Bootleg Boys hits the Kindle

Adventure Eddy might not have had any new adventures recently (well, not that you've read of, anyway) but he's still alive and well.

In fact, everybody's favorite ginger recently hit the Kindle. You can pick up his second adventure, Bootleg Boys, for less than a dollar.

And here's the good news (or the bad, depending on your perspective.) The response has been so positive it looks like the next chapter in the long-overdue Adventure Eddy saga will be hitting the stands at an accelerated rate.

Thanks for your support!

Bootleg Boys by Roland Hulme is available for Kindle from Amazon.com

Bootleg Boys review

I was incredibly excited today - Adventure Eddy's epic jaunt Bootleg Boys got its first review on Amazon!


Okay, I'll admit the wonderful Ms. Moreno, who wrote the lovely review, won a copy of Bootleg Boys in one of my bloggy competitions (at least, I seem to remember she did - I was terribly late at sending her a copy!) but it's still very much appreciated; and hopefully at least partly earnest!

Amanda doesn't just have a name which rhymes with 'panda' - she also Eats, Shoots and Leaves (please tell me somebody got that - my first stab at Panda humor.)


If you're in the market, check out her editing website Shooting Panda.

Getting it out there...

There's an old philosophy aspiring novelists should live by - don't give up on getting your book published until you've been rejected 100 times.

100 is a bit ambitious - but great writers like J.K. Rowling and Frederick Forsyth had to deal with several rejections before their bestsellers found homes. Why shouldn't the rest of us?

Anyway, I haven't even sent 'Bootleg Boys' out to a single agent.

I guess I've been scared of rejection.

Which I shouldn't be. After all, if Rowling got rejected, I shouldn't feel too bad about it. Besides, I've had some really good feedback about 'Bootleg Boys.' I read it myself recently and noticed the things that made it considerably better than my first attempt at a full length novel, 'Adventure Eddy.'

'Bootleg Boys' is character-driven - the actions and motivations of the characters drive the story. 'Adventure Eddy,' by comparison, was all plot and no heart. When I suffered from writer's block with 'Adventure Eddy,' it was because I couldn't think of a way to convince my characters to do what the plot required of them.

It was the opposite problem with 'Bootleg Boys.' Plot went out of the window as the book neared completion because Eddy, Lucy and his friends had needs, drives and desires of their own and didn't want to do what my plot plan expected them to. It was in letting them drive the story that I 'found my feet' and wrote something better that what had come before.

I might have found my feet writing 'Bootleg Boys,' but I haven't found a publisher.

But I shall!

Today, I've sent out 'Bootleg Boys' to an agent. I flirted with email submissions before, but this time I'm sending it out in printed format to real agents. Seeing my submission in print somehow makes the whole experience more tangible.

It's not going to be easy. Conservative estimates suggest that fewer than 1 in 500 first-time submissions get accepted by an agent (and even fewer ultimately go on to be published.)

But unless I put my work out there and risk rejection, I'll never know whether my destiny was to be an action/adventure novelist or a half-wit hack.

I know I can write. It's what I get paid to do each and every day. Surely somebody will see my ability eventually...

Eventually is the right word. Submitting novels is a TOUGH and LONG process. There are hundreds of agents out there, but most frown on 'multiple submissions.' Sending your book off to more than one of them at a time is an industry no-no. Considering that it takes them between four weeks and three months to get back to budding writers, the 'one at a time' routine is frustrating and time-consuming and means just a few rejections can add months to the time frame of getting your book in print.

But I've also learned that agents expect their authors to play ball - so not following their guidelines will most likely inspire a rejection even before they've considered your writing. Therefore, I'm going to do the 'right thing,' even if it's a long, slow process.

Because, like with my diet, as long as I'm making progress, that's the main thing...

Competition Winner!

Last month, I ran two competitions for a chance to win a signed copy of Adventure Eddy's 'Bootleg Boys.' And we have a winner!

Paisley Penguin got picked from a hat (actually, it was a coffee mug) and will be getting a copy of Bootleg Boys winged over to her as soon as I get her address!

This was fun. Maybe in the new year, I'll have more competitions (and offer prizes that are a little more exciting than a book written by me.)

Well done, Paisley!

