"Blakey on Tour" comes good

Today sees the publication of MADE OF STONE - Mangel book #5. And this blog is the best place to mark the occasion. Because right here is where I started writing it.

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will recall how I did a guest blog by Royston Blake a couple of years ago called Blakey on Tour (which seems to have spawned 310 spam comments about drugs - WTF?). For some reason I couldn't find a way to sign off from it, so I continued it. Then I continued the continuation... and so on until I had about thirty of the things and no sign of an end in sight. At that point I took it offline.

Made of Stone is the end result, after a few weeks of writing, rejigging and then several months of the usual publication process. I don't know of any other writer who has done this, although I'm sure I'm not the only one. (If Norris McQuirter is reading, can you check that? If it is, I want in the Guinness Book of Records. Or just a crate of Guinness would be fine, thanks.) I don't mean taking your bloggings and putting them into a book, but writing a blog post which ends up turning into a novel. Not only a novel but the fifth novel in a series, and one which the author loved writing and reckons is OK, if he may say so himself. (He may.)

But do you know what? I'd like to do it again.

There was something about the thought that people are waiting for the next instalment - even if it's just one person - that spurs you on. I felt like Dickens when I was writing that thing. Except Dickens got a shilling for each copy of each instalment he sold, whereas I got a comment if I was lucky (or 310 about black market drugs if I was really unlucky). But do you know what? Those comments were worth more than a shilling. They were worth at least 1.5 shillings.

Anyway, Made of Stone. Please buy it (UK, US, Can), steal it, borrow it... read it. Tell your friends. If you know someone who read Deadfolk or one of the other early ones, tell them. Royston Blake is still around.

And he is on tour.

Blakey on Tour - Aside #6 and final

I have purged Blakey on Tour from this blog. Sorry if you were planning on going back to it (for whatever strange reason). Fact is, I have been working it into a novel offline, which is nearing the end now, so I don't want people discovering the first draft on here. Actually I don't care, but it seems neater this way. Hmm... maybe deleting it all wasn't such a good idea? Fuck it - done now. I'll let you know how the novel goes. If I can only find it...

Meantimes, ONE DEAD HEN publication date is drawing near. You can pre-order it here and here, "like" it here (go on), and read about it here and here. Any way you look at it, Blakey is on his way back.

Blakey on Tour - aside #5

8 things about "Blakey on Tour", the ongoing story on my blog:

1. Sorry I have not been updating it


2. I am still writing it


3. In fact I am writing it so much that it is going to be another novel (but with a different title)


4. I have had to go back and put things in, which is why I can't do it on the blog any more


5. Also some of the material doesn't feel right on my blog, if you get my drift


6. A huge thanks to anyone who read it up to this point. The fact that people were following it is what got it going. I owe you one. Writing a chapter and then immediately posting it up and seeing hits on it was a strange and exhilerating thing


7. If this book never sees light of day, I'll try to track down every last person who followed it and get the manuscript to them, should they wish to read it


8. Royston Blake lives on!
   

Blakey on Tour - aside #3

Not been much from Blakey this week, has there? I assure you that it is down to sheer not having enough time. That and laziness... but the understandable kind of laziness, that kicks in when faced with obligations looming. Next week I'm at BookExpo in New York, so prob not much touring from Blakey then either. But I promise he will be off in that burger van again right after. Or possibly the hearse, if he can get it out of the police pound. Until then, we'll have to leave him in the dire straits he finds himself. Thank you to everyone who has been following it. Please come back. Blakey needs you!

(Oh, and BTW, Deadfolk - Royston Blake's first outing - is currently 99c for Kindle and $5.99 paperback on Amazon.com. Cheap pricing on Amazon.co.uk next week too, I hear.)

GUEST BLOGGER: Royston Blake - "Blakey on tour Part One"

Like I says, I ain't been in jail. Mangel jail is a place for proper scum, not community pillars like me who sometimes fall a bit foul when they cut a corner in the name of doing the right thing. No, what I thought I'd do, following the success of my campaign wossname and in celebration of my forthcoming memoir, is go on a nice holiday. And by that I don't mean camping in Hurk Wood - I mean a proper, fucking expensive holiday.

In a caravan.

I had it all sorted as well, had me eye on a decent caravan and everything. Nice white one it were, only one previous owner so far as I knew and he were still owning it at the time. What's more, he were always out all day during the week and I knew how to pick the type of padlock he had on the gate, meaning I didn't even have to pay for it. All I needed were summat to pull it with, and we all know the best type of caravan pulling motor, don't we? That's right - your 1983 Ford Granada MkIII hearse. And it just so happened I knowed where they had one.

(Update: this post spun off into a novel, most of which I wrote here on my blog. But I took it down when I had to start going back and making little changes. Hope you get to read it when it comes out. But it probably won't be called "Blakey on Tour")