Pratfalls and Persistence: A personal odyssey in self-publishing

 

Recently I self-published a book – my second - a themed collection of short stories, titled Boiled Branches, Green Wood: A Book of Trespassers. After I finished writing it, I edited it, which took absolutely ages. I laid it out three times. OpenOffice corrupted the formatting twice; the first time in a manner that was so random that it gave me pause to wonder whether I was watching an emerging artificial intelligence failing to fully grasp its responsibilities. The second time was more comprehensive, in line with the application of some disruptive algorithmic principle, to which I had not been made privy. Apparently I was not the first to have experienced this unexpected reorganisation of the furniture in a saved OpenOffice document. The responses on the support forums were, at their most helpful and polite, along the lines of ‘Yeah, it’ll do that’. I have reached a peculiar point in my life where setbacks of this kind no longer fill me with self-righteous anger directed at an unjust universe that fails to recognise me as its centre. Have I finally come to realise the futility of venting my fury at the heavens, where some divine being may or may not be watching? I think a better explanation is that I am just tired.

I designed the front cover, then I redesigned the front cover after Amazon KDP (the publisher) rejected the original for being too lo-res. The image currently garnishing the book is the result of a quarter-of-an-hour spent wandering the garden with a camera in one hand and, in the other, a demonic brass figurine that, under ordinary circumstances, occupies a corner of the mantelpiece in the dining room. But where to place this unholy idol? Atop a velvety slab of beefsteak fungus, protruding like an occasional shelf from one of the cardinal limbs of the apple tree? In principle, yes, but it’s hard to get a good shot that doesn’t diminish either the fungus or the figurine. When photographed lying in the grass, among the fallen leaves, it appears to lack purpose, as though it came to be there randomly. What if I were to cut one of the windfalls in half and then press the effigy into the crisp white flesh as though it had always been there, awaiting discovery? That’s kind of on the right track, but the image is too clean and clinical. Better would be to press the idol into a mouldering bruise blemishing a rotten apple, in a way that fractures the brown, fungus-spotted skin and causes fluid to ooze visibly from the corrupted flesh. It is in this context that it embodies one of the core themes of the collection – that of an interloper corrupting an established way of life.

I released the book a few days ago, rather stupidly in the same week that Thomas Pynchon published his long awaited new novel Shadow Ticket. My book is not as good as the Pynchon book, but it is interesting and it covers a lot of ground. The stories (of which there are ten, along with a poem) mostly concern the arrival of uninvited guests; some who are obviously malevolent; others whose motives are more opaque. A few of the stories dwell on the consequences of intruding on some forbidden place, or on the breaching of cultural taboos. There is a generous dash of the supernatural; a hint of politics, though nothing I would regard as being partisan or preachy. There is a sprinkling of light comedy and there are varying levels of criminality. In between, there runs the gamut of the human experience – those who surrendered when they should have fought; those who accepted gifts knowing that the price was too high; those who resisted, some more successfully than others; and those who forged a path of acceptance. Here and there are odd details – people, places, and objects that resurface in different stories, sometimes under different guises. There are strongly inferred hints of a wider world beyond the reach of the spread pages.

The book is arranged as a progression. It can be approached any which way, but it is designed to be read from cover to cover. When it came to choosing the stories that I was going to include, and the final order, I went at the task as though I was deciding on a tracklisting for an album, where the emphasis is on context and what goes well together. I started with a list of about seventeen stories that all shared common ground, whittled that down to nine and added a poem. Then I added another story and I got rid of the original poem and replaced it with a different one. In common with most vinyl records, the book has an A-side and a B-side. The five stories that make up Boiled Branches are generally shorter than those in the latter part of the collection. They focus on subjugation, well-deserved defeat in the wake of a half-hearted defence, and in surrender to greed or to naked ambition. Following a poem, which acts a divider, Green Wood (also five stories, but longer) is defined by resistance and, on those occasions where an obstacle proves to be immovable, by calculated tolerance.

Below are notes on the stories in the book, absent spoilers:

The Voice from the Caves dates to September 2019. It was originally submitted to (and subsequently rejected by) Liars League – a bi-monthly event that I believe still occurs in London, in which short stories of around 2000 words are read aloud by actors. I had some success there, chiefly when I had work accepted by Liars Leagues in London, New York and Hong Kong all in the same month – an achievement that was scuppered by COVID, which resulted in at least one of these events being postponed.

The story has been expanded and there has been a tonal shift. The idea I had was that the two main characters, who are hiking across a fictional Greek island, would lead the reader into the book, while laying down some of the broad themes. I don’t think I was entirely successful, but that was the intent.

