I write history books!

It must have been back in 1942 when I was 9 years old that I walked past a newsagent’s shop and saw a boys’ magazine, “The Wizard”. It had a colored picture of a soccer player shooting a penalty on the cover and I just had to have it. I nagged my mother until she gave me the money to buy a copy. At home, I opened it and stumbled into a new world – an unexplored world of adventure and sports. It was a place I’d never been in. All I seemed to hear those days were snippets about sport on the radio when we gathered around to listen to the news of the war that was raging in Europe.

I read a story about a soccer player who out-dribbled the other team and scored a goal. Boy was I  impressed! I read another about a boxer, Rockfist Rogan, who was not only a champion boxer, but was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force and flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. That really turned me on. I knew all about Spitfires and I had a picture of Joe Louis the world heavyweight champion pinned on the back of my bedroom door. I was sold. The magazine came out every 2 weeks and once my mother saw me actually reading, she subscribed for me.

Then I read a story about “Wilson the Great”. The world’s greatest athlete. Wilson, who spun his own clothes, ran barefoot, and lived on nuts and beans in a cave, ran the world’s first 3-minute mile in 1942. He outran and out-swam everyone else. He broke every world record. No one could match him. He became my idol. My mind was made up. I was going to be another Wilson. I started exercising in secret, following Wilson’s advice when he dropped hints in his stories. 

While all this was going on, I was growing older. 9 became 10 and then 11 then 12 and my reading habits changed. While Wilson remained my main hero, new names were emerging as the war progressed. Biggles, The Red Baron, Douglas Bader, Eisenhower, and others.

Something new happened at school too. One day the teacher told us to write an essay about a sport of our choice. So I wrote a short story about the goalie in a soccer match who stands daydreaming and doesn’t notice the opponent’s men charging towards his own goal. She loved it. The next week we were asked to write about an incident in the war. I based my story on my hero Rockfist Rogan who not only shot down 6 enemy planes one morning, landed safely at his base, and then dashed off to a boxing match and knocked out his opponent in the second round.

Teacher couldn’t get enough! Slowly I found myself exchanging physical training hours to poring over exercise books with blunt wooden pencils and writing stories. One day the teacher told us to write an article about the environment and I wrote about the appearance of ‘clean’ water in bottles. She thought it was great and told me to submit it to a newspaper. I did. They published it and sent me a check. It was all too easy.

I still received The Wizard every week but most times I was too busy writing to read its stories. I wrote articles on dozens of subjects. I sent them off to newspapers and magazines and laughed all the way to the bank with their checks in my hand. I also became an avid reader. I read whatever I could, the objective being to compare my writing to other writers’ efforts. Of course, I was usually the best.

School came to an end and I moved on to college. I enrolled in creative writing among other courses. In the evenings I wrote articles, short stories and became deeply involved in blogging. All paid well and I was happy. My bank manager was happy too. I moved to my own apartment and set it up to be the complete writer’s studio. Banks of electrical outlets for computers, printers, scanners, telephones. A comfortable, (but not too comfortable) chair with backrest and arms. Excellent lighting. Loads of fresh air. Hot and cold water dispenser. Coffee machine, place on the wide desktop for nuts and raisins, and other small ‘chewies’. I was set to go.

I worked on my psyche. I remember reading about John Grisham, the lawyer who became a popular writer. In an interview, he was asked, “What made you sit down and write a book?”

Grisham replied: “I didn’t sit down to write a book. I sat down to write a best seller.” 

And then one day I had a brainwave. It came to me early in the morning when I was not fully awake. I was going to write a book. An obvious next step in my writing career. I would write the book; it would take three or four or maybe six months writing. I would read it through a couple of times and then send it off to a publisher. Then I would sit back and watch my bank balance growing. No foreseen problems.

On a Monday morning, I sat down in front of my brand new computer, cracked my knuckles, loaded the software, and began writing my first bestseller. It didn’t open with the famous “it was a dark and stormy night” but it was close. And better. It was about the assassination of a leading terror figure. He lived in a Middle Eastern country and was busy invading neighboring countries, hanging people off lampposts, and generally becoming a domestic and international nuisance. Time for him to leave.

I wrote and wrote, sometimes for 8 or 10 hours a day. Some days less. Jane, a gorgeous woman, lived across the hallway and soon became as addictive as my book, but I pushed on amid the distractions and waning hours. She did a bit of proof-reading and searched for typos and made coffee. She did other things too. The word count was like the graph on the stock exchange, full of ups and downs but overall it crept up. At 80 thousand I took a week’s break and another at 100 thousand.  It was nearing 120 thousand when we visited a local book-fair. I met an agent who listened to the plot of my book and ended up inviting me to drop off a manuscript at her office.

So Jane and I printed and I rushed the work over to her. She called a week later and asked me to come in. She then raved over my work and explained my errors and suggested corrections.  I corrected. An awful, tiresome and exhausting job. Every correction caused another error hundreds of pages in the future or past pages. It was a nightmare. 8 months later it was done. I was a wreck. I could recite long excerpts by heart.

My manuscript was then given to another reader at the agency. She was ten years younger than the first reader and found mistakes that only the young find. It meant another 8 months at least. I resubmitted the book. A month later someone called to say they had found a publisher and the book was on the way. Jane and I celebrated.

Two days later they called again. “American forces invaded the country of your book last night. It’s now history. We will not be able to find another publisher. We suggest you write another book.” 

These days when people ask me what I write I tell them, “Oh, I write history books!”