The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Behold, We Are A Novelist

In 1998, I wrote a horror-fantasy novel called Beelzebub, about a society of Satanists isolated in a gigantic fortress some four thousand years after the Rapture. It was, and remains, the biggest (95,000 words, give or take a few), longest (three months at a thousand words a day for the first draft), and by far the most troublesome single project I have ever undertaken; nothing else I have done, literary or otherwise, compares remotely with the accomplishment of having completed the damned thing. Unfortunately, quite apart from whatever literary flaws it may have, it suffers from several crippling faults which make it unsuitable for commercial publication: it has less than four hundred pages; it is not part of a series, or even a trilogy; there aren't any elves; it offers only one proper in-joke (which, for those interested, is evident in this extract) and no moral guidance whatever; many of its sentences have semicolons; and it is by an unknown author.

So, being nearly as vain as I am curmudgeonly, I have published it myself, using the excellent services of Lulu. Their paperbacks are very well made; their publication process eliminates all the usual inconveniences like illiterate copy-editors and talent-scouts hunting for the next Dan Brown; and for this particular book I found a cover design in their gallery which couldn't have been better if I had commissioned it myself. Beelzebub, my first novel, is now available for purchase at £6.95 a copy. Should you decide that it's worth your money to read it, I thank you. Reviews, free publicity, expressions of undying admiration will all be more than welcome.

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