I Be Writing Again

Ever since I finished writing 'Travels in Xanadu-du', 15 months ago, there's been a bit of a hole in my life. I'm grateful to those of you who actually bought it, but clearly it hasn't reached the market it's intended for (and it is a bit wierd, and not without its problems, I'd be the first to admit).

A little over a month ago, publishers HarperCollins launched a website called Authonomy. This is a website where aspiring authors can showcase their wares and get valuable feedback on it. And if they are insanely lucky, can have it reviewed by HC editors and ermm, maybe, just maybe, published.

I've been hanging out there quite a lot, and so has my buddy Alexander McNabb (well, I say he's my buddy, for some bizarre reason we never actually met while I was in Dubai, but, you know). Alexander's excellent book 'Space' is currently at number 9 in the Authonomy chart. Which is just incredible because I'm pretty sure it's being supported by real people, not just his nearest and dearest.

I digress.

I've been wanting to write more since my first book, but suffering from an ideas drought. I've also been pretty busy with the real work.

Yesterday, I sat down with the deliberate intention of thinking up an idea for a novel. I closed my eyes, relaxed a bit, and bang! There it was. I scribbled down a plot outline and then began to write. Yesterday I produced 1432 words, and today I gave it a full day and produced 3902 (a full-length novel is between 80,00 and 120,000 words). And I am still laughing my socks off. 

Here's the thing that thrilled me, the thing that I had almost forgotten. Once you start writing a piece of fiction, there is almost nothing you can do to stop your characters from making it up as they go along. They just do stupid stuff, follow the path that they want to follow, and all you have have do is write down what they do and what they say. It's exhilarating!

But I think I've learned a few things from the previous book and certainly learned stuff from the Authonomy website, so I reckon the new book is gonna be a corker!

I'll be boring you rigid with this, you mark my words.

Authonomy

I was alerted to a new website yesterday: authonomy.com. It's run by publishers HarperCollins, and lets authors upload samples of their work and then suffer utter humiliation by being reviewed by other members of the site. Each month, the top five manuscripts are promised a perusal by HarperCollins editors. Cool idea, methinks.

I signed up yesterday and uploaded about 12,000 words of 'Travels in Xanadu-du' (10,000 is the minimum for you to have your work made public, but it's an achingly difficult process to upload the stuff - you have to make each chapter into a separate Word file, and the upload process frequently falls over for no apparent reason).

So get on over there and say nice things about my book.

Who's Who in Xanadu-du

Early readers of my novel, Travels in Xanadu-du, have been whingeing a bit about being confused by the huge number of names that they think they are expected to remember. So I've done a Dramatis Personae, a Who's Who of Xanadu-du. I also wasted a couple of hours today in producing a podcast of me reading out the list. I'm supposed to know how you pronounce all these names, but there's a big difference between doing it in your head and trying to do it out loud.

Anyway, enjoy!

This Writing Lark

Now that Travels in Xanadu-du is out, I have finally started the sequel. I know, I know, I should have started it months ago, but I was scared to. I still am. It's a journey into the unknown. The first novel happened almost by accident, but once I'd started it I had no choice but to get to the end. I've read a few books about how you're supposed to write a novel since then. Probably my favourite one is Stephen King's 'On Writing' - I suspect because there's only about two chapters that are directly related to writing and the rest is autobiography. The things that interested me were his comments on plotting. He says he's only ever done detailed plots for two or three of his novels, and they did not turn out to be his best work.

Well, hey, me and Stevie King: birds of a feather! When I started Travels in Xanadu-du, all I knew was how I wanted it to end. I had no idea of what would happen on the intervening pages. But it was OK, because my characters took over. They just started doing the kind of things they would do. All I had to do was type it. Towards the end of the book I did write a plot and made the buggers stick to it. But, at the risk of sounding like a poncy writery jerk, these characters were briefly alive, and I just wrote down what they said and did. And, yeah, I might as well say it: it was an almost mystical experience. I mean, you read about writers saying crap like that, and you think 'nah, that can't be true.' But actually, it bloody well is. I couldn't believe it when it started happening, but I'm so glad it did.

