The Last Days of Dad is
my first book, self-published in 2018. It consists of nine stories
which are linked through the central character, Will. The first
story Back Home is set in Will's adulthood but harks
back to his childhood. The next story In My Beginning goes
back to the late 1940s when Will's mother undergoes a gynaecological
operation which will lead to his birth. After that, the stories
follow Will at various stages of his life over a thirty year span
from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, by which time he is married
with a baby son.
The book is a mixed bag of
fact and fiction. In My Beginning, for example, is
based on a series of letters which my mother wrote to my father from
St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, but the story is filled out with
imagined detail and dialogue. Ginger is mainly
autobiography, although I didn't go as far as Will in attempting to
scare my pet goldfish. I did attend a Chelsea party similar to the
one described in Soirée, but the 'bedroom scene' is
entirely fictional which is a shame really. After all, how can you
say you've 'lived' if you've never had to dodge a double dildo? I
have attended 'Messiah
From Scratch' concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, but without being overcome by 'angst' like Fran in Forever. Well,
not at the RAH anyway.
A life is one long chain
of events, most of which are forgotten. But the memories that remain
in our heads, like images or 'stills' from a film, are not only those
of momentous occasions. Some are seemingly mundane, even trivial. A
boy sitting in a field on the edge of town. A goldfish swimming in a
plastic bag. A dodgem car that won't start. A leaf falling from
a garden tree on a specific occasion. These are true memories, but
also fragments of an original experience that can no longer be
recalled. But as the Irish writer John
McGahern said: 'Even events that actually happened have to
be reimagined.' Which gives us the freedom to make stories.
It took me five years to
make these stories. To write and rewrite, to find better words than
the ones I started with, to research details, polish paragraphs and
sometimes to 'unwrite' if my prose smacked too much of literary
artifice. Near the end, I had to partially rewrite Dodgems and Back
Home because they were the first stories I wrote and they
seemed stiff and wooden by the time I'd finished the others. They
went through 15 and 16 drafts and they're still far from the best in
the book. But I'm not complaining. It was very rewarding. It was an
apprenticeship and I found a voice.
Of course, they're not masterpieces. Far from it. But I've had good feedback from some of the select band of people who've read the book and I think they meant it. Certainly, there was an element of genuine surprise in their voices. Runaway and In My Beginning have been particularly praised, but the comment that means most came in an email from a friend: 'I have just finished your book, and was so impressed. I liked your prose style, which I found spare and clean and always convincing. The mortality theme rang a particular bell with me, and your evocation of growing up and away from a place.' That's heartening, especially the word 'convincing'.
But now we come to the point. In the 16 months since I published The Last Days of Dad, I've sold 29 copies. It would be nice to sell a few more. Part of the problem with self-publishing is that you have to do everything except manufacture the book. And the crucial aspect is marketing which I've never been very good at. I mean how does one do it? 'I've written a book. Would you like to buy it?' Cringe. I did a reading with Write Brockley (local indie authors) last December at which I tried to pitch our books as stocking-filler presents. 'Imagine the joy on the face of your loved one,' I said 'when he/she tears off the wrapping paper on Christmas morning to find a book by someone they've never heard of.' Nobody bought it. Perhaps I'm not my own best friend sometimes.
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| Write Brockley reading |
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