That Royalty Feeling

Well, I got my first royalty cheque for my novel Like A Flower this week. It's been a long time coming. And it isn't going to change my lifestyle significantly, but it really feels good to get even a little something back for a hell of a lot of work.

There's also been money starting to trickle in from Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists' new all-original album 'In Love With Trouble'. And the feeling is the same.

Words and music may look easy... but they take a lot of hours and a lot of energy. Why do we do it? ... is a good question... I suppose it's what we do and we don't have any choice but to keep on doing it...

From Tiny Acorns...

Not only has Like A Flower sold a few copies... but reviews are starting to appear... I smiled in particular at this one...

Gardener's Questing Time 8 Jan 2013

By J. Clarke

Amazon Verified Purchase

A horticultural thriller that comes over as a cross between Amateur Gardening and True Crime magazine, this had me gripped from the very first page. Lots of twists and turns, some superb writing and a plot to (literally) die for. As Raymond Chandler said, "a good story cannot be devised, it has to be distilled". If that's so, this is of the finest vintage.

If you want to check out whether such comments are justified, you can buy the book... and read more reviews... by clicking here.

So whoduggit?

I know a number of people have actually bought - and some have even read - Like A Flower (my tale of life, death, love and gardening - aka the whoduggit).

If you are one of those who have read it, it would be wonderful if you'd put up a one-line (or even one-word) review on one of the websites selling it.

Most of the links are listed on the website... and if you haven't bought it yet...

Flower Shop

You can now read a fair chunk of my novel "Like A Flower" at Amazon.

You can even buy it there too...

Who Are The Trolls?

JK Rowling says she stopped looking at stuff written about her a long time ago. After she realised that she didn't actually have to read all the unpleasant things in the media.

I'm not anywhere near her stellar league, but I already understand this. A piece in the Brighton Argus (as I said, I'm not in the Rowling universe) about the writing of my novel, Like A Flower, later went up on its website and within minutes was drawing negative comments.

People were pointing out that anyone could get published online now, and that I was just "self-publishing". The first bit is true (but is that a bad thing?) and the second bit isn't.

I'm not self-publishing. The book is being published by a reputable online publisher. I am not paying a penny to be published and (in 40 years of writing) I never have done.

My first reaction was to want to reply to the trolls, but I couldn't register on the site and in the end gave up. My second reaction was to ask for the comments to be taken down, since they seemed libellous.

My reaction now is the Rowling one. Just forget about it. But I am left wondering who on earth takes time to go onto the website of a local paper and make negative, unpleasant comments about someone they have never met whose only crime appears to be to try to do something creative, entertaining and, hopefully, a little profitable?

Prophet Of Loss

I guess you never forget the first paper you worked for... and it looks like that paper hasn't forgotten me entirely.

It was great to see a mention of "Like A Flower" on the website of the Northamptonshire Telegraph, the place where I started to learn my journalistic craft a few decades ago.

Of course, in those days (and up until recently) it was the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. But now it appears only weekly.

I still remember my first day in the newsroom and being taken on a tour of the place by the chief reporter. He led me past the sub-editors' desk and then through the double doors to the typesetting machines.

"One day," he told me, over the noise of the machines, "they say all this will be done by computers. And when that happens, it will all be over."

As far as the romance of working on newspapers is concerned, I'm afraid he was right.

Modest Success?

Here's the more modest version of the cover for my novel "Like A Flower", due out as an eBook at the beginning of November. Well, if I can't plug it here, where can I?

My publisher, Magus Digital, has worked long and diligently on both text and cover, and I'm grateful for all their efforts.

For a slightly racier version of the cover, see my earlier post Life, Death, Love... And Gardening. And for surprises both visual and verbal... well, you'll have to buy the book.

First Write Your Book...

How many times do you have to write a book before it's finished? I've lost count now. Having done what I thought was the final draft, I am now doing the final final draft of Like A Flower, my novel about life, death, love and gardening.

It's going to be out this autumn and the publisher wants the copy (in perfect condition) this week. Initially, I dreaded the prospect of going through it one more time. But having got two-thirds of the way, I've found that I'm enjoying it. Good story, good characters and some intriguing twists... Can't quite believe that it's by me.

And meanwhile the new book, With Fervent Heat, is under way. Can't wait to read it... but I guess I'll have to write it first.

Seconds Out

I have been away from my post/s. Now I'm back. The good news is that my novel Like A Flower seems to have found a publisher and should be available for downloading to your Kindle this autumn.

Having got one book done and almost dusted, it's tempting to get a second one under way. The problem is that I've had so many ideas that I'm not sure which to go with.

The front runners at the moment are With Fervent Heat, a story of the terrible ramifications of intense passion, and 'King Hell, a tale of addiction, love and friendship.

