My presentation at the Bosworth Festival Literary Evening

When the lady from the festival committee asked me to speak during this week I said yes,- naturally, but it was only after she’d left that I realised I didn’t know what she wanted me to speak about.

Could it be woodcarving? Writing? The meaning of life?  Wine appreciation, - something I’m noted for. Or better still, French cuisine?

Thankfully, written confirmation soon arrived and I saw that it was to be part of a literary evening.

So, Meaning of Life it is.  

Or rather the ‘Meaningfulness of lives’, which was the subject of a Forbes study, which  began by asking, ‘Why were so many jobs with a better pay and higher social status less likely to produce happiness?’.

The list of unhappiest workers included Sales & Marketing personnel, Technical Specialists, Electronic Technicians, Law Clerks and CNC Machinists.

For my part, - I spent 30 years as a Financial Adviser, latterly as a corporate pensions specialist and for the most part, loved it. It was a vocation that became increasingly complex, calling for continual study and improvement, so I was never bored.

Yet in spite of the satisfaction I gained from the work, I decided to take a gap decade when I was 54, - a decision that was made easier after my wife was misdiagnosed with lung cancer and given 3 months. When the error was discovered 9 weeks later, and her illness declared to be something quite different and eminently treatable, we’d become different people.

80 hour working weeks were no longer acceptable, when there were so many things we had yet to see and do.

It was time to smell the roses along the way. Which is not to say I gave up work entirely.

I spent a year working at Leicester College and regularly drove coaches, both here and on the continent. In fact I’d been doing that for over 20 years. I always found it a great therapy; something that demanded my full attention and therefore a clean break from work.

I secured a modest income from wood carving, but during that time I also had a dream, - an extremely vivid one. In fact, I’ve always had vivid and detailed dreams but they fade away within minutes of waking, save for the vague recollection of whether they were happy ones or nightmares.

This one was different though, and as I lay there, surfacing, I recalled every detail. So much so that eventually, I threw on my dressing gown and went downstairs to write notes. It took over an hour and I still have them, but at the time I threw them into my bedside draw and said to my wife, “I reckon there’s a book there you know.”

And that is where they stayed. I still don’t know what prompted me to dig them out 3 years later, but I did and I began to write.

I haven’t stopped since.

Which brings me back to the Forbes report, for after listing the 10 unhappiest jobs, it went on to list the 10 happiest jobs.

Top of the list were clergy and in order, it went on to list Firefighters, Physical Therapists, Authors, Special Education Teachers, Artists, (I’m not sure Van Gogh would agree with that), Psychologists, Financial Advisers and operating engineers.

So, it’s official, - I’ve been happy for most of my working life and therefore very, very lucky.

 

I am not going to tell you how to write a book, that is far too big an issue to tackle and one I don’t feel qualified to speak about, but I can talk about how I did it. My own journey of discovery, with my own opinions.

Of course, I am influenced by others. There are three people who are my literary heroes, partly because, if you’ll forgive my slightly aberrational use of gender, each are mother lodes of quotations; namely, Winston Churchill, Noel Coward and Mark Twain. That much, at least in part, will be evidenced in due course.  

In fact  I’ll go ‘off piste’ for a moment to slip a quick one in here from Mark Twain which was deliciously prophetic and should be dedicated to George Bush Junior;  “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

Now, back to the plot; of my first book that is. The synopsis reads;

Graham Parsons is a man ordinaire whose well-ordered life is changed beyond measure when he witnesses the manslaughter of a 7 year old boy, Christopher.  When holding the dying child he experiences a profound out of body experience and minutes later suffers a life threatening attack that will leave him with permanent disabilities.

His recovery brings with it a telepathic connection with children who need help, a connection that threatens his sanity, marriage and eventually his life.  His tale of discovery begins with a fearful and confused denial which takes him to the edge of reason until eventually, he accepts and employs his remarkable gift with a charming pragmatism that disarms doubters and helps to salvage blighted young lives.  His simple, candid honesty wins the support of four friends from very different backgrounds; Christopher’s mother, a GP, a Child Protection Officer and a Detective Sergeant.

This story chronicles the shocking, moving and yet often heart-warming episodes in his new life.

 

I had no idea at the outset how many surprises lay in wait, for the business of writing a novel was nothing like I’d imagined. In fact, after 4 novels and a novella, with another in progress, writing continues to be a journey of discovery for me  

To begin with, I was startled by the amount of research required, something I hadn’t expected when writing fiction but it’s a necessary component of ALL writing. A matter of integrity I suppose, though in varying degrees.

Almost everything beyond my first hand experience needed some measure of checking. Grammar and spelling are givens, of course, but the list was endless. Geography, transport, Police procedures, medical matters, - in fact all things normal and then there was the paranormal.

I even spent a month researching the Hell’s Angels and that was an enlightening experience.

