Forgetting the Whale (20th December 2011)

The 'Trade Paperback' version of Maximilian arrived through the post this week. This is an exciting moment for an author. It's the first time you get to lovingly flip through the pages of your book - or at least something that looks very much like it. The cover design is so seductive and clever. I know I've seen the cover artwork before, but I'd never thought what the back cover might look like. The artist has added a dramatic label that reads, 'DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME'. I didn't know he (or probably she) was going to do that - but I love it. It captures the reckless and futile essence of Max's project perfectly.


I hadn't appreciated the long, drawn-out process of publishing, and what this means to an author. By the time you send your manuscript off to the publisher, you've probably read and re-read it a dozen or more times. The early chapters you'll have read so often you can almost recite them. But then months pass. In my case, I sent Max away in May 2010. You start writing the next novel, and eventually, off that goes too. Your head is in a very different universe, grappling with a very different story. (By the time Maximilian reaches the bookstands in paperback, I should be in the middle of writing Book Four if I stay on timetable.) So you start to lose touch with Novel One. 


A couple of months ago, therefore, I re-read Maximilian. I thought I ought to have it fresh in my mind for conversations with the publisher. Mistake. A week or so later the detailed page edits arrived from Orion. Every page was a morass of scribbles, crossings-out, corrections, and edits. I had to read it all again. That was hard. Today I've had a cheerful email from the publisher. They'll send me the page edits to go though over Christmas. I'm going to have to read it again. I do wonder how writers get any time to read anyone else's work at all - you're so busy reading your own.


Hey ho. Only a few more shopping days until Christmas. I've abandoned 'The To Do List' as material for Book Three. No matter how hard I try I can't dismember the original screenplay format. So now I'm writing something darker. These are early days, so I shouldn't say much. And I'm only 3,000 words in. But, for the sake of honesty and posterity I shall drop in my working title. It is, 'Forgetting the Whale.'

I've just come back from a trip to Riyadh, Dubai, and Doha. Not much sign of the Arab Spring in these places, although the local papers always make interesting reading. The Gulf Times lambasted Obabma for not giving enough support to rebel groups. Gulp. I wonder if Sheikh Mohammed knows about this.

Riyadh is, as ever, a pretty charmless place. Dubai is outrageous. Doha, as Goldilocks might have remarked, is just right. I sat with a friend on a restaurant balcony overlooking the souk, smoking a shisha, and all was well with the world.

W&N have sent me their New Voices publication for 2012 - extracts from new writers. I'm included and so are a few chapters from Maximilian. It is scary to realise how good the other writers all are. I'm now reading them on my iPad, in order. I haven't come to my bits yet. You can upload this on PDF if you google 'W&N New Voices 2012"

Florida (20 Sept 2011)

Here are some holiday snapshots of our family vacation in Florida. That's me behind that manatee. And that's the NASA GRAIL rocket on its way to the moon. Add some alligator spotting and you have three authentic experiences from the holiday. Every other experience was hugely artificial - but was thoroughly enjoyable all the same. That's Florida I guess!

So here is my review - loved the manatees, loved the rocket, loved Lake Tohopegaliga and the wildlife; we gave Disney a miss (except for Downtown Disney ... does that count?) .. but we had two days of being flung about at Universal Studios and a quite amazing day at Discovery Cove - frankly everything about this resort is pretty fantastic, especially the reef where I snorkelled happily for hours. All good stuff. I put on almost seven pounds of weight in ten days. If I was to live in Florida for a year I wouldn't fit through another door ever again. It was a great time - really good to be doing it with the family (Sue and Jon and Zoe and Ian). Back in Shropshire I miss the sunshine but I don't miss the freeways and the billboards and the endless supply of retail outlets.

