I was tempted to write something like “hurrah!” or “cool!” or “amazing!” but one word does not truly do justice to the feeling of holding your first printed novel in your hands…
Looking down at the book, there is something surreal about it all. Just like some of you who are reading this, I too harboured desires to become published at a young age, and at times I was self-deluded to think I was good enough to be in print (down to the arrogance of youth). A few knock backs from big-hitting publishers put that arrogance in check straight away.
Later came the pendulum effect of experience where I sometimes thought I was good enough to be in print before swinging back to self-doubt: would I ever see my name on the front cover of a book? About five years ago, everything was telling me “no”. If you believed the Press, they would tell you less people were reading books, and if you believed the agents, they’d tell you out of thousands of manuscripts they read each year, they only took on 2-3 new writers.
I guess that was when I stopped believing in getting my book published, and wrote simply for the joy of it.
But looking now at the book in my hands, I realise I was wrong to have stopped believing and I should have fought on. Luckily, Macmillan discovered me only a year after I stopped submitting work to agents, and I suppose if I hadn’t entered that writing competition in 2004, I would still be unpublished without any hope of being so.
Luck and perseverance is everything. Talent is there too, but it isn’t worth a damn without the latter. And all that hard work, the emotional turmoil, the countless hours working on not just this book, but the other books that preceded The Secret War, have been worth it…
Just to see it now in print…
To hold your own creation bound in your hands…
Anyway, gushing over with, there is apparently a big warehouse somewhere in the South of England where my books will be stored (I imagine it will be something like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, full of dusty boxes, supernatural relics and perhaps an Ark or two?!). All those pristine hardback copies all ready to fly onto the bookshelves, and hopeful fly off them with equal haste!
Being published for the first time is all about stages, and now that I have some something tangible in my hands, I’m one step closer to realising that ambition as a published writer. The next stage will be the book launch and then seeing the book on the shelves of the local Waterstones or WHSmiths.
And then – perhaps then – it will really sink in. If you are there when that happens, you might find me sitting in a corner of a bookshop somewhere laughing uncontrollably, the occasional tear rolling down my cheek. But don’t worry about it, and approach me if you must, just don’t expect me to remove that big fat grin on my face!
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