I think this is the first blog post I've done in nearly a month, and the first about writing and upcoming projects for even longer.
I'm back though. I finish work for Christmas on Friday, and that means I have the opportunity to get cracking on my next project - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. This is the book I was going to write first. It's skated around in my brain since late 2001 when I was suspended from my job as a nightclub manager for accidentally locking a customer in the club overnight! The guy didn't complain, of course he didn't. He was like a kid in a candy store, but somehow head office got word of it and I spent the best part of two weeks wondering if I'd still have a job.
During those two weeks I went through a lot of emotions. The first being sleep. Finally, I could get a good night's sleep after my imitation of a bat for the previous four years. Secondly, fear. I had dropped out of my final year of university to become a nightclub manager and I thought at the time that was what I wanted to do. The late nights and partying seemed like a good thing back then, but as I sat alone in my flat for those two weeks (I was working in Dundee, quite a small town and I was keeping a low profile) I began to wonder what might have been. What if I'd stayed on and not taken the money? What if I'd chosen different A levels? What if I'd worked harder at school?
Then something bizarre happened. I got a mailer from my old school advertising an old boys dinner. I didn't think much of it until I saw a name at the bottom of the page. The name of a girl I had a crush on back at school. This was long before the days of Facebook and Friends Reunited was in it's infancy so there was little way of knowing what happened to that girl other than go to the dinner.
And that's where the idea for There Is A Light... came from. I dusted off my old PC and began to write. The first line was typically awful for a first draft - 'Suspension is something that happens to bridges, not to me.' I cringe at the thought of it. But I was pretty drunk and the excitement of getting down to writing what was originally called 'Reunion' took over. I didn't finish it. Not until I quit working in nightclubs in 2005 and was unemployed for two years. By then it had become 'This Charming Man' and went through several drafts before being submitted to agents. There was some interest, but nothing firm, and those knock-backs hit me for a couple of years until I took the plunge with 'The Surrogate'.
After a modicum of success (Top 100 humorous books Amazon UK - albeit for about an hour) and generally good feedback for 'The Surrogate' I've decided to rework 'There Is A Light...'. The main character of Callum Harrison is as close to me as I would ever allow myself to get and much of the book reflects on my own experiences of school and growing up. I just hope people enjoy reading it as much as I have writing it.
C J Evans
