'The Powers that be' trilogy by M.J.Ryder
So here it is at last, my first book. Well books to be precise – a lot of my early preparation time was spent painstakingly typesetting the entire thing by hand so I could squeeze the whole trilogy into a single 832 page tome.
It’s strange looking back at the work that’s gone into writing these books. I remember the day just after my 18th birthday when I was walking home from 6th form one afternoon and was quite literally struck with a ‘bolt from the blue’ telling me to start writing. Seven years later, and here it is, my finished work.
If I’m honest the books haven’t changed that much in the last three years or so as the trilogy was actually finished before I started on my English degree at Brunel. These books are then in a way, my apprenticeship as a writer – a biography if you will, of my early days starting out.
I guess in a way this is why I’m so apprehensive about people reading them. While I know in my heart, there’s some pretty cool stuff (in the second book especially), I also know every single criticism anyone will ever lay at the door of the words I’ve committed to print.
But then, that’s the great ‘double edged sword’ of being a self-published author: every single word you read has been put to print by me, and me alone. If you find a typo (which I hope you won’t!), it will be a typo by me. If you find a grammatical error (again, I hope you won’t!) it will be an error by me. Spacing too, has been solely the work of my tired hand, with countless hours spent sitting up late at night systematically going through 250,000+ words to check spacing, indents and chapter headings.
If you knew the amount of times I’ve been through the thing checking errors I’d come across on an off-chance, or changing grammatical errors I wasn’t aware of at the time, you’d probably think I was mad to keep on going the way I have. But then, maybe I am…
A great man once said:
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
While I agree with Mr Churchill completely in his analysis of the world of the writer, I must point out the one small flaw with his argument in my own particular case…
You see in my case the monster still lives on. The monster still exists because now I’ve read a few hundred books as well as a degree in English with Creative Writing, I’m now working on a second book – a follow-up to the adventures of Callum and co, bringing back to life some of the adversaries I hope you all come to enjoy in my first literary outing. This new book is called The Darkest Hour. I’m 48,000 words in, and I can tell you now, it’s more of a monster to me now than The Powers that be ever was.
More updates of course, as and when I have them.
Thank you for listening, and more importantly still, thank you for all your kind words of support and encouragement!
Until next time,
M.J.Ryder
For an expanded version of all my blogs, please visit my website www.mjryder.net/blog.html
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