Obituary: My Novel (May 2007-July 2008)

I had already written an interesting and incident-packed post for today but I’m putting it on hold for a couple of hours out of respect for an old friend of ours.

You might not be aware but this is a dark day in the Madeley calendar and, quite frankly, I don’t know how I’m going to cope.

Those of you who are regular readers might want to bow your heads at noon today in an act of remembrance for a friend that never stood a chance. I want you all to take a moment out of your busy lives to remember our old dear friend, ‘My Novel’.

My Novel was due to be published today. It was going to be a day of great celebration. Judy was going to go to the local bookshop and try to buy a copy of my book and get me to sign it. I was going to pose next to the bookshelf while Judy took snaps for the blog. I would have then come on here and encouraged you all to go out and buy it. It would have been the best £7.99 you would have spent all year.

Alas, it was never to be. Due to the buyout of one publisher by another, my book was cancelled. The cover was designed, the proofs read, and many of you were listed at the back in my acknowledgements. It’s still listed on Amazon. It just doesn’t exist in the real world. I think it’s every writer’s nightmare to have an ISBN number for a non-existent book. It’s much worse than never getting published. You can’t know how bad I’m feeling this morning.

My Novel came into this world on a wave of great optimism. People said that my political satire cheered them up enormously, that it was well written and as funny as hell. Others said ‘mehhh’ but it still found a publisher willing to publish its three hundred pages of artfully crafted nonsense. At noon today I’m going to give it a Viking funeral by burning a copy of the manuscript to commemorate its passing from the publishing world. As I watch it drift out into the middle of the lake in our back garden, I’ll probably shed a few tears as I blow my Nordic hunting horn to tell Stephen Fry to shoot the flaming arrow that will ignite all 90,000 words of my carefully written prose. And when I’m done, I’ll come back here and post something to mark a new phase of my life.

I’m not abandoning my hopes of becoming a writer. It’s just a bit harder to find the words this morning.

My Novel.
“You deserved better.”
(May 2007-July 2008)