Oh hello there, it’s been a while. Two and a half years to be exact, but who’s counting? What have I been up to during that time? Well, thanks for asking. You might want to strap in, because this is a bit of a rollercoaster…
So back in the middle of 2016 I got myself a job writing in the computer game industry. I’d already secured a 3-novel deal with Titan Books for the War of the Archons trilogy, but unfortunately those mid-list advances don’t cut it as far as paying the rent goes, so I needed a steady income. And I got one. Packed everything up, moved to Cambridge in a 6-room shared house with a bunch of 20-somethings (which at 42 was a serious adjustment), and started work in a brand new industry. I hadn’t worked for anyone else in an office environment for about 10 years but it was fun, the people were nice and the pay was (eventually) a welcome change to my usual state of penury. I even bought my own flat in a little market town just north of Cambridge and met the love of my life. Sweet! Everything was going well, so obviously I decided it was time to pull the rug right out from under my own feet…
As much as the work was rewarding, and being part of an expert team of game designers was a great way to make a living, it just wasn’t doing it for me. Creatively I was hamstrung by other people’s decisions and I just felt like a bit of a cog in a larger machine. I wanted autonomy. I was still writing my own series on the side, but it just wasn’t enough. Ideas for other projects were brewing, and I knew I would never have the time to see them through while in full-time employment. So what should I do?
Well, obviously I’d do the very thing everyone tells you NOT to do as a mid-list novelist: I handed in my notice, got a big loan to live off, and sold my flat for the equity! Risky? Certainly. Madness? Probably. But there comes a time in your career when you’ve just got to back yourself.
So how did that work out, Rich? Well, here’s my new Twitter banner to give you a bit of a clue:
With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight I made the right decision. But it was most certainly not that straight forward. There was a lot of nail biting and hair pulling along the way, and on several occasions I wondered if I’d made a big mistake. And, had things worked out differently, it most certainly would have been. However, I like to think you make your own luck. Show me someone who never took a risk, and I’ll show you someone who never achieved anything, right? Mmm… maybe.
I had a conversation with my agent at the end of 2018 about what project he thought I should pursue. I had two ideas – one was a sprawling epic fantasy, one was a tightly-paced historical adventure. During my time working for ‘the man’ I’d also done a lot of research into self-publishing, and was serious about pursuing it and seeing if it could work for me. However I still wanted the safety net of traditional publishing deal and the financial reassurance it might give me. Consequently I started writing the epic fantasy, since it’s the genre I’m most comfortable in, and would be the easiest to sell initially (or so I thought). I wrote the first 65,000 words of the MS, which was enough to pitch as a partial, and in March 2019 my agent submitted it to around 16 fantasy imprints in the US and UK. Then we waited.
I don’t think I have to tell anyone how nerve-wracking the submission process is, and if you haven’t been through it I’m sure you can imagine. Eventually a trickle of rejections start to come in and the initial enthusiasm and excitement turn to grim acceptance.
Meanwhile my partner and I moved to the North Norfolk coast for a while. I finished the last book in the War of the Archons trilogy, touted myself around for freelance work with mixed success (even applied for a full time job in Ireland), and began to seriously consider the notion that the fantasy novel was never going to sell. So what to do about it?
The answer was to self-publish. If I was to get no joy from trad publishing, I’d just have to go it alone. Everything I’d learned told me I needed to write a series, something that would appeal to a specific market, and historical fiction is one that’s apparently underserved. Perfect.
So I spent late 2019 researching and writing the novel that would eventually become Oath Bound, a rollicking action adventure set just after the Battle of Hastings, with the full intention of publishing it myself and writing more books in the series. Then… I lost my nerve. What if I invested all this time and money into self-publishing and it didn’t work? Even if it was successful, would it be enough to live on and pay off my burgeoning debt? Who knows? So after another brief chat with my agent we decided to also submit that novel to the vagaries of the publishing industry and see if we could get a bite. I didn’t hold out much hope – I was untested in the genre and I’d never really considered myself a historical fiction writer. Despite a keen interest in history, I’m far from a scholar on the subject and always thought writers like Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden must have an encyclopedic knowledge that I could never hope to match.
In the meantime, my partner had been offered a job in Leeds, my home town, so we moved up with a month’s notice and stayed with my mum for January and February of 2020. If I said this was a bit of a down-point, I’d be understating it. Things were tense, nerves were frayed, but eventually we managed to rent our own place in March, and things started to look up, if not financially. Then… you guessed it… Covid happened.
I don’t need to go into the details of this, everyone has battled this shit in their own way. During this crappy time I lost a couple of friends to non Covid-related things, and we bimbled along for a month or so. Then stuff started to happen…
In April I was approached by a couple of digital-first imprints with offers to publish Oath Bound. Due to there being no advances attached, and the fact I knew very little about the digital-first business model, I ended up turning them down. I was convinced that if there was no advance I may as well stick to my original plan of self-publishing. Then in May, 14 months after the original submission, Orbit US came knocking. They loved the epic fantasy partial, wanted to know how long it would take me to finish the first book, and would I like some money to do it.
Corks were popped. Breaths of relief were sighed. Words were written. Announcements were made: https://tinyurl.com/zrj3v34s
By October 2020 I’d submitted the completed first draft of what would be called Engines of Empire (and would eventually end up a stonking 190,000 words long) and then started to think about what to do with Oath Bound. I planned another two books and started writing the sequel while publishing the first book myself. Then the harsh realities of independent publishing began to dawn on me – the amount of work it would entail, the initial burden it would have financially to pay for covers, editing, marketing. I started to think that maybe I’d been a bit rash in turning down the previous offers I’d had for the series. Eventually I had a conversation with another writer about the whole thing, and he mentioned (completely unprompted) that he was surprised Aries Fiction hadn’t already made me an offer. My reply of, ‘Well… actually they have,’ made us both laugh.
A quick chat with my agent and we went back to Aries (albeit cap in hand) to ask if they’d still consider publishing the series. The indefatigable Holly Domney said yes, and the result… Oath Bound is currently available on Netgalley right bloomin now: http://netgal.ly/hV4zQ9
Obviously all this could easily have turned out to be a cautionary tale on what NOT to do to get a book deal or two. I’m certainly not advocating packing everything in and chasing your dreams. It’s been a period fraught with doubts and worries, but hopefully it’s paid off. And from August there’ll be a book from me every six months, so at least there’s something to look forward to.
Oath Bound is released on 5th August in ebook, and you can pre-order it here: rxe.me/PDLQX4
Engines of Empire comes out in February 2022. All the usual announcements closer to the times.
Stay safe, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll get to enjoy some of my words over the next few years.
Hear All, See All, Say Nowt 