Tag: diary

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)

Flibbertygibbets and jiggerypokery

A lot has happened in a short space of time so I thought I’d write a little post to let everyone know what the flibbertygibbets is going on.

– The Book and the Blade has a new release date – February 28th, 2023. I’ve known for quite a while that this was going to happen and I’ll be honest, I was gutted at first, but it is for the best. The reason is due to some jiggerpokery at the publishers that meant the original schedule couldn’t be kept. Not really a problem, my debut novel will still come out in my 40th year and I think that’s pretty cool.

– About that ‘debut novel’ thing. Well, The Book and the Blade might not end up being my debut after all. I still have a publisher interested in getting Rock Zombie into print… there’s a small chance it could happen before February, but who knows?

– I finished another book. This one is set where I live in Australia and is called The Last Witch in Brisbane. There is an uncomfortable number of people beta reading it for me. I’m scared.

– Speaking of other books, there are four Arthur Crazy stories in total and they are all complete. In fact, it’s really surreal to me that no one has read Arthur’s first adventure and I’ve finished a whole story arc!

– The cover for the second book will be announced sooner than you think and hopefully, the release of the four books will be more condensed than first planned.

– Each book will be available in eBook, hardback and paperback formats from pretty much anywhere you can buy books. There is also a possibility of an audiobook release but I’m not 100% on that just yet.

– Last but not least, following advice from people I really respect, I have delved into the young person’s world of TikTok. I don’t know what I’m doing and honestly, once I’ve waded past all the shiny young people waving their tits at the camera I feel more than a little uncomfortable being there… so I’m going about it with my usual sense of professionalism and attention to detail.

Oh, and I’m writing. In fact, I’m writing the story I’ve wanted to write since before I could read (🤔, but more on that later.

Cheers folks!

All Hail Emperor Bezos and Bow Down Before the Amazon Overlords!

There is no getting around it. Very soon I will have to get on my knees like everyone else in the world and beg for scraps at the feet of Emperor Bezos. As much as I would love The Book and the Blade to be 100% indie… only available in small shops with quirky cafes and book sellers who double as baristas, or perhaps even in unique little corners of the internet on websites run by enthusiastic book bloggers, I will still need to play The Amazon Game!

3(0) is the magic number! Yes it is, it’s the magic number!

– 30 reviews gets your book noticed by Amazon’s algorithms (Wizards. Wizards sounds cooler.)

– reviews get you onto lists

– lists get you exposure

Lists like these…

Having not released the book yet it is no surprise I’m floundering at the very bottom

But then there’s the strange caveat that reviews from people you know sometimes disappear. I’ve seen this with author friends and there are many indie authors on Twitter who testify to the same thing… any reviews they have which may be linked to, say, people on their Facebook friends list, can mysteriously vanish. Forget algorithms and wizards, that is the work of Amazon’s Dark Overlords!

(A smidge dramatic? Maybe.)

This doesn’t always happen but it has occurred enough times for it to be “a thing” for indie authors.

I don’t know how it will play out for The Book and the Blade but I do ask (and will repeatedly beg) that if you do read my little book, please leave a review. They might vanish into the ether, they might not. Either way, all interaction makes a huge difference. Perhaps together we can unite and overthrow the overlords? And they don’t have to be complex reviews or even analyse the story in any way. They just have to exist.

Here’s a few examples…

***** Excellent cover

I.P. Freely

***** Interesting title

Ivana Tinkle

***** It’s a book

My mate Mitchell

***** Looks great on my shelf

Seymour Butts

***** That bit with the cat was funny

Al Coholic

***** It’s not that shit

Oliver Klozoff

Thanks for reading!

Ask me anything… (sort of)

Well, ladies and gents, I’ve managed to get this website up and running and I’ve made sure all the links work (and go precisely where they’re meant to). So far, it’s all tip-top and shiny. So, I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of new links I added just now. These two…

That’s Goodreads and Youtube and you can find them both in the header of this website. The reason I want to mention Goodreads, in particular, is because eventually, I will be begging people to leave reviews of The Book and the Blade there. And on Amazon.