And, of course, if you're so inclined, you can get your own copy of Bootleg Boys by following one of the incessant hot links I have littered this post with!

Bootleg Boys

by Roland Hulme

When it comes to doing business with bootleggers, Adventure Eddy soon discovers that breaking deals comes as naturally to them as breaking import regulations.

So when unscrupulous smuggler Joe Jenkins stiffs him as badly as he’s stiffed Customs & Excise, Eddy decides it’s time to take back what he’s owed.

But swindling a swindler isn’t as simple as it sounds – and the local police are getting increasingly suspicious.

Teaming up with a murderous ex-girlfriend, a scheming stripper and an underhanded attorney, Adventure Eddy embarks on his most ambitious exploit to date.

It’ll take daredevil driving, split-second timing and nerves of steel – but at the end of the day, that’s what being one of the Bootleg Boys is all about.

How to write a synopsis...

So I've been thinking about the problem of getting published.

I don't think it's an impossible proposition any more. As I've spent more time writing for a living, I've realised that the secret of getting published is quite simple. I just haven't managed to achieve it 'novel scale' yet.

Here's what I've learned you need to do:

1. Come up with a killer concept for a novel - one you can describe in a single sentence, yet hook people into wanting to learn more.
2. Write an engaging, fast-paced book that constantly challenges the main characters so the reader is compelled to turn the pages to find out what happens to them.
3. Get your book accepted by an agent, then a publisher.

Out of these three steps, the third is the most difficult.

Publishers and agents, you see, are simply deluged with manuscripts and submissions. If you've ever read some of the extracts on NaNoWriMo, you'll realise that most of these submissions are utterly, utterly crap. And contain vampires and werewolves (yawn.)

So to stand a chance, you need to come up with a submission package that hooks an agent's attention and inspires them to read further... and further... and keep that pressure going until they need to request your entire manuscript merely to satisfy their curiosity about 'what happens next.'

To do this, you need three things:

1. A kick-ass cover letter, that makes an agent think: "This person seems to have their head screwed on. Let me risk five minutes of my hectic schedule to examine their synopsis."
2. A fast-paced, compelling synopsis that tells your entire story, chapter-by-chapter, in ten pages or less.
3. Your first three chapters - and, baby, they'd better be good.

Now the first and the third part of this puzzle I think I'd had down reasonably well. I've got some ideas about writing that cover letter which I'll go into elsewhere.

The synopsis, on the other hand, always gave me problems.

The fact is, it's not easy to distill the essence of a book - maintaining the characters, twists and surprises - into less than ten sides of A4.

I have tried doing so, but it's tough. Not just because it sucks all the life and character out of a book, but because listing all fifty-of-so chapters (even in 140 word paragraphs) ends up covering twenty sheets of paper and adding up to 7,000 words.

So today I patented a new process.

I went chapter-by-chapter through the Bootleg Boys and I took one five-line chunk out of each chapter - the most exciting bit.

So, for example, I cut the following from Chapter Ten:

Miss Rogers smiled fractionally. The stern looking girl was very pretty when the corners of her mouth lifted up.

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t really going to shoot you.” She gave the crossbow a rattle playfully. “I don’t even think this thing’s real.”

Thunk!

A quivering arrow whizzed past Eddy’s ear, burying itself three inches into the wall.

From that, I 'continued the thought' and managed to write down the business of Chapter Ten in just three lines (well, it's three lines in Word.)

Eddy manages to convince the mysterious brunette, Lucy Rogers, that he is who he says he is. She claims to be Eddy’s brother’s ‘Office Manager’ who lives in the downstairs apartment. Reluctantly, she agrees to let Eddy move in.

I then deleted the original 'quote' and left just the three line snippet. Astonishingly, it managed to sum up the chapter much more concisely than I could have imagined.

By doing this with every chapter, I ended up with a chapter-by-chapter synopsis that fit onto seven pages and came it an a snippet above 2,000 words - making it match the criteria of a synopsis suitable for an agent.

In addition to that, though, my new synopsis strategy helped me:

1. Eliminate or consolidate boring chapters. If nothing worth quoting happened in that chapter, it was time for it to go. I shed ten chapters when I realised they were inconsequential.
2. Eliminate plot discrepancies or lose holes I'd missed by only looking at the story chapter-at-a-time instead of as a whole manuscript.