So now Abimbola and Chinwala and Kimoni and William de Roquefort and Trevor the Flying Rug have been released from the cupboard again. I can't wait to see what they'll get up to! On a J.K Rowling note: a (not very) major character will die in this book. Because I can. Bwuhahaha!

Travels in Xanadu-du: The Book, it has Landed!

I know most of you are desperate to know about the progress of my novel, Travels in Xanadu-du. Not least because some of you have actually paid good, hard cash money to get a hold of a copy. Only a month late, I am pleased to announce that it is shipping! Not without glitches, of course. Life would be so boring if everything went to plan, now wouldn't it? The plan was that the printers would make a big pile of books. The bulk of these would be shipped to Liverpool where my publisher is based, and ten copies would be delivered to me in sunny Madrid to do with whatever I like. Hmm. Some bugger got it wrong. The doorbell rang at about noon today, and the nice (but sweaty) young man from UPS delivered box upon box of books into our micro-piso (if you've been following the plot, you'll know that we live in the world's smallest flat, but we love it because it's right in the middle of Madrid).



I've seen my name in print many times. But to stack up a bunch of books like this, well; it's a bit unusual.

So, I spent the afternoon printing shipping notes and address labels, printing and signing maps of Xanadu-du, signing the books themselves, and then packing up the pre-ordered books and taking them to the Post Office to wave goodbye to them. Please take note: no author that you've ever heard of went to such great lengths to keep his punters happy!

Actually, this cock-up didn't work out too badly: we saved a good old British pound on postage to the UAE. But we gained an extra one on postage to the UK.

Until the current stock is exhausted, you can get your book signed and personally taken to the Post Office by the author, and a signed colour map if I feel like it. So get on over to Xanadu-du, and place your order NOW!!!

I love you all.

Travels in Xanadu-du: Update

Aaargh. We've had a couple of weeks of completely unexpected delay in the production of my wonderful novel. Firstly, I thought I had uploaded the files to the printer's website. There was no obvious way to verify this, so I emailed my 'client services representative', who ignored me for a few days and finally, after a whole wasted week, said the files had not been received by them, and explained the completely impossible-to-find way to find out what the situation is on their (absolutely bloody horrible) website. Marvlious.

So I uploaded the files again, and after a three-day wait the pre-flight crew in the US complained about 'multiple missing fonts'. We're talking about PDF files here, and standard practice when creaing PDFs is to embed any unusual fonts, but not to embed things like Arial or Times New Roman which are present on every PC and have direct equivalents on Macs, Linux boxes, etc. So these #$%#$^ in the US were quibbling about the absence of Arial and Times New Roman. Arial is actually used in the headers of the bookblock, but TNR appears nowhere. Anyhow, I had to produce and upload another file for the bookblock, and force the embedding of these common-as-muck fonts, and then wait another three days while they got around to opening it.

Finally: two days ago the status was 'printing'. Yesterday, the status was 'shipped'. They are using UPS for the shipping and the scheduled delivery date is the 17th (UPS donkey-cart: Royal Mail is quicker!). If it's ok I can order the initial print run and fulfill the pre-orders that we have. I have to say though, that the name of the printing company includes the word 'lightning', and I'm seriously worried about them getting done under the Trades Descriptions Act.

So those of you who have not yet ordered your copy: the special offer of a full-colour map of Xanadu-du, signed by moi, still stands, but only until the point where the book goes into production. So get thee over to the Xanadu-du website and place thy order.

Travels in Xanadu-du: Almost There

I spent the weekend finalising the design of the cover - Lightning Source (who'll be printing the book) don't want to see crop marks in the artwork, so the entire placement of the relevant stuff is down to having the bleed margins exactly right at a quarter of an inch all round, and the spine width as calculated by their system. I confess to being a little bit worried by this: the placement of stuff on the spine is the most critical part of the cover design. But I'm sure they know what they're doing.

