How did I get started writing

…by accident really. I was made redundant from my job in 2009 and for over a year couldn’t get another one.

While having time off was great to begin with, there’s only so much watching TV or doing housework a guy can take without going a little mental. I’m surprised more housewives don’t go postal and take out all those crappy drivers at the school gates. Plus the lack of money was starting to get to me a bit too.

I was reading a lot at that time; visiting the local library at least once a week and hauling away three or four books. I was reading of one of these books, I can’t remember which one, when I suddenly realised… this is crap, anyone could do better that this.

Now I hadn’t written anything since I left school in the 90’s and never even made up a bedtime story for the kids. I was obviously naïve about how difficult writing a book could be, but I didn’t stop to think about what it involved, I just jumped in.

I mulled it over for a day or two, came up with an opening to my story and some main characters. Then telling no-one, not even my wife, over the next three or four weeks I wrote the first eighty pages of what is now my first book.

I let it sit then for a few months and more or less forgot about it, while I set up in business on my own. Eventually I returned to the ms and decided I had to show it to someone, just to know if was any good; I’m not objective about my own stuff. (…look at me saying ‘stuff’ like there is more than one thing…there isn’t)

In a hastily written email, I attached the 80 pages and sent it to six different agents, asking them to read it and give me feedback. I know, what a tool; but I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. I knew nothing about agents, or the publishing industry, or anything really back then.

As you all know, most agents have specific submission requirements for new authors and I didn’t follow any of them. I also did no research as to whether the guys I submitted to even handled crime fiction. My offering shouldn’t have passed the first hurdle and indeed it didn’t with some, who never responded. One asked me if I’d finished it and just told me to resubmit when I did. One liked the style but not the particular story and wanted to see something else I’d written.

Then out of the blue an agent emailed me back. They loved the story and wanted to meet me, when they returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair. After a great meeting in October ’09, I signed up with them and started writing in earnest and completing the first draft by Feb this year.

Since then it’s been rewrites, correction of grammar and punctuation and general polishing before I delivered the final draft at the start of July; just in time for this years fair in Frankfurt, so fingers crossed. Now I’m leaving it up to the experts to get it out there, while I’m 9,000 words into my second book.

So that’s it, hope it’s of some interest.

Back again soon