It was a very difficult job trying to catch
Murphy or O Grady on the telephone. I didn’t
want to pester them so I would call every Wednesday afternoon, unless the
secretary gave me a specific time that she knew they would be in. With speaking to the secretary so regularly
we established a sort of rapport and she became friendly toward me. One day I telephoned and she was able to tell
me that they not only had received the complete full manuscript for the first novel but that Savage
had read it and, “Was rolling around the floor laughing while holding his tummy.” That was good enough for me, they had seen it
and liked it all I had to do now was convert that into a publishing deal. The Manchester United deal was chugging forward
at a snail’s pace, somehow or other I felt that these publishers were far more
important and advanced than Murphy, the gay sauna manager, so I treated them
with respect and kid gloves.
I would hate you to think that I would sit down
and produce a book in two weeks simply by pulling stories out of fresh air. Apart from the years of dedication and
practise, not to mention the rejections, there is the research element that
takes up quite a lot of time. I mention
this now because I do remember specific research that I carried out for my
third project. Sometimes you get things
so right it’s terribly exciting. In my
first book I had invented a machine called VAMPT, a Voice Activated Multidialectal
Phone Tap, which would be an automatic telephone listening device, monitoring thousands
of telephone calls and only activated when key trigger words were used. A couple of years later to read that these machines
were being developed and used by the security services really cheered me up, showed
me that I was on the ball, so to speak.
Irene watched a soap opera called Emmerdale, I
couldn’t stand the programme, however rather than sit for thirty minutes complaining
about the pathetic acting and the ridiculous storylines, I began to watch, but
with my writers head on. There was a family
in the show called The Dingle family. They
were mainly pig farmers, but the suggestion was that although lovable rogues
they lived just on the wrong side of the law.
I then noticed that the television company had produced a separate video
that had the Dingle family travel to Australia to visit relatives. This wasn’t mentioned on the main television
show and it got me thinking. Using my
video to video machine I began to collect footage of the Dingle family and
slowly a story began to build up.
As they were pig farmers I needed to carry out
some research on pig farming. I had experience
of pigs been reared, from my time on the farms in Ireland, but I needed something
specific to focus on, something that might provide one thread of the storyline,
like a rare pig disease or breeding problem.
When you take six books on pig breeding and pig farming out of your
local library you don’t half get some funny looks, but I suppose some of us are
accustomed to funny looks. I got home
and began to read. Admittedly some of
the books were terribly heavy going and they probably got no more than me
looking at the pictures and diagrams, but one book was nice and simple and encouraged
people to read. Then I came across one
important little detail.
It was a story about the pig breed known as Cumberland
pigs from which the famous Cumberland sausages were made. The last, pure bred, Cumberland pig was
called Sally and her owner wouldn’t put her down, but Sally died and rather
than dispose of the body he put it in his freezer. The story then went on to ask that as the
line of pure Cumberland pigs had effectively died out, how long would it be before
European bureaucrats would step in and stop people from selling products called
Cumberland Sausage? The pig breeders had
taken the two breeds closest to Cumberland and bred them together calling the
product Cumberland, but of course it wasn’t pure. Now you might be sat sitting there thinking,
so bloody what, well, what I wanted to do was give you a little insight into
how a writers mind works.
Think Jurassic Park, I know, I sort of stole
the story from Michael Crichton, he wrote the book, Steven Spielberg helped convert
it into a movie. So I decided that
government scientists would occupy the farm next door to the Dingles where they
were carrying out top secret experiments.
A team of genetic scientists were cloning pure Cumberland pigs from poor
old Sally’s remains in the freezer. This
now sets out one area where you have to complete some research on genetics so
that you can pretend that you know what you are talking about. I also wanted then to be next to a secret military
installation so thought that I could suggest they were close to the Ballistic Missile
Early Warning Station and Space Surveillance Service at RAF Fylingdales which
luckily for me was situated in Yorkshire, as was the fictitious soap opera Emmerdale.
As I began to research Fylingdales I came
across Buckminster Fullerenes. I knew
you would immediately get the connection, because it is so obvious. As everyone knows a Buckminsterfullerene is a
spherical fullerene molecule which has a cage like structure of twenty hexagons
and twelve pentagons, resembling a soccer ball, or as we call them, the big
golf ball things at Fylingdales. Now get
the girl of the Dingle family, Mandy, to start a relationship with an RAF cook
on Fylingdales, who now arranges for them to collect the slops for their pigs. The cook wants to have a career in the media
and has joined the camps amateur dramatic group.
Now add in a badger set, which a local
television news crew are monitoring, because they expect badger baiters to turn
up, and the opportunities for mirth and mayhem are endless. Zak, the head of the family finds restricted documents
in the slops, doesn’t realise that it is a telephone book, and tries to sell it
to the Russians. The guy who owns the farm
next door is gay and falls for Zaks son, who is appropriately named ‘Butch.’ To start off researching dry old books about
pig breeding and to end up with an RAF cook singing, “I am the very Model of a Modern
Major-General,” on top of a badger set, at midnight, while Russian spies and British
research scientists are drinking huge amounts of Zak’s mind blowing home brew
is some journey, I can tell you. In fact
it got me so excited I sat down and wrote the book. I hadn’t approached anyone or asked
permission I was just so excited with the story, I had to write it.
It came out quite well and I enjoyed not just
writing it but researching the various elements that somehow or other came together
and made the story. But I had a problem,
I now had fourteen books that would form one hell of a deal and I knew that I
really needed someone to represent me because if the truth be told, I would
very soon be out of my depth. I knew I
wanted to have a simple and honest approach to it all but I also knew that
publishing was full of sharks. So I went
to the toilet, well; that’s where all my rejection letters were, plastered all
over the walls. I went through each
letter some of which were so bland and un-personal they were embarrassing. I ended up with a list of literary agents who
had actually taken time to reply to me, only problem is that the list was two
people long.
One was an agent at Peters, Frazer and Dunlop
and the other was a fellow called Jeffrey Simmons. I constructed a letter to both of them explaining
that I was about to close three contracts, covering fourteen celebrity book
deals, would they be interested in representing me. I didn’t say who the books were for or give
any indication of the deals. I said that
I would telephone them the following week to find out if they thought we could
work together. Peters, Frazer and Dunlop
were a huge firm, still are, whereas Jeffrey Simmons was a one man show. I rang Peters, Frazer and Dunlop first and
asked to be put through to the agent I had selected. One of the thoughts that goes through your
head, well; my head at least, was what happens if they both say yes? I couldn’t believe it when I heard the agent
say to the secretary, “Tell him I’m not in.”
It certainly took the legs out from under me.
I now had my final chance and telephoned Jeffrey
Simmons. He answered the telephone and
we began to chat. Jeffrey then referred
to my letter and asked me directly who these ‘celebrities’ were. “Manchester United, Lily Savage and Emmerdale
farm on the television,” I said, which brought about a slight silent pause. I know that I had mentioned in the letter
that Carol Anne Duffy had recommended me to her literary agent, in the hope
that it would add some credibility to my cause.
“Okay,” said Jeffrey, after a good few moments of giving it some thought.
“I am prepared to take you on as a client, I will represent you.” Well; I had done it, I had secured the services
of a literary agent, I could sit back and concentrate on my writing, he could
do all the negotiating, and boy would there be some negotiating, for as I hope
you might have expected, I had my eye on a new client, it was going to be so
nice to phone them and when they asked about money say, “Oh, my agent will sort out the details.”
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