The Reality of Being an International, Bestselling, Award-Winning Author!

*I’m from England, I live in Australia, and my publisher is American. By default, I have sold books to an international market!

**For one moment of one day, the digital sales of my book got to Number 2 in a very specific category.

***Entirely fictional…I just wanted to use the ‘rule of three’ in the title. It looks better.

So, the reality then, because that’s what we’re left with…is that nothing much has changed at all. In fact, to paraphrase Arnold Rimmer, the thought occurs that we haven’t budged a smegging inch! Well, that’s what it feels like. I know I have a book out there. Two in fact. Three if you include novellas. Four if you include anthologies. But life trundles on as it ever did. Not for me the rabid auctioning off of my rights to the highest bidder…I’m just going to work, doing what I always do, and complaining about not having the time or energy to do what I want to do…what I love. Because I love writing stories. And I want people to read them and to get some semblance of entertainment from them. But lately there has been a little misconception doing the rounds among some family, friends, and acquaintances. It’s quite funny actually, but I think it’s about time I set the record straight, because the misconception, bizarrely, is that I’ve made it! (Whatever that means!)

I’ll admit, from a distance, it might look pretty cool. I released a book, lots of people came to the launch, I did a little happy dance about selling out every copy, then I did a bookshop signing and the same thing happened there, and then I bleated all over social media about the charts, then I bought a guitar (with my earnings), and then we moved house and now live on acreage with the most ridiculous views.

So, I can see the problem. From the outside, it does look kind of impressive, but the other day someone asked me if I was going to quit work and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.

They thought I was rich!

I laughed so hard I nearly shat! (super special brownie points to anyone who knows this gross but excellent reference).

The reality is I’ve sold a few hundred books, made a few hundred dollars (I get 10% or so of physical sales, it’s not a lot), the guitar was dirt cheap, and we moved house because we’re romantic idiots with more passion than sense.

But there is another side to this somewhat narcissistic tale. I am, indeed, an international, best-selling, award-winning author! Well, two out of three isn’t bad. But I did write a book or two. People have bought them, read them, enjoyed them, and reviewed them. And for one brief shining moment, this happened…

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But more than that, I’ve had the most lovely messages from friends and complete strangers, and I’ve made friends because of writing.

Then just last week, I spent a bit of time in the primary school attached to my work (it’s a P-12 college) and a young girl asked me if I was ‘the one who wrote that book’, and I got to say yes! (after I checked that she meant Albert the Great Australian Dragon and not the adult book about a drunk guy seeing dead people!) We had a cracking chat about talking dragons after that.

Look, I’m not saying I’d turn it down if an agent decided to start a bidding war with the Top 5 publishers and it crept into six-digits, but I am genuinely content carving out my own little corner.

Thank you to everyone who has come along for the ride. I can’t promise riches, but I can promise some ridiculous stories.

Cheers!

The Sluagh Sidhe

One of my all-time favourite fantasy novels is The Sword in the Storm by David Gemmell. It is a wonderful alternate historical fantasy about the Rigante tribe facing off against the ever encroaching armies of Stone.

For the historical buffs, yeah, you’re just one letter away from Brigantes and Stone is… drum roll, please… Rome.

But the story is superb and the folklore Gemmell weaves throughout is amazing. In particular, I always loved the Sidhe; a strange, mythic race connected to the land. Not quite fae, definitely not human, but something else entirely.

And now I find myself, thirty years later, putting my own spin on familiar legends. My latest book is an idea I’ve had rattling around the old noggin for about ten years. It started with a simple idea and then a title.

The idea: what if the Roman Ninth Legion did indeed vanish…and the children were left behind?

The title: The Children of the Ninth.

That’s all I had. Literally the idea and the title. I thought about it on and off for years… particularly when we spent a fair amount of time pratting around on Hadrian’s Wall in 2018/2019.

Various iterations (in my head) involved dragons, time travel (thanks, Doctor Who!), underground civilisations, and good old-fashioned brutal warfare, but I never put pen to paper. Until last week.