But I discovered lots of other interesting nuggets of information en route.

For example, did you know that one teaspoon of soil is likely to contain a few hundred nematode worms, a million single celled dudes called protists, a million fungi and we mustn’t forget the billion bacterial cells of ten thousand species.

Gradually, my need for accuracy became a fixation, so much so that when I included mention of the weather in June 1931, in ‘The Tack Chest’, I found myself delving into the Met office archives to reproduce the real report.

And then sometimes the research produced a storyline of its own, such as the exploitation of pupils in cultivating crops on an allotment, which was evident from the entries in the Mancetter School log book, - now held at Warwick Records Office. It fitted well with some of our family lore and became a chapter in that book.

When I visited the Warwick Records Office, I remember reading the calendar of events they’d posted on the wall. It included meetings, walking tours and talks being put on by local interest groups.  One was for a presentation and talk entitled, “The great fire of Warwick – an event organised by the ‘Friends of Warwick’.”  With friends like that the town doesn’t need to go looking for enemies.

The cover depicts a Percheron draft horse, groomed for showing and standing beside a black lacquered chest bearing two trophies. Her name was Dolly Grey and the man holding her was my great uncle Jack. The chest is over there.

That much is fact but the hoard it contained and the tale that followed is fictional. It’s cited as a gentle story of farming from around 1920 to 1960 based locally, in the Hartshill, Mancetter and Atherstone areas. 

Well, I say gentle, there were the explosives, scandals, crime and classified weaponry along with secret loves and a World War Two guerrilla unit. 

So you see, I never felt constrained by the facts, just the need to know them.

Or as Mark Twain said, “Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

That might also be likened to some newspaper reporting, about which Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you read the newspaper you are misinformed.”

All those are liberties non fiction writers don’t have and if my research seemed challenging theirs must beggar belief and I applaud their diligence.

 

But so much for research.

Writing, actually putting pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard is pretty important too. They say that the first sentence is usually the toughest but it only took me thirty seconds or so;  - the first time. The dozens of re-writes over the following months took much longer.

I had always harboured the notion that since novels, for the most part, had a beginning, middle and end the writing of a novel would be mapped out in the same way, in advance; a case of following one’s nose.

It wasn’t. I soon learned that writing a novel is like life itself.  Travellers know that life has a beginning and end, but the chunk in between evolves, as a result of the experiences and influences of what happens along the way.

So it is with writing, at least in my experience.  Whilst the basics of the plot are in place I found that the whole story was too big to dwell on. For that matter, all lot of it had yet to appear.  I realised that I was writing in ‘the now’, in a time and place that represented a tiny fragment of the whole.

There was another necessity I hadn’t foreseen but soon became apparent. I needed to keep notes as I went along, of the chronology of events, characters and their ages, even birthdays, and so much more.

The 3 books of my ‘Graham’s Chronicles’ took me to places, -- actually I was going to say ‘took me to places I couldn’t have dreamt of’, but that is exactly what happened, at least at the outset.

So many surprises and not just for me. My wife, Pam was a tad startled when she discovered my first sexual narrative.

The characters became family too and when I was ‘in the zone’ they occupied most of my waking thoughts. They followed me away from the computer, shared walks with me, ate with me and shared long drives. I never went anywhere without a pen and pad, not even to bed.

You probably know what I mean when I speak of being ‘In the zone’, but few can imagine how intense that experience is. I even discovered that sometimes, as I wrote of their experiences I shared their emotions, not least of all because at times, the trilogy contains details of child abuse, from bullying to manslaughter.  

People have shown alarm at that; so much so that I was prompted to write a blog about it on my website.

Do check the website out by the way. There’s a recipe in there for canapés as well, which is incredibly easy and fabulously tasty.

But back to the trilogy and particularly the genre; - remember, I didn’t choose it; it chose me.  Most of the episodes of child bullying and abuse found in the books are based on actual case studies, one you will even find on ‘you tube’. It goes without saying that this part of my research was harrowing at times and no sane person would find such actions as anything less than abhorrent.

But so are murder, rape, kidnapping, torture, genocide and mutilation, to name just a few. Yet call into any library and the bookshelves are full of them, - both fiction and non-fiction.

Now does that mean that a significant percentage of our society enjoys reading about such things?

Of course we don’t, - at least, not for its own sake. We read crime thrillers and the like for the assurance of seeing evil being defeated by the good guys. Why? Well I think it’s because we need to believe that happens and more often than not, in fiction at least, it does, unlike real life.

In fact, there is a sort of inverse logic at play here. The greater the horror, the greater our need to find the solution is.

My trilogy includes horror, but it is really about an accidental hero called Graham, a very ordinary man given the power and will to help children in need; a hero for the reader as well as the children.

