Today G.R. Matthews stops over at the Hive for a guest post!

He tells us all about his journey from struggling to finish one whole book, to succeeding at getting a traditional publishing deal.

So without further ado, we’ll let him take over the keyboard:

Reading. That’s what started it all. 

Books from the library when I was a teenager – luckily, my village in Wiltshire (UK) had a well-stocked one that was even featured on a popular children’s TV show (how’s that for fame?). Once I had a little money from the Saturday job, I started to buy books from the popular chain store that just happened to be on my walk from college to the bus station.

RPGs. It started there too. Introduced to AD&D by some friends, I fell in love with the imagination and stories of monsters, evil characters and dungeon crawls. I wrote some modules/games for us to play and ran a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles campaign for my brother and friend for a year or two. That was fun because I generally made it up on the spot with only a vague idea where the story was going, but it worked. A Sunday club in the local town where I created characters including an Elven Magician with an irrational fear of mushrooms – he had a staff of Featherfall, I recall, and completely missed the fact that it had been disenchanted in a recent battle… the jump from the rooftop to escape the thieves chasing him didn’t kill him. Not quite.

That’s where it started.

About 12 years ago, after starting and failing to get any piece of writing past chapter three, I made a decision. I needed to go back to school. I needed to learn what I was doing; the right and the wrong.

So, the first course I took was an introduction to Creative Writing with the Open University. Which then developed into a Diploma in Creative Writing over the next three years when I took the follow-up, more advanced courses. I see a fair number of authors stating you don’t need to study creative writing to be an author, and you don’t. I needed to do something to kick-start the process, to get the right habits, to feel confidence. Everyone’s different.

During the course, I learned the most important aspect of creative writing, the trick that few understand, that is hidden away like the secret of sawing a person in half (in the non-murdering way) by the magic circle, and yet everyone knows. It is also the one thing that everyone finds the hardest. You just have to write – no excuses, no procrastination (yeah, right), and get on with it. The more you write, the better you get at writing, or the very least, the more writing you’ve done.

My final project, my last piece of writing for the Diploma, was going to be a sweeping fantasy epic based in Ancient China – which would combine my love of martial arts films and fantasy, but wiser heads (my tutor) pointed out that the 3,000 word limit probably wasn’t enough to do it justice.

They were right, it took around 300,000 words to tell that story – and on the way dragons, animal spirits, travel across the planes of existence, unparalleled fighters, and a white sword whose merest touch was death, all sprang into existence.

And I was working at the time, in a reasonably high pressure job – but I needed to write. So, I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. One month, fifty thousand words – easy. Not. I was shattered by the end, but I did have most of a book done which became The Stone Road.

There was a second blessing in all of this, which made it possible. During a Christmas evening out with work colleagues, including the BOSS, we got to talking about what we would be doing if we didn’t have our current roles; what was our dream job? I said writer, as did the BOSS – and we ended up writing both of our Self-published books at the same time. He’s now off completing a Phd in Speculative Fiction (he is a genius) and I’m writing book number… um… thirteen?

Clearly, I took the self-publishing route first. I published the Forbidden List trilogy (fantasy) and four books in the Corin Hayes series (scifi), along with some short stories. So far, so good. I enjoyed writing for me – the stories I wanted to read and to tell. They made me happy, but it would be fair to say they mostly drowned in the ocean of self-published books – peaking early, taking a last breath, and sinking below the waves. I entered SPFBO One (the forgotten one), the pilot which grew into the giant it is now, got a great review from Sarah Chorn (Bookwormblues), and didn’t make the final.

During all this, at BristolCon in 2017 or so, I gave a copy of Silent City (the first book of the Corin Hayes series) to someone working behind the Grimbold Books stand and who ran a review blog. This is important. We’ll come back to this.

I wanted to take another step, something to change my fortunes that did not involve robbing a bank (I would not make a good bank robber). I also dreamed of seeing my books on the shelf in a bookshop and Self-publishing offered little chance of that (at the time, I’m aware things are changing, slowly). To do that the assumed wisdom is to find an agent to represent you and go from there.

To do that you needed a book which would grab their attention, make you marketable, and you have to go through the hell that is the query process.

Decision made. I started writing. No. Actually I started planning a book. My journal, a habit picked up during my Creative Writing course, became full of ideas, characters, places, a world and a magic system. Then I started writing with an actual plan – not pantsing most of it as I had in the past.

