renowned novels.
‘I absolutely loved it, so there was no awkwardness in that department,’ he recalled.
‘I quickly became a big fan of her writing. And part of the attraction initially was that she was a writer, because writers did impress me.’
But the first date proved to be a complete disaster. David was ‘over-eager’ while Bernardine ‘over-cautious’.
‘It was a total car crash as first dates go,’ he admitted. ‘At one point, I was struggling to find something to talk about and decided to show her the book I was reading at the time – Crap Teams by Geoff Tibballs.
‘It’s about crap football clubs and I was worried my team, Bristol Rovers, might be in it. Having it didn’t seem to impress her that much.’
David, who as an actor played a doctor in Will Young’s Hopes and Fears music video and another doctor in cult horror classic Werewolves of the Third Reich, began yearning to scratch his writer’s itch again and mentioned the idea to Bernardine.
Also a professional actor known as David France, David shied away from revealing who his world-famous wife was when approaching agents and publishers, preferring HOWUL to be judged on its own merits
He added: ‘I talked to her about maybe writing another novel and shared my ideas of what I might write next. She picked up on one idea, which is the novel that has now become HOWUL, and really got behind it.
‘She is incredibly accommodating when other people pass judgement on her own work and offer suggestions on it. And that was the irony. I would make comments about what she’d been writing and she would take them on the chin very deftly. But when it was reversed, I was so much more emotional and pathetic about it, especially when reacting to anything which might be regarded as a criticism.
‘She then recommended somewhere to me that offers “manuscript assessment” — The Literary Consultancy. When I sent HOWUL to it, the feedback I received was pretty much identical to what Bernardine had been saying all along.
‘Now I’d heard it not just from her but also from an organisation that has both “Literary” and “Consultancy” in its name, I took the suggestions onboard and rewrote it accordingly.’
David said the book would not have got off the ground without his wife’s support. He added: ‘A turning point was when she said to me once, “Is writing a hobby or is it something you really need to do?” That was a wake-up call for me because I think it had been more hobby-ish.
David said the book would not have got off the ground without his wife’s support – but doesn’t expect to compete with her in the Booker stakes
‘I thought, if it’s not going to be that, if I am really going to make this happen, I just have to apply myself and stay away from other distractions. And that’s what I did.
‘Bernardine has been so amazing for me and so supportive, so encouraging, and so patient as well. How we write is very different and I don’t want to make it sound like she did it for me, but she sets an example for what you have to do as a writer.
‘One of the things is she works so hard at it. I had always been a bit more dilettante before, messing about, not committing, then I saw her locking herself away and really working away at things.’
Is he ready now to compete with her in the Booker stakes? Not according to him.
‘Each of Bernardine’s eight novels is amazing and that’s not just husbandly pride,’ he said. ‘People have been raving about her work since long before I met her.
‘It’s like acting. Some actors hate all other actors for their success, but not me. I don’t feel I’m competing with her. I accept she is a much better writer than I will ever be! Just please don’t tell her I said so…’