Thankfully, judging from the reviews, readers have come to love the character Graham as much as I did.

 

But back to the first manuscript.  Eventually, with 120,000 words saved on the computer, I had my first novel, ‘A Child’s Eye View’.

The family were certainly surprised when I produced my first manuscript.

So was I.

It raised the obvious question, ‘What do I do now?’ Begin work on my acceptance speeches for literary awards or prepare myself for the inevitable television interviews?

In my dreams!

There were a few things to attend to first.

One; proof reading.

Two; proof reading.

Three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine, proof reading – and not just by me, because when you are the author of a drafted text you become blind to many textual errors; you see what you expect to see.  So having numerous people provide feedback was a crucial part of the process.   Mostly friends and family, they were wonderfully supportive and always constructive with any criticism.  . I owe them a great deal.

Even so, it felt like painting the Forth Bridge and even now I come across passages that could have been slicker.

Incidentally, a trick I’ve learned since, which works for me and halves the number of re-writes is to write the first draught by hand. In doing so I re-discovered the pleasure of writing with a fountain pen and the process of transferring the text onto a computer tidies a great deal up.

But, finally, having done it the hard way, the job was done. It was time to pop down to the high street and appoint an agent.

Boy, that was a surprise too!

After many, many submissions, all of which had been returned with nary a page turned one agent took time out to explain that they received over 600 manuscripts per week. She also added that any glimmer of interest would be snuffed out for ‘one- offs’ from someone my age.

That didn’t worry me unduly, for by then I was addicted and knew there would be more, though some sign of encouragement would certainly have helped things along.

My second book ‘Graham’s Gang’ took me a little over ten months, but I was far more relaxed about writing by then and ‘in the zone’ almost immediately, since it was a sequel and therefore many of the characters were old friends.

I think that is reflected in the writing style too. Whilst the core subject and characters remained the same the storyline is quite different, almost to the extent of changing genre. I was, - am delighted with the result.

Eighteen months later I had completed the last one, entitled ‘Help Out House’. I couldn’t believe it, I had a trilogy.

I sought the advice of Anthony James, who had also been a late starter, yet had two of his books in circulation.

He explained that he’d self-published them using the Amazon mediums, ‘Kindle Publishing’ for marketing books electronically and ‘Create Space’, which markets them as paperbacks. Remarkably, they print each book to order and yet delivery is only two days.

Now these mustn’t be confused with ‘Vanity Publishing’ where new authors were persuaded to part with chunks of money for a box of poorly printed books that would end up in an attic as a failed ego trip.

To begin with, both the Amazon routes are nominally free, in that the author can produce the books. I had a go and found it too daunting. It would have taken me, a luddite when it comes to computers, forever. There are a number of pitfalls too. For example, Kindle Publishing claims to accept Word files yet the result can be amateur and flawed, which means of course, that the reader’s experience will be marred.

At this point, self publishing authors need to ask themselves a crucial question. There is no right or wrong answer, but it must determine what their next steps will be.

The questions is, “Do I want to see the book sell or am I happy enough just to see it in print.”

If it is the latter, then a DIY approach is fine, for family and friends are more than ready to forgive a few editorial hiccoughs.

If, however, you do want to see your work sell and there cannot be a better affirmation of someone’s work than to have people buy it, I think you need a pukka job.

Which means that;

1. The book needs formatting professionally
2. It needs a high quality cover that has enough impact to tempt the casual shopper
3. It needs a slick and appealing synopsis for the rear cover, the second thing the casual shopper will consider.
4. It will need an ISBN number, or International Standard Book Number, which is a unique identifier. It will also need all the usual disclaimers and copyright clauses
5. I would also urge you to publish via Ingram’s as well as Amazon. There is a cost, but you open up a line of supply to bookstores, who will never buy from Amazon, understandably.
6. Oh, and you’ll need a tough hide. Not everyone will like your book and criticisms will be out there for all to see.

I chose the second route and chose Nicola Makin of aSys Publishing for the job, apart from the cover photography and for that I used a professional photographer; Teresa O’Neill from Loughborough. They have both been wonderfully supportive and I think the results speak for themselves. If anyone out there would like Nicola Makin’s details I have a few cards with me, just ask at my table.

There were moments of comedy too. The budget for photography was extremely modest but thankfully, the two youngsters on books 1 and 3 were related to the photographer and willing to help out for a very small fee.

In the second book, ‘Graham’s Gang’, Graham has a spell in a US prison.

[Hold up cover]

 I decided to feature an adult male in reflective clothing. The jacket such as that worn by him in the UK, as a car park attendant, bright orange trousers such as US prison inmates might wear, a red baseball cap  and finally, a pair of leg irons.

Book 2 needed a male model and since I was the only one prepared to do it for the fee on offer, which is to say nothing, the choice was easy.

Not so the props.