Last week I started writing. No plan. No idea beyond the basic premise and a nagging thought it should be geared as a middle-grade horror (because there’s very little out there between Goosebumps and Stephen King…and kids love scary books!) I spent bloody ages picking out cool Roman names for my characters then I killed one of the buggers in the second chapter! I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing.

Today, I hit eleven-thousands words and the Bean Sidhe made an appearance, which is really cool because I didn’t know what the hell that was this morning. I just wrote a creepy old hag into the story and then I did some research on Scottish mythology and folklore. The creepy hag became the Bean Sidhe and now she’s about to summon the Sluagh Sidhe, which means ‘host of the sidhe’ or sluagh na marb, ‘the host of the dead’.

These are dislodged souls, or the unforgiven, and they tend to attack in a great flying crescent-shaped horde. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, but it’s going to be fun finding out.

What was perhaps even more fun finding out was the origins of The Sidhe in one of my favourite novels. I mean, I probably should have known, but until a few hours ago I thought Gemmell himself made it up. Silly me. I’m a little bit disappointed he didn’t use the alternative spelling though.

Sith really has a ring to it.

I wonder if anyone has used that before?

Thanks for reading folks x

The one written at 4am about whatever is rattling around my tired mind.

Well, 343am to be precise. I’m wide awake. Again. It’s a relatively normal occurance but I am getting a little bored of approaching the wee hours from this direction. It was a lot more fun when I was a young man coming home, putting a pizza in the oven, and then promptly forgetting about it as I passed out on the couch. But now I’m just… awake… and thinking.

Here’s a list so far…

1) if the Ninth Roman Legion simply vanished overnight in mysterious circumstances and left all the children behind, what happened to the women in the camp?

2) is there a special place in hell reserved for vanity publishers who masquerade as traditional publishers?

3) what’s that sound?

4) why is that video of Tim Minchin’s Matilda set to Dragula so freaking good?!

5) how much horror is too much horror for middle grade readers? There seems to be a huge gap between Goosebumps and Stephen King, which reminds me of…

6) the time my wife and I were shopping for clothes for our daughter and Kel loudly proclaimed, “there’s literally nothing between princess and whore!”

7) why is an extremely old lady running incredibly fast towards you such a scary image? (Give it time)

And of course, the old faithful…

8) if I fall asleep now how much sleep could I possibly get before I have to get up and function?

That vanity press one though… does my head in!

An update:

The one about simultaneous submissions

After the recent news that my book, Rock Zombie, lost its publisher (due to the publisher ceasing to exist and annoyingly not rising from the dead in a blaze of ironic glory) I am back submitting. Any writer will tell you that this is far from a fun process. It isn’t just the hard work of getting your synopsis, cover letter, bio, comparable titles, elevator pitch, and, you know, novel itself polished and ready, it’s the anticipation… the hope… the f*cking never-bloody-ending wait for a response! It takes a toll. Not to mention of course how utterly bizarre it is to have people read your work in the first place.

Everyone, please read my stories! Except, sort of don’t. It’s weird.
Writers

What you might not know if you haven’t put yourself through this particular wringer, is the added little addendum many publishers have in which they stipulate they will not accept ‘simultaneous submissions’. This means that if you submit your work to them you are doing so in the understanding that you are submitting only to them.

I guess I understand the reasoning; that if a publishing house goes through all the trouble of reading your work, liking it, debating it, deciding to publish it and then putting together an offer only to be told you’ve gone elsewhere, that could piss people off. But, honestly, it strikes me more like that one girl in high school who kept you on the line just enough to offer a glimmer of hope in a boob-filled future only for you to find out years later you never really stood a chance in the first place because some b-list celebrity came along and wrote a kids book/had a car with a CD player.

I might be mixing my metaphors here.

I think I have some issues.

Well, that is true… which is why I never submit to publishers who stipulate no simultaneous submissions. I received a form rejection recently that was for a book I submitted so long ago I actually forgot which one it was. I had to go back through my spreadsheet to find out. Sixteen months it took to get a response! Sixteen! Can you imagine waiting sixteen months on one submission and then going again?! Nightmare. And there are so many publishers you never hear from at all. That’s fair, that’s the game, but one at a time can go for burton.

