There's an origin story behind every finished work, be it short fiction, novel, play, painting, sculpture, etc. Sometimes the story is brief: had an idea, wrote it down, voila. Sometimes it's a bit longer.

I was never meant to write a novel. The very idea! I flunked A-levels, got into computers and have done a job in IT for 25 years.

But sometimes you have to let the latent creativity out. It was always there.

So, briefly: moved house, bit isolated, joined a writers' group, got deadlines to make me commit to paper the ideas I had rattling around. Wrote a lot of short stories - those are fun. Everyone should try short stories first, is my take.

Then, one summer, some of the group decided we were going to write a novel in 6 weeks. Preposterous now I think of it. But it got Willow started (based on an instant writing exercise I did in Group which is preserved almost unchanged as chapter 0 of Willow).

2 years later I had a first draft. It had a different name then: Blood and Starlight. I don't remember which year, probably 2014?

Anyway, shopped it out to some agents and had some very nice rejections, including one after an actual meeting in That London with an agent who basically told me to start over. I didn't quite burn the first draft, but I did write an additional 20k words for the new opening which had a knock on effect throughout the rest of the book. While the first draft and this eventual published version are the same story, they have a very different structure. That's how it goes with novels, especially my novels: I always start too late and need to front-load some way into the story that isn't just a cold open.

How did it get published finally, you ask?

2016 was a bumper year for me in terms of writing output and publishing acceptances. My first accepted story that year (Witch Houses, forthcoming in my short story collection A Thousand Door House) went to a US website called Hypertext. The editor there wrote me one of the best ever opening lines to an acceptance email I've ever had: 'This is an obvious and emphatic yes'. Isn't that lovely? Somehow I got to 'meet' other writers who knew about Unsung stories back here in London. I submitted a story the them, Build A Cat. They liked it, it got published. And the next one I wrote, Travels By Foxlight. I thought, why not see if they like Willow?

They did!

And in early 2018 I got the email every writer seeking a deal loves: 'Want to make a book?'

I did!

It launched officially at Fantasycon in Chester later that year, and I managed to squeeze two more launch parties for it afterwards, one at Waterstone in London and one in my 'home' city of Birmingham.

What's the takeaway?

First, I never really ever desired publication... until I did. I never thought I could become a writer... until I did.

It takes a bloody long time, both to write the thing and then to finally get something done with it. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. My second novel failed to get picked up, and the publisher for Willow closed shop not long after the pandemic waned.

Hence doing it all myself.

If many writers are honest with themselves, when they submit their work what they're looking for isn't the fame and the fresh book smell and the parties and the people on socials fawning over them. They're looking for someone in a position of influence to say, 'Yes, this thing you've done is good enough for me to do something with it. Let's do it together'.

I have had that experience now. It's one I never thought I'd ever have. So I kind of know, going more into the indie self-pub phase of my writing experience, that my work is good enough. I can pat myself on the head now. And recently I've relearned writing for the pleasure of it, rather than writing for some nebulous target I'd convinced myself existed (they never do. Just do as thou wilt / to thine own self be true / etc).

Oh, something else. Willow never sold gangbusters. It wasn't particularly well reviewed. But for those who read and liked it, they really liked it. It made me realise I will never have wide appeal -- my work is too dark and weird -- but if it works for some small group of likeminded people then that's just fine by me. (aside: I've had a few people come up to me and say, I read your book - didn't get it. I always answer: thank you for taking the time to read it! It's not something to be taken for granted, other people's time and money.)

If you'd like to read an older and longer take on this process, see my old blog: 

https://friendofcarlotta.wordpress.com/2021/02/15/a-couple-of-years-back-i-got-a-book-published/