For what it's worth, I think I've got a decent synopsis now. Perhaps I'm on my way to being ready to submit it all to an agent!

If you've finished a novel and want to send it off to a publisher, try my method of creating a synopsis. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how helpful it is.

NaGeMyNoPuMo...

November is nearly upon as - and for many aspiring writers, that's the time for NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month.

I've been a participant for two years - getting a score the first year (with the Bootleg Boys) and then flunking out last time.

I have to admit, I'm not so sure about it this time around.

For a start, I've written 50,000 words this month on my as-yet-unfinished sexy-spy-extravaganza that contains so much sex and violence and dodgy one-liners that I would never let friends or relatives read it.

I'm not even finished with that one yet, and I'm expected to write another?

But I'm also aware that I need to do something... I've actually written a novel, Bootleg Boys, and have been so scared of rejection that I haven't even sent it off to a publisher - despite the fact that it's a million times better than Adventure Eddy and my one reviewer said he 'loved it' (apart from occasional rampant cheesiness.)

So this month, I'm starting National Getting My Novel Published Month.

I am going to get my manuscript in order and shop it to agents, to see if I can turn my Adventure Eddy dream into a reality.

And in the meantime?

Maybe I'll NaNoWriMo... If I have time... If work, wife, baby and (most importantly) inspiration let me.

Insert Random Aliteration Featuring the word 'Bootleg' Here

To mark the finish of the epic Bootleg Boys (the writing of it was epic - the book's not) I have decided to produce a brief Frequently Asked Questions fact sheet.

What exactly is the Bootleg Boys?

It's an adventure story! Or crime/adventure. Or something like that.

What's it all about, Alfie?

Did you know 250 lorries and vans cross the English channel every single day STUFFED with bootlegged beer, wine, spirits and cigarettes?

With taxes on beer, for example, being just one SEVENTH in France of what they are in England, there's a lot of money to be made smuggling it - and a lot of unscrupulous types trying to make a profit!

So that's the setting. Big lorries. Bootleg Beer and some unscrupulous types. But unlike previous stories, it's not Eddy who gets on the wrong side of one of these unscrupulous types this time around. They get on the wrong side of Eddy.

What follows is something VERY ROUGHLY like The Italian Job, except with beer instead of gold bricks.

Okay, okay. Adventure Eddy's been to Paris, New York, Germany and Cornwall. Where exactly does THIS story fit in with whatever 'Eddy' continuity there is?

Nice and simply. It's set straight after the last book, Adventure Eddy.

If you're into comic books, you'll have heard of the term 'reboot.' It's a bit like what EON films did in that last Bond movie, Casino Royale. You 're imagine' the origins of favourite characters.

That's what I did with Adventure Eddy - going right back to square one and explaining who Eddy was and how he earned the title Adventure Eddy. Bootleg Boys follows straight on from that - although it's a stand alone book and you don't need to have read 'Adventure Eddy' to understand it.

Wait a second! I thought Eddy lived in Oxford, not Winchester!

Eddy's been adventuring for almost fifteen years now! He's 'lived' in London, Plymouth, Tavistock AND Oxford. But in the reboot, he's moved to Winchester.

And who's Pranay Raj? Whatever happened to Angus Connelly?

Angus was Eddy's oldest and most loyal friend. He was also the dullest, dreariest character in the series. Eddy needs somebody to bounce ideas off, but who said that person can't have his own personality too? Streetwise, unscrupulous Pranay walked right onto the page, fully formed, and quickly booted Angus out of the picture. It's a bit like how Mary Jane Watson pushed Gwen Stacy CLEAN out of the picture in the old Spiderman comic books (no surprise, really. Mary Jane was a ginger and they always come out on top.)

Woah, woah, woah! In Adventure Eddy, his stonking great Firebird is clearly described as having 'pop up headlights' and a five litre engine. Now, suddenly, it's got a 6.6 litre and a four in the floor. How do you explain that?

Ian Fleming used to do it all the time. James Bond's beautiful Bentley would be one car in one book and morph mysteriously into another in the second.