Matthew Street Festival (31st August 2011)

Zoe has been managing the Derby Square stage at the Matthew Street Festival in Liverpool for four years, but this has been the first year we've been able to go. It's the world's largest free music festival, and sure enough the streets of Liverpool were heaving with people crowding around the various stages. In a very partisan way we stuck with the Derby Square stage to see a Merseybeat tribute and then a quite brilliant Beatles tribute - the Club Big Beatles from Brazil; a very authentic sound and the scouser crowd loved them. Zoz has about seventy people working to manage the stage and the crowds - it's a pretty awesome event. We'll definitely try to be back next year.

In book-related news, I've started work on Book Three - but only in a very experimental way. I'm resolved that B3 will be 'The To-Do-List', a hokey tale about three students who recover a to-do-list off a dying tourist, and who then set out to complete the actions for him. It is a much more comic tale than any I've tried before - largely because I conceived it originally as a rom-com screenplay. I worry that it may be insufficiently profound, but it should be fun to write, and (I hope) more commercial. I am also teasing another idea around - (I'm calling it Dispatches from the Multiverse) which interweaves five stories that all begin the same way but which develop in different ways. Let me know, would you, if anyone has done this before!

August Blog (24th August 2011)

Less than two weeks now before we go to Florida. Yayy! But I'm struggling to keep up with a huge workload as well as finding time for the hundreds of little jobs that always need to get done before a holiday. I've registered on the US Dept of Homeland Website and explained that I don't intend to bring down the government of the USA and I haven't been involved in any programmes of genocide. As I write this my passport is at the Saudi embassy in London waiting for a visa (I have to go to Riyadh when I get back from Orlando) - this makes me just a tad nervous. I hope to pick it up on Friday but the woman at the agency was hardly reassuring, saying, 'well it is Ramadan you know, so there can be delays.'

I've had some good early reaction to The Coincidence Authority. Sue liked it. Phwew. Actually she preferred it to Maximilian. Stan loved it (or at least he said he did which is what matters). Jon is reading it right now. I'm letting the manuscript rest for a few weeks. When I get back from Saudi I'll have another read right through. Stan wants me to sprinkle the story with real life coincidences - I rather like this idea and I've been collecting a few.

Onwards and upwards.

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

Catching Up (8th August 2011)

Everything seems crazy at the moment. Two weekends ago we were in London so that I could give my niece away at her wedding (Dimi you looked amazing - I was a very proud uncle). We got back last weekend from a family trip to Dublin. (Actually we went to see Prince in concert at Malahide Park. He was brilliant - of course - but I guess you need to be a Prince fan to believe me. We also had an evening in the Temple Bar doing some essential research into Guiness drinking, Irish Music, and boxty-based cuisine.) So I was knackered on Monday morning as I caught the 07:35 from Stafford to London to meet with my Saudi connection. Still. We have to earn a crust. Now I'm trying to juggle a host of commitments all focussing on September. We're all off to Florida (long story), I need to be at a business meeting in Riyadh (even longer story), and I don't know if I should be planning to be in Malta. Or not. These Maltesers are keeping me waiting on a decision. And I've just printed off Draft One of The Coincidence Authority for my nearest and dearest to read which is the most nerve-wracking thing a writer can ever do, and I'm expecting to be frantically busy this autumn with re-writes. Hey ho.

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

The Coincidence Authority (4th August 2011)

It's 7:45pm on Thursday 4th August and I should take a note of the date and the time because I have just finished work on the first draft of a manuscript that I should be calling 'Book Two'. Actually the title has been subject to so many changes of heart that I'm still not sure what it will be called when (if?) it ever sees the light of day. The current title is 'The Coincidence Authority'. I like that title. It sounds serious - and yet (I hope), enticing. The previous title was 'Azalea Explained', or, 'Explaining Azalea,' but these threw too much attention onto Azalea and not enough onto Thomas Post who is the real protagonist. For a while it was 'Azalea and the Coincidence Man,' but this was a bit Mills and Boonish. Anyway. Maybe they'll change it. I don't mind too much. Whatever the title, this is my first teaser trail for the book: Thomas Post is an expert on coincidences. He's an authority. People come to see him, to ask him if he can explain strange events that have befallen them, and he can always explain these things away. We poor humans, he would say, have a tendency to make patterns out of random shapes, or to construct meaning from the random behaviour of the universe. But one day Thomas gets a visit from Azalea Lewis, and his world will never be the same again. For Azalea's coincidences seem to go off the scale. The lives of Thomas and Azalea become entwined, their destinies entangled. And now, with Azalea apparently dead in a foreign land, Thomas must reassemble the pieces of her life in search for the patterns that drove it. And that means he must try to unravel the coincidences that so afflicted her. There. Will that do? Comments please ....

