Getting your first book published is always a thrill for the author, though it can take work to get there. We invited Ren Warom, author of recently published SF novel Escapology,* to write about what it is actually like to get a debut novel to publication. Here’s what she said:
It’s pretty common that your so-called debut is not your first novel. Hole in one authors are rare birds, the rest of us are birdies, or eagles, or double eagles or much, much worse. Golfing metaphors notwithstanding there, I’m sure you get the drift. I’m a birdie, or a bogey. I may have snagged an agent with my first novel (though if we’re being technical it was my third and a half) but it failed to sell, and thereafter we find my birdie novel: Escapology.
I was thirty five thousand words into the sequel of the novel that did not sell when my lovely (and very wise) agent, Jen Udden, gently suggested I start something new just in case. I was resistant to say the least, but I knew the score, so I took her advice and pounded out some synopses of possible projects with a sinking heart.
One of those projects was a rather flimsy notion based on a daft short story I wrote in a fit of unmitigated glee after having a vision inspired by an internet advert. The story was called Escapology. I also called it my ‘cyberpunkafunkadunk’ story, because it was zany. Ludicrous. Pure freaking Gonzo. Accidental Cyberpunk tripping arse over heels into weird fiction. I was awful fond of that story as you can probably tell, and I loved the idea for the book it gave birth to.
Out of four or five possible synopses, Jen liked that one too, and another one for a cyberweird-ish duology based on yet another crazy story, but I didn’t have the stamina to write another first book of a series (Escapology was originally a standalone), so I made the decision to dive in to Escapology (and that’s a pun––if you read the book you’ll find out why). More than anything, I wanted to have fun. To play. To make a bit of a mess. I didn’t want to be serious. To get attached.
Escapology came together over the course of a year like a bad sweater. Bits fell apart; holes appeared in what seemed to be well-knitted sleeves. I kept running out of yarn and having to use different colours, different types, and so the resulting sweater (Hades, these metaphors!) was a bright shout of slightly nonsensical entertainment. The kind of garish sweater you get for Christmas and secretly love (and oh but I did––my foolish, foolish heart.)
Funnily enough though, Escapology almost died before it was born when I hit a major snag (more punning, this is just a saga now): Jen did not dig the first draft. At all. I didn’t dig her suggestions for changes at all either, but her suggestion that change was necessary was one hundred percent accurate, so I sucked it up, dug in deep and looked hard and got back to her with enough change to please us both. Benefits of having a good agent, y’all.
I had a deadline to complete those changes, which felt right, like proper work, and the draft arising from those couple of months of hard graft was the winner. We went out on sub with it on Feb 27th 2015 and accepted a two book offer from Titan just over two months later (so much for a standalone eh?) Compared to the slog and sadness of my first book it was joyful madness. Utter freaking Gonzo insanity from story to book to deal, and all of it from a vision gifted by an advert.
Talk about Cyberpunk…I feel like I’m living it.
Ren Warom lives in the West Midlands of the UK with her three children, innumerable cats, a very friendly corn snake, and far, far too many books.
Escapology is published by Titan Books in June 2016.
ISBN:9781785650918 | paperback & eBook | 448 pp | £7.99
*Set in a dystopian future the book follows Shock Pao a ‘Fail’ in the real world, and an accomplished hacker and a thief in the virtual world known as the ‘Slip’. When Pao accepts a job from his ex to take down a vicious crime lord he can not possibly imagine that it will be his most impossible and illegal assignment yet..