However!

And it’s a big however entirely deserving of the line break, centre-justification, and bold text… when I created a list of potential new publishers for Rock Zombie there was one that rose above the others, and though they didn’t stipulate no simultaneous submissions, they did mention they have a 21 day turnaround. Twenty-one days is far more manageable than sixteen months, and I really like them, so this one time only I submitted to just the one place. And now we’re on the twenty-first day (not accounting for time difference) and I haven’t heard anything, so I’m experiencing a little microcosm of the whole process. It’s lovely, I tells you! Just lovely! Gotta dig that hope!

Ah, what am I complaining about? I know the drill, I’m an old-hand at this now. I’ll be a little disheartened if I hear nothing at all, that’s true, but then I’ll just get on with it. Roll the dice again.

I love Rock Zombie. I think people will get a real kick out of it, and the honest truth is, I really want to submit it to the amazing publisher of The Book and the Blade, but as Parliament House Press have signed four of my books already and I submitted a fifth a few months ago, I think I might be pushing it! 😀

So, if the phone doesn’t ring tomorrow, I have a top ten list of contacts I’ll be sending Rock Zombie off to later in the week… but this time I’ll be sending them all together… because sod no simultaneous submissions.

And clearly, the fact that this is the second blog post in as many days means I’m totally not dwelling on it at all. No, not even a little bit.

Cheers!

The one about a work in progress

When we had the launch party for The Book and the Blade, my mate Mitch did an awesome job of MCing, filling any potential awkward silences on my part by asking questions. One of those question was, what are you working on at the minute? The answer then (and still now) is a comedy fantasy called, Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Orcs?! This is a story that came about after a conversation with a friend’s partner (now also friend) the first time we met. We were chatting over a mutual love of Lord of the Rings (of course) and he mentioned the scene from the movies where the orcs shout, “looks like meat is back on the menu, boys!” We talked about the implications of this one small line. Not the cannibalistic tendencies of the orcs as evidenced by the word ‘meat’, but the deeper implications of the word ‘menu’. The idea ran from there and tickled around my brain for about a year. I finally started writing in November 2022 for NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month). I wrote mine and Stu’s conversation down as best as I remembered it as part of a prologue and went from there. In November, I wrote 51k words. Then I didn’t look at it for four months.

For the last two weeks, I’ve largely been bed-ridden, and certainly housebound (which is shit! I’m on holidays!) so there’s been very little else to do apart from think about, and occasionally write about, orcs. We’re now up to 68k words, the prologue has gone, and I think we’re approaching the final act.

The story is a massive piss-take, while also being a love-letter of sorts, to my beloved fantasy genre. It contains every trope you can imagine; from the golden-haired hero to the nefarious dark lord, to elves in forest and dwarves in mountains, to witches, wizards, trolls and unicorns. Speaking of unicorns…

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The main protagonist of my story, however, is none of the characters mentioned above. This story is written from the point of view of a young orc called Gary, and his best mate, Frank. They find themselves, as the tropes of their world dictate, pulled from pillar to post across a fantasy-scape that leaves no cliché unturned (or subverted). This, ladies and gents, is what happens when you devour Gemmell, Eddings, Pratchett, Tolkien, Brooks, Jacques, Cornwell et al from a young age (while also developing a sarcastic-prick trait a mile wide).

But I like it. Sure, I get the feeling I might have gone a little “too Alex” with this one, but it’s only the first draft and it isn’t finished yet. Who knows how things will pan out?

Oh, and fun fact, my wife tagged me in this post this morning…

My reply was “are you f*cking kidding me?!”

For those keeping track, a similar thing happened a month after I finished writing Rock Zombie (still, by the way, in some sort of publishing-development hiatus) a story about a zombie and ghost coming from the same dead guy. Kel found a meme shortly after with damn near the same idea!

I’ve decided this demonstrates one of two things – I either have my finger on the pulse in an almost savant-like manner, or I have never had an original idea in my life.

