The book evolves and yet we stay the same

As a novelist I face two distinct questions on an almost daily basis: are authors still trapped in the hands of publishers and publicity and can technology do anything to help them here?

Having been through the eBook revolution and seen its problems at first hand I will be quick to say that a book is not an eBook. Of course it shouldn't be that way. A book is a book whether you write it on paper or use chisels and marble tablets, the medium should have no impact on the delivery but that is the theory and has nothing to do with the reality.

The reality is that we have been with books in their current format for a long time and the only way we are going to give paper up and whole-heartedly embrace a digital format in a way that will create an iPod-like revolution in books is when (and only when) the digital experience is so seamless that, like in the iPod (or an MP3), we do not keep being reminded of the medium.

As yet there has never really been an eBook best-seller and yet, theoretically, there should be. There are over 350 million with computers who can make purchasing decisions and should just 10% of them reach out, click, and spend a few dollars downloading and enjoying an eBook we will have made internet and publishing history.

It has not happened because while books evolve in terms of what form and format they can be offered in, we stay the same in our expectations of experience and familiarity. When we read fiction we expect a level of comfort and ease of access that is firmly wrapped around our fondness for books and reading. Screens and flywheels do not yet engender the same feeling.

When I woke up I saw the morning

There is a certain degree of freedom here in terms of what I write and how that is not constrained by the need to stay within the remits of the characters whose inner worlds I explore on my site: http://www.fantasynovel.co.uk/


First a few practical questions (or rather answers) because I know you will ask. This blog is part of my online publicity campaign for my Fantasy Fiction novel, The Shade, which took me two weeks and an entire lifetime to write and which I have now self-published and I am selling through my website.

It is also the place where I will let my hair down, share writing information with you and answer questions.

You will think that the titles of my listings are quirky and you are right. One advantage of fantasy fiction is that it challenges the way we see the world, much as modern art does. By safely 'hiding' behind the 'fantasy fiction' label it manages to immediately take us into a mode of suspense of disbelief and present us with settings which crystalise all that is real in our world.

Is it moral to kill? Can power truly corrupt? Does everything have to have a price? These are questions which Fantasy Fiction answers best. It also entertains. Gives us a laugh. Occasionally makes us horny (well, it is the place for ethereal women) and teaches us the essense of heroism.

So, my title? Way to often we wake up and slip into the day. We never stop to think that the morning itself is a kind of miracle. We have survived intact through a night of darkness when our brain has gone offline and the part of us we have scant control over has taken over our paralysed body.

The morning I saw when I woke up was crisp, fresh and relevant. It was full of promise and rife with opportnity. In the shower, with the hot water cascading over me I felt that it also allowed me to feel part of a nebulous world that stretched beyond my sense and made me feel that somehow I had a place in the world, that I was contributing something worthwhile, that I was a child of the universe just like everyone else.

The morning looked back and sensed my presence.

As The Slinger would say: "To see we do not need eyes. We need vision."