Book number 6 is The Book With No Name by Anonymous, published by lulu.com as a self published book and then later by Michael O'Mara Books. It's available from amazon in paperback and play.com in paperback
carry on to the bottom of the review for an EXCLUSIVE interview with the author
Now I'll be totally honest this book passed me by totally, Untill I read some reviews on amazon.co.uk, and any book which has a customer review with the words "It's fair to say that when my girlfriend gave me this as a present I wasn't best impressed. The plot suggests that everyone who reads the book ends up dead, so I thought she was trying to get rid of me in a particularly cowardly fashion." (comment by Neil Butler) deserves some attention,
At the time I bought this book I knew nothing of its past and it wasnt untill well after finishing both this and the next book -the eye of the moon by the elusive author Anonymous, that I found out that to begin with this book was a self published book using lulu.com, and from that the book managed to work its magic and get a full push from current publishers Michael O'Mara Books. but before all of this, The Book With No Name was written and the first chapter was release online to drum up interest, in the same way as Scott Siglers does with his current online audiobooks/podcast (www.scottsigler.com)
Now you know the back story -or as much of it as I know, its time to get on with the review. The book isnt centred around one individual character like most books, it allows you to follow a story from many angles, and while it could get confusing it doesnt, There is an group of characters though who form the main, part of the storyline along with some bit part players who help to make up the body count,
If you look at a book and wonder what its going to be like, seeing one thats called The Book With No Name and is written by Anonymous and on the back it tell's you that anyone who reads it is found dead soon after, how could you resist, its like being shown a big red button and being told no to press it.
Im not going to spoil the story for you by giving too much away about the plot lines and the story at large. One thing you will notice though as you read this book is its attention to detail, the place where the book is set -Santa Mondega it gives the feel of an old west gold rush town filled with modern people in 911's or on Harley Davidson's, who have no problems killing each other just to get to the bar of the tapioca -the local dive bar run by Sanchez
As a little bit of a special extra, I've been given an Exclusive interview with Anonymous, author of The Book With No Name,
OK first of I'd like to say how much I enjoyed your books, The residents of Santa Mondega kept me hooked and entertained in equal measure,
I've read about how you published the book with no name yourself through lulu.com could you explain, how you went from being a self published author to getting published by Michael O'Mara books ?
In a word "Luck". Self-publishing is extremely hard work. I released The Book With No Name via Lulu.com in August 2006. In the first month the book sold 38 copies. That might not sound like much, but I remember I was ecstatic at the time. A successful self-published book is one that sells over a hundred copies. Again, that probably doesn’t sound like much, but book stores generally won’t stock self-published books. Self-published books are expensive to produce so The Book With No Name was retailing at about £11.00. When you consider that most chart-topping books can be picked up for about £3.99, you can see why it’s difficult to sell many copies of a paperback priced at £11.00.
I worked pretty hard trying to drum up interest for the book on the internet. I tried about a hundred different ways of marketing and I made as many friends as I could on sites like Myspace. Sales of the book began to double each month and traditional publishers started to notice. A couple of publishers approached me to try and find out who I was and what my book was about, but no one was willing to take a risk on it. Until Michael O’Mara books picked it up.
Although I didn’t know it, a successful children’s author had spotted The Book With No Name on Amazon and recommended it to the Chief Editor at O’Mara. The editor downloaded a copy from Lulu.com and liked what he read. He then ordered a bunch of copies and handed them out to his colleagues at a meeting and insisted they all read it. This was initially met with some resistance because O’Mara don’t normally do fiction, but pretty soon, everyone was on board and they decided they wanted to publish the book. They tracked me down on the internet, and the rest, as they say, is history.
From what I've come to understand your book initially was wrote incrementally and released online, at what point did you decided to go for it and release it as a book?
In actuality I only ever posted the first chapter online for people to read. It went down well and I uploaded the whole thing on Lulu.com at the same time as I released the paperback version. Word spread around the internet pretty quickly that there was this cursed book causing the death of everyone who read it. The fact it was only available online made it even more mysterious.
while I'm not sure about the costs that you would have incurred by publishing the book yourself, would you advise other authors to go the same way as you did? and in this time of change for the way content is consumed by the public have you considered doing something online again like a fellow author Scott Sigler, (www.scottsigler.com) who also started off online with his audio versions of his books such as earthcore, and ancestor as well as others and then like you he also moved in to print,
Self-publishing is now a very affordable option. On Lulu.com it’s practically free to set up. All I had to do was pay for the copies I ordered for myself.
