Read, Write, .Dance

Read, Write, Dance. Those three words could almost be my epitaph. Certainly (bearing and rearing children aside) they are the three activities that have eaten up the greater part of my time since I was a tiny tot. I know most of you are readers and many of you are also writers and/or dancers, and you will know what I mean. We read because we read because we read. Ditto writing. Ditto dancing.

I envisaged an old age that would be taken up by these three beloved interests, and over the last few years I've purchased lots of books. I bought them intending to read them, of course, but somehow reading has dropped to the bottom of the list. I have been writing, of course (although not nearly as much as I should have done) and I do attend fitness classes three times a week (at least in theory -  it's more often once or twice a week).

Until a couple of years ago, I read religiously for an hour before going to sleep at night. It's essential for a writer to keep up with the latest books, especially in one's own genre, so whenever a colleague publishes a new book, I dutifully visit the online bookshops to seek out a copy.

But buying isn't reading. All that's happened is that I have a To Be Read pile which, if I stacked all the tomes one atop the other, would be about twice as tall as I am. I open the new book, read the blurb and possibly the prologue or first two or three pages, and that's as far as I get.

Partly, friends, this is due to disillusionment. I was over the moon when I sold my first novel, The Dagger of Dresnia, to Satalyte Publishing. But Satalyte is no more, and The Dagger of Dresnia (published 2014) has sold fewer than 500 copies. It is back up on Amazon now, due to the kind offices of my friend Andrew Partington of Submarine Publishing, but sales are still few and far between. (If you'd like a copy, contact me via Facebook.)

I think, friends, the self-publishing craze has resulted in a market swamped by enthusiastic writers, each of whom has written a magnificent novel that could change the world, or at least entertain a few people for an hour or two. But self-publishers and small press don't have the same access to publicity as the Big Five, and most of us can only expect to sell a few hundred copies at most.

Edward IISome writers do very well out of self-publishing — they are usually prolific writers who can turn out three or four books a year. My creative machinery just doesn't work that fast, and nor, I think, do those of most writers. A book every year or two is about as much as most of us can manage.

Enough whingeing.  My current fiction reading is The Rune of Life by Dave Dunn, a long-time colleague from our Online Writers Workshop days, and non-fiction  - Edward II, The Unconventional King by Kathryn Warner, a dedicated historian with a passion for this often overlooked man and his times.

Carry on reading!