The Long and Winding Road

The long journey to publication for ‘Oblivion Black’ has been a long, frustrating, depressing but enlightening one.

It has involved draft and draft, and there’s been more than one time I’ve thought that I’d finished the book only to be dragged back to it. I’ve put a stake through it’s hard but it keeps coming back. I was out for a run in Hengoed (look it up) fairly late into the writing process of the book which I thought of a very central plot point which was informed by something very painful and personal that happened. I remember thinking ‘Bollock.’ because it made absolute sense and gave the book an emotional heft, so it was I went in for another redraft.

A chance meeting with Tim Lebbon - who I published back in the day - at Greenman three years ago led me to submitting it to Titan books after it being rejected all and sundry. I will be eternally grateful to Tim as Titan read it and liked it, but asked for some rewrites. In the meantime flushed with would be success via another writer friend I approached a big American publisher and had a tentative response that they were interested. In the space of a couple of months I’d got closer than I had in years to getting ‘Oblivion Black’ published.

The next few weeks will see a paperback, e-book and eventually a very limited hardback. The hardback is just for my ego. I want to put something beautiful out into the world, and have been working with a book designer and my mate Neil Davies to produce illustrations. I’m determined to do it right and have loved the process of getting it to the stage of publication.

It has lit a fire under me to get writing again and I’m 30 thousand words into the next book which is going to be the first in a series which will be out next year.

So as I write I’m probably a few days away from having a physical copy of ‘Oblivion Black’ in my hands, and that’s when the work really begins.

Image - inside sleeve for hardback edition by Chris Nurse