From the unhipdom of the last blog, for this blog I want to talk about something much more hip: spiky profiles! See below.
You may have heard about the spiky profile among autistics and a quick glance on the Google home page will tell you that a spiky profile is "a phenomenon whereby the disparity between strengths and weaknesses is more pronounced than for the average person - it's characteristic among neuromenorities those who have neurodevelopmental mental conditions including autism and ADHD" or "high aptitudes in a few areas and noticeable limitations in others."
But the only spiky profile I want to talk about here is the spiky-haired punk in the book which shot me to my 15 minutes of fame in 1988 and 1990! I've at last brought it back out in paperback after all this time. I did actually use apicture of me from back in the day as I used to have hair like that. I loved it! This is my most successful book to date. The main character is Lauren and she probably does have some ADHD characteristics. She likes new experiences and is quite rebellious and embraces the punk scene in 1977.
.The whole book is written in diary form beginning in the late 60s when Lauren is a child and ending early 80s when she's twenty-two. It charts the development of her self, her language, her hopes, fears and passions. It is a very hard-hitting book. But some characters take a hold of you completely and Donna was one of those. I felt she was so real to me it was like writing about a real person, hence the change of name at the time for the book. In the Times review they mention that I didn't just inhabit the character but that I was the character and I thought 'yes, well spotted!' I was very complimented by that.
The book was first picked up by the Malvern Publishing Company, a small press based in Malvern (funnily enough!) and I went up to Upton-upon-Severn to meet them. They brought it out in hardback in the UK in 1988 and then sold paperback rights to Allison & Busby who published it in paperback in 1990. This is the one that most people will have seen and it sold about 2,000 copies which wasn't bad for 1990. But then it was remaindered which is what they used to do in those days after it had been out for a while. There was also a US hardback edition published by Villard Press (part of Random House),1990. See various editions below
I was totally thrilled to get the book reviewed in The Times (1988) and in the music magazine The Face (1990) and in various other circulations too, including in the States. I have the originals or photocopies in a folder.
Since the early 90s, it's been out of print although I did try and interest a few publishers eg in 2000 to mark 25 years of punk, but without success. I bought it back out as an ebook in 2011-ish. All my other early books I'd typed or retyped onto a word processor back in the late 1990s and from there it was easy to move them across to the computer when I eventually got one. But I'd left Flamingo Circus to last because it was in print and I had no digital version. I didn't want to type it all out again but I found this thing called OCR circa 2011 (optimal character recognition) and it was great that it recognized most of the characters on the page so I just had to check for any mistakes.
One thing I will mention which is probably autism-related is the overlwhelming anxiety I felt about the publication(s). Don't he me wrong, It's really exciting to get your book published especially the first one. It wasn't the first book I'd written, but it was the first one to get published. Yet I was terrified having to do interviews with the local press and going around bookshops with the publisher - I had to take a couple of tranquilizers to cope with it. I probably sabotaged any follow-up, although maybe my follow-up wouldn't have got anywhere anyway but I remember thinking I couldn't cope with this so instead of trying to capitalize on it I just carried on doing my own thing which is probably why I went into the wilderness for ages. Or maybe this was a one-hit-wonder and not that much of a hit either! I have had books published since then but not anything like this.
Anyway, it's back out in print and it's also available as an eBook and on Amazon with a new introduction. I designed the cover, it's had a few but I quite like this one at the moment. No doubt I will grow tired of it at some point.
The latest paperback version can be bought from Amazon from the following link:
YouTube version available below:
Many thanks - your comments welcome as always!
I tried to listen to the video but it came up with an error. An outstanding book with both Kate's and my characters within its pages.x
ReplyDeleteSorry about that Ann but you will have seen the video which I published separately! X
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