And this morning, Colin sent me the last bit of his proof-reading work, and he had found a real typo. So that makes it worth waiting for! Anyhoo, I have now uploaded the files to the printer's website, and we have paid for the (compulsory) proof. I hope to have this in my hands within a week, and if it hasn't gone completely to ratshit, I'll place the order for the first edition.

Now would be a good time for those of you who haven't forked out yet to do so. You'll get a bonus full-colour map of Xanadu-du, signed by moi. You know you want it.

Travels in Xanadu-du: Update

To those of you who have already pre-ordered a copy of my book: thank you, thank you! To the rest of you, here's a little incentive. Several of my buddies have expressed a wish that I sign their copy (in the mercenary and entirely unlikely hope that I turn out to be the next J.K. Rowling). Sadly this is not possible, because the books will be printed in Milton Keynes and sent out from Liverpool in sunny England, whilst I am stuck here in Madrid in (currently) cloudy Spain. So, here's the deal.



There is a map of Xanadu-du. It will be printed in greyscale in the book, and you may well need to refer to it in order to follow the action. Pre-orderers will get a full-colour version of that map (the same size as the book), personally signed by moi. Is that cool or is that cool? So get your order in: http://www.xanadu-du.com/books.

Have we gone to press yet? No. Awaiting final proofreading by Don Colin (no pressure mate!), and then we get a printer's proof, and then we are in production. We're still aiming at the end of February.

And I love you all! Mwaah! Mwaah!

Travels in Xanadu-du: Get It While It's Hot!

The deal with the printer is confirmed, so we are now taking orders for my fantastic book, Travels in Xanadu-du. Orders will be shipped before the end of February. So get clicking on the banner below.

Travels in Xanadu-du: News

I know you're all agog to know what's happening with my book, Travels in Xanadu-du, which I suggested might be hitting the market at the end of January (2 days from now). Guess what. Slight delay. We now have an ISBN for it (978-0-9558318-0-5), which means it exists as far as the cataloguing people are concerned. But you'll have a hard time buying it yet.



The files for the cover and interior are just about to go off to the printer for proofing. Once I've received and approved the proof, we'll be ready to rock. Or roll. Or whatever. We are told to expect a ten-day wait for the proof.

We'll be flogging the book from our website xanadu-du.com/books, with a pound off the cover price. In a few days you'll be able to pre-order it from the site - I'll let you know when. In a month or two it will be available from Amazon and orderable through any bookstore. We don't expect it to be stocked in bookshops because the economics would only work if you were prepared to pay about eighteen pounds for a paperback novel - retail booksellers like to have a 55% discount - if we gave them that we would be selling the book at below production cost! We're not gonna do that on account of needing to eat and stuff.

One interesting thing we've had to deal with is shipping costs. Couriers (FedEx, DHL etc) are outrageously expensive - they want 50 or 60 Euros to deliver a package. That's the fast service. They don't seem to offer a slowish service. I think it would be ok if they would take it end-to-end and get it to wherever in about a week for ten Euros or less. But no, they don't do that, what they do is rush around like blue-arsed flies and get it there in two days. Or three if you live in Alaska or Antarctica. So we are using the British Royal Mail for delivery. This is very fine for our primary market: next day or the day after in the UK. About three days in Europe (including all of Russia!). From five days for the rest of the world. The 'from' is interesting. What it means is they will dump the stuff with the postal authority of the concerned country. What happens to it and how long it takes after that is entirely down to your local postal service. But none of it costs you, the adored customer, more than 7 Euros.

Travels in Xanadu-du - part dux

One thing that is taking a huge amount of time with publishing 'Travels inXanadu-du' is the proof-reading and 'interior design' of the book. I'm too poor to afford external proofreaders and editors. But BetterArf knows her way around books and also the Engrish language, and so do I. I was working on the design of the book a few days ago, and when I thought it was ready I printed it out on the laser printer on 80 gsm recycled paper. I also printed the cover on heavy, glossy photographic paper. And then I glued the pages into the spine of the cover, and trimmed it (a bit roughly, but hey). So now I have a reasonable facsimile of what the finished book will look and feel like.