As much as it pains me that old Bezoz rules the world and I will be hopefully focusing more on independent bookshops than the big brother dark overlord of book purveyors it is pretty much essential for a new book to get good traction on the conveyor belt of Amazon in order to have even a hope of success. And like everything else in this dear world, Amazon bought Goodreads.

So anyway, enough of the politics for a second. I set up a Goodreads account a while ago. I list all the books I’ve read there, post reviews, keep my reading life organised and, apparently, I also opened myself up to an ‘ask the author’ segment.

I don’t remember doing this, but I answered a couple of questions (generic ones, I believe. I still stand by the answers). So, I figured, what the heck? Ask me anything! Go for it, don’t be shy. Either do it on Goodreads itself (and please give a follow while you’re there) or ask in the comments here or on Facebook/Twitter.

And yes, Mam, you can just call on Whatsapp and ask me there x

Thanks for reading

A spanking new website!

Things are happening, folks! First of all, the countdown to the book release is on. At the time of writing, there are 149 days left! I also had an exceptionally cool meeting with my amazing editor yesterday but I can’t really dish the goss on that one yet other than to say she is a legend!

The purpose of this post is to let people know that the old website is now offline and has been replaced by this shiny new one. The plan is to actually write things! (I know! Shocking!) In a week or two, it will have its own domain (abfinlayson.com) which seems awfully grown-up and I will be putting together a monthly newsletter that people can subscribe to (thanks Mam!)

As we get closer to the release date I will add more details about where you can buy the book (digital and physical), get merch (if that’s your thing) and all the launch details.

In the meantime, not really knowing what else to do, I built this little website and added Easter Eggs throughout. Never trust a link, ladies and gents, who knows where they will take you?

click me

Go on, I dare you!

That was some year! (written in June 2021)

It has been just over a year since I woke up one morning to an email from some lovely people in The States who told me they wanted to publish my little book.

A year!

2020.

Nothing much happened there, right? Just an ordinary, boring, humdrum kind of year. So I thought I’d let you know what I got up to during that time (book-related, of course, not just a random diary).

Let’s see…

I made a website… and then entirely failed to write anything.

I made a plan for a monthly newsletter… and then didn’t do it.

I started social media accounts… and kind of half-arsed them all.

It might seem that I’ve done sod all in the last 12 months but it has been bloody busy, although, if I’m honest, that was more through fear than anything else.

Why fear?

Well, I signed a contract for a series but I only really had one book. Oh sure, I was writing the second and I kind of knew what would happen in the third but I saw this as an ‘all eggs in one basket’ kind of situation. I grew very anxious that The Book and the Blade was just a flash in the pan and that when I finally submitted book 2 the publisher would hate it. So I powered through the second book, terrified it would be shit or that I’d forget how to write, and when that was finished I went immediately to three and four. One after the other. Non-stop. Writing like a nutter and feeling like a fraud. Imposter syndrome they call it. Because you see, there’s me, signing a contract as an author but what if I wasn’t one?

What if I just got lucky that one time?

On some odd level, I think I’ve considered this time between contract and publication as a gift, a strange little period of limbo where I haven’t yet been found out. I’m not even sure I really believe it myself. I don’t think I will until I’m holding the book in my hand. Strangely enough, this has spurred me on to write more than ever; to get the most out of it before it all goes tits up.

So, along with some admittedly mediocre social media dabbling, I have spent the year:

Completing two rounds of edits for Book 1

Writing Book 2

Editing Book 2

Submitting Book 2

Writing Book 3

Editing Book 3

Writing Book 4

Writing a completely new novel unrelated to The Book and the Blade

Editing it

Editing a novel I wrote in 2016.

Submitting it (last week in fact)

Drinking too much

Sleeping too little

And boring the ever-living shit out of my wonderful wife and friends with incessant questions about devils, demons, folklore and whether or not ghosts can touch themselves.

Tomorrow I will be submitting the new book and adding that anxiety to the big ball of crazy that is me.