Hopefully, one will be underway soon.

Like A Bestseller?

The final rewriting and tweaking of my novel Like A Flower is now done. It would have been done sooner but a lot of life got in the way.

Now it's just a question of agents and publishers fighting over the rights to it... Well, not quite. More a case of my doing everything I can to get one of them to see that it's worth all the work that has gone into it.

I'm already indebted to my friend, colleague and published author Matt Rudd who made some great suggestions about the book and how to sell it. And to a number of other journalists who have given me promising contacts.

And if you're an agent/publisher... Like A Flower is a page-turning thriller about life, death, love... and gardening...

Like A Cover

Well, we're getting there. This is one of the cover designs for the book— produced by a friend who creates wonderful pictures by blending images and mixing photography with painting.


I like this one because it combines the beauty of a flower with something darker. I know I'm always saying this but the book is about life, death, love and gardening... and that's all captured here.

However, I think I like even more the alternative cover, below, because it is so classy. And the cassa lily featured here is a symbol of love, death and sex — a combination that also ties in nicely with the themes of the book.

Selfless Work

The new website... of which this blog will be a part... is coming together. And so is the cover for the novel, Like A Flower. In both cases, creative colleagues/friends are doing all the hard work, and I'm just doing all the "Can we do this?" and "Can we do that?"

It's not dissimilar to playing in a band, where the sum of the parts is so obviously greater than the whole. The look of the website, the feel of the book cover, the power of the music are all enhanced by the input of more than one person, and more readily take on lives of their own... perhaps because any egos involved have been diluted.

Unexpected Delights

A church? Yes, but not just any old church. This is St Mary's Church, in the village of Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire. What a little English village is doing with an enormous piece of perpendicular gothic architecture in its midst I am still trying to find out.

It was near here, a few weeks ago, that I met a senior police officer who had agreed to help me with the finishing touches to my novel, Like A Flower.

Researching and writing a novel leads to so many unexpected delights. Not only did the meeting open my eyes to a whole other world (and several possibilities for future stories), but I got to visit this amazing building...

Re-Writing The Wrongs

Writing can be enjoyable. But does anybody actually enjoy re-writing? A published author who has taken an interest in my novel, Like A Flower (an everyday story of life, death, love and gardening), said he thought the opening chapter was great and original and made him want to read more.

But the bad news was that he thought it needed two new pages at the beginning to set it up properly... and to get it past an agent. I don't enjoy re-writing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that he was right. And I would be a fool not to take his advice.

So I've sat down and produced the required new intro. I was already tweaking the rest of the book, so now I just want to get through to the end one more time.

The problem is that my desire to have nothing more to do with it is almost as great as my desire to get it published. I think the attraction of publication at the moment is that it would be closure.

Workin' Man Blues

Another day, another gig has come in. A music gig, that is. On the writing front, there isn't much coming in at the moment. After an endless run of commissions since leaving The Sunday Times four weeks ago, I'm on my last writing gig for a while. A big job, it will take me into next week and then... it's wait and see.

There is work to do on re-writing the book, Like A Flower, before it goes to an agent, and work to do on my new website, too. So there's no possibility of being idle.

As with music, you can despair of ever having another booking and then suddenly the diary is so full you don't know how to fit everything in.

They say you should play every gig like it's your last... but at this stage of the game, you never know when it might be just that.

Looking For The Break

A friend who is a published author has offered to put in a word for me with his agent about my novel, Like A Flower. That is, if I send him the first chapter and he likes it. This is a bit like playing a tricky drum break at a gig and knowing that there is a great drummer sitting in the audience: ie worrying.

Oh well, I'd better give Chapter One a quick going over, mail it off and see what happens. As with writing, as with music, the creative process seems to account for about 20 per cent of what you do. The other 80 per cent of the time is spent trying to persuade someone to let you do it.

If this particular agent isn't interested, I have other authors' agents and publishing contacts to pursue. Not because I am particularly well connected in the publishing field, but because so many journalists I know have been kind and helpful in pointing me in the right directions. There's a home waiting for Like A Flower. I just have to find it.

Sharks And Flowers

Let's keep this brief, as John Mellencamp said in his wonderful song called If I Die Sudden... I'll be writing about the life of a musician and the life of a writer. The main band I play with is an electric blues/rock trio called Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk). Almost everywhere we play, someone always asks (a) why we are called the Shark Dentists and (b) whether we are all dentists. The answers are: (a) no one can really remember any more (although we think that when the band started in 2007 the idea was that we wanted to sound as if we did something dangerous), and (b) no.

My main writing project at the moment is finding a publisher for a novel called Like A Flower... which is about life, death, love and gardening... and involves a few things that are more dangerous than shark dentistry...