I bought the yellow high viz jacket off for £1.50 and the letters for the back cost £3 as did the orange trousers; all off Ebay. I can’t remember where I got the cap from so it couldn’t have cost anything.

Because I wanted the leg irons to look authentic, I’d decided to find a shop that sold the real things. I tried everywhere until eventually I ended up at Katz costume hire in Nuneaton. There I found great chunky plastic ones on a rack which were too obviously phoney but at least they had some. I asked the lady behind the counter if she had any of the shiny steel variety and was a tad startled by the look she gave me and the tone of her voice when she said, “No sir, this isn’t that sort of shop.”

I had no idea what she meant, but I’d obviously struck a nerve.

It was time to try Ebay again. They appeared immediately, - loads of them, though the cost concerned me. At £29 they were easily the most expensive prop across all three books.

Nevertheless, I placed the order and they arrived two days later, accompanied by a receipted invoice from a company called ‘Grateful Goose Restraints’.  They also enclosed a brochure which left little to the imagination.

 

Teresa, the photographer chose the upper car park at beacon Hill for the photo shoot and since it was a mid-week morning there only a few cars there, parked by dog walkers.

I’d driven us there and really felt quite nervous, never having done a photo shoot before. As soon as we’d parked I donned the outfit by the side of the car and slapped the leg irons on, not realising I’d put them on upside down, not that that altered their effect in any way.

We couldn’t decide what to use as a backdrop so we tried a rocky outcrop, a dry stone wall, various grassy banks, the promontory overlooking Loughborough and eventually, the wall of the toilet block.  All this, with me trailing after Teresa in a prisoner’s shuffle.

By now we’d attracted an audience.

After a quick scan of the digital stills we decided to call it a day and I bent down to release the leg irons. Since I’d opted to do without the pink furry covers my ankles were quite sore by then, but the realisation that I’d put them on upside down was accompanied by the sickening recollection of having left the keys in them. Needless to say they were no longer in place.

We gazed around the site measuring the hundreds of metres we’d covered and needles with haystacks suddenly seemed a doddle.

Well I’m happy to tell you that we decided to start at the car and retrace our steps rather than the other way round, for there they were, sparkling in the sunshine, just four feet away from the car.

It was then a simple matter for me to lie on the ground with my feet in the air so that Teresa could unlock them.

 

There are few things more thrilling than to receive the first proof of your book, or in my case it was three books. Up until then, I had only viewed images and text on the computer but here was something I could actually hold and place on a bookshelf. They represented four years work – and another opportunity to proof read. Strangely, errors popped up that I’d missed when they were computer files.

Oh, another aside, while I think of it. Did you know that since 1662 it has been a legal requirement to lodge a copy of every single book published and available to the public, whether it has an ISBN number or not. The law currently falls within the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 and my aim is to fill a foot of the 400 miles of shelving they have at the depositary at St Pancras in London.

 

More months passed by until finally, we went live.

The books had been researched, written, edited, proofed and published.

Yet only half the job was done.

I was speaking to an executive film producer recently who confirmed that fear when he said that marketing represented a full second half of the job, unless you were very lucky and attracted public attention, similar to ‘Fifty Shades’ I suppose. 

For all others, particularly those without the clout of a publisher to back them up, it is a matter of using every means and opportunity to promote the work.

Keep the faith and never give in.

Nicola, my publisher designed a website for me and I had posters printed for use locally, but something else happened that was quite wonderful. Not only did they sell, but people began to write very kind reviews, none more so than the one written by Dean Yates-Smith in the Aspect magazine, which I have reproduced, with his permission, and left out for you.

I never let a marketing opportunity pass by, even now.

Last February, I spent a couple of weeks in Sharm el Sheik and took the final proof of ‘The Tack Chest’ with me to check for the last time. There were a few tiny corrections but I decided it was good enough for public appraisal. It was very much a beach resort and books were left on racks beside the towel kiosks, for anyone else to borrow.

When I pointed out my photograph on the back of the book to Sammy, the attendant, in the hope that he’d mention it to others, he immediately claimed it as his own and put it under the counter. Not quite what I was hoping for.

The following morning he looked a little glum and pointed at an empty space at the end of the counter. “Mr Jeff, your book has gone, see.” Sammy had obviously placed the book there and stuck a piece of surgical tape to the post above it, on which he’d written, ‘He get his towels here!’

All that apart, the significant success of a self-published book still relies on luck. This next bit may or may not be mine.

I have been authorised to tell you that I’m in preliminary talks, very preliminary, with an executive producer of two film companies.  It’s too early to say, but I’ll still keep the faith anyway.

So, to any of you who have thought of writing a book I would say go for it. The whole thing is a wonderful adventure.

And to those of you who read I’d say keep up the good work.

Mark Twain wrote; ‘The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.’