The first book was titled Sword-Master (then retitled “Rivers of Song and Shadow”) and it was set in the Six Kingdoms, the land of different cultures, Empires, tribes, clans, trade, geology, weather patterns. Once complete, I wrote a synopsis (hell on earth), and a query letter (which didn’t change too much as time moved on). Off it went (10K, Synopsis, and letter) to agents in the UK and USA. It came back from a few with lovely rejections – It isn’t quite right for us, we wish you luck in the future – and one evening a full request appeared in my email!

Holy shit!

This is it. A full request! They’re bound to read it, be bowled over, and offer representation. Nothing can go wrong.

Except, this is publishing. It didn’t go totally wrong, in fact, it was a beginning (and we’ll come back to this too). The agent in question wrote a page or two of thoughts; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Recommendations too – what to work on with a story.

Book two. First person narrative this time. Grimmer. A tale of revenge and murder set in one of the Six Kingdoms. Synopsis, letter, 10K. Rejections. The agent that asked for the full MS of book one, rejected book two also with a shorter letter but some thoughts and ideas.

Book three. Well, not actually that easy.

I started book three, typing away, and heard about an open call by Rebellion on twitter. A friend got in touch and said are you going to pitch? What’s the harm, I thought. Though I was on holiday at the time we did have access to WiFi and I had my laptop.

I threw three pitches in. Three books I had written and done. The two above, plus one that I described as the “A-TEAM vs World of Warcraft”. I let them sit there and then, on a whim, pitched the book I was just about 10,000 words into.

I got a nibble. An expression of interest. Not for the books I’d written, but the one I was still writing… shit. I told them I was only in draft one, told them it was rough, told them it wasn’t finished. We don’t care, they said. Send us what you have along with a synopsis.

Now I have to write a synopsis. Bugger. I got in touch with Adrian Selby, someone I’d met a few times at BristolCon, got on well with, and knew to be a kind gentleman. He offered some advice, read the synopsis over, and suggested some changes. I did all those and sent it off.

Now, on the off chance they want the full book, I’d better get it written. Queue months, three of them, writing hard – thankfully I had a plan! From 10K to 160K in three and a bit months to get draft one done. And in the middle of those three months I got the email from the publisher – can we have the rest?

Working, writing, writing, working. I was shattered.

I’m not finished! Give me a month, please, and you can have “Draft One”. It’ll be rough, untidy, full of errors.

We don’t care, just send it as soon as you’ve finished it.

Write. Write. Write.

Sent. Now I can relax a bit. Then I can start editing it, improving it. Working out the kinks and problems. My trusted beta reader can have it and offer suggestions.

And then, sat in a Game Cafe on work team-building afternoon, I got the email from the publishers. We like it. We love it. We want to publish “Seven Deaths of an Empire”. Do you have an agent?

No. No, I don’t. Give me a few days.

10k, query noting I had an offer of publication, and synopsis went off to the agent (Jamie Cowen) who had taken the full MS of that first book (told you we’d come back to that). He replied that he would need to read it first, the 10k, and make sure it was something he felt suited him, and a few days later he replied it was and here’s the contract of representation.

And the editor (Kate Coe – Rebellion/Solaris) got in touch too. She said you might not remember, but years ago, at BristolCon, you gave me a copy of Silent City so I knew you could write. See, we came back to that too.

Cue edits, a three page document of thoughts and suggestions, changes (though not many it turned out), discussion of cover, the addition of glossary, a map (and another map which I drew), a lot of learning on my part and finally, near two years later, publication day and my book on the shelves of bookshops.

A lot of hard work, and a bit of luck. It always takes a little luck to get anywhere, to do anything. Right place, right time, right people. 95% of it all was hard work – nearly a million words written – to get to this point. 5% was luck and not giving up, taking chances.

What happens now? More hard work, more little bits of luck, and more books on the shelf – I can only hope!

G. R. Matthews began reading in the cot. His mother, at her wits end with the constant noise and unceasing activity, would plop him down on the soft mattress with an encyclopaedia full of pictures then quietly slip from the room. Growing up, he spent Sunday afternoons on the sofa watching westerns and Bond movies after suffering the dual horror of the sounds of ABBA and the hoover (Vacuum cleaner) drifting up the stairs to wake him in the morning. When not watching the six-gun heroes or spies being out-acted by their own eyebrows he devoured books like a hungry wolf in the dead of winter. Beginning with Patrick Moore and Arthur C Clarke he soon moved on to Isaac Asimov. However, one wet afternoon in a book shop in his hometown, not far from the standing stones of Avebury, he picked up the Pawn of Prophecy and started to read – and soon Sci-Fi gave way to Fantasy.
You can follow him on twitter @G_R_Matthews or visit his website.

We already have an author spotlight, and a review up, which you can check out by clicking on the links.