Look back to remember why you’re going forwards

            Another week has gone by and therefore another post has been written, although in some hurry this week. Now I make a point to have my blog posts written well advance of when posting (especially if it’s a theoretical topic as they take some thinking about) but this one was last minute; this is because, this week I’ve felt worse than if I’d gone on holiday with a group of Germans. At the time it feels amazing, but the hangover isn’t something you want to talk about for a few years following. I’ve not been drinking, to clear that up, I’ve just been struck by a rather potent bout of influenza. However I’m nearly back to full strength again.

            This week I think it’s important to talk about how my mind has been able to look back over the last few years and realise all the efforts I’ve put into getting to where I am and how I could not have gotten here without having people I could depend on. Family, no matter how little you can see them and my friends, mostly the non-British ones have kept me on the straight and narrow in the course I’ve chosen; I suppose this means I’m dishing out a lot of Birthday presents for the next few years.

            I remember four years ago, when I started learning to write at a level that was not just considered childish fantasy; I began by learning poetry, reading different poets, different forms, and even over the last few years I’ve met many poets from around the world, much to my delight. Fiction has always been what I found hardest to write (or write well) but I’ve always wanted to go against what was natural to me and write fiction, after a few years, and many punctuation mistakes – that I still make all the time – I’m here with an editor cleaning up my multiple messes.

            So, in Eleven days from now, I hit the official launch date of my book, do I feel ready for the critics and those who misinterpret my work and disagree with me? No! But I made the commitment to start and finish this book, the edits and Nocturnal Press put their faith in it too, I suppose that means it was meant to be out there. Even now I’m working on another book (or few) to hopefully publish next year or so, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Until next time, I have a week of work to catch up on. So read, write, live.

My usual hideaways

https://www.facebook.com/joseph.clarkauthor

https://twitter.com/Realmskipper

My book is now available for pre-order at

http://www.npuniverse.com/books/mr-lockes-diary/

An Author on the Edge

So for the last few weeks now I’ve been either giving advice or pushing out some motivational words in the hopes that someone who started off this year like I did, will finish it in kind of the same manner. Today, I am not going to do either of these things.

There remains about a month until my first book, ‘Mr Locke’s Diary’, becomes available for those of you out there who are interested to buy can finally do so. I don’t know your individual interest levels in this, but let me say that I’m sweating pretty hard right now! I’ve learned a writer not only suffers for their art, but their art does a pretty good job of rounding off the experience on its way to the public. I don’t doubt the quality of my work, as many painstaking hours have gone into preparing it for its maiden voyage, but I, like any chef or parent out there fear its rejection.

This, I suppose, after the dreaming, planning, editing, begging, publicising, cover art designing, more editing, more campaigning and dreaming and once again editing we arrive at publishing. The last step is no less difficult than all the previous steps, even if it is the goal.

Of course, anyone who is serious about this line of work knows the writer’s job does NOT end at this last step, your role just shifts slightly to marketing. If you have been good you’ve already amassed online followers, blogged regularly and talked avidly about your achievement since you first signed that contract. I think I would score well on my effort. When I first found out that I was being taken on, I wasn’t sure, in honesty, if it was my friend or I who was the most excited, either way I found myself pinned to the ground in a hug as we were both shouting for joy.

Now I’m at my desk, checking, rechecking, getting myself out there (and sometimes I’m actually doing University work) all in preparation for my and my book’s futures. I’m still as elated as that first day, because after many reasonless rejection letters, I will soon be in print.

I suppose two words of advice to round off this mostly intimate talk; a rejection letter doesn’t always mean you’re a bad writer, it just means, ‘we have enough people’ or ‘it’s not what we’re interested in’; and secondly, you can always benefit from having a friend on hand for the tears and to pop open the champagne.

Until next time, read, write, live.

Ciao

You can find me in my usual hidey holes:

https://www.facebook.com/joseph.clarkauthor

https://twitter.com/Realmskipper

Re-Vamp

It has been a long time but I have returned! This time I bring the news that my first book, 'Mr Locke's Diary', will be released in February. Let me take you all back to where I started this blog though, a bit like the 50th Dr Who anniversary that just passed actually.

I’ve always known I wanted to write, I started when I was eight, on a series of books I’m still writing. This book was inspired my musings during a job I did over summer and my almost obsessive adoration for the music of Emilie Autumn, whose concert I saw in Nottingham before moving abroad.

My book will be available through Nocturnal Press and via me. Though my aims are to break into the retail chains with enough support from publishers and readers.

I’ve always known I wanted to write and I’ve never been short of a reason for doing it. It’s like asking a cat why it purrs, because it cannot bark, mine is similar; I think the best would be to lend a few words from John Keats, ‘the artist is the most unartistic person in the world, he is a conduit for this energy that he transforms into words’, is what I summarize from his work. In brief, I never chose to write; I always knew I was full of stories and they all had to be shared.

My Book, ‘Mr Locke’s Diary’, follows a young house maid in the service of Mr Locke who one day goes missing. She is forced to pose as a gentleman in order to save the house from bailiffs but in the process she finds she has a taste for the new found freedoms of being a young man. She discovers a dark work of seedy drinking establishments, violence and pornography, but once through the looking-glass, she can never turn back.

Her freedom is short lived and discovered posing as a man and she is locked away in the asylum for insane young ladies where her luck only deteriorates. Delusions trap her in a world made of metal, filled with soulless workers loading trolleys with boxes, where you are condemned to eternal punishment to survive in boredom. There is a box, just one will lead you out of this place. Will she choose to exist in this place forever or take the risk of leaving? We all have an ending, we just don’t know which it will be until it’s too late.

To follow my work you can go to the following sites:

https://www.facebook.com/joseph.clark.908 - public profile

https://twitter.com/JosephC95010475 - Another less frequently used public profile

http://realmskipper.blogspot.fr/ - for articles and poetry

http://www.wattpad.com/user/JosephClark - for other fiction

I hope to see you all soon. Ciao