As many of you will have read in the last post, i decided to E-publish my back catalogue of novels. There's no point having them sitting on my hard drive when they could be being read.
The first one i'm, or rather, Trestle Press, is publishing, is The Follow. I wrote the original manuscript in 2009 in 15 days. I sat there and did nothing but write with one break for Kung Fu and the occasional foray to the shops for smokes and coffee.
It's based around a PC called Gareth Bell, who works on the intelligence unit in Brighton, on the drug squad. The book revolves around Bell trying to walk the very fine line between doing the right thing and getting his own back on the drug dealer who stabbed his partner and then walked away free from court after the evidence was fiddled.
After one misguided and unplanned step over the edge, Bell finds himself drawn into a series of events that quickly spiral out of control as he tries to keep himself on the right side of the law that he's sworn to uphold.
Although The Follow is not as polished as some of my later work, it was good enough for my agents, LBA, to pick me up and submit it to publishers the same year.
This was my first experience of publishers being cautious with the recession taking hold, and every email back began with the fateful words "in the current publishing climate", a phrase that i'm still hearing far too often.
There's no confirmed release date yet, but all going well Trestle Press will be releasing it in the next couple of weeks in Kindle format. When that happens i'll let you know, and i'll post up a link to the Kindle reader for PC, which is free.
If, that is, i can ever get the links working on blogger. I've tried posting up a link below, but i rather suspect that, as usual, you'll have to copy and paste it into the browser bar as i can never get the damn things working!
http://bit.ly/uRWDrj
Link worked fine when I tried it!
ReplyDeleteThough I was privileged to read through the draughts and the finished article, I'm looking forward to 'The Follow' appearing on Kindle (I'll view it via PC) and I shall be ready to stump up cash to re-accquaint myself with Gareth Bell in due course.
As for the situation of attracting agents and publishers through trad methods, I say 'if you can't join them - beat them' - be master of your own destiny and e-publish!
Go on, my son!!
This will fit nicely in my newly created "Crime Fiction" category on my Kindle. Make it so Mister! Great to see works from you making it out into the real world mate!
ReplyDeleteThanks guys,
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping people will bear with me. The books i'm releasing get better and better ( or so i'm told) as my writing improves. I'm going out on a limb releasing something i wrote a couple of years ago but i'm reliably informed that it's still a good read...
Congrats on this, bud. It's a thrill to see your name on the front of a book cover and it will be good for exposure. Looking forward to having a nosey at The Follow. I still believe there's room for new faces on the traditional scene though, so don't give up on that, mate.
ReplyDelete