The next episode...

It's hard work being an author...even if it is only part-time. As we come up to Christmas I've been finding that my day job has been taking over somewhat - my students have exams in January and it's been revision central, knowing full well that their notes will develop a thin film of mince pie crusts mixed with beer on them over the holidays - and so my writing, promoting etc has ground to a bit of a halt lately.
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  

Cash for Kids

It is the start of December tomorrow and at the weekend I will be going up into the attic and getting the Christmas Tree down and putting on Fairytale of New York and maybe having a beverage or tow to celebrate the start of the festive season. Christmas, that wonderful time of the year when the shops are bulging, women are fighting over turkeys in Marks and Spencer and when adults spend most of their time fluctuating between food comas and hangovers with mild spells of drunken behaviour between. Ah, Christmas.

Call me crazy (and often people do) but I think Christmas is about more that that. At Christmas, my thoughts gravitate towards those for whom it will not be a season of goodwill, but a season of getting by. For the children that are struggling to come to terms with being parted from their parents, either by illness, death, or having been put into a foster home. Some children may be suffering alongside their parents. It's been a bleak year financially for most of us, but for some people every year is a bleak year. Whether that is through losing jobs or expected expenses, Christmas can be just another day for children.

One charity that aims to help is Cash for Kids. Most local radio stations in the UK run a campaign alongside this charity, as do ASDA to try and help the less fortunate. I applaud that. Childhood should be a time of wonder and awe and Cash for Kids looks to help kids have fond memories. Which is why I am going to be donating 100% the proceeds of my book to this charity in December. I'm not rich, but I know I'm lucky. The money I would have got from the sales of my book could have benefited me and helped me buy something I didn't really need. Or I could give it to a child who needs it which is a greater reward in itself.

This Christmas, do something unselfish. It doesn't have to be much, but if we all do a little bit, then it might make a difference to somebody's life.

C J Evans

Gary Speed RIP

I was about to write about my book and the sales figures and how I'm a little bit ahead of where I wanted to be, when I read the attached article by Matthew Linley, the brother of my former flatmate. It highlights how depression and depressive illnesses can afflict the strongest of us all. The inspiration for which is the shocking news yesterday of the death of Gary Speed, the manager of the Welsh football team and former professional footballer for Leeds, Everton, Newcastle, Bolton Wanderers and Sheffield United at the age of 42.

I was driving home with my uncle and my cousin from my sister's fiance's Stag weekend when I heard the news. It was a bulletin on Radio 1 and after searching through the internet I found out how it had happened. It appears Gary Speed took his own life, leaving behind two young sons and a wife. My thoughts, as are most of the country's are with them. The conversation in the car took a turn away from the frivolity of the weekend to our own understanding of depression. My uncle talked about a work colleague, while I talked about my understanding of the disease as a Psychology Lecturer. What I didn't mention was that for some years, I have suffered from depression.

Why didn't I talk about it? There is still such a stigma to suffering from mental illness. When the British boxer Frank Bruno sought medical help for his battle with depression, the vile rag that is The Sun ran the headline 'Bonkers Bruno Locked Up'. While I would dismiss using that publication to wipe my arse with, it raised an important social point. Depression is seen by many as a weakness, a flaw in one's character. I even used to think it myself, hiding from the truth. I saw myself as weak because of the way society portrayed people who suffered with the disease. There are over 6 million people in the UK receiving treatment for mental illness at the moment. Nearly 1 in 10, a greater percentage than are physically disabled and yet there is still a stigma attached to it. Maybe it's the traditional British 'stiff-upper lip' or maybe it's that not enough people understand the illness. But the real truth is, depression is prevalent in our society. It exists and yet sufferers are forced to believe that they are weak.  They are anything but.

People  who suffer from depression face a double battle; one with themselves trying to conquer the feelings of hopelessness and despair even during those moments that others would consider to be happy ones. And they face a social battle, of having to cope with public perceptions of others that somehow they are lesser individuals because of their affliction. As Dorothy Rowe once said, 'Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer'.
Here's a list of people with depression and ask yourself are these people worth any less than me because of what they suffer?