Over the last couple of days, I've taken the book and a red pen out with me, to cafés, restaurants and bars: anywhere with free heat and decent light. I find it much easier to read things this way. Very long documents on a computer screen? Forget it. Double-spaced text on A4 paper? Definitely forget it. Something that looks and feels like a book? Yes please.

So, I've spotted a few typos, and added maybe 100 words in this final re-reading process. But the thing that has amazed me is the effect of font choice on the 'length' of the book. The final version is in 11 pt Garamond, and it's 294 pages. I had previously tried 11 pt Book Antiqua, which gave us 322 pages, and 11 pt Palatino, which also resulted in 322 pages. Page count is obviously very important, especially for print-on-demand, because we have to pay for every page we print, and there are no economies of scale. It's quite important for our bottom line that we do not go above 300 pages.

Other things I've been obsessing about: dashes; hyphens are no good, apparently. You have to use long dashes. So I did a search-and-replace for the evil hyphens, and it replaced all of the legit hyphens (as in 'search—and—replace'). Dang. So then I had to go through the whole thing to sort out the short from the long. And then we have problem of single-quotes and double-quotes. You can confuse the hell out of M$ Worm with these things. Which is great, except you then have to go through the entire document line by line to sort the buggers out.

And finally, widder's endorphins. Sorry, widows and orphans. This is printer's-guild code for lines that appear on their own on a new page at the end of a chapter. They look like shit. There are a couple of them currently in the book, but they will be the last things to be dealt with, after typography, pagination, etc. The usual cure is a small amount of re-writing. I can do that.

The Great Publishing Adventure

Avid readers of my Dubai blog may be aware that I wrote a novel last summer and have been trying to get the damn thing published ever since. Translation: I've been sending it off to literary agents, because traditional publishers in the UK don't dirty their hands by dealing directly with newbies any more. Furthermore, it seems the publishers don't take risks on newbies at all, and prefer to throw their money at ghost-written 'books by celebrities'. It's a tough market if you're not a celebrity who can't write. Especially for fiction.

So far I've only sent my sample stuff to literary agents who have heard of this thing called email: I've had a couple of genteel refusals, and a bunch of silence. A few weeks before Christmas I fired up the laser printer and sent printed-on-paper versions to three agents. These dudes are the first ones to get the actual final version of the book, but they all say it takes them one or two months to respond. We can probably add a fortnight to that for the Christmas holiday. Whatever, I'm not holding my breath, I could be dead before I get any response!

The important thing is to get the book out there, and then we'll see if anybody can be persuaded to buy it. So we are going to self-publish it. 'We' in this case means my very good buddy in Liverpool, and me.

Is this vanity publishing, Keefie? Absolutely not. With vanity publishing you pay a shitload of money to a company who will sort out your scribbles, print a few hundred or a few thousand copies and deliver them to you. They will then rot in your garage. Our venture means that we become the publishers: we have our own ISBNs, we have designed the cover and the book interior, and we own all of the rights to the material. We won't have a shedful of unshiftable stock, but if you order a copy you'll have it in 2-4 days. And we'll be doing some serious marketing to get the thing moving.

How is this possible? Through the magic of Print-On-Demand. What happens is that we lodge the digital artwork for the cover and the interior with our printer. In theory, if we have an order for one book, they will print one book on their digital printers - they produce around one million books per year, but their average print run is 1.8 books - and ship it to us. In reality, we will always maintain a small stock for immediate despatch. The book will be available from our website, Amazon.com and trade distributors. POD is somewhat more expensive than offset (about 4x), but we think the advantages outweigh the cost: it means we can get the product out there in the market for a minimal outlay and see if we can generate the demand for it.

I think the book will be available around the end of January, so get saving your centimos: I expect all of you to buy at least one copy, and I'll know if you don't.

Watch this space!

My First Podcast

This morning BetterArf sent me a link to the website of a Canadian first-time author who decided to make Podcasts of his novel. I thought it would be fun to try doing a bit of my as yet unpublished novel as an experiment.



PS: Grandma is a voice in Chinwala's head.