Oh, and I’ve already started working on another project, a zombie project – and it’s probably worth noting here that I’m scared of zombies (a therapist would have a field day with this).

Thank dog I have so many wonderful people around me, many of whom I met this last year. Without them, I think I’d go crazy.

Thanks for reading

It’s easy to get a publisher, right?


It turns out I keep this online diary almost as consistently as I keep my personal diary, i.e. hardly ever. This is quite normal for me. I seem to work in flurries of madness separated by long periods of nothing. Well, I say nothing, but the old noggin is always ticking over. It’s like a bag of cats in there. If it’s any help, I have thought about what to write many times.

This diary entry is about my search for a publisher.

The moment I finished writing the book, I had the seed of belief that it was good enough to be put out there, that someone might get a titter out of it and think it was a good fit. This might sound arrogant but when you’ve written so much shit you notice the occasional diamond in the nugget. So I knocked up a hasty cover letter (rubbish), a synopsis (even worse), and started throwing it out into the ether.

I didn’t have a plan and I did next to no research.

And I got results!

Almost immediately. I’m not kidding. I sent the book out on a Sunday and had a reply on Tuesday with an offer of publication. I was stoked! This never happens. This was my shining moment, all that hard work paid off, you love me! You really love me!

And then they asked for money. A lot of money.

Not a publisher.

(In case you’re starting out and you have questions about this, the answer is quite simple… a legit publisher will NEVER ask you for money. Ever.)

I was gutted, but then the next week I received another email, this time from a publisher who only read the first 30 pages… they wanted the rest. Happy days! Back in business!

A week after that they sent me a contract!

And a bill.

Here’s the thing. That bill was remarkably smaller than the first. We’re talking a few hundred instead of a few thousand, and so I was tempted. Really tempted.

At this point my wonderful wife stepped in and did the research I should have done myself. She discovered that the fee I was being asked for was exactly one hundred pounds more than the fee charged by a certain online company that specialises in getting self-published texts ready for ebook distribution. It seemed like another scam, but I was still reeling from the first let-down and thought it might be worth a punt anyway.

Then I saw the cover designs.

Holy snapping duck crap Batman! The font being used for many of the titles was that dodgy ‘Word Art’ thing you get in old editions of Microsoft Publisher and PowerPoint. You know the one, black outline with yellow and orange ‘flames’ in the text. It was the title for every 90s kid’s comic sans created short story. And the less said about the images the better.

(I know you probably want to see some of these but I’m a gentleman – ahem! – and won’t tattle-tale – each to their own and all that. More power to them.)

Did I run away? You’d think so, but not quite. I was still tempted. Other publishers were getting back to me with polite but firm rejections. There was still hope here.

But then I read the contract and there were two clauses that changed everything,

1) I would retain the rights to the original manuscript but any edited manuscript (and all its contents and characters) would become the property of the publisher.

2) I had to take all the swearing out.

No way, get fucked, fuck off! Those fucking characters are fucking mine! I fucking love them! They’ve been rattling around my stupid fucking brain for twenty fucking years!

FYI: The Book and the Blade contains…

38 variations of fuck

15 shits

4 twats

2 bastards

and a partridge in a pear tree.

Needless to say, I walked away.

But then another publisher said yes!

Then they went bankrupt.

Three strikes, you’re out!

I was about ready to give up but I decided to give it one last punt. This time, I would do it properly. This time, I would do my research. This time, I would look for publishers that specialised in my kind of story. And so I did. I created an excel spreadsheet and everything, so you know I was being serious. I categorised every publisher I found in order of preference and at the top of the list emerged an independent publishing house in the USA with a clear sense of style, humour, and an interest in the macabre that mirrored exactly what I was looking for.

But they weren’t taking submissions.

So I waited. I polished the manuscript. I did a better cover letter. Wrote a better synopsis. And then I sat up until midnight on the day the submissions opened and sent it in at 12:01.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

(Apart from the video they asked me to film as a ‘getting to know potential authors’. We don’t talk about that.)

