Being a debut author

Bit of a crap heading there. But I don’t really think blogmeister Sarah invited me here because I’ve got a great haircut. It’s because I’ve recently had my first book come out. So I’ll go on about that for a while and see where it goes.

Yes, after a long gestation period Deadfolk came out from Serpent’s Tail in June this year. The gestation was mostly down to the publication process. The book took me about ten months to write, then waiting around for three or four months forgetting about Deadfolk and getting on with something else, then about fourteen months from acceptance to publication. That was a long fourteen months, let me tell you. The lovely echo of that initial “yes we will publish it” fades pretty quick, and you’re left in a kind of no man’s land where you’re no longer the stoic artist who strives without reward, and you’re not yet the pampered novelist who gets to do guest blogs. And while those bygone days of stoicism seemed pretty bad at the time, I kind of miss them now. You may think I’m talking shit, but I do miss them. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m now constrained by market forces to stick to a certain type of writing. I would be writing what I’m writing anyway. I think.

Back to reality: it’s not actually that different once your book it out. You get used to it very, very quickly. But, for a while there, things were odd. Let me take you back… back… back… to the 6th of June…

I left it until lunchtime before I lost my nerve. But it was no use – I couldn’t hold out any longer. Today is Publication Day. I’ve just got to see the book on the shelf… in a proper bookshop. As I walk through those streets heading for Bookshop A, sun shining brightly overhead, I feel kind of nervous. Nervous? I’m shitting myself. I’m walking past people, wondering if they recognise me. I’m wondering what I’ll write when someone inevitably comes up and asks me to sign the book. What if they don’t have a pen? These are the kind of things and I have to consider now, right? But it turns out OK for now – I reach Bookshop A without anyone stopping me. So no embarrassing “no pen” situations there. I enter the shop.

I’m feeling a tad self-conscious about this, I must admit. “Hey, look at him,” I know the staff are whispering. “That’s that Charlie Williams bloke, come to look at his book on the shelf. How childish.” But I put my head down and go on up to the crime section. I am a punter after all, am I not? I am allowed to go into bookshops and look at books, even ones that are by me and which I have no intention of buying. Am I not?

Ah, here we are: the Crime Section. I know this area well. All the familiar names there – Block, Christie, Ellroy, Leonard, Rankin… and right at the end there next to Willeford we should find…

Nothing.

Not Williams anyway. A tiny fist begins to take hold in my stomach. Calm down, calm down – they’ve probably put it somewhere else. So I check the other sections. New Fiction – no. Fiction A-Z – no.

Er… it’s not here. I go out onto the street.

It’s started to rain. (It hasn’t really. Allow me a touch of pathetic fallacy here, please.) People are walking past but they’re not talking about me. They’re not even looking at me. Or if they are it’s because I cut such a tragic figure. I realise I have no need of a pen. No one is going to ask me to sign anything. I trudge off.

“Excuse me,” says a woman at the next street corner. She’s holding something. It could be my book, you know. I’ve gotta look down to see. I can’t look.

I look at her face instead. She’s looking at mine and she looks, you know, excited. Shit, I don’t have a pen. “Yeah,” I say suavely. Or maybe just: “Hey.”

“How often do you use a credit card, sir?” It’s a fucking clipboard she’s holding.

I trudge on, down one road and up the next. And then I see it:

Bookshop B.

I’ve learned my lesson now: I know the staff aren’t looking at me. Or if they are it’s because I look like a shoplifter. I go on up to the crime section. I’m not nervous now, I’m kind of resigned. Block, Christie, Ellroy, Leonard, Rankin… Shit, no Willeford. How can you have a crime section without Willeford? Ah well, at least they’ve got the other Charlie W.

Deadfolk. 8 of the fuckers. (That means there were 10 and two have been sold already. And don’t tell me it doesn’t. This is my myth. OK?)

If there are any other authors still reading this post, care to share the moment when you first clapped eyes on your first book? Oh go on.

PS: Bookshop A (or, as it’s now known in my house, “the other bookshop”) had Deadfolk in a few days later. Bit late though. The psychological damage is done.