A Gentle State of Writer's Madness, When You Start Anthropomorphising Your Novels

Added on 15 April 2011

All that stuff I wrote a couple of weeks ago about deciding that I probably wouldn't publish the next Barney Thomson novella - Barney Thomson & The Half-Blood PM - because it was too similar to The End of Days... well, damn it, damn it to Hell, I'm going to publish it anyway.

Is it as good as The End of Days? No. But you know what, given that The End of Days is the finest barber serial-killing apocalyptic absurdist thriller ever written, how could the other one possibly be as good? It couldn't. And does it also have a scene in the Sherlock Holmes? Yes. But then, I can find another pub in London and set the scene there. Nothing happens in the scene anyway. As for the other similarities, well damn them to Hell 'n all. It didn't stop me writing seven barbershop novels in the first place, just as it didn't stop all those other people who have written endless crime series regurgitating plot lines, situations and characters.

The title has to go of course, because the book isn't a spoof of Harry Potter. New title: The Wormwood Code. It's relevant, it's snappy. It says thriller. I know which cover I'm going to use, but need to get my ace cover designer - the non-English speaking Iza from Poland - to make a couple of changes. And then we'll be good to go.

Of course, what with it being the middle of the Easter school holidays, good to go - which in Kindle publishing terms can be as little as a couple of days - will be a bit more protracted.

I don't imagine this will be it, the big Barney Thomson breakthrough novel, but the executive committee of Long Midnight Publishing here in Bandar Sera Begawan decided that we might as well go ahead. The End of Days is the lowest selling Barney Thomson title on Kindle. This makes me sad, because it's my favourite. It's a lovely and delicious little novel, full of blood and gore and comedy and satire, and I just want to give it a hug as it sits there at the bottom of the Barney Thomson league table, weeping softly at being ignored by a cruel world.

Now I need to go and take the kids to see cars and aliens.