If there's a lesson to all this, it's that there are as many paths to publication as there are published writers. Everyone who has managed to reach the summit all writers aspire to can tell a different story of how they made the ascent. For me, it started with the encouragement of a friend when I was ready to give up, and ended with a chance encounter on a crime fiction website. And that's the final lesson for anyone who writes: don't give up. Life can turn on a pinhead, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but you never know when that twist is coming.After all the depressing publishing news of the last few weeks, here's a story to warm the cockles of your heart and provide the wannabes among you with the inspiration necessary to keep going.
Stuart Neville, a writer from Northern Ireland, describes on his website how he got discovered by a new York literary agent, and signed up for a major book deal. [via Reading Copy].
His first novel, The Twelve, a crime thriller set in Belfast, will be published in the UK and the USA and translated into Japanese, French and Spanish. It has won praise from best-selling Irish author, John Connolly who calls it :
... not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times.Let's wish the author all the best.
5 comments:
sorry, but i won't patronise anyone who spams my blog (when they could email me) and who makes basic spelling and grammatical mistakes. if you want to run a successful business you have to be PROFESSIONAL!
Well said, Sharon! What cheek!
- Poppadumdum
High praise from Conolly. Worth a browse, I reckon.
Well done Bib :) a telling comeback :) I started writing because I got mad at people who wrote things I know to be untrue. Surprisingly enough, I found that people would mount seriously spirited defences of very dearly-held untruths. It all started professionally when I approached and editor and told him one of his authors was just BS-ing thorugh the entire book. I pretty much wrote another book completely countering all those claims. The editor was amused and decided to publish mine as well. I never saw the other author after that, but that was a long and profitable relationship :)
Hi. Just read the first two chapters of The Twelve (accessible from the writer's website.) Now that is writing! Haunting, powerful, and you just want to read more. No wonder he got discovered -- great stuff. Talent usually wins out. Talent and perseverance. Good luck to the rest of us. First, have a great story that needs to be told. That's the the word, needs! Then write it and rewrite it until it is damn good!
Wishing everyone a great New Year where our dreams come true because we (finally) made them come true! Sitting around hoping and waiting doesn't seem to be working, so it's time to roll up the sleeves and get back to work and get serious and take responsibility for our own action (or inaction). All the best for a great 2009! Robert
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