Hoilday time

My final manuscript had been sent off to Bookguild Publishing, and other than researching on the internet (and writing my blog) I was preparing for a family break. We could no longer afford a holiday in the sun so decided to take two weeks out of daily living, and enjoy life in our own country.

The first week was spent at home with two friends from Germany who we had met some years before while on holiday in Cuba. As I have said before in my blog they are two of the funniest people we have had the pleasure of meeting. They have a very german sense of humour which is very refreshing, and they love my children as if they were their own. When we waved them off at the bus station they sat on the coach to Gatwick and the tears flowed from not only them, but from us as well. They are wonderful people from a wonderful country and hopefully, if I can make some money, me and the family would love to be able to take up their invitation to visit them in Munich in 2014.

Twenty four hours later we were in the car driving up to Scotland to stay with another wonderful couple at their home. We stopped for the night in Gretna Green and travelled next day on the ferry from Glasgow to Dunoon. We spent five lovely days with Bill, Val and their sloppy dog Dougal. We spent our time walking on the moutains and hills, and a days visit to Glasgow (by train) to see the sites, and take an open top bus guild tour of the city. One word of warning, Glasgow does have delights that are worth a visit, but as the conductor of our tour stated, it's always raining, so be prepared.

The kids loved Dougal and I had to spend the next two months after our visit fighting off their demands for us to get our own dog. I got told off a couple fo times when I got caught feeding him under the dinner table. But what could you do when you have a face resting on your nee with large brown eyes looking up to you, pleading for a scrap of food? You give in, thats what you do, and by the end of our visit he had me working out of his paw.

On the way home we had booked into a B.B in Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast, just for the night, so we could visit where my wife's grand parents used to live. Again we enjoyed our stay, but next morning it very windy, and as the black clouds came rolling in, it was a cold and brisk walk we had along the harbour.

On the way home we got lost, but everyone was relaxed enough after our break not to end up in arguments, and by late in the evenning we arrived home just as the engine in our car started to make a worrying noise.

When I took it to the garage the next day they only confirmed what I thought could be wrong, and my heart sank. The clutch was knackerd and it would cost nearly £500 to fix it. This was a disaster for me. I had spent the last of my spare money on the previous two weeks and now I was skint.

I had already sent off the payment required for first stage publishing. So now I had no choice. I would have to find some paid work. At that momement I was scared that I would get back into the old routine of working and enjoying the regular money that come in, so giving up on the final push that would be required to gettting published, and making a success of my dream, in becoming an author.

As needs Must

Although my book, Frenzy by Mark King, is out on the 28th of March 2013 I still feels as if I have ages to wait until I see it in the book shops (Although you can pre-order it on W.H.Smith.com, Waterstones.com and Amazon).

Until then I have had to take up various part time jobs (as needs must) to bring in some money to pay the bills. I still find it hard to say what my job is when strangers ask me, 'so what job do you do?' Until Frenzy starts to sell I find it hard to call myself; an author.

One of the jobs I have been doing is as a match day steward at my local football club. You don't earn much but I get to see the game for free, and the money goes towards a few drinks with my friends afterwards.

It was perfect last Saturday as my team won, and a lot of friends I hadn't seen duly arrived through out the night.

I went straight to the Steam Packet after the game. A very well run traditional British pub with a very friendly landlord called Kim.

He always has a welcome for you and makes you feel at home, but most of all he has a smile on his face, and this is what makes him so special. For Kim's life has not always been easy. He made a new life for himself after leaving his home country of Morocco and along the way he has had to face some difficult times, more than most people, and to tell you the truth more than enought to have finished off most men, including me.

But he gets on with his life and you can tell that he enjoys making other people happy.

So if you are ever visiting the lovely city of Norwich, pay a visit to the Steam Packet and have a drink with Kim.

Thinking ahead

Within three weeks of signing the contract I had read my final manuscript making any final changes needed, and emailed it to Bookguild Publishing.

As normal it would be a case of always-hanging-around while I waited for the first editor's copy with their recommended changes to come back to me.

The family needed a break and as we hadn't the money to have a holiday in the sun, for the last three years, we decided to take up an offer of spending five days in Scotland with friends.

While we planned the long drive up to Scotland I started to think ahead about the next stage of my quest.

How to sell the book?

As normal I started to complete reserch on the internet and found out that as an unknown person the first thing you need to do is to get your name known.This was one reason I started the blog along with trying to guild other hopeful new authors who needed advice on how to make their dream come true.

There are different ways to get noticed. One I looked at was Twitter, but at the time I just couldn't get it. Now I have a Twitter account and have started to use it to communicate with others. I'm still learning how to use it, but i'm now there under the name @author-king. So look for this or under my name, Mark King, and hopefully my page ( with Frenzy Cover) will pop up.

I don't know if you are from America, Germany, Russia, China or any other country if you can follow me here in the U.K, but if you can then feel free to tag on. I'm trying to complete a tweet a day, and if you are on twitter then let me know and I can then follow you too.

As I have said in previous blogs you always need to be think of the next stage before you have finished the stage you are at now, if you want to get to the finsh post.

The contract

It came through my letterbox. The envelope which inside held the contract from the publishers.

What can you say about any contract? Not much, they are always written in favour of the person or company that's had made it, and most are so full of complicated english that it's almost impossible to understand what they say unless you pay for expensive legal advice.

I read through it and then signed.

