UNCLE TOM

Just thinking of Old Uncle Tom's Cabin ... No I don't have an uncle who lives in a cabin .....just the question 'can one book change the world' and this one certainly did. Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin  in 1852 and by the outbreak of the American civil war in 1861, it had sold 4 million copies making Beecher the most famous author in the world. Notable not for it's literary quality or over sentimental story, but how it change peoples thoughts towards slavery..the book Abraham Lincoln referenced when he met Stowe as the book that started the great war.

I don't think I'll win any prizes for literary prose either, but it's the message within my books I'd like to think might have an effect on the world.. it's a common goal for a writer. But the difficulty is how to get people to look not just beneath the surface but actually see what is infront of their eyes. In a world where  information overload cloggs every media, the simple story of life can sometimes seem lost.

FatMan is a simple story, but none the less getting someone to open a book and see what's inside is very difficult. Over the weekend I met a young man who's focus was on the type face of the cover...not the 300 pages inside. In publishing it is undoubtedly the envelope of the letter that gets the sale, but as a writer you would like comment on the words. There are those who read and those who watch and those who do. There's a bit of each in us all but all of one is never good.

My Epitaph Our Legacy was written with a view to changing the world, and of all my books it's the one  when people on the tube look over my shoulder brings an immediate effect ...laughter.  It's a great feeling to inspire an emotion in people, a change of state or confidence, but with this project I'm after something more, a bigger change. It's a huge task, it's a massive ask, and one so far in the year has been ultimately nothing more than an experience. But it ain't over till the FatMan sings and there's enough time left in the bottle to hit a home run yet...lady luck might just take a fancy to me after all.