Guest Blogger: Charlie Williams

I do feel a bit unworthy. Jon Morter launched a Facebook campaign to get Rage Against the Machine (a band he has no commercial interest in) to Christmas number one, thereby sticking two fingers up at Simon Cowell and his X Factor. Not an ulterior motive in sight there, no personal gain whatsoever besides glory. So *I* launch a Facebook campaign to get my own book published, thereby... well, just getting my book published. When you put it like that, I do seem a bit mercenary. But would you believe me if I said I was doing it for health reasons?

*Mental* health reasons.

Back in 2002 I wrote Deadfolk. It was my third novel, but the first one that looked like having a chance of publication. The main difference between this and my first two was the location (Mangel, a provincial English town from hell, based on Worcester) and the voice of the first person narrator, Royston Blake... a small-town doorman with a big city ego, a flexible relationship with reality and his own way of expressing things. I don't know where that voice came from. I had been in a few scrapes with bouncers over the years - haven't we all - but not to such an extent that I got to know about their inner lives... their essential fragilities that come with the job and the personality type that inevitably drifts towards it. But I didn't question that voice either. I just wrote, as any writer would. Here was pay-dirt: a voice, so distinct from my own and yet quite authentic. Plus it was always there, a first person narrative on tap. And it didn't stop at THE END. Straight away I started writing the follow-up, Fags and Lager , fulfilling the two book deal I had signed with Serpent's Tail for Deadfolk.

Pete Ayrton (Serpent's Tail publisher) came to a reading event for Deadfolk I did at the Big Chill festival. I had already finished Fags and Lager and handed it in, and Pete asked me what I was going to write next. "Another Royston Blake novel, of course," I said, sipping my pint of rough scrumpy and surveying the hordes of burnt-out ravers. "I'm already writing it." He thought about that for all of a moment, then said: "I'll send you a contract."

Three Royston Blake books, plopping out one after the other, each finding their way to book form with very little effort from me. If that sounds easy, I guess it was. But you have to figure in those first two novels, the stillborns. I paid my dues with them. Rejection slips? Ha! I could paper my house with them. But they were a thing of the past, right? I'm on a roll baby, already putting the final gloss on WRONGUN, the fourth Blakey novel. "Plop", it was meant to go, like the others. But it didn't.

It didn't make any sound at all.

"We like it." This was my editor speaking, John Williams. I'm paraphrasing. "Peter and I love it, it's just..."

What? *What*, dammit???

"It's Profile, the new owners of Serpent's Tail. They don't like the sales figures on the other books."

Wha...? But... but what about the reviews? What about The Times? What about the *Irish* Times? What about "hell, this is gloriously funny stuff and so original that other writers must be gnashing their teeth in jealousy" (Mathew Lewin - The Guardian)? What about the translations into four foreign languages? What about the fact I appeared at the Guardian Hay Festival, for God's sake, and got my complementary crate of free champagne (lasted about three days)???

But, once my ranting died down into a series of grunts and snivels, I realised what was going on here. What's more, I totally understood it... even if I hated it. It seems a bit redundant to say so, but a publishing house is a business. It is also a guardian of the arts, but only insofar as sometimes taking a gamble on something good but with no obvious commercial value. With a series of books about a potty-mouthed bouncer prone to accidental killing and existential crises, I was the proud creator of something with no obvious commercial value.

I had another stillborn on my hands.

So I put it behind me. I wrote another book - Stairway to Hell - which was nothing to do with Blakey or Mangel. Serpent's Tail published it last year, cautiously perhaps but reassured no doubt that it wasn't part of a commercially moribund series. It was a book I had wanted to write for years, I loved writing it (as much as a person can "love" writing) and the reviews were good. But things weren't moving on for me. There was a pain in my head, a buzzing that wouldn't go away and kept cranking up the pressure. It was Royston Blake, not dead after all and not happy either. He wanted to speak. He had stories to tell, characters to introduce and new swearwords to coin. "See them books in that shop over there?" he said. "They're shite. You want a book, I'll give you a book. Get your pen and paper out."

But Blakey, you can't just dismiss every book in Waterstones. There are some great books in--

"They're shite! Get your fucking pen out! And you can do summat else as well. See that book of mine, Wrongun? I want it out there. I want it in that shop. I want freedom!"

How do you ignore a voice like that? Prozac? A lobotomy? Whisky?

Nursing my umpteenth hangover, I gave in. But what to do? When a series is commercially successful, it's simple enough for the author to take it to a new publisher. But a series that sold in successively smaller numbers (despite consistently good reviews)... not so simple. Whichever way I looked at it, I knew I was going to have to persuade Serpent's Tail to give it a go. But how? They had turned it down, hadn't they?

Around that time I got a message asking me to join a Facebook group - Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number One. Huh, I thought, they've got as much chance as I have of getting WRONGUN published, thereby appeasing the angry bouncer in my head. But I joined anyway. You never know.

FREE THE MANGEL ONE - 100,000 MEMBERS AND BLAKEY GOES FREE

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The link above will take you to a Facebook group. If Charlie can get 100,000 members then his publisher will, I believe, agree to publish his new book. He currently has 77. Just a little way to go then.

You can also check out Charlie's website and I will be reviewing one of his books soon.

Comments

[Paul D. Brazill]

Clooney has said that he's going to do a Telethon in support of the campaign. Apparently.

[David Belbin]

'Deadfolk' is an awesome novel, but the only publisher I showed it to hated it. What's so skill about it is the way in which Charlie narrates from the pov of a character who is thicker than the reader, so that you're constantly aware of what's coming his way before he is. This is a bloody difficult trick to pull off (I can only think of 'The Luck Of Ginger Coffey' by the brilliant Brian Moore, that does the same trick, but with far less humour) and should have been the start of a growing cult. Free the Mangel One!

[gary davison]

What a great post. I think i might just sign up, or at the least buy a copy and see what he's got to say this Roy bloke.

[Pauline]

Terrific guest blog. If your books are half as good...

[Carol]

Loved the blog - the first to make me smile today. So...OK...a challenge but I just need to read one of the books first... :)