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

The First Cover Design ...(9th July 2011)

This is getting exciting. I've had the first cover design from Orion - and I love it!

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

Maximilian Ponder: The Story so far ... (11th April 2011)

This is me working out how to blog. Oh dear. Don't like this font. Let's change from Times New Roman to Verdana. Much better. Should I mess around with fonts for a while? How about Lucida? Not very different is it? Georgia then? Oh no. That won't do for my new blog. Back to Verdana. But now I'm wasting time and losing my readers. Why do I prevaricate like this? The story so far ... In July 2005 I sat at my computer and typed out the first line of a novel. I already knew this was going to be a novel and not a short story, and it was going to be my first 'proper' novel in contrast to the strange science fiction and fantasy tales I'd written before. The story had been incubating in my mind for some months, but, well, I'd put off actually committing anything to paper; or to hard drive. 


Anyway - the time had come. I loaded up Microsoft Word and I typed, 'My name is Maximilian Zygmer Quentin Kavadis John Cabwhill Teller. My name contains every letter of the Roman alphabet except for the letter 'f'. My mother, it seems, had an aversion to 'f'.' After this I had to check the name to see if the alphabet claim was true. But damnit there was no 'p' either. I tried adding another name - 'Paul' but somehow this made the line lose its rhythm. I messed around changing names and inserting letters, and in this way I happily spent around an hour before finally having to abandon my writing for the day. I had written thirty three words and had stalled on finding a name for my central character. It wasn't an auspicious start.


Fast forward five years. The finished novel has been languishing on my computer for eighteen months while (in another fit of procrastination) I wonder what to do with it. Finally one morning in a fit of uncharacteristic energy, I send some sample chapters out to three agents. The book is now called, 'The Interesting Brain of Maximilian Ponder.' It is the story of a young man who locks himself away for three years to catalogue every memory from his brain. Only it doesn't take him three years. It takes thirty years. 


Would anyone ever want to read this? I really don't know any more. But I send it off anyway. And then I wait. Writers need to be good waiters. The manuscript went out in May 2010 and the first rejection came back before I'd had time to make a coffee. The second agent gushed over it for five months before sending me the squirmy letter. But hooray for the third agent. I shall call him 'Stan' although this isn't his real name you understand. Stan called to say that he loved the book. Now as anyone who ever wrote a novel could tell you, this immediately means that you can die happy. Someone actually loved this piece of tortuous prose that you've been living with for five years. Those words over the phone trump a massive injection of heroin in terms of sheer euphoric effect.


When the auction started it was giddy. It was unreal. Bids came flying in for unimaginable sums of money, and the man we shall call 'Stan' glibly batted them away into the long grass, waiting for bigger ones to emerge. I am so happy to have signed with Orion. I love everything about them. Their offices are right opposite 'The Ivy'. I have a lovely and very understanding editor. They throw fabulous parties where you rub shoulders with Michael Palin and Hairy Bikers. Most of all, they seem to love the book. Now it is, 'The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder.' (Apparently the word 'interesting' isn't especially interesting.)I'm revising the manuscript this month, and hope to see it in print in the spring of 2012 - a year from now. That is the story so far. I will try to blog updates, including progress on Book 2 (working title: 'Explaining Azalea.'). So that was Blog Number One. And it kept me from having to revise Maximilian for at least thirty minutes. Now about those fonts ...

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com