Drew Wagar

A sad piece of news today. Robert Holdstock, author of the Elite Novella ‘The Dark Wheel’ and the ‘Mythago Wood’ Sequence of books, passed away at 4am this morning, aged 61, after complications due to an E. Coli infection.

Unfortunately I never managed to meet him, but his Novella for ‘Elite’ certainly contributed to my own wish to start writing and I can trace my own ‘Status Quo’ and ‘Mutabilis’ for ‘Oolite’ directly back to Robert’s work.

For those not familiar with ‘The Dark Wheel’ it is possible to read it here online. It’s a great space yarn and set the scene for the most important computer game of the 1980s – ‘Elite’. It fleshed out the background to the universe of ‘Elite’, and made it ‘real’ for many thousands of us.

Thanks for the inspiration, imagination and the good times Robert. You’ll be sorely missed.

The members of The Dark Wheel salute you.

Right on, Commander.

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I’ve long harboured the ambition to write a serious novel and have it published. I’m in the midst of trying to finish a book I’ve been putting together for off and on (mostly off) for the last four years.

Finally the manuscript is nearing completion. As I’m able to put in about twelve hours a week on it (commuting by train does have its benefits), I’m hoping to have it done by Christmas. Then I need to start getting serious with it.

First up – will it be any good? I’ve been advised that once I finish it, I should set it aside for a month and then go back and read it end to end, to see if I really think it’s a genuinely good story or not.

Second – editing. I’ve got to trawl through it and fix typos, bad grammar, poor sentence construction, dodgy dialogue, plot holes, trim for size etc.

Third – Prep the formatting. Sort the line spacing, fonts, borders etc.

Fourth – Then I need to get it proof-read by some critics, who will give me an honest opinion on the story overall, roll those changes back in and see if it still hangs together.

Only then will I have a finished manuscript!

And then to publish…

I could go the ‘vanity publishing’ route. Which is effectively where you pay someone to publish your book. You stump up all the money upfront and hope that people will buy it. Guarantees that your book gets out there, but it sort of fees like ‘cheating’.

You can use the ‘publish on demand’ route. I’ve already used this for my ‘free’ books. Effectively you submit your story and if anyone wants to buy it, it’s produced on demand. Cafepress and Lulu are good examples.

Third is the ‘proper’ route. Find an agent, get them interested and they will find you a publisher and you’re off. Easier said than done of course!

I want to go the third route,  so I’m going to have to put in the graft to polish up my story as much as a I can before I go hunting for an agent.

Even if I’m successful, and the book does get published, will I make a lot of money? Probably not. The absolute best I can realistically hope for is that the book sells a few hundred copies, perhaps a thousand or two. At that rate the likely income would probably be around the £5,000 mark, not much return on the effort invested.

So why bother?

Why does any writer bother? We have a story to tell, and it wont let us rest until it’s told.

I’ll keep you posted with my progress! Wish me luck!

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