How close have you come to achieving your dream?

Evening gang,

This is going to a slightly different blog post. It might even end up being a bit of a series. Here at Sinclair Towers we've been decorating and moving things round. I found a pile of old rejection letters amongst the crap. But I also found several letters proclaiming interest in my books and my letters from the Sheil Land Agency where they agreed to represent me.

Reading these made me realise how close I came to a totally different path. Had just one of these letters led to a publishing deal then the following ten or eleven years might have been very different.

So let's jump back to the beginning, almost. In April 2001 I was about to graduate with an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester. I had written my first novel, Playground Cool, and I was utterly convinced a book deal was mine to have. I was 24.

I remember asking Sophie Hannah, now a very well respected crime writer, how to approach agents. I sent off a few letters and some extracts of the book. Straight off the bat I received a letter from Viven Green at Sheil Land.

"Thank you very much for the chance of reading your sample material. I'd be very happy to read the rest of it if you'd like to send it in with return postage - just in case"

That was April 11th. I was over the moon. Then on April 17th I got another letter from Sarah Molloy at the AM Heath agency.

"Thank you for letting me read the opening chapters of Playground Cool. I'd be happy to read the rest of the typescript and look forward to reading the rest of the material in due course"

Short, to the point, interested in my book. It only fuelled my youthful arrogance.  Two agents interested in a week and everyone at the university in Manchester was telling me my book was great. After all I'd just got an MA for writing it.

I'll tell you what happened next in another post.

But it was all good, at least at first!

Ten years in the making

First of all, welcome along dear reader, it's very good of you to make the effort. I don't say this lightly. As an aspiring writer (or rather a writer who aspires to be read) I appreciate anybody reading anything I've written.

This all began, officially at least, ten years ago when the good folks at Manchester Metropolitan University offered me a place on their Creative Writing MA. Obviously I'd decided before this moment that I wanted to be a writer, but the MA was the first time I'd taken steps to do anything about making that happen.

It very nearly did happen too. My first full length manuscript went down a storm with my tutors, the MA was mine, I gained an agent at the first attempt who thought the book a triumph and so I assumed that it really was that easy. Clearly I was a genius and my debut novel would be on the shelves in time for Christmas. Ah, the arrogance of youth.

That novel was titled Playground Cool. It remains unpublished and now, ten years on and several novels later, I remain as determined as ever to have my work read. Over the coming weeks, months etc I will be adding extracts of my work along with more background on just why that first novel didn't make it to the shops and what I have done in the intervening years.

I will also keep anyone who is interested up to speed on my latest effort - The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe. I'm editing the first draft at the moment and will then begin the now familiar process of sending out letters and extracts to publishers. Depending on how that goes I might even include a couple of rejection lettters and if - here's hoping - something comes of it, I'll post the acceptance letter too.

But for the first time I'm planning to self-publish electronically via Kindle. As and when this process starts I'll post updates on that too.

So, if you fancy it, there's plenty going on, certainly plenty to read, some of it good, some of it probably not so good and I'll appreciate the company.