It all started, appropriately enough, with a book. In 1992, an aunt sent me, for my birthday, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth by Henry M. Morris. I won't tell you exactly what it was about just yet because that would spoil the ending if you haven't finished The Ultimate Dreamer. I'll tell you more about it in a future History Globe but for now let's just say that it advanced an interesting viewpoint on the creation/evolution debate.
It happened to chime with two book reviews I'd read recently. I can't remember what the books were called but one was a novel about what happened to Cain after he was expelled from the Garden of Eden; and the other was a defence of the unpopular scientific theory of genetic memory (the idea that acquired knowledge can be passed on genetically). It may not be obvious how these relate to my book but their themes of creation and evolution informed my general thinking at the time.
I studied psychology at university but also studied two years of history (and probably would have achieved a much better class of degree had I stuck with that instead!) One question that had always fascinated me was: how do we know that history is true? Not only is history written by the winners but they could write any old rubbish they liked - and in many cases did. As a child I'd often played Jana's game of imagining that the whole world might just be putting on an act for my benefit and one day they'd stop it and show me the real world. I didn't believe it you understand - I'm not that disturbed - but it was an interesting idea and I was delighted, many years later, to see something similar in a Far Side cartoon and then, later still, in the film The Truman Show.
All of these concepts were floating around in my head when, in June 1992, I sat my final exam and went to celebrate with my friend Jamie. I told him about it all, we discussed at length as you do when there's a bottle of wine involved, and I finished by saying that it would probably make a good book. Jamie replied, "It would. And you should write it."
So I did.
Of course, it wasn't that simple but if it wasn't for Jamie, I probably never would have written the book. Sadly, Jamie died a few years ago and never got to read the finished book or even know that I'd written it. But I always knew that it would be dedicated to him.
I wrote a short synopsis (I think I may still have it somewhere and if I ever find it I'll let you see it) and made a start. At this stage, informed by the book about Cain, I was thinking of a much more ancient world but I soon changed that to the early renaissance setting you see now for reasons that I'll explain another time.
I can't remember how far I got but after a while I stopped because other things took precedence and there was no urgency to finish. I ended up stopping for several years until 2002, when my house fell down and I spent a year living out of a suitcase in my parents' spare room while it was rebuilt. With very few of my own possessions to distract me, I found myself with plenty of time on my hands and returned to the book in earnest. I worked for a few months and then - disaster! I opened the file one day and was faced with pages of gibberish. Not the gibberish I'd written but meaningless machine code with odd words and paragraphs scattered through it. Something had corrupted the document and, of course, I had no back-up. A friend who was good with computers tried to recover it for me but with no success. My only option was to painstakingly go through the entire document, find the surviving fragments of text and try to piece them together. I spent several weeks doing this and ended up with probably a third of what I'd written. I had to fill in the rest from memory. To this day I don't know how close I got to the original. I'm sure I improved some sections but I'll never know if there were any really great bits that were lost for ever.
I finished the book over the course of eight months. That was the easy bit. Now I had to get it published. The book industry is much like any other entertainment industry - music, TV, films. It's almost impossible to break into. Getting a book published the traditional way involves being taken on by a literary agent who will help you to find a publisher and negotiate with them. You can go directly to a publisher but then you don't have someone fighting your corner and it's just as hard to get them interested anyway. Literary agents only take on so many clients and only those who write the sort of books the agent is interested in. If their client list is full or you don't write in their field, they won't even consider you. Even if they do read your submission, whether they agree to represent you depends entirely on whether they want to. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but it does mean that getting your book to an audience is determined by the opinions of the agents. Of course, they're experienced professionals and know a thing or two but, as with music, films, TV etc, you can't always predict what the public will like. It's quite possible that agents turned my book down because it was rubbish but one person's rubbish is another's diamond in the rough and there's a lot of creative work out there that some people might like if only they got the chance to. Anyway, after doing the rounds of the agents, The Ultimate Dreamer languished on a shelf for another ten years while I occasionally worked on a second book that might never be read either.
And then the world caught up.
I'd been thinking about putting the book on the web so that it might at least be read when, in November 2012, I read an article about the revolution in self-publishing thanks to the advent of Kindle and other ebooks and advancements in printing technology. Back in the old days, self-publishing used to be referred to as vanity publishing. There were no ebooks, only paper ones, and printing was expensive. You had to print lots of copies of a book to make it economically viable and then sell lots of copies to recoup the money. Publishers would, quite sensibly, only publish books they thought they could sell enough of to at least break even. You could choose to self-publish, which meant paying for the printing and publication costs yourself, but it was an expensive business and, with no publisher behind you, you weren't likely to sell many and so you only printed a limited number, making it even more expensive. Vanity publishing mainly catered to those who wanted to print a few copies for their friends and family for the kudos of having published a book. it wasn't in any way commercially viable.
