How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous

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Wednesday 5 April 2006 is publication day for my latest novel: How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous.

If you've been paying attention to the book world in general, you will know that the perceived wisdom these days is that a publisher should begin banging the drum for a book several months in advance of publication. After all, on this very blog you may have read reviews of books well before the publication date: Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days is a case in point, and Dara Horn's The World to Come is another. Why then, have I never (well, hardly ever) mentioned my own new book until just before its publication date?

Several reasons. First, it was fun to write (which is why I did it). But it wasn't much fun to publish it, even though I'm using my own company, Kingsfield Publications; that was just work. And it is, frankly, no fun at all to have to market the damn thing and try to arouse some interest in it.

Still, an effort has to be made. It would be silly, really, to go to the trouble of writing a book and then to make no effort at all to find readers. Of course, we both know, you and I, that there is no such thing as a book that everyone will enjoy. Never has been, never will be. But if you don't even know that a book exists, then there is zero chance of you making a judgement as to whether you might enjoy reading it. Hence, I do at least need to go through the motions of making people aware that the book is available, in the faint hope that a modest percentage might, just possibly, perhaps, maybe, find it to their taste.

So. Here goes.

How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous is my twelfth (published) novel. And it's about a man called Harry.

Harry is a divorced man who has not been able to see his daughter Lisa since she was five years old. But Harry still loves Lisa more than anyone else in the world; and he worries about her future because she was born without a left foot. When Harry is offered the chance to win a million pounds for Lisa, by taking part in a reality TV show, he immediately accepts. All he has to do is find a woman who is willing to risk her life for him -- and he has just three months to do it.

And, if that hasn't put you off entirely, here's a brief account of what I'm going to do.

Beginning on Monday, I'm going to serialise the book on this blog. Yes, I realise that you may groan. But you don't have to read it. It's not compulsory. There will be lots of other stuff on the blog as well. But every day for the next, what, five or six weeks probably, there will be a daily excerpt. There may even be a handful of people who will read the book that way, one day at a time. But, more to the point perhaps, there will be visitors to this blog who pop in just the once over that five or six weeks, and they will at least realise that the book exists, and will have the opportunity to download a free pdf version of it if they want one.

Ah yes. The free pdf. I am making a pdf file of the entire book available free. All you have to do is click on this link, and follow the instructions. No strings attached.

Isn't this depriving myself of sales, I hear someone ask. Well, possibly. But you will not be left without links to Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com, where you can buy an amazingly cheap paperback copy if you wish. What is more, it is much more likely, in my opinion, that the availability of a free pdf copy will arouse interest, help to spread the word of the book's existence, and generally act as a marketing aid rather than do damage to the book's prospects.

If, for one reason or another, you are in my email address book, you may also find that I send you a note about the book in the next week or two, inviting you to read it, review it, draw it to your friends' attention, and all like that.

And here, to begin the drum-banging, is an interview with the author.

Interview with the Author

How old are you?
Sixty-six.

How many novels have you written?
Twelve. The first one was published in 1963.

So, if you’ve been at it for forty years, and if How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be famous is your twelfth book, how come you’re not rich and famous?
Well, some people would say it’s lack of talent. I don’t think so myself, obviously. I put it down to the fact that I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again.

Explain.
If you want to be taken seriously these days, you have to write a series of books in more or less the same style, like Jilly Cooper or James Patterson. In the 1970s I wrote three whodunits featuring a detective called Ben Spence. These were quite well reviewed and sold tolerably well. They were published in the UK, the USA, and a couple of other countries. So the smart thing to do would have been to go on writing more of that series. If I’d done that I might, just possibly, have achieved the same degree of success as Colin Dexter, with the Morse books, or Reginald Hill with Dalziel and Pascoe. But I got bored with writing whodunits and did other things instead.

Such as?
I’ve written more or less every kind of book, under several different names. My first novel could reasonably be described as literary. I’ve written whodunits, thrillers, a family saga – even one book which might be called a romance. Some of my short stories also qualify as science fiction and fantasy.

How did How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be famous come to be written?
Good question. In the autumn of 2004 I was ill in bed for a week, running a temperature. During that time I had a very vivid dream, in which the basic plot of the book came to me ready made, so to speak.

And did you start work at once?
Not immediately, no. When I first thought of the idea, I decided, as authors often do, that it was an absolutely brilliant story which would undoubtedly become a bestseller.

So why didn’t you get on with it?
Because I’ve noticed over the years that writers often come up with an idea for a book which they are quite convinced is going to be an enormous commercial success and will win the Booker prize as well. But I’ve learnt enough about writing and publishing to be sure that such ideas are invariably nonsense. So I held off.

But you did write it eventually.
Oh yes. Over the next few months I found that the idea never quite went away. So I did a detailed plan of the book, as I always do, and then I decided that it would be fun to write it.

What do you think of it now that it’s finished?
I’m quite happy with it. There’s no such thing as a novel that everyone enjoys, and some people aren’t going to like this one. But sometimes readers are surprisingly keen on something that you yourself think isn’t all that good. So I am quite happy for this book to go out into the world and see what people make of it. I think it will give some harmless entertainment to a fair number of people.

How would you categorise the book?
I would describe it as commercial fiction which doesn’t fall neatly into any of the obvious genres. It’s mainstream fiction.

What are you going to do next?
Most of my time and energy these days seems to be spent on my blog (the Grumpy Old Bookman). I have a number of ideas for non-fiction books, but at the moment I’m not planning another novel. I would like to write some more short stories, because they are enormous fun.

Why are they fun?
Because you have absolute freedom to write about anything under the sun. And that’s what I value.

For the last few years you’ve been publishing your work through your own small press, Kingsfield Publications. Why is that?
Originally it seemed to be a matter of necessity. Between 1963 and 1985 I wrote half a dozen novels which were published by major firms, both here and in the USA. But then between about 1985 and 1995 I didn’t write any fiction at all because I was too busy with my main job. And then when I started to write again, after retirement, I found that my agent wasn’t able to interest a publisher in a writer of my age. Especially one who couldn’t seem to settle on writing one kind of book. So I could see no alternative to being my own publisher. However, once I got into the independent publishing business I found that it had enormous advantages.

Such as?
You regain control over your own material and over your own fate. If you work through an agent and a leading trade publisher, you have to pay attention to what they say. And they usually want you to change things. And they mess around with your punctuation, and put a cover on the book that you don’t like. All that kind of thing. Which is all very well up to a point, and I recognise that professionals generally offer valuable advice – but I prefer to do things my way. When I publish a book of my own I can get it out in half the time of a professional publisher. I can choose what size of book it is to be, decide on the typeface to use, and design the layout of the page. I can even design my own cover. That’s a very satisfying process.

But presumably you can’t sell as many copies through Kingsfield Publications as you could through a big publisher?
No, I can’t. But then I never sold huge numbers of books anyway.

So, to sum up, you prefer to publish your own work, and have complete control over it, even though you sell fewer copies and make very little money.
Exactly.

This interview was conducted on a computer keyboard, in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, on 21 November 2005.