As for recommending it to other authors, that’s a tough call. If you just want to see your book in print or your name on the cover of a book then yes, go for it. However, if you’re looking at it as a way to break into traditional publishing as I did, then I recommend it only as a last resort. A lot of people see self-publishing as a sign that your book is not good enough to be published traditionally.
After I’d shifted my first thousand copies via Lulu, I emailed a respectable Literary Agent and asked if he would be interested in reading it and representing me. He told me in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't read it and also told me -
"Don’t mention your self-publishing to a publisher or agent until after they show interest in the book. The fact that you are selling copies online is not a positive point - it will be taken as evidence you aren't publishable in a conventional manner."
Harsh, but unfortunately true. As I said earlier, I was very, very lucky. There are tens of thousands of novels being self-published every year now, and I only know of a handful that have ever been picked up by traditional publishing houses. Usually you have to sell thousands, or tens of thousands before a publisher or agent will snap your novel up. Fortunately I have an agent now. I recently signed with the Isabel White Literary Agency. see link - http://www.isabelwhite.co.uk/
As for me self-publishing again - I would never rule it out, but most likely as a publicity stunt, or a last resort.
which of the 2 books (the book with no name and the eye of the moon) -was the most enjoyable to write? also as an author yourself, all be it a anonymous one, who would you say you enjoy reading and what style of genre do you prefer?
Both books were great fun to write, but I think The Book With No Name was probably the most fun, simply because I felt under no pressure. When I was writing it, I kept on reminding myself that there was no way in hell it would ever get published. With that in mind, knowing that I was almost certainly going to have to self-publish, I wrote with a lot of freedom. Every time I thought "I can’t do that, people will hate it," I reminded myself that I was writing the book for myself and if other people didn’t like it, then tough. It’s my story and I’ll tell it my way, no matter how absurd it gets.
The sort of stuff I read varies quite considerably. These days I’m always looking to discover authors I’ve never heard of before. I often read self-published books and review them on my blog to try and give them a helping hand.
Is there anywhere that reminds you of the Tapioca and Santa Mondega? also when reading both books I cant help but feel that I'm in Santa Mondega and to me its sort of a 19th century American gold rush town with dirt roads with dust flying up behind the yellow Cadillac as it's speeding away from Elvis and Sanchez, is that the feel that you were aiming for?
Absolutely. You’re picturing it very much the way I intended. It’s kind of like the Old West but with Cadillacs and Harleys instead of horses. Kind of like Mad Max 2 meets The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Many years ago I worked in a bar, and I was as frustrated by it as Sanchez is in the books. The bar I worked in was at the end of a long dirt track road. When non-regulars came in I treated them similarly to how Sanchez treats strangers in the Tapioca. I saw a lot of violence in that bar and it served as great inspiration for the Tapioca.
Having read both books I noticed that the story lines carry on from the book with no name in to your second book -the eye of the moon. without giving anything away about your next book can you say if the successor to the eye of the moon will carry on from where it left off, or will it go in a different direction with new characters?, or will we find out what happened to Dante and Kacy, Peto the Hubal monk and the mysterious Jessica as well as finding out who is responsible for the murder of Rodeo Rex?
I have just finished a new story called The Devil’s Graveyard. It’s a prequel to the other books, and there’s a trailer for it on youtube at this link -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ak-JBm9cx4
I’m also working on a couple of other projects. One is completely different to my usual stuff, and the other is a follow on from The Eye of the Moon. I’ve written about twenty chapters so far, but I don’t know if I’ll ever show it to anyone because I quite like how The Eye of the Moon ended.
As for the "Who killed Rodeo Rex?" question – It’s one of those questions that I think is best left unanswered. There are several possibilities and I think if I revealed the killer it would spoil the mystery.
Obviously with a character like the Bourbon Kid in your book, killing off a character off isn't too hard, how do you decide when to bring an end to a character?