But the digital revolution has changed the game drastically. You can now self-publish an ebook for free because there are no printing costs involved. And you can even self-publish a printed book because print on demand services (where only the copies that are ordered are printed) have become economically viable. And, while there are thousands of self-published books out there that only sell a handful of copies, some are becoming bestsellers. 50 Shades of Grey started life as a self-published ebook before becoming a worldwide phe-nomenon, and respected playwright and screenwriter David Mamet (of Glengarry Glenross fame) is turning to self-publishing with his book Three Stories. You may not have the resources of a pub-lisher behind you and your book may have been published without an expert casting a critical eye over it but now you can get it directly to your readers and let them decide for themselves.
So I dug out The Ultimate Dreamer, spent Christmas re-editing it and researching self-publishing and, four months later, here we are. I have an ebook for sale, a paperback out soon, my own website running a competition to win a signed copy (yes, I know, but these are the things you have to try) and other writers following me on Twitter. Yes, I do Twitter now. And Facebook. I always said I never would but those are the two largest internet communities and I have to use every resource I can because, as well as being a writer (and I can actually say that now) I have to be a publisher and a publicist.
At time of writing, the book's only been on sale for three weeks so it's too early to say whether I'll have the next bestseller or just fade embarrassingly into obscurity. But even if The Ultimate Dreamer is only ever read by a dozen people (and it's already sold more than that), that's still a dozen more people than had read it three weeks ago; and if just one of them enjoys it then that's something to be proud of. And I've got a book for sale. And people have bought it. There's a 485 page paperback sitting in my living room that I wrote. I'll always have that.
This is a good a place as any to say a huge thank you to everyone who's supported me so far. Family, friends, members of various internet forums and communities, those who've liked or friended me on Facebook or followed me on Twitter. Everyone who's sent mess-ages of congratulations, everyone who's taken an interest, everyone who's spoken to me about the book and, of course everyone who's bought it or read it. Special thanks have to go to Phil Scary for all sorts of assistance and to Rosslyn Rafferty for telling everyone about her great personal achievement in knowing someone who wrote a book.
And, of course, to Jamie, who perhaps believed in me more than anyone else.
Next time: How to Fossilise Your Dragon
It happened to chime with two book reviews I'd read recently. I can't remember what the books were called but one was a novel about what happened to Cain after he was expelled from the Garden of Eden; and the other was a defence of the unpopular scientific theory of genetic memory (the idea that acquired knowledge can be passed on genetically). It may not be obvious how these relate to my book but their themes of creation and evolution informed my general thinking at the time.
I studied psychology at university but also studied two years of history (and probably would have achieved a much better class of degree had I stuck with that instead!) One question that had always fascinated me was: how do we know that history is true? Not only is history written by the winners but they could write any old rubbish they liked - and in many cases did. As a child I'd often played Jana's game of imagining that the whole world might just be putting on an act for my benefit and one day they'd stop it and show me the real world. I didn't believe it you understand - I'm not that disturbed - but it was an interesting idea and I was delighted, many years later, to see something similar in a Far Side cartoon and then, later still, in the film The Truman Show.
All of these concepts were floating around in my head when, in June 1992, I sat my final exam and went to celebrate with my friend Jamie. I told him about it all, we discussed at length as you do when there's a bottle of wine involved, and I finished by saying that it would probably make a good book. Jamie replied, "It would. And you should write it."
So I did.
Of course, it wasn't that simple but if it wasn't for Jamie, I probably never would have written the book. Sadly, Jamie died a few years ago and never got to read the finished book or even know that I'd written it. But I always knew that it would be dedicated to him.
I wrote a short synopsis (I think I may still have it somewhere and if I ever find it I'll let you see it) and made a start. At this stage, informed by the book about Cain, I was thinking of a much more ancient world but I soon changed that to the early renaissance setting you see now for reasons that I'll explain another time.
