THE CAGE FIGHTER ALEX REID

Paperwork week: Accountanty stuff to the accountant, met with the designer about designery things… playing on Facebook…

Of course, Facebook is a brill networking tool and shouldn’t just be used to waste time. We all know that. Oh, and it’s royalty month. It’s a real joy to send royalties out cos I know what I’m like when a royalty cheque comes in. Although in my case, I rarely earn enough for a bag of chips and a can of pop (note to self: another resolution – write a book people will want to read), and PLR payments barely feed the cat.

My intention of reading through a few hundred manuscripts over Christmas didn’t quite work out. I did more sleeping and chocolate eating than reading, but I’d been a good lad in 2009 and earned a bit of time off. I’m through a lot of them anyway and making progress. 

I had a great reply from one author that, unfortunately, got a rejection letter. It’s not like I enjoy sending them out, but there must be at least some understanding that a smaller publisher cannot publish everything that comes in. After my ‘soz and all that, but best of luck’ I got a reply saying ‘what a surprise’. It made me laugh for a bit… but it’s unreal that someone would think to send something like that back to a company they wanted to be published by. If he’d said ‘quel surprise’ I’d have been more impressed. The funniest bit was after I replied with ‘what an attitude’… he asked if I’d be interested in his other work! Priceless.

This year is all but scheduled. I’ve been updating the website with bibliographic data and there’s still a couple more to add, covers to add and a couple of publication date changes to make. There’s a possibility of a couple more non-fiction biog type books from some classic ‘Tonto outsiders’ that I’m hoping will fit into the autumn and then a novel that may get the green light too. 

I’m dead chuffed with the 2010 slate: Sheila Quigley’s next novel is in, I’ve got early drafts of a few others and all is good. Mike Kelly, writer of ‘Shakespeare & Love’ sent the first half of the book and it is an amazing read. Also in pre-production – Faces is going through the edit and Elliot at Preamptive is designing it – early mock ups are brill. ‘My Life On Mars’ is in the edit and looking good too. ‘Dirty Leeds’ is on its way to another reprint in a few weeks and ‘DisRepute’ (Robert’s next book) is being written for a June release. I may even let him out of the Tonto Dungeon at some point for a break if he’s good.

Rather than me ranting on about me me me all the time, if anyone is up to anything writery, give me a shout if you want to plug it on here.