From the Archives2 min read
The Reluctant Blogger
Why would I want to write a blog? The answer is that I don’t. I have to though as part of the marketing for my novels on Kindle. Apparently it’s all about social networking and I know as much about that as Baldrick does about simultaneous equations. Anyway, I have set it up but what to do next? Sorry about the name by the way. It was supposed to say something a little different but I haven’t got any M pathy at the moment.
Anyway, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away (aka Manchester) I decided to write a book to see if I could. I was 18 working in an office and living at home. I wrote in a notebook at evenings and at weekends. Then I realised that I would have to type it out. I broke my sister’s Petite with my two fingers. It took me about a year to write but two years to type although I think that included the year my parents took it off me and forbid me to write anymore because I failed my insurance exams. By the time I was 21 though I had one messy manuscript which I sent off to publishers – you didn’t have to go through an agent in those days. Not a nibble. In hindsight I think it was so poorly presented that no one actually read it. Some years later I got seduced into vanity publishing. I sold 72copies and had 428 sent back to me. These disappeared when I rented my flat out. “Trance” was this ill-fated book.
On to 1996 now. I was redundant and out of work for 6 months before I had to move down to London to get a job. I started writing another book and because I had had a little success with making people laugh in one of my previous places of work I attempted a full comedy thriller. I finished it 4 years later, in London by that time. I tried every agent in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook with no success. Another bottom drawer filler.
In 2004 I made another attempt. Always fed up with my life I had always dreamed about going back and starting again so I wrote about it, although in the end it wasn’t about what I would have done again. The story took a life of its own. Another 4 years and then the same success with agents, although one did briefly dabble at looking at the screenplay.
Next it’s 2012 and someone at work sends me an article about publishing on Kindle. I didn’t have the skills so I paid for someone to publish my last two novels – Trouble Cross and Rewind – and that is the reason for blogging, to generate some sales. (SHAMELESS PLUG)
The plan is to give you some tasters in the sidebars but first I have to learn how to use this thing so for now here is the link.
Nanu nanu.