Leo Tolstoy, author
Charles Dickens, English author,
John Keats, poet,
Michelangelo, artist
Bette Midler, entertainer
Charles Schultz, cartoonist
Dick Clark, entertainer
Irving Berlin, composer
Rosemary Clooney, singer
Jimmy Piersall, baseball player. Boston Red Sox
Burgess Meredith, actor,
Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky, composer
Charlie Pride, singer
Sylvia Plath, poet and novelist.
Janet Jackson, singer
Patty Duke, actress,
Roseanne Barr, comedian
Marlon Brando, actor
Maurice Bernard, actor
Buzz Aldrin, astronaut
Margot Kidder, Actress
Jonathon Winters, comedian
Pat Conroy, author
Ernest Hemingway, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist,
Tennessee Williams, American playwright

And I didn't even mention Stephen Fry, Kurt Cobain, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Van Gough, John Kirwan, Stan Collymore, Marcus Trescothick, Paul Gascoigne or many others.

Depression is not a weakness except in the eyes of the general public and it's about time that changed.

First book blues

It's been a hectic couple of weeks since I've last written a blog. Nearly three weeks since I posted anything at all, but I do have a good reason for it. MY FIRST BOOK - THE SURROGATE- WAS PUBLISHED THIS WEEK! I must be excited, I'm using block capitals. I've been up late at night, re-writing, editing, re-editing to try and get the book out on time (I didn't) but it's finally out there and...I feel sad.

Why do I feel sad? I think the book is okay. I would have like a little more time with it, but then I probably would have procrastinated over what word to use here or there? Do I have to capitalize the A in 'ah' when I am using it as dialect to replace 'I'? Stuff like that. I'm glad it's out, but I miss it.

Is your first novel like your first child? Do you cajole it? Mother it? Tell it off when it doesn't do what you want it to? Maybe. It depends what type of parent you are I suppose. For many years I was a neglectful one, and now I've spent some time with it, I didn't want to let it go. I'm like the parents waving their first born off to university, weeping at the dorm room, hoping it'll be okay in the big bad world.

Then I remember something. I have other children. Lots of other children all craving my attention. When one flies the nest, another egg cracks. So back I go to the little office in my house and prepare to write my next novel, with one eye on how my baby is doing in the real world. Although, i might just enjoy having the house, and my head, to myself for a little while first.

C J Evans

11-11-11 Remember

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

That was the week that was...

Well, what a week that has been. Coffee spilled on a lap-top, three days of lecturing in Evolutionary Psychology, Bonfire Night, Halloween and some stomach troubles I'd rather not share with the rest of the world...but I just have.

If that weren't bad enough, I was doing my usual skim through the blogs of other Twitter users when I found an article called Self Pub Suicide. Now there are several things I could do here: 1) I could dismiss this article as literary snobbery - 2) Engage in a debate about Traditional vs Independent Publishers or 3) Descend to the level of calling names and throwing tantrums. I'm going for the fourth option. Rationality.

I see the publishing industry as not being too dissimilar to the music industry. For most writers, it's the ultimate goal to get picked up by one of the Big 6 and having their book plastered across poster sites at railway stations across the country. Personally, I'd love nothing more that to walk into Waterstones and see my book in a prominent position with a five star review from somebody famous. But for most authors, that isn't going to happen. That's a fact. Regardless of whether you get picked up by one of the Big 6 or one of their subsidiaries, as an author there is a high likelihood you are going to sell less than 1,000 copies in your first year and then get dropped. This is where being an independent has it's advantages as you just carry on writing and hope the next one will be better.