The Sinners’ Corner was written in 2017, where it laboured under the unwieldy title Away From the Sight of God. It was inspired by the postcode wars between rival London gangs, though the narrative of the story has absolutely nothing to do with that. It’s about how people come to regard some small part of their neighbourhood as their personal territory, whether it’s a certain table in a cafe or a particular park bench. An early version of this story was published on the London Magazine website. Since then it has been re-written and significantly expanded.

Penned in 2020, The Hangman’s Assistant is another rejected Liars League submission. Tonally I was aiming for something similar to the low-budget dramatisations of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. I enjoyed writing the interaction between Derek Sheade and Sylvia Dixon to the extent that I may well revisit these characters in the future.

I can’t remember why I wrote In Search of George’s Wood. The first draft dates to 2018. It is an attempt to create the kind of rambling supernatural tale that was once commonplace in literary journals. It contrasts men who are willing to realise their ambitions no matter the cost, with those who are directionless by nature, and those who have been left rudderless following some personal setback. The story has strong ties to The Poacher’s Ball, which follows after in the book and is a ghost story with biblical roots and branches. It was originally published in Book Eight of The Ghastling, in October, 2018. I have made some very slight alterations to it.

Here ends Boiled Branches. The poem On Hart Island, that functions as a divider between the two parts of the book, references a location in the Long Island Sound where the COVID dead were buried. Hart Island has, for some time, been a burial site for the unwanted and the dispossessed of New York City.

I am very fond of the bickering witches who inhabit The Three of Cotton as they attempt to work out who placed an evil eye in a local cornfield; the bolshie Sue Crow is a particular favourite of mine. I wrote the story in early 2021, though I have changed it significantly since the first draft. The village of Creaksea is based on Canewdon which lies a few miles from where I live and has long been associated with witches. Some of the local mythology and folklore finds its way into the story, while other parts are made up. There is an action scene that caused me a great deal of grief. I ended up basing it stylistically on the opening of the 1966 film Grand Prix, which is composed from brief shots of the drivers prior to the race at Monaco. I tried to storyboard it like that, as a succession of vivid images.

Written in 2019, and originally titled Keys to Japan, The Union of Unlocked Doors is the longest story in the book. It asks the question, does a virtuous man make a good leader and, if so, then under what circumstances?

I wrote The Blue Wake of the Barry (2020) as an entry to a competition where the subject was the Irish city of Galway. I have never visited Ireland and have no idea whether I did the place justice. While there are moments of humour in many of the other stories, this is the only one that was written as a light comedy, though hopefully it is not so flippant that it undermines the more poignant moments. It is my favourite thing in the book.

Even the Flowers (written in 2016 and submitted all over the place to blanket indifference) was the result of an exercise where I had to create a story based around a superstition. I went hunting for something a bit niche and alighted on a really interesting piece of Russian folklore.

The Winding Down (written in early 2020) was a hard story to get right. It took a long time for me to balance the conversation between the winemaker, Le Besco and the bureaucrat, Kremer. If you are communicating with someone who you do not particularly like with even a semblance of good faith, then there will be moments when you strike an accord or stumble over common ground. There is such a moment of commonality in this story where a subject is raised that amuses both men and brings them briefly together.

The opening ten pages of the story were added as I was editing the book. I wanted to convey the daily struggles of the farmers in the region, and also to make the reader aware of the kind of man that Kremer is, in advance of his meeting with Le Besco and Kirouac.

I have reached that necessary stage where, as one prepares to cut ties from a project in which a great deal of time has been invested, a degree of objectivity starts to creep in and you can look upon what you have created with an air of detachment. I do have criticisms and, though I will not dwell on them in public, I will take them into account in my next book. Overall, it turned out better than I expected. As a writer whose interest lies mainly in concepts, I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity and nuance of the characters. I didn’t know I had it in me.

I regard my primary audience as socially awkward men, who find a copy of one of my books in a secondhand store, fifty years after my death, and develop a somewhat unhealthy attachment to it. That being said, I am more than open to interested parties purchasing the book now, while I am still alive, and perhaps reading it, and maybe enjoying parts of it, or all of it.

Should you wish, you can obtain the book from Amazon, on Kindle or in paperback. The latter are printed on demand - where exactly depends on where you are situated in the world. In the UK they come from Dunstable, in Bedfordshire.

The link below is for the paperback on Amazon UK. From there you can find your way to the eBook, or to Amazon websites elsewhere in the world.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FQPRJ5NY