Sunday 16 June 2013

'The Book That IT...' is born

When I finished writing 'The Book That THEY Do Not Want You To Read' in early 2011, I was very, very excited. I was convinced (naively perhaps) that I had written something unusual, something funny, something thought-provoking and, perhaps most importantly, something which I was pretty sure other people would enjoy reading.
Of course, by the end of 2011, my enthusiasm had all but evaporated under the disappointing weight of rejection letters that fell with disheartening regularity through the letter-box.
Clearly, even though I thought what I had written was good, nobody else did.
And so, as time drifted merrily on into 2012, I decided to hang-up my quill and ink-pot, place my one hard copy of 'The Book That THEY...' on a shelf in my office and leave it there to gather dust and become nothing more than a personal dream unfulfilled.
But then, shazam! Along came e-books and e-publishing and the super-duper people at Autharium and the opportunity to resurrect that dream and make it real.
And now, in mid-2013, all three parts of 'The Book That THEY...' are available on the interweb - a source of immense satisfaction (if not immense riches).
But, a source of greater satisfaction is the feedback that I've received, much of which has been very positive, even from those for whom sci-fi is not normal reading. Not only is the story of Jethro Postlethwaite being well received, but also my style of writing is...and that, my friends, is uber-satisfying indeed.
In all honesty, if I'd have been told by my peers that the story was good but my writing was shit, I'd have snapped my quill and vowed never to scribe another word again.
If I'd've been told that the writing's okay but the story is rubbish, then I'd've drawn a line under the misadventures of Jethro Postlethwaite and moved on to something new.
It's because I've had such positive feedback about both writing and storyline that I've decided (much to my wife's chagrin, no doubt, because there are DIY jobs to do and they will get done, I promise) to press on with the sequel to 'The Book That THEY...', which I have imaginatively entitled 'The Book That IT Does Not Want You To Read.' Clever, eh?
Now this is going to disappoint my mother who has read the first few draft pages of 'The Peculiar Case of God vs Pratt' and thinks that has real mileage, but that, I think, can wait.

So, it's been a weekend of scene planning, of pulling together all my notes on 'IT', of realising that I'm going to have to study things like spectral-phase-shift, melancholia and string theory...
...and I'm very, very excited again!

Let the scribing begin!!

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