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 It remains unpublished and now, ten years on and several novels later, I remain as determined as ever to have my work read.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.