There I was, coming up to to nearly a year and half into my two year quest to become a published author, and I had a signed contract. True, I was taking on the risk, but if you believe in your work, or claim too, but will not take all the steps required, no matter how risky, then you don't have the belief you think you do.

I posted back the signed contract, and at the same time sent off more requests to various trust funds looking for financial help.

I had a gut feeling that the replies from the funds would be negative, but had got so use to being turned down that I wasn't too botherd if they did. I had also got fed up with always-hanging-around for other people so I had decided that if I did get any help it would be a bonus, if I didn't then it wouldn't matter.

For now the next three weeks was going to be a busy time for me, because I needed to make any changes to the final draft of my manuscript before Bookguild could start process of editing.

Joker's Monday (where's the horse)

For the last couple of weeks I have given Joker's Monday a miss, but it seems that after the horse meat scandal that has engulfed most of western europe recently; the joke was on us.

I have received lots of jokes about horses ending up in burgers and pies when it should have been beef, and although they are funny, the situation is not.

The whole thing is another scandal, on top of another scandal, on top of another. A constant stream of insults agaisnt the ordinary person. It's doesn't matter where you live in the world, we all seem to be taken for a ride by somebody.

It may just show that when life is lived for what you can take from it and not what you can give, and maximum gain is the only means of showing success, then maybe something is going wrong along the line.

Don't get me wrong; we all need money to survive and I was as eager as the next person to get my hands on as much of it as anyone else, but! There is always a but. I have now had to live for the last two years on very little money, let during this time I have never felt richer in my life.

I'm not going to get on my moral high horse; it's just i'm not afraid of it anymore, not afraid of not having more than the next man.

Once you have this knowledge then you become free.

The next week

The first thing I did on the Monday after my visit to Brighton was to write to all the charity trust funds I could find, asking for financial help with publishing my manuscript.

I had borrowed a massive book with thousands, upon thousands, of trust funds listed and what aid they would give to what type of needy cause.

A lot were connected to religion, most being Christian, followed by a lot of Jewish trusts, but not many Muslim. The remainder were mostly for education or the arts. The ones connected to the arts interested me and these are the ones that I noted.

I looked and I looked, but I could only find one or two (out of thousands) that were directed towards writing, and these were based around paying the costs towards somebodies education in this field.

I found a lot for helping poeple who wanted to follow a musical or other art form like painting, but not one which would help an unknown or unpublished author to make it on the first rung of the ladder.

I hope after FRENZY by Mark King is published on the 28th of March it is a success, and I hope to be able to follow up with more stories, but the one thing I hope for now is to make enough money from publishing so I can re-invest some of that money back into humanity by setting up a trust fund; solely to help other people who maybe have no hope of getting published (because of their backround), but who can tell a great story, and then help to get them published.

This is a long term plan. In the short term I was going to go ahead and pay the upfront costs with the last remaining money I had.

I was fed up with always-hanging-around. I wasn't going to hang-around for their replies, I was going to go for it now, and if in the near future one or two did come back with some postive news then this would be a bonus.

I didn't have to hang around for the contract from the publishers, it arrived on the Wednesday.

A night out in Brighton

After my meeting in Brighton with the publishers I went to a cosy little corner pub for a drink, and reflected on my meeting.

The owner of Bookguild Publishing is a women of presence, not in a over-powering way, more like a mature auntie who has seen the world, and enjoyed every minute of it. I liked her and she seemed well suited for life in Brighton.

My mind was made up. I was going to take the risk of covering the upfront costs in exchange for a greater return in the future, and more importantly control over my work. I was approaching various charity trusts funds to see if they could help, but if they couldn't I would use the last of my life savings (and future retirement pot) to achieve my goal.

I asked the barman to order me a taxi and as soon as it arrived I jumped in and requested it take me to Hove. This is part of Brighton but people who live there still like to think its different.

My sisiter had moved there some years before to take up a job in a business a friend of hers had started. it was a big risk for her at the time but it seems to have payed off.

I arrived and she gave me a tour of the building. She works for a high class dentists (there is a poss name for what they do, but I always forget what it is) making the teeth of the rich and famous look nice, white and clean.

I then waited for her to finish work, once again in a corner pub just down the road and which was her local. After an hour she walked in with four of her work friends and every one settled down for a chat.

I noticed how perfect all the girls teeth looked, a perk of the job,  and  they all spoke in postive terms about how well kept my own teeth looked, and as some of them were in there twenties it was nice to get such attention!

The beer and wine flowed freely and so did the talking. I had spent the previous twelve months with so little money, and had looked after every penny to the point were my old life had become a distant memory, but for this one night only I decided not fret about about money, and just enjoy the night.

We ended up in the early hours getting a take-away Thia to enjoy around one of the girls who lived across the road and there I was in a flat, with four lovely young ladies, and my sister (She is lovely too, but not in the same way if you get my drift).

Of course I was on my best behaviour as my sister was there, but, and this is a very big but, it still made me feel like I was ten years younger, and that's what made the night so great.

Me and my sister ended walking back to hers and soon I was a sleep in the spare bedroom.

The next day we walked along Brighton beech as the wind blew a gale, which helped to sober the mind, and she took me to Bill's. This is a cafe, but not your normal working mans cafe, Its a little be more, how can I explain it, it's a bit more artisan.

I treated her to a full English breakfast and afterwards she escorted me the the train station. As I trundled away from Brighton on the train, reading a newspaper; life at that moment once again felt new and exciting.