Signing and Selling the First Thomas Ford Paperbacks at Foyles by John A. A. Logan
Last
month, XPO North sponsored the Indie Author Fair 2015, at Foyles Bookshop,
Charing Cross Road, London…which meant me heading south for 8 hours by an
interesting east coast line Virgin train ride, that passed through Newcastle
and some great undeveloped farming countryside I’d never seen before…
It’s
a bit surreal to arrive at a big station like King’s Cross in London after
travelling backwards for 8 hours by train…it reminded me of Robert Pirsig’s
description, in Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, of how ancient peoples used to encounter the
future…as though proceeding up a river of time in a boat, with their back to
the future as they rowed, facing the past, and only seeing the new territory of
the encroaching future in small manageable segments appearing over their
shoulders gradually…
In
his book, Pirsig presents this backwards approach to moving forward as the
healthier way to travel…rather than the modern method of turning our back to
the past, and facing the future head on, aggressively, thus removing all
context from it, and almost inviting it to overwhelm…
So,
anyway, I arrived at King’s Cross, to witness the scene of armed and armoured,
machine-gun bearing police officers patrolling the station’s public floors in
groups of six.
It
would have been a bit like entering the film stage of Blade Runner, and I might have thought this London’s become a bit dodgy, had I not left an Inverness 8
hours earlier which had seen the street containing the railway station there
shut off and also filled with police and fire engines after a terrible fire the
night before.
King’s
Cross then, and never mind the Bad Omens – First job was to get food, I managed
that, something called a Falafel Surprise which contained no great shocks.
And
then to a hotel room in Argyle Street, right by the station, convenient, but
down a supernaturally quiet road, so quiet I was wakened by birds singing outside
the window next morning.
On
the Friday of the Indie Author Fair I got lost in the tube trying to make for
Leicester Square, the machine ate my ticket twice (this happened
every day I was in London)…I got to Foyles at 10.10am, though…and so began a
day of talks which have been better described elsewhere and which are caught on
camera here:
(Now
that I check I can see myself in the background during first 45 seconds,
looking really dodgy in leather
jacket and cap, arriving to sign in!)
When
the day of talks was over, 4.30pm arrived, and it was time to have a go at
selling books.
After
3 years of being an ebook-only author, the first paperbacks of The Survival of
Thomas Ford had been designed by Dean Fetzer of Gunboss Books (www.gunboss.com) specially for
this event, and the very first paperback sold to Bob from the Midlands.
There’s
no photo of that one, but Thanks, Bob!
Orla
Broderick, author of The January Flower, got a photo of the second paperback
being signed and sold, though:
Thanks
again (things became a bit blurry by that point in the day, but I think that
copy went to Richard – Hope you enjoy Thomas Ford, Richard…and more
importantly, apologies if memory has not served and your name was not Richard!)
Friday
was then rounded off with a good philosophical talk at a pub table on Charing
Cross road, and some late sandwiches from King’s Cross to munch back at the
hotel room.
*********************************
Saturday
began in a rush, with the attempt to catch the Northern Line tube to The
Omnibus arts centre in Clapham, right by Clapham Common, which I had always
heard of.
I
was headed for this Spread the Word event called “Keeping the Pages Turning”
“Hunt
down the DNA fingerprint of great Crime Fiction, with “Ireland’s answer to Ruth
Rendell" Claire McGowan
Former
Director of the Crime Writers' Association Claire McGowan
leads this day of practical work, seminar discussion and creative writing which
gets you under the skin of Crime Fiction. In this day-long masterclass, which
also includes an author talk and Q&A, you'll unravel the mystery of making
a book unputdownable. What creates suspense - how do I keep the pages turning?
Claire
teaches London's City University Crime Writing MA, which has a cracking track
record for getting authors published, and she knows her police procedurals from
her psychological thrillers, having published several herself. And as if you
needed further persuasion... there's free tea and coffee! Can you think of a
better way to spend a Saturday? (Other than, say, reading a bloody good
thriller…?)
“A
knockout talent” Lee
Childs
“Chills
you to the bone”
Daily Telegraph”
Sounded
good to me, so I had booked a place online before getting the train down to
London!
The
weather was great that morning as I passed Clapham Common, and the Omnibus
building which was rescued from a fate of dilapidation I believe, by being
turned into an arts centre, was immediately recognisable on the horizon, just
as it had looked on Google.
Later,
I learned that this building had originally been built as The Clapham Library
in 1889.
There
were 11 of us in the circle around the table, including Claire.
The
atmosphere was like a tutorial or seminar, perhaps more like a tutorial, and
it’s 21 years since I’ve sat in on anything like that.
It
was interesting, for me, to get the contrast between an “Indie” event like the
one the day before, and a class like this, taught by a traditionally published
crime author who teaches the London City University Crime Writing MA, which is
targeted at successfully getting students traditionally published.
Though,
as Claire said, self-publishing is more and more regarded as a serious option
now and she herself has friends who have self-published extremely successfully
(Mark Edwards and Louise Voss).
Later
that week, I saw that Claire had written this piece on her blog, Inkstains -
“Seven
ways to stay positive (in the face of dropping advances, ongoing rejection, and
an onslaught of articles in the Guardian)”
As she rightly says there - “One
thing I’ve tried to do is understand what a privilege it is to earn any money
at all from doing something you love.”
After
the class, I walked the Clapham streets for an hour or so, continuing a talk
with two of the other participants which had begun in the room.
The
common was full of people, children, dogs, the sun shining down.
It
occurred to me that, on both days, it was these individual talks with people
that caught my attention, more than the structured, ordered meetings…what the
character Chaney in the 1975 film Hard
Times referred to as “the in-betweens. Don’t forget the in-betweens”…
Although,
of course, I was equally conscious that without the context of those
structured, ordered meetings I’d not have met those people to have the
“in-betweens” with.
Back
at King’s Cross, I arranged to meet my old friend, Chae, and Saturday was
rounded off with a philosophical discussion of another kind at a kitchen table
in Walthamstow.
Headed
back for King’s Cross, I once again had a completely non-functioning tube
ticket.
Lots
of midnight drunks in the railway station to thread through, and then the walk
down that quiet Argyle Street to my hotel room (which has many bad reviews
online, from customers unhappy with only having the space of a ship’s cabin to
sleep in, but I quite enjoyed my little ship’s cabin bed for those 3 nights).
Nearing
the hotel, I passed a young man who was removing six-foot-long awkward-to-handle
cardboard sheets from a dumpster/skip, fishing them out nervously.
I
think my approach spooked him a bit, he hurried up, hauled out the cardboard,
got it under his arm, and speeded up as we walked past each other, him carrying
his new bed at midnight to who-knows-where and leaving me with another
permanent “in-between” to squeeze in my brain, take home with me, and think
over later.
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