Hopefully, there is enough unique humour and bastardisation of Latin to get me a pass with Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Orcs?! (The dark lord who dies in the very first chapter is called Dark Lord Dominus Tenebris III… translation… Dark Lord Lord of Darkness III. Pratchett, it is not! :-D) And if that isn’t enough, my world has a wall, no one has done that before, right? Look, I’m not messing around here… it’s called The Threshold… you have to cross it to get to the main highway… The Road of Trials.

Additional fun fact; I did something stupid today (I know!). One of my favourite podcasts is called The Failing Writer’s Podcast, and in their first episode of season 3, the fellas put a call out for anyone willing to send in the first three chapters of a work in progress. They haven’t decided what they will do with any they might pick…critique it? read it out? take the piss? review? Either way, I figured, sod it, why not? Nothing might come of it, but it will be fun to find out if I really have gone too Alex with this one. We’ll wait and see.

Anyway, so that’s what I’m up to. I expect to finish the first draft by the end of April. After that, who knows? If you’re working on something yourself, please let me know!

Thanks for reading.

The Book and the Blade | Albert The Great Australian Dragon | Reindeer Games | Pleased!

At least when I write stories I (mostly) control what happens…

It has been an interesting few weeks to say the least… Arthur was published on 28th Feb, we had an amazing book launch on 11th March, I threw Albert into the world on the 26th March, work ended on Friday, and I got sick Friday night (this is like the shittiest version of that Craig David song).

On Saturday, I am heading to Emerald to hang around the wonderful new bookshop, Highland Books, and talk a little bit about Arthur… but this morning, I received notification that Australia Post, in their great wisdom, have decided to delay the delivery of my author copies by a week. No reason. No explanation. Just a mocking little green badge that says ‘On Time’. On time, my arse! So, there’s a very real chance I will be heading to a book signing with ONE copy of The Book and the Blade (the reason for the signing in the first place!) and ten copies of Albert the Great Australian Dragon (the daft, local story I self-published for a laugh).

When I ordered author copies in the past, they have always arrived within a week. This time, I placed the order over two weeks ago… so there is still a small chance it’ll work out… but it’s also Australia Post, so who knows?

For those of you in the UK, Australia Post is basically the same as Royal Mail… in EVERY way.

All I can do now is… wait. What’s that old poem? Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to not jump on Twitter and call Australia Post a bunch of twats…

There is literally nothing I can do to make things work out. So, I might as well write, right? At least I can control the things that happen on the page… but even that isn’t entirely true. Yesterday, a main character in my wip died under my tippy-tappy fingertips and I didn’t see it coming. It is a very strange moment indeed when your brain slowly catches up with the words appearing on the screen and you realise where the end of the sentence is heading. I didn’t plan on killing he/she/it. And I certainly didn’t plan on it happening in such a brutal and sudden fashion (I’m pretty sure I used the words fucking eviscerated). It really works though. It’s a good scene, it made me chuckle, but honestly, it’s really buggered the rest of the story. Where the hell do I go now he/she/it is dead?

So that’s what I’m going to focus on today… where to take a 50k word story now one of the main characters is spread all over the ceiling… you know, the things I can (mostly) control.

But if anyone knows the secret cheat code to make Australia Post work more efficiently, I’d really appreciate a whisper in the ear.

Cheers!

Fly my pretty!

Reflections on launching a book into the ether

At one point on Saturday I found myself sitting on the floor of a raised stage while all around me people I knew, people I’d just met, and people I’d never seen before talked and laughed and drank together. The pub was full, a long narrow hall of arcade machines and graffiti-covered walls pressing folk together to share tables and seats… something that could not have happened a year or so ago. Another book was thrust under my nose by a workmate whose grin told me he thought the whole thing was just as ridiculous and surreal as I did. We both laughed and I took another drink… a pint glass in one hand… a pen in the other. That was my name on the cover. My book.

“Sign this for me, mate!”

“Happy to!”

“Book wanker.”

“Yep!”

