With two shorts ‘out there’, a novella being published and a novel being edited, I wondered if this might help
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
At 15, I wrote a novella. It was based around Boxing Helena and Misery. I should have been locked up. Combining the stories, frankly, it was bloody weird. But hey, I was 15. I announced to my family that I was going to be an author. When the snorting stopped, my fuck-you attitude started.
Searching in the Yellow Pages (it was a thing back then), I found a publishers on Bond Street and skipped onto a train to London. Asking a doorman at a hotel nearby, I found the door with a nameplate of the publisher I sought, ringing the bell and patiently waiting.
I blagged my way in, up the stairs to a tiny office and a lady who seemed honestly happy to see me. I spent the next couple of hours explaining that the manuscript I had in my hands was the best thing ever, and I just needed a few grand to make it work. The happy lady turned into a wailing, hugging, very worried, caring human being.
Enter the Police, phone calls, escorting to a train and a mountain of bullshit for me, when I got home. But, I was bitten. I didn’t quite get the deal I wanted, however, but I knew this was for me. Money, no money, getting words on paper was what I wanted to do. This was not going to be as easy as I thought.
25 years later, here I am. Writing. Loving it. The fuck-you attitude has calmed down and I’m not combining the work of others, trying to pass it off as my own. Now, I’m writing weirder shit and it is my own – thankfully, the authorities are no longer concerned.
2019 will see my first physical publication in my hands, a novel past the post and who knows what else.
These are stories I want to tell, not stories I want to sell.