I do like to kill people off when it’s least expected. A lot of people, when they’re reading a book, sub-consciously start categorizing the characters. I certainly do. I mean, when you pick up The Da Vinci Code, you’ve decided early on that Robert Langdon is going to be the hero who solves the case. And Sophie Neveu is going to be the female lead / love interest. If Dan Brown decided to kill off Robert Langdon in chapter twenty, people would go nuts. When writing The Book With No Name I thought about that a lot. So in several instances, when I had a character that I felt was safe and categorized as unkillable, I just thought, "Right, it’s time for him to die". Rodeo Rex was a prime example. I had big plans for him. He was going to kick some serious vampire ass, and I think everyone could see that, because I’d invested a lot of time into making him a really cool character. So I figured, if I’m not expecting me to kill him off, then no one else is either. So it was "bye bye, Rex". I was a bit gutted about it though, because great characters like him don’t come along too often. I killed off most of my best characters in The Book With No Name and The Eye of the Moon, just to keep my readers on their toes. *slaps forehead*
Obviously Sanchez is going to feature in the next book what with his current house guest being who it is, but id like to ask where you get the ideas for the character's and their name's, with characters like Sanchez who I've already mentioned, and the likes of rodeo Rex and the Bourbon kid its not like their names are something you hear in everyday life, unless you live in somewhere just like Santa Mondega that is
In the case of the Bourbon Kid, I was always going to name him after a drink, and Bourbon was the best one by far. Vodka Kid? Whisky Kid? Gin Kid?- none of them had the right ring to them. Malibu Kid would have worked, but can you imagine a gravelly voiced serial killer drinking shots of Malibu?
As for Rodeo Rex, Sanchez and El Santino, I felt that those were names that fitted the stereotype of the characters I was trying to create. The names define the characters to an extent.
I named some people after characters from films. Jefe was the name of a character in Three Amigos, and some of the monks in The Book With No Name were named after characters from the film Kingpin.
Do you have a set routine for writing where you sit down everyday and write, say 1000 words a day like Jason Bradbury does (jasonbradbury.com and UK TV show "the gadget show") when he's writing his books (dot.robot available from his site) or do you prefer to wait and write when the mood strikes and the juices are flowing regardless of when that is?
I do have a routine, although I have been known to break from it. Generally I will write a chapter a day, which usually equates to about 1000 words per chapter on a first draft. When I’m done I tend to go back and rewrite the novel seven or eight times until it’s exactly how I want it.
With The Eye of the Moon I deleted about 7 chapters from the Dante and Kacy storyline because I felt they were slowing the story down. I really liked some of the chapters too. There was one in particular that involved Dante line-dancing with a gang of vampires. Maybe I’ll post that up on my blog one day for a bit of fun.
After talking with a couple of friends, they commented that its very much like the combination of cult sci-fi show Firefly and Buffy the vampire slayer, would you say these comparisons are a blessing or a curse?
I have to admit that I’ve never seen Firefly, despite hearing great things about it. And it would probably surprise most people to discover that I’ve only ever seen a handful of Buffy episodes. I take those kind of comparisons as a compliment though. To have my work compared to anything successful like that is always nice to hear.
lastly as an author not who not only has gone out and published a book yourself out of your own pocket, but also then gone on to a more mainstream publisher unlike most authors your have a unique perspective so if you had any words of advice to give to aspiring writers what would they be?
Don’t give up. The more you write, the better you get at it. Read lots of books, write a blog and try make friends with as many other authors as you can, whether they’re self-published or very successful. Social networking websites make it easier than ever to network with people in publishing. Lots of them will give you good advice if you ask. Be humble enough to listen, and take on board any constructive criticism.
Also, if your manuscript lands in the hands of an editor or agent who likes it, one of the first things they’ll do is an internet search to find out as much about you as they can. Make sure they don’t find you trashing books they’ve published, or authors who are friends of theirs.
With plenty of pop culture references, great humour these books have everything: humour, love, revenge, vampires, sex, violence. and bourbon which id ask for a shot of but after what happens in the book I'm not sure id be all that keen on glass of Sanchez's hour old special blend, you cant fail to be impressed not only with the writing style and the witty dialogue but with the self belief that their book was so good, they had to go out and publish it themselves, and with that I'd like to take this chance to not only say thank for the enjoyment but for answering a few questions for me, good luck with the new book, I'm sure that I'm not the only one waiting out there to buy it