I can't remember how far I got but after a while I stopped because other things took precedence and there was no urgency to finish. I ended up stopping for several years until 2002, when my house fell down and I spent a year living out of a suitcase in my parents' spare room while it was rebuilt. With very few of my own possessions to distract me, I found myself with plenty of time on my hands and returned to the book in earnest. I worked for a few months and then - disaster! I opened the file one day and was faced with pages of gibberish. Not the gibberish I'd written but meaningless machine code with odd words and paragraphs scattered through it. Something had corrupted the document and, of course, I had no back-up. A friend who was good with computers tried to recover it for me but with no success. My only option was to painstakingly go through the entire document, find the surviving fragments of text and try to piece them together. I spent several weeks doing this and ended up with probably a third of what I'd written. I had to fill in the rest from memory. To this day I don't know how close I got to the original. I'm sure I improved some sections but I'll never know if there were any really great bits that were lost for ever.
I finished the book over the course of eight months. That was the easy bit. Now I had to get it published. The book industry is much like any other entertainment industry - music, TV, films. It's almost impossible to break into. Getting a book published the traditional way involves being taken on by a literary agent who will help you to find a publisher and negotiate with them. You can go directly to a publisher but then you don't have someone fighting your corner and it's just as hard to get them interested anyway. Literary agents only take on so many clients and only those who write the sort of books the agent is interested in. If their client list is full or you don't write in their field, they won't even consider you. Even if they do read your submission, whether they agree to represent you depends entirely on whether they want to. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but it does mean that getting your book to an audience is determined by the opinions of the agents. Of course, they're experienced professionals and know a thing or two but, as with music, films, TV etc, you can't always predict what the public will like. It's quite possible that agents turned my book down because it was rubbish but one person's rubbish is another's diamond in the rough and there's a lot of creative work out there that some people might like if only they got the chance to. Anyway, after doing the rounds of the agents, The Ultimate Dreamer languished on a shelf for another ten years while I occasionally worked on a second book that might never be read either.
And then the world caught up.
I'd been thinking about putting the book on the web so that it might at least be read when, in November 2012, I read an article about the revolution in self-publishing thanks to the advent of Kindle and other ebooks and advancements in printing technology. Back in the old days, self-publishing used to be referred to as vanity publishing. There were no ebooks, only paper ones, and printing was expensive. You had to print lots of copies of a book to make it economically viable and then sell lots of copies to recoup the money. Publishers would, quite sensibly, only publish books they thought they could sell enough of to at least break even. You could choose to self-publish, which meant paying for the printing and publication costs yourself, but it was an expensive business and, with no publisher behind you, you weren't likely to sell many and so you only printed a limited number, making it even more expensive. Vanity publishing mainly catered to those who wanted to print a few copies for their friends and family for the kudos of having published a book. it wasn't in any way commercially viable.
But the digital revolution has changed the game drastically. You can now self-publish an ebook for free because there are no printing costs involved. And you can even self-publish a printed book because print on demand services (where only the copies that are ordered are printed) have become economically viable. And, while there are thousands of self-published books out there that only sell a handful of copies, some are becoming bestsellers. 50 Shades of Grey started life as a self-published ebook before becoming a worldwide phe-nomenon, and respected playwright and screenwriter David Mamet (of Glengarry Glenross fame) is turning to self-publishing with his book Three Stories. You may not have the resources of a pub-lisher behind you and your book may have been published without an expert casting a critical eye over it but now you can get it directly to your readers and let them decide for themselves.
So I dug out The Ultimate Dreamer, spent Christmas re-editing it and researching self-publishing and, four months later, here we are. I have an ebook for sale, a paperback out soon, my own website running a competition to win a signed copy (yes, I know, but these are the things you have to try) and other writers following me on Twitter. Yes, I do Twitter now. And Facebook. I always said I never would but those are the two largest internet communities and I have to use every resource I can because, as well as being a writer (and I can actually say that now) I have to be a publisher and a publicist.
At time of writing, the book's only been on sale for three weeks so it's too early to say whether I'll have the next bestseller or just fade embarrassingly into obscurity. But even if The Ultimate Dreamer is only ever read by a dozen people (and it's already sold more than that), that's still a dozen more people than had read it three weeks ago; and if just one of them enjoys it then that's something to be proud of. And I've got a book for sale. And people have bought it. There's a 485 page paperback sitting in my living room that I wrote. I'll always have that.
This is a good a place as any to say a huge thank you to everyone who's supported me so far. Family, friends, members of various internet forums and communities, those who've liked or friended me on Facebook or followed me on Twitter. Everyone who's sent mess-ages of congratulations, everyone who's taken an interest, everyone who's spoken to me about the book and, of course everyone who's bought it or read it. Special thanks have to go to Phil Scary for all sorts of assistance and to Rosslyn Rafferty for telling everyone about her great personal achievement in knowing someone who wrote a book.
And, of course, to Jamie, who perhaps believed in me more than anyone else.
Next time: How to Fossilise Your Dragon