Perhaps Indie writers have lower expectations, but we know that outside of our friends and family we're going to get less sales. For most of us, the dream is not to sell thousands of books, but just to sell one to somebody we don't know. Be that a downloaded E-book or a copy through a POD publishing site, seeing our work read by somebody who wouldn't normally read our book is an achievement. Indie writers are the bands that tour in the back of a transit van, lugging their own equipment, getting their music (or stories) out for the public to judge. Often we'll get bottles throw at us on stage, sometimes we'll get a free bar, but all in all, we're at least letting people see our work. Do we sit and home and send out letters saying 'please print my book'? Sometimes. Do we dream of the big stadium gig (in this case - national distribution in leading bookstores) of course. But we don't wait for it to happen. We take risks and try and write, and write for the public to see and judge.

I don't want to say that the traditional route is not worth going down. For many people it is. If you write literary fiction or chick-lit or even crime and thrillers, it can be an incredibly profitable avenue to explore. Just like with indie authors, if you have faith in your talent, then why not give it a go. The traditional route is much like the pop music industry or even classical music. Do you think that the London Symphony Orchestra has ever played a gig in their local pub? Can you ever imagine Britney Spears or Beyonce busking in the street? No. Because they don't have to. Indie writers on the other hand do. We don't have the access to the same level of resources. We don't always fit into neat little genres or have target demographics. Yes we have rough edges and sometimes we sing out of tune, but for me, personally, I like that. We make our mistakes in public, but sometimes those mistakes lead to moments of beauty. I'd much rather be a Seasick Steve or a Jeff Buckley than a Take That or a JLS, but that's my preference. I appreciate that others will have different tastes. 

Which is the best option? Indie or Traditional? In the words of Harry Hill, there's only one way to find out - FIGHT!!!!

C J Evans

On writing THE SURROGATE

So, it's nearly time for the release of my first book - THE SURROGATE and to be completely honest I'm working around the clock to get the editing finished in plenty of time for the release date of 11/11/11. I've barely had time to do anything else other than read and re-read and re-read the same pages again and again. In fact I've read it so many times, I don't think I'll ever read it again I'm that sick of it (insert marketing type comment here that tells people the book really isn't that bad).

All along, I've taken the approach that writing and publishing the book is more about an experience than any vain hope of success. Of course, I'd love for thousands of copies to be sold in the first weeks and to be sitting on a golden throne in a mansion with a swimming pool full of champagne by this time next year, but lets be realistic. That's not going to happen. Not until Cash My Gold send me back my throne anyway.

In recent weeks I've talked about how authors should be proud to be independent as it gives them certain freedoms over traditional authors. Pricing, release dates, marketing are all aspects of an indie authors work they have control over. Another is content.

Writing The Surrogate has made me realise how important having control over your own content is. I don't mean the plot, as I'd hope that most authors would resist any change to their well-crafted plots. What I am referring to all the little nuances that impact on a writer's style. For me, writing what is essentially a commercial work of fiction, it doesn't have that much of an impact, but there are still things I've included in the novel that I have put in there deliberately, that editors may not have understood the reasons for.

First of these is the use of Scottish dialect for some of the characters. While the book has no pretensions of being literary fiction, giving some characters an authentic voice not only adds realism, but enforces the class divide between the the middle class Tristan Shepard and his world and the working class realm of Marie McDonald. Yes, it does make it a little difficult to understand certain characters and what they say, but I find the Scots dialect one that is both humorous and humble and that's something I hope those characters will portray. Similarly, I used real locations rather than made up ones. Tristan drinks in high-end bars and goes to fancy restaurants, whereas Marie goes to fast food outlets. Using real locations also helps people reading the book who are familiar with the area to identify with the type of person the characters are. It helps me to cut out unnecessary description of areas and concentrate on the story. And it may get me a free beer or two next time I go to Edinburgh.

I do wonder if these things would have been sacrificed if I had gone the traditional route. Perhaps not, but in editing The Surrogate I've been glad not to have had to edit out some of the things that were important to me in establishing the how different the two protagonists are. And hopefully, just hopefully, it'll make entertaining reading for those who read it too.

C J Evans