Something retro

I have a confession to make. It appears I told a white lie when I said I had never previously kept a diary or a journal. Like a lot of people (especially creative people who hate to throw anything they’ve created away even if it is incomplete with no possibility of being finished) I am a horder. Yep, I horde things away until I can horde no more. So while I was tidying the study over the weekend - looking for some rare space to do more hording - I discovered a little note-book: A Hobbit’s Journal. I received it for Christmas (I think in 2001) and it’s a lovely little journal with sketches of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings on every page by someone called Michael Green. The journal itself is wonderful (why I horded it away is beyond me) but there is also some added treasure inside. It appears I started a hand-written blog in December 2001, on the book being published in January 2007, The Secret War. So in the spirit of blogging, I’ve decided to type up two of the entries. It’s interesting to me to look at this now (just as it will be interesting to me to look at this entire blog in five years time) to see how far I’ve come, but also to note how different things were then. In 2001, I had no idea I would be published. Indeed, I had only hope, and one that was increasingly being eroded by charlatan agents and cowboy publishers. I guess the book “The Plainsmen” (as it was called back then) was perhaps the last throw for me. To see whether or not I would even get a nibble in that great publishing sea before I threw in the fishing rod and decided to do something else. I didn’t of course - I went travelling for six months instead and missed writing so much that I bought a palm-top and began writing a children’s book. Still, these are the two entries, fresh and hopeful:

2nd January 2002
I’ve put a spurt on and now I’m midway through chapter 18. The title of the book is still a problem for me¦ It was called, at the beginning, “The Temple of Fire”, but it sounded too much like a “Dungeons and Dragons” tale or something from “Indiana Jones’. Next came “Infernos and Prophets”, a little convoluted and too “Clive Barker-esque”. So what is wrong with that? Well I guess nothing except I want something synonymous with the PLAINSMEN books, and not a derivative of some other odyssey. I want something that captures the spirit of adventure and the peril of the fated journey William Saxon and Kieran Harte face; not like “Will and Kieran’s fun adventure”, or the like, but something that is also epic. Something like “The Soldiers of Sallian” or “The Reluctant Warriors”, or “The Baptism of Fire”. How about “Plainsmen: The Valley of Fire”

24th January 2002
I’ve sent the first two chapters of Plainsmen: The Valley of Fire to an agent, aargh! Yes, I’m nervous. Wouldn’t you be? And I’m a week away from finishing the 2nd draft. Already I see scenes for book 2. Maybe I’ll write some in Oz!

That was the last entry I wrote. I only wrote four entries in all. History tells me the first agent I sent it to, an agent that I’ve always sent stuff to “Dorian Literary Agency“ rejected it but with a few nice comments. They couldn’t quite take the mix of history and fantasy in the book but at least they had the courtesy to tell me. The other agents and publishers didn’t even tell me that. And so a dozen submissions and rejections later I left England for Australia and New Zealand. It was the right time for me as well, because I’d had enough of trying to get stuff published. For me, it felt the door was always closed. I still wrote though, but for myself, so I wrote a children’s book called “The World of Night” inspired by some art I bought from a stall in Kings Cross, Sydney. How things change…

I guess the Plainsmen, Infernos and Prophets or whatever you want to call The Secret War, could have been shelved forever if it weren’t for that Channel 4 writing competition. And the rest is history folks.
Yep, things change. And sometimes it is good to keep those rejections and old entries in journals to remind you of how much they have. Sometimes hording is a good thing…