Saturday saw the launch of The Book and the Blade, and it was absolutely magic! For a few hours I stood, or sat, or leaned against Street Fighter II in a packed pub and talked about a book I wrote. I was surrounded by amazing people, and we were all there for something fun… and creative. The walls were covered in art, arcade games and pinball machines offered a nostalgic soundtrack, and for a short while I lived a dream.

In hindsight, I should have prepared. The writer should at least have written a speech, right? But I didn’t, and so when my friend, Mitch – our impromptu and excellent MC – introduced me to the crowded room I took hold of the mic in what might have been nervous fingers. But they weren’t… not when I got going… not when it mattered. It felt like the most natural thing in the world and I loved it! My wife and friends had made magic happen! I stood on a stage and looked out at the faces of people I knew and loved… friends and family from all over the country who had made the trip, new acquaintances I met in an online writing group who were even more awesome in real life, lovely guests, lovely strangers, and even a few amazing ex-students. Complete magic! It was a whirlwind. I started by thanking everyone but then gave special thanks to my wife… I read the dedication from the start of the novel and explained the truth behind it… the facetiousness… the tongue-in-cheek-ness.

All the best ideas are Kels. Including, and this cannot be stressed enough, to actually have a book launch in the first place!

It almost never happened.

I’m one of those strange characters who can seem a complete extrovert but will quite gladly do nothing if that is an option. I’d already written the book. Hell! It was already published. Doing nothing seemed to be a viable option to me… not to Kel. Only a month or so earlier to this mad day she convinced me to say yes to a launch. I remember the look on her face when I said, ‘Okay, babe. Make it happen.’ There was that smile I love so much followed by the frown of business and she got to work. She called Amy and that was that… game over, Al. Just turn up and do as you’re told!

(If you were there you would have met Amy! She was everywhere! A total legend! I hear her and Mitch even walked through the airport yesterday carrying a poster, still advertising my book!)

So, I did just that… as I was told. I stood up in a room full of people and spoke about my first novel… and I had a bloody great time! When there were gaps that threatened to spread into awkwardness, they were jumped on by Mitch and others who threw questions at me and the whole thing seemed so natural and wonderful that, honestly, I can’t quite believe it really happened. We sold every book and every single bit of merchandise (we had merchandise! Ridiculous!), we gave novellas away, and I signed my name wrong a hundred times, and it was just bloody lovely. People laughed and smiled and even applauded! (madness!) And then it just kept going… social media exploded (in a safe, localised and contained kind of way) with people saying the most wonderful things, and as much as I’m usually reluctant to write stuff like this for fear of tooting my own horn and sounding like an arrogant twat, I figure there are some instances where it’s okay, right? This was one. It was magic. And I loved every second.

My little book is in the world now. Officially launched. In the hands of the gods.

Kel tells me I have to stop being so self-deprecating when I finish these things or when I create ads on social media. “Stop saying I hope you enjoy my book… unless it’s shit”. That sort of thing. So, I promised her I wouldn’t. Not this time. This time I will absolutely not end by saying I hope people don’t think my book is shit.

See.

Much love!

A SOMETHING of SOMETHING and SOMETHING

I feel like I’ve missed a trick with The Book and the Blade. It would seem that I did not get the memo regarding the standard structure of novel titles in the contemporary market. Absolutely everything seems to be some combination of A____ of_____ and _______ , and with less than ten days to go it is probably a wee bit late to change things.

A Book of Shadow and Blades?

A City of Drunks and Deceased?

A Blade of Sharp and Pointy?

A Man of Inebriated Regret?

A Midnight Panini of Cajun Chicken and Cheese? (Now THAT’S an in-joke I squeezed into the book for a small number of people!)

Well, folks, regardless of marketing reservations it is officially too late to do anything about it now. The Book and the Blade will be released to the world on February 28th of this year… just 9 short days away at the time of my writing this! To say I’m a tad excited would be like saying Trump was a little bit controversial, but it is an excitement heavily tempered by a creeping pessimism. Imposter syndrome really is a kick in the tits. If it wasn’t for my best friend and amazing wife (same person…also my biggest critic…in a good way!) I would have already closed the door so to speak. It is a really odd thing to write a book…to put everything out there, to create something new you hope people love, and then to tie yourself in knots at the thought of people actually reading the damn thing! With that in mind, it is perhaps no surprise I have let things get this close to release day without doing a damn thing about it.

