It's finally here
Writing and publishing one's first book is no sprint, folks. It's a marathon — a long energy sapping haul with self-doubt forever lurking in the background, peeping over your shoulder, whispering to you to forget about it, give it a miss, see what's on telly. The secret is never to give up –no matter what.
My journey started over two and a half years ago when I first sat down and began to type out a story I had been thinking about for a long time. It wasn't long before I realised that I had to have my own special time for this escapade so I began to rise at five a.m. and get my three hours writing in before breakfast.
It became a routine that was remarkably easy to stick to. Writing truly becomes an addiction. A year later and after multiple re-writes, I passed it on to Marc, one of my boys who luckily has an M.A in English Literature. He carried out the first serious edit and gave me lots of tough constructive criticism. Six months and many more re-writes later I gave it to my wife Marie to read. Waiting for your first review of a finished work is nerve wracking, to say the least, even it is from your love. The result was worth waiting for, though, as she found it hard to put the book down and she read it in a couple of sittings, so I began my search for an agent the very next day.
This proved to be the most discouraging experience of all. Most never even replied to my queries and submissions. This, apparently, is par for the course. Virtually all the others sent a form rejection letter apart from one American agent with whom I had some communication. Finally, earlier on this Spring I started to go down the Kindle route having discovered that Amazon were close to selling more ebooks than paper hard copies this year. It began to look like that was the way to go.
Six months later and with fantastic help from Ali, one of my girls, I got the formatting nailed and the book-cover produced and last week I finally launched it on Kindle. All you lovers of a good thrilling read, why don't you give it a try.