So here we are. Without research… 15 publishers. 3 dodgy yeses. 5 rejections. 5 no responses. And 2 incorrectly addressed emails on my part.

With research… my first choice publisher working hard to bring my book to the world in 2022.

As the incomparable Sir Terry Pratchett said,

“If you trust in yourself. . . and believe in your dreams. . . and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MJzbST

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-book-and-the-blade

Before The Book and the Blade

I wrote six books before I started work on The Book and the Blade. They were not great. One, two and three were terrible in fact. Four showed some small promise but floundered (drowned) in the middle. Five was a present for my kids that I’m still happy with, and six was a silly thing that I enjoyed but will never sell to anyone. Ever.

A sixteen-year-old kid runs away from home in 1992 to watch Nirvana play at the Reading Festival while being part of the most cliche-ridden love triangle imaginable.

It is hardly a literary masterpiece.

I have a number of (very patient) friends and family who read these pieces of rubbish and my uncle quite enjoyed the last one but he did ask, ‘when are you going to write some fantasy?’

And that’s the moment I started thinking about it seriously. Let’s forget the fact it took me until I was well into my thirties to actually write what might be considered a ‘complete novel’, why wasn’t I writing in the genre I most loved? I’ve always read fantasy. Sir Terry Pratchett is my favourite author by a long way. Next to him are Neil Gaiman, Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmell, Stephen Kind and Richard Matheson. So that’s quite a potent mix of fantasy, folklore and horror. Maybe it was about time I started writing my own?

So on the 31st of January 2019, I did. I even marked the date in my diary, but what I didn’t comment on was why I started writing.

The thing that really kicked me into gear was a night out and being really quite unhappy at work.

It is frustrating to admit that last part. I’m a teacher. I love teaching. But I was struggling. We had moved from Australia back to Yorkshire and found a dream house (a cottage below a castle) in a dream town because I’d secured what looked to be a dream job. It was our Big England Adventure. My wife found an amazing job in York, and our kids were happy at school. But I wasn’t. I really struggled to get back into the English way of doing things. For the first time in fourteen years of teaching, I felt really quite shit at it. I was surrounded by amazing people and supportive colleagues who became firm friends but I was unhappy. That unhappiness led to a sense of frustration because I couldn’t control it. And that frustration led me to write… because I could control that.

Just before Christmas, 2018 I’d gone for a day out with the lads from university. Naturally, we met in York and toured all our old haunts (pun absolutely intended) and over Christmas, I couldn’t help but think of the story idea that had come to me decades earlier when we first met. So by the time I was back in the classroom (heading to work in the dark and leaving work in the dark and desperately looking forward to the weekends) I started taking a few moments for myself to write the story I’d always wanted to write.

And it made me happy.

There’s nothing quite like writing about a pissed-up, sarcastic loner talking to dead people to put a smile on your face.

York. Some places just exude atmosphere.

The Idea

I had the idea for The Book and the Blade nearly 20 years ago and it hurts me to write that!

When I was 18 I started University in York and one of the drawcards for the city was the rumoured 365 pubs… one for every day of the year.

There’s a famous street called Micklegate that has somewhere in the region of 20 of these establishments all crammed into the one cobbled area and some genius came up with the idea for The Micklegate Run – you start near the ironically named Bar (old Norse for “gate”) and have a drink in every pub on your – increasingly meandering – way down towards the river.

Let’s be honest, even if you only drink water that’s a LOT of liquid!

Well, we were young and stupid and sucked in by three-for-one prices and this wonderful new invention called Red Bull that went remarkably well with vodka and so we tried it.

It didn’t end well.

In fact, I don’t remember it ending at all.

What I do remember is an idea.

Imagine getting so drunk you didn’t realise the people you were talking to were ghosts. The world is spinning. You just want to get home. But you live in one of the most haunted cities in the world and the ghosts know you can see them.

I always thought it was a good idea and now, thanks to Parliament House Press, it will be published in 2022!

22 years after I started uni!

They say good things come to those who wait.

Here’s hoping.