It seems that the logical place for me to start this new author site and blog would be the reason the site exists in the first place. I am not exactly new to either writing or blogging, but it was only at the beginning of 2014 when I had a short story published over at the Devilfish Review that I truly began to grab the label writer for myself.

I have had my fair share of submission rejections, enquiries about representation rebuffed, competition entries disappear, and feedback concerning what was not liked when an agent finally did read my sample chapters. I have also had my successes, and I do not feel bad about this process. There has been a lot written about rejection and the inevitability of the experience if you try to be a writer. The truth is also that publishing is a numbers game, one that is not getting any easier as publishing adjusts to modern distribution and the proliferation of books thanks to the ease of digital self-publishing.

For me the challenge is that I am still writing, and apart from wanting to work on my craft, I like any other artist want my work to be seen, or my case read. In a discussion about writing earlier in the year when I mentioned having finished books, it was suggested that I should look at publishing one online. This started the process that lead to this site, but the project as I have been thinking of it has escalated over the last few months.

The idea was initially to get read, but having been a musician for over twenty years I have always been interested in independent labels and the idea of being able to do something myself was appealing. I was thinking a digital book, but hopefully with some kind of professional edit and a proper cover design. Me being me though, I wanted to explore all my options, and that is when things started to escalate. It was whilst doing my due diligence and discussing business plans with my dad that we found amongst a plethora of self-publishing businesses, a company that seemed to genuinely care about the books they produced and so I initiated contact and got a quote.

Taking into account the economics of scale, it seemed sensible to start with the most recently completed book as it felt the most finished and was substantially shorter so I got a quote, which wasn’t terrifying. As we started working things through it became apparent that it would be possible to do a bigger launch with a sensible print run of actual physical books.

As a result, here I am, announcing the start of the project that will lead to a fully edited children’s’ book of somewhere around 30 000 words depending on what happens during the edit. Not only that, but I will be documenting process here as we prepare to bring my book to a wider audience. I’ll leave you with the elevator pitch, but there will be more to come.

Everybody knows that it is a bad idea to build on ancient burial grounds, but when confronted with a pet cemetery in the back garden of a new house, what are you going to do?

For Abby and Chris’s parents the answer to this problem was to create a playhouse for their children in a new garden shed. However, when their children start seeing ghosts in and around the playhouse, it is just the start of a new adventure. As the haunting escalates, a pair of guardian witches begins to help, but when the children’s mother is kidnapped and taken to a strange parallel world, only Chris and Abby can follow to save her.