The Ghost Camera

An update

Allow me to start by saying Happy Christmas and a safe and kind new year.

Some readers may know that I am in the process of publishing a new book with the crowd funded publisher, Unbound.

The way Unbound works is you pitch a book on their website, and if it gets enough supporters then the book is published. I’m very happy to report it reached 100% some time ago so it is now guaranteed to be published in 2024.

The Ghost Camera will be available as a hardback, a digital book and an audiobook and yes, I will be reading the audiobook version.

I started writing this story in December of 2021, I finished writing it about a month ago and it’s now with the editors at Unbound. I know there will be numerous corrections, changes and re-writes, which is a process I love.

For people who don’t know, and why should you, my new book, ‘The Ghost Camera,’ is the 15th book I have published so far.

About 6 years ago I swore to myself that I wouldn’t write another book. I really enjoy doing it but it is a genuine mug’s game. It takes years to write a book and unless you are J K Rowling or John Grisham, the hourly pay rate for writing is probably around 0.03 cents an hour.

I have also been so busy building and growing The Fully Charged Show that I’ve had little time to do anything else.

So, over the last 3 years, when I do get a break in my schedule, I’ve been busy researching, writing and re-writing.

I know I said this book writing malarkey a mugs game but I have been lucky enough to have some success with the books I’ve written. Many 100’s of thousands of sales of ‘The Man in the Rubber Mask’ (a comic memoir of my time on Red Dwarf) and ‘The Man on Platform 5’ (a romantic comedy based on the Pygmalion/ My Fair Lady story)

The other books have done okay but nothing spectacular, so obviously I hope The Ghost Camera will be an international best seller, but I also hope for world peace and equality for all people on earth and that’s not going too well at the moment.

So what is it about?

Well, for starters, there are no ghosts mentioned in the book but an explanation about the title would be a bit of a spoiler. The book is about the way we respond to new technology, it’s about what we believe when new technology challenges the way we perceive the world we live in.

It’s about the ability of scientists and engineers to learn from their mistakes and failures, and use a fairly startling technology in a way no one initially considered.

It’s about glimpses of alternative worlds that could exist now, some better, many much worse than we are experiencing.

The story is told in two ways. One is by Morris, a man in his late 60’s who describes himself as a highly skilled laboratory janitor and is very upset if you call him a cleaner. He works in the laboratory and R&D building where the Ghost Camera is created.

The other aspect of the story is told from multiple press cuttings from tech blogs, tech magazines, newspapers, TV and radio reports.

I’ve just been reading through it again making little corrections and I am mildly ashamed to blow my own trumpet, but I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written.