It's a bit like how Felix Leiter, who had his arm and leg chewed off by a shark in Live and Let Die, magically regrew one limb per book and by the time The Man With The Golden Gun wheeled around, his only handicap was a hook for a hand.

It's called creative expression or something. 'Ret-conning,' as the comic masters have titled the phenomenon.

But yes, well spotted. Eddy's Firebird magically and mysteriously changes from a 'Knight Rider' style third-generation Pontiac Firebird into a 'Smokey and the Bandit' style second-generation Firebird during the gap between Adventure Eddy and Bootleg Boys.

But hang on! It still has a 'perspex book lid' and Pranay still refers to it as 'Knight Rider.' What gives?

Well, I know the car has morphed. You know the car has morphed. But nobody told the car.

So are you advocating skirting Britain's tough Customs and Excise regulations via Eddy's activities in Bootleg Boys?

No! not at all! In fact, read the book and you might just see it all as a twisted morality tale in which everybody gets their just deserts.

Will there be sex and violence?

Not really. My parents read might read it! But there's plenty of romance, a bloodthirsty quest for vengeance and enough perilous situations for even Eddy to get nervous.

And where can I read it?

Publication date is set for November 1st! Barring, of course, sudden and horrific realisation that it's crap. I'll even post a link when the time comes!

Bootlegged

Well, somehow or other, I managed to finish The Bootleg Boys.

It was the story I started during last year's Nanowrimo and I'd only got a few more thousand words needed to wrap it up - so I do so. In the end, however, it was like squeezing blood from a stone.

The 'hard' part, which is the climax of the bootlegging plot, actually came quite easily. The words flowed and I even came up with a neat little flourish I hadn't seen coming. But then the 'easy' bits? The wrap up chapters that deal with the inevitable aftermath of Eddy's exploits?

Every single word was a struggle.

But I kept on plugging along until I finished the story.

But instead of the triumphant little buzz I get when I finished writing something, I felt a bit flat. Like it wasn't right. I was unsatisfied with the way things wrapped up.

The only answer to this, of course, is to go back and reread the whole thing and see if the ending 'works' or not. But at the moment, with my head swimming with the characters and adventures I've just written about, I'm a little too invested.

It's very frustrating.

Stop the World - I need to pee!

"Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you." Lisa Alther.

The teetering brink of autumn constantly reminds me that time is screeching past.


It was around this time last year that I first returned to America, to a wonderful week spent with Tina's family. That climaxed in an early Thanksgiving and this year, it looks like we'll experience the same thing. Tina's parents are coming up at the end of the month for a family get-together.

This time, of course, we won't be 'just visiting.' We're here to stay.

Moving to America was one of my three 'things to do before I'm thirty.' And I've managed it. Hooray! I also managed to achieve my second ambition - to earn a living by writing. But the third - to get a book published - stays tantalisingly beyond my grasp.

The arrival of Autumn is a harsh reminder that time is running out. I've got barely four months to get myself published before I turn thirty. That's just not going to happen.

It's a bit of a disappointment, but writing has been firmly on the back burner for almost a year now.

Following on from our visit to America in 2006, I settled into writing big time - and got stuck into Nanowrimo, a month-long writing competition in which you aim to complete 50,000 words in less than 30 days.

I managed to achieve that target - just - with my Adventure Eddy story Bootleg Boys. But my writing sort of teetered out once Nanowrimo was over. Work and the move to America diverted my attention.

Which means that Bootleg Boys is still unfinished, languishing on my hard drive. The problem was the ending. Nothing quite 'fit.' I have about four different versions now and not one of them is the 'definitive one.'

The realisation that I haven't written anything significant for almost a year is not a comfortable one...

(Well, actually, I have written dozens of successful radio adverts, a smutty story published worldwide, some national advertising and marketing copy, an Internet article linked to by the Wall Street Journal Online and my articles on 'being ginger' got my mug on a BBC documentary)

...so I have decided to spend October finishing what I started.

Bootleg Boys will get finished, by hook or by crook. And it'll be good. In fact, it will be miles better than Adventure Eddy. It might not be good enough to get published - but it will be a step closer towards that goal.

And in November, when Nanowrimo comes around again, I will start off a 50,000 word adventure about something completely different.

But until then?

Adventure Eddy rides again.