But he persisted, and a year later we went to the same party with a No 1 bestseller on our hands. I replied, honestly, no, there were several fine books on punctuation already, and I wasn’t an expert. “Do you think there’s a book to be written about punctuation?” he said. By Christmas 2002 I felt strong enough to attend a social event in London – and there I bumped into Andrew Franklin of Profile Books, who had by chance heard Cutting a Dash, a radio series I’d presented. But in 2000 my sister died and I resigned my job because whenever I ventured out of doors I burst into tears. For all of the 1990s I’d been under contract at the Times, first as the TV reviewer and latterly as a high-profile sportswriter. I was 47, living in Brighton, working freelance. Surely no sane publisher could ever say to me: “Lynne, I have to tell you that your book on punctuation has failed.” So I decided that the next book must have intrinsically modest aims. My last novel had sold poorly (and I’d received a large advance), which made me poison as far as another publishing contract was concerned. Who knew there were millions waiting for a funny book on punctuation? Certainly I didn’t. L ooking back to 2003, everyone involved in the publishing of Eats, Shoots & Leaveshas reason to be proud, but at the time we were as surprised as anyone.
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