Signed, sealed and delivered.

This is the first blog post since something fantastic happened. The second part of the Morocco trip will come up in a few days.

Yesterday the signed contract appeared thanks to the postman. I’m now signed up with Inspired Quill, an excellent new publishing house in the UK. Established this year, they are providing a platform for new authors to establish themselves in the industry as well as training and information on other related areas, such as marketing and online commerce. I’ve been really impressed with them so far. They’re in regular contact via email and Skype, and I feel like I’m being handled with a great deal of attention. It’s all I could ask for from a publisher. As a side note; according to their Twitter account, they’re currently open for submissions and are looking for bloggers, so if you’re reading this and have a manuscript handy or feel like helping them with their online outlets, then give the website a look.

It all came about from a chance meeting on the website Litopia. Litopia has a weekly live radio show called Litopia After Dark, along with an accompanying chatroom. It was that chatroom where I got talking to Sara-Jayne, the owner of Inspired Quill. After an enjoyable conversation she encouraged me to send in a submission. After reading through their mission statement and some of the interviews done about the company, I was really hoping they’d like my work. Fast forward a couple of months and here we are, ready to progress on to next year and a planned summer release. I’m really excited about how it’s all going to unfold. Writing as a career is something I’ve always dreamed of, but it felt like something done by other people.

When the idea for Queen of the World came up it was around 2007. Before I ever considered trying to write the novel – huge and daunting as it was, with a potential word length which made me cringe – I took up a position in Cork, Ireland with Blizzard Entertainment, where I worked for the next two years. Writing was still a part of my life but only as shorter work and bits and pieces for my ‘portfolio’. Queen of the World rattled around in my head, and various scenes and characters fermented and grew. I didn't write them, though. I was too involved in my career as part of one of the biggest video game producers in the world. I actually went to the head of Blizzard Europe’s customer service department for a meeting about how to get involved with their Creative Development team. I wanted to write for them. I wanted to write quests, stories and flavour text. I wanted to help create for the world of Azeroth, with its richly detailed history and memorable characters.

“So do you have any of your work available? Have you been published? What can you present to showcase your work?”

I didn’t think the answer ‘I have a DeviantArt page and some poems!’ would be a great comeback. I listened as he explained that the company, as huge and successful as it is, gets to pick and choose who works for it creatively. He said it would be a good idea to build up a library of work and to become successful in the literary world on my own, and then come back to them later when I could properly present myself. So off I went back to my desk, carried on working, and wondered what to do. I worked forty hours a week. I didn’t have any publishing credits. And Queen of the World was just too big, too much effort along with all the other matters in my life which needed my attention.

I left Blizzard in 2010. My girlfriend and I went to Vietnam to live and work for six months. During the trip we bought a pair of Suzuki GN125’s and rode down from Hanoi to Hue. We worked and drank and lived in shitty little apartments and generally had a blast. One of the main reasons for me to leave my solid job and dick around in South East Asia was to write Queen of the World. Only it didn’t work out that way. I was now working six days a week, more than at Blizzard. I was dealing with culture shock and constant budget balancing for the trip. Over those six months I managed 62,000 words which I didn’t think were very good. I started to doubt whether I could even write the damned thing, let alone write something worth publishing.

On the way back to Europe we landed in Paris for a few days. I walked barefoot on a tour of the sights, due to my shoes being ruined in Bangkok (A story for another day). As we got out of a taxi taking us to the airport my rucksack was stolen. In it contained my walkman, some expensive headphones, my pet stuffed monkey and my laptop. The laptop containing the manuscript. All I had was an old backup on my Hotmail account. I was down to 38,000 words.

I came back to Norway after the journey was all done. My girlfriend, who along the way had suffered the misfortune of becoming my fiancée, took me to her family cabin on the coast. There was no TV, evening-only internet connection, and no towns within an hour’s boat journey. I had a seat by a window overlooking the great scenery. I had a borrowed laptop. And I had a lot of free time.

So I wrote. I wrote every morning for the next nine weeks. I wrote up to 4,000 words a day. And at the end of it all I finally had my first draft. I edited it and redrafted it and edited it again. I had some friends read it to give feedback. I changed the ending. I cut some scenes. And in the end I was finally ready to start looking into submissions.

And now here we are. I’m chuffed to bits, looking forward to the year ahead and ready to make Queen of the World the best book it can be with the help of Inspired Quill. Here’s to proving that with enough effort, you can do the things which seem to be done by other people.