A reader writes...

Sometimes, I get an email which makes up for the lack of money, fame and everything else I've got from writing books. A few days ago, I heard from a Swansea fan who had read The Bromley Boys and had recommended it to a friend of his. The friend, Dave, then went away on holiday and managed to read it while he was away. As my correspondent reported: "he loved it so much he found himself trawling through various bromley fc websites when he got home....exactly as i had done." They had become Bromley fans, which was beyond brilliant. But this is not always a rewarding experience, as the next part of the email clearly illustrates. "when i got home from swansea's tuesday's nil-nil draw there was one email in my "in tray". it was from dave & it simply said "bromley lost 6-1 tonight".
This was possibly the most poignant email I've ever seen.

Mentions in the press and Amazon rankings

The Bromley Boys got a nice mention in Monday's Independent and I was hopeful it would lead to a few sales. So I checked Amazon and was dismayed to see it falling. It continued throughout the day, ending up in the 70,000s.

The next morning, something changed. Suddenly, people were buying it and at one stage it was around 4000, which is probably the highest it has ever been. It started to taper off that evening and went back to normal.

This was the piece, from Sam Wallace's column:


I read The Bromley Boys this summer, Dave Roberts' book about his tragic adolescent obsession with Bromley FC and their disastrous 1969-1970 season. On one occasion the teenage Roberts paints "Ellis Must Go" on his T-shirt in protest against the club's inept manager Dave Ellis. As he prepares to reveal his T-shirt he realises that the person sitting next to him in a virtually empty stand is Ellis himself. It's the kind of story that reminds you of Danny Baker's 606 at its vintage best.

The kind of holiday photo I like to see.

Mrs Bron Hall and Mr James Hall of Auckland, New Zealand enjoying the sun and some quality reading material in Fiji (or somewhere like that).

The best publisher you've never heard of

There would, I imagine, be few people filling their shopping baskets exclusively with the latest offerings from, say, Harper Collins or Hodder and Stoughton. Brand loyalty amongst book lovers tends to be more about authors (many of whom are described as 'brands' these days). The honourable exception to this is the smaller, niche publishers - Salt and Bluechrome spring to mind - who are not only passionate about what they do, but also have a consistent feel to every book they publish, presumably because they reflect the tastes of just a handful of people, as opposed to committees and focus groups.

A few months ago I ordered a book called 'Believe in the Sign' by Mark Hodkinson, on the grounds that it had been grouped together with my latest book on Amazon, in the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought This' section. Despite not really wanting to like something that had such a similar theme to my book, I found myself absolutely loving it. I had never heard of the publishers, Pomona, so decided to check out their website.

The first thing that struck me was that this was not a normal publisher. Hodkinson himself seems to run it and, with author royalty rates of 50%, it doesn't appear to follow any conventional publishing business model. But even more notable was the line-up of authors. It was some of the people who made me fall in love with reading in the first place - Hunter Davies, who wrote 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', Barry Hines, whose 'A Kestrel For A Knave' became the film Kes, and Trevor Hoyle, writer of cult classic, Rule of Night.

This was incredibly exciting. So why had I never heard of Pomona? The answer, according to Hodkinson when I emailed him, was something faced by most publishers in their position. Distribution. They simply don't have the money to compete with the majors, who can (rumour has it) effectively GIVE books to stores and pay for them to be front-of-house.

I am now on my fourth Pomona book in a row and it's fantastic. A Barry Hines book, called Looks and Smiles, which is a love story about a mechanic and shoe shop assistant, set during the turbulent early 1980s. It's the kind of thing Penguin used to do - real, passionate and unflinchingly honest. Before that, I read Mark Hodkinson's latest novel, 'The Last Mad Surge of Youth', which would be on the bestseller list if there was any justice in the world.

Perhaps inevitably, Pomona seem to be experiencing financial difficulties. I don't know of any small independent that isn't. But they deserve to at least be checked out at http://www.pomonauk.co.uk

And no, I'm nothing to do with Pomona. I'm just a huge fan. And how many publishers can you say that about?

Review - Death, Destruction and a Packet of Peanuts by Chris Pascoe

As someone who doesn't drink and has no interest in history, this book didn't seem particularly promising. A bloke goes on a massive pub crawl, while visiting sites of major battlefields of the English Civil War.
By the end of the second page, I was hooked. The author, Chris Pascoe, is a very funny writer - I defy anyone not to laugh at his story of the shed-eating dog or the American tourist rewriting history. But even more impressively, he brings the Civil War, a subject I've always associated with memorising dates at school, to full technicolour life. Some of the descriptions of battles are breathtaking and the characters mesemerising. Prince Rupert was my favourite, a man who didn't seem to have any concept of personal safety.
And then there was Pete. Pete was the author's traveling companion and a one-man disaster zone. His adventures are enough to make a book on their own, the highlights being an ill-advised toilet seat attack on a skinhead.
Throw in an incoherent Northerner called Dave and a dog of the same name, and you've got a book that I couldn't put down. Highly recommended.

Two emails that made my day

Both came from people who had just finished reading The Bromley Boys.
The first was from Alan Soper, goalkeeper for Bromley in the season in which the book is set. He was one of my all-time heroes and the fact he enjoyed the book gave me an enormous thrill. He also put me right on one anecdote. I claimed that one of the players was sent off for pushing an opponent. Apparently, it wasn't so much a push - more a right hook to the jaw. He told me a couple of other brilliant stories, including the time the team had to train in the ice-covered car park one frosty night, as the chairman didn't want them on the pitch in case they "broke the grass".
The other email was from a teenage Ipswich fan who had also just finished the book. He finished by saying " I would just like to say thanks for a fantastic read and i hope you will be writing more great books soon; as you have done something in my mind which J.K.Rowling couldnt, made me fall in love with reading!".
What a fantastic day.

Someone hasn't bothered reading e-luv.

My first book, e-luv, was frankly disgusting. All sorts of unsavoury sex things going on and a main character who wouldn't make a good role model for anyone. One reviewer gave it a "smut rating" of 8.5 out of 10. So I was a bit shocked to see a copy on eBay, described as a children's book. It really isn't. So, if you're thinking about buying it for your kids, I urge you not to. Buy it for yourself instead.