To be continued . . . .

A proposal for book of parts, right here on Substack

I’m sure many of you know that Charles Dickens, the renowned Victorian author of works such a A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, did not initially release a finished book of his novels.

The stories originally appeared in serialised form in various periodicals such as The Morning Chronicle and Bells Life in London. Dickens judged the reaction of his readers and adjusted the story as the series progressed. Unlike his contemporaries who followed a similar route to their readers, he didn’t finish writing the stories before he started releasing the chapters each week. The chapters were published almost as he wrote them.

This, I have to tell you from experience, is a risky approach. It would be for me anyway, risky but very attractive.

For those who don’t know, and why should you, I have published 13 and a half books over the past 35 years, (one of them I co-wrote with actor and playwright, Nigel Planer).

Every one of those stories has been thrown away, re-started, torn to shreds and re written again and again many times. Judging from my conversations with other writers over the years, this is not an uncommon experience, but the opportunity to try a different way of telling a story is very tempting.

I have a new novel coming out later this year, it’s completely finished, it’s been edited, typeset, ready to go, with a cover and introduction. It was due to be released in June of this year, but due to some financial challenges suffered by the publisher I work with, there has been a rather severe delay.

Titled The Ghost Camera, my new book will now hit the doormats in October this year, published by a new entity, Boundless. They have taken over Unbound, who have published my most recent 5 books. So the bookwill appear, I quote from their website:

As part of the acquisition, Boundless has secured Unbound’s intellectual property, ongoing customer and supplier relationships and publishing contracts, digital assets, and goodwill associated with brands such as Unbound, Neem Tree Press and Boundless Magazine. The new owners have also retained all existing Company employees.

So that’s a great relief for all concerned and I will update progress with The Ghost Cameran as soon as I know what’s going on. The Boundless website is due to go live again at the end of March, and I’ll just quickly state right now that there are no ghosts of any sort in The Ghost Cameran book.

Anyway, this very long delay in publishing is nothing unusual, I finished writing the first draft 3 years ago. I finished the editing process last summer, and now I have to wait another 7 months until anyone can read the book.

In the meantime, I’ve got the itch to write a new story. As with The Ghost Cameran, it’s an idea that won’t leave me. I’ve been tinkering with the notion for a few years, these things taker a lot of time to gestate but then they suddenly start to take shape.

This is the feeling I am having about the as yet untitled new story I want to write.

Of course I could go through the same process of pitching the book, raising the money to publish it and waiting another 3 or 4 years for it to come out. Or . . . . .

I could rlease it a chapter a week, for a few weeks and see what happens. I have realised that the obvious place to do this is here on Substack.

I would of course need som feedback, I’d need to know if anyone likes it and wants to read more.

What d’you think?