Kel has different ideas.

Last night, while we waited for our daughter on her first official date no less (where did that time go?!) I officially gave in to my wife’s polite suggestions for a launch party…so now things are going to happen. It’ll be in Brisbane…somewhere. The Saturday after the release date…sometime. And I promise I’ll turn up…maybe.

All jokes aside, it has been an amazing (and stressful) few weeks…writing, editing, doing interviews, checking final proofs, panicking, hyperventilating, drinking…and, of course, unboxing my debut novel!

I hope that if you buy it, you enjoy it, or at the very least, don’t hate it so much you start a campaign against the author that goes viral and he never works in this town again and gets sacked from his day job for bringing the English language into disrepute and is then bundled out of Australia by immigration because they just can’t tolerate such amateurish shite on these sun-drenched shores and then his wife leaves him for being such a failure and his kids change their names to completely disassociate and he ends up selling moody-gold from the back of a car on a racecourse market where he rummages through the discarded betting slips for that one small glimmer of hope (or because he can’t afford toilet paper and needs must) and then he wanders off into the mountains only to be found in a bush hugging a tattered copy of the Beano that reminds him of his shattered hopes and dreams.

Something like that anyway.

Cheers folks!

PARLIAMENT HOUSE PRESS / AMAZON / BARNS AND NOBLE / BOOKTOPIA

Rock Zombie (or One Night in Redcar with the Dead)

This is the story that happens when you think sod it, let’s write the daftest thing we can think of and tie it in to all our teenage memories. Rock Zombie is a novel about a young lad drinking at the Beach Park on Redcar seafront… he dies… he comes back as a ghost… but his body also reanimates as a zombie. The spirit of Robbie Neville then spends the rest of the night trying to stop his body from eating everyone and causing a zombie outbreak in the streets, pubs and clubs of the author’s hometown. Cast your mind back to your first real night out (in the 90s no less) – only instead of navigating the social labyrinth of short skirts, Kickers shoes and tracksuit-clad scallies, you’re dealing with an unstoppable wave of the walking dead.

Okay, I guess they are kind of the same thing.

Rock Zombie was probably the most fun I have had writing a book. Many of my stories are littered with subtle (and not so subtle) references to pop culture and music but this one wears them all on its ragged, teeth-marked sleeve. In fact, there are so many references I had to do a number of edits because it simply wasn’t possible to get copyright permission to use all the song lyrics. Each chapter of Rock Zombie is the title of a classic tune from the 90s (here’s the playlist). Robbie Neville is, after all, a wannabe rock star who models his look on those of a certain well-known grunge icon. In fact, when we meet him, he is riding the wave of his new-found, small-town celebrity status after appearing on ITV’s Stars in Their Eyes.

Tonight, Matthew. I’m going to be… Kurt Cobain!

For those of you who aren’t British or have no memory of the 90s, Stars in Their Eyes was like the pre-cursor to Britain’s Got Talent, Ex-Factor and The Voice. It was basically a karaoke dress-up show where people splashed on a bit of make-up, revealed themselves via a smoky stage, and sang one song… before returning to their lives never to be seen again.

But it’s amazing what a person can get away with when they’ve been on TV… even in the 90s… even if they’re now a zombie.

So, yeah. This daft little book found a publisher and is due for release pretty soon. I figured I’d write this short post as an introduction because the honest truth is, I don’t really know what is happening. I received an email before Christmas saying the date was set for the end of January but as I haven’t read anything, seen anything, or signed anything I’m not entirely sure what is going on. In my short experience though I can say that the publishing world is full of these little foibles and so I’m just going to wait and see. Hell, if it doesn’t happen I’ll try again and if it still doesn’t happen there’s always the Reindeer Games route of self-publishing. But with only a few weeks to go I figured I should at least try something in the way of advertising.

So watch this space… there’s rock zombies in it!

(maybe)