That year I had an amazing mystical experience, and I wanted to write about that, about meditation, and about buddhism. And I wanted to develop the first person narrative style I'd used in Are You Boys Cyclists? What better than to write about going on a buddhist pilgrimage to Nepal, where the buddha was born, and India, where he attained enlightenment? But it didn't turn out like that!
When I finished the book, I sent it to every agent in the Writer's and Artist's Yearbook. No dice. Then I started sending it around the publishers until I reached the ones whose name began with E. Element Books. They said they wanted to publish it and asked for the usual bit of re-writing. Hurrah! But I was in the middle of writing In the Land of the Demon Masters and told Element I'd start doing the re-writes during my next summer holidays. After some correspondence with an editor at Element, I did the re-writes and after a wee while got a letter from them. I was a bit nervous when I got the letter, but strangely enough I wasn't too bothered when I opened it. It started: Dear John, I sorry to tell you .... there was a big stamp across it saying FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATOR. The publisher had gone belly up!!
Then I thought I had made a deal with a publisher in Glasgow last year after a friend of mine read it and liked it so much he wanted to sent it to them. I'm really not sure what happened there, but publishing is in such a ferment right now with the advent of ebooks .... anyway, it was very encouraging that someone else liked the book and it was a great night in the pub!
The Buddha And The Big Bad Wolf is a great title. People have told me it's funny. Yours on Kindle for only £1:71!
Just read it this weekend. Hard to describe what I got from this, but maybe a underside view of enlightenment and the effort needed to set it up.
ReplyDeleteSteve! Glad you managed to get through it. It's not your normal travel book, or religious book for that mattter, is it?
ReplyDeleteThe follow up book is TheBlissBook which is a bit easier on the mind!!
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