That’s right, people – I’ve been on the front line of the entertainment industry for a full quarter of a century. Twenty-five years ago today my first book, Anthropology, was published in Italy. I was out of the trap and on my way. It’s been a psychedelic blizzard ever since, with highs, lows and in betweens. Longstanding readers will know that the lows have been piling up for the last few years – I’m passing this momentous milestone with my first eight books out of circulation in my homeland thanks to *checks notes* accounting irregularities at the publishing house. [I won’t return to that unfortunate business in detail today, but if you’re after an update, it’s as raw as ever – the case is not closed, and I’m still as angry about those people as Rupert Grint is about having to pay his fair share of income tax.]

It’s been over four years since Sour Grapes came out, but I’ve not been idle. I had the idea of marking this anniversary with an annotated compendium of my three story collections, and got started on it in the middle of 2022 with the aim of getting it ready for this year. To my amazement, I made it. Get a load of this:

 

[Since you ask, Tunnel of Love is a nod to the Fun Boy Three single that I bought from Woolworth’s in Tiverton in 1983.] Frustratingly, though, we’ve hit a snag. A publisher came on board last year, telling me they were up for putting it out in 2025. Months went by with no further news, and when their silence started to become ominous I chased them up, at which point they told me they’d decided that the book was too long and they couldn’t afford the paper. Oh.

Maybe this is the full story – times are really tough for small presses – or maybe they also had cold feet about the content of the book. I don’t know, and I’m not going to press them; I would rather move on with a minimum of hard feelings. The problem may stem from the notes in the omnibus amounting to a kind of memoir in which I tell stories about the stories, as well as going into the books’ publication histories. It is, I hope, a light and enjoyable read, but anecdotes about my dealings with publishers were inescapable if I was to do this properly, and the picture it paints of some of the characters in and around the book trade is not wholly flattering. I know from experience that the biz is pathologically inward-looking and wretchedly cautious (often to the point of coming across as a shower of snivelling cowards), so finding a home for this book was always going to be a struggle. I can’t see a big house touching it with a barge pole, so its only hope is to be taken on by a pugilistic independent publisher. If you happen to be a pugilistic independent publisher who digs what I do and can afford the paper, feel free to get in touch.

If no pugilistic publisher is forthcoming I’ll have to weigh up my options. I’m hoping it won’t become a Great Lost Book. Even if you already have the story collections there’s a ton of new material in there (60,000+ words), so it counts as the 11th instalment of the Dan Rhodes franchise and will consequently be an essential purchase for everybody, if and when it does finally appear. I would have preferred this update to have trumpeted a release date, but what can you do? I don’t know how all this is going to unfold, but I’ll keep you posted on any major developments. In the meantime, stay optimistic and save up your pocket money just in case…

Thanks for tuning in.