Category: Accidental Pilgrim

In the newly swanky and refurbished Talbot Hotel in Wexford, tired after the training – you’re giving a lot of yourself, but you forget you’re also on your feet all day so your legs are sore.

But walked up the Main Street and into a bookshop, looking for my book. Nothing in the Just Published area, but there beside the travel writing section was a pile of Accidental Pilgrims on the floor, waiting to go into the Ms next to Tim Moore.

I’d unsurprisingly thought that the first time I saw my book in a shop would be in a familiar shop in Dublin, and so it blindsided me that it happened here in Wexford (even if I was looking for it). I should go back tomorrow to see if any have been sold.

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

So that’s it. Around 10:15 this morning a car pulled up outside the house and a guy with a clipboard and a smallish box got out and walked up to the door.

We all knew what was inside, and I quickly signed for it and plonked the box on the table inside. Pausing only to wait for folks to get their cameras (it was good to have people there to witness the event), I opened the box and there inside their layer of bubblewrap were ten copies of my book.

After three years of work there it was – The Accidental Pilgrim by David Moore. An object, a book, my book. Not just a set of BBEdit files, or a honking Word document, or an Acrobat file, or a printout from QuarkXpress.

I’m staring at three copies here at work now, and I can’t quite believe it. I know all about books, and I know all about the words I wrote in all those files. But it seems mad that the words have turned into a book. You know, like real writers write?

A thing that should be in your shops very soon if you’re in Ireland. And it’s entirely possible that if you’re in a bookshop over the next while you’ll see me there, looking at it and shaking my head gently.

Sunday, February 29, 2004

The book should be in the shops next week, and in preparation for the big day, the new Accidental Pilgrim website is launched today. It aims to satisfy a number of different audiences: those who haven’t read the book yet can try a couple of sample chapters and buy the book online, while those who have read it can find out more about the journey and the saint, and look at some photographs from the road. There’s also a press area for journalists.

There are still some things I’d like to tidy up on it, but I’m pretty happy with it, and I hope it proves useful to people. Thanks to Paul for all the work.

And tomorrow I should get to hold the book in my hands for the first time. Which is more than a little frightening.

Thursday, February 05, 2004

My mum sent me over almost all my school reports. Thirteen years of grades and judgements and the frightening thing about them is that they’re all the same. I hardly changed in my entire school career.

The first ever report says I was good at English, keen to help in class and a bit quiet. And that’s pretty much what every other report boiled down to until I left for college. I was OK at the sciences, and never caused any trouble, but it was in English, history and languages that I flourished and really enjoyed myself.

(I was terrible at Art, which prompted the funniest comment: ‘He works politely but without any flair or interest.’)

I didn’t get reports in the same way in college, but they would have said the same. And I’ve not changed much since.

Which means the sort of person I am now was already set before I started school. I wonder would my first teachers be surprised to see how I’d turned out? Almost certainly not. I hate being so predictable.

Friday, January 23, 2004

Just delivered the edited page proofs of The Accidental Pilgrim (very minor changes, thank goodness).

Despite having seen the whole book printed out many times, there was something very strange about looking at the proofs – typeset as the finished book will be, with crop marks and the French stuff in italics and all that mullarkey. Suddenly it looked like a book.

Cover design is now sorted, and publication’s set for third or fourth week in Feb, with publicity to follow immediately thereafter.

Should be talking with the PR folks next week, so prepare for a media blitz. You can never have too much coverage of bicycles and sixth-century saints, that’s what I say.

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Pulling the last bits together on the book – time for a dedication and some acknowledgements.

The dedication’s simple enough – I promised it to my nephews, one of whom bears the name Columbanus as a direct result of my bike journey. I feel responsible, so the least I can do is dedicate the book to him.

Acknowledgements? Well, there are a few people who have really helped, so they get a mention. I reckoned I should also thank everyone whose good quotes I’ve shamelessly purloined and used in the book.

And I got to use that old reliable of academic publishing: ‘any mistakes that remain, are, of course, entirely my own.’ Or words to that effect.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

So yesterday I got all my stuff together to claim the Artists Exemption on my book. This means I won’t have to pay tax on the income from it – no complaints here about that. My accountant was delighted when I told him I was writing a book – ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘A legal way to avoid paying tax.’ And he doesn’t even have to be creative.

There’s a good chance that the amount I make will be so little that even with the day job, I wouldn’t be liable for tax anyway, but I was thinking positively as I filled in the forms.

Under the regulations, the books has to contain artistic or cultural merit, and the Revenue Commissioners reserve the right to have someone judge that for them – there’s a job I’d like see advertised.

For a non-fiction book like mine, there are some extra requirements. Textbooks or books that help you do your job don’t count, nor do most collections of journalism, but other things are fine: literary criticism, autbiography, and the vague ‘heritage value’ clause.

The book should fall into any number of categories, but we’ll see what the Revenue think.

Sunday, November 09, 2003

I’m done. Can I have my life back now please? After a month of working all but full-time at the day job and coming home to work flat out on the book, I’m delivering the final draft tomorrow.

I think it’s better than it was, but there’s a wood and trees thing going on, so I really can’t tell any more. At a micro level, a large number of the individual sentences have definitely improved. It’s a little scary how much work the manuscript could still soak up productively.

The word count is down from 85,000 to 78,000, and I reckon you’d be hard pushed to spot the removals. A few bits that I liked had to go, which was sad, but I realised that me liking them wasn’t a good enough reason for them to stay in, if they upset the flow of things. Maybe I’ll do a collectors’ edition with a DVD of deleted scenes. Most of them revolve around food. But most of the deletions have been the odd sentence here or there, or even a clause that’s been tightened. Out went a lot of the adjectives too.

Halfway through the edits I was grumpy as fuck and wanted to throw the laptop out the window. It’s been the hardest part of the process so far.

I’ll see the damn thing twice more – once when the line by line edits come back, and again when the page proofs are ready. But even if I think another month could improve the book further, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and I just couldn’t bring myself to keep polishing indefinitely. All my journalism and web writing experience has taught me just to get it out the door and leave it at that.

Thursday, November 06, 2003

The bike I used for the first trip (from Bangor to Bobbio) was nothing special, but now I’m finishing off the book of the trip, I realse it’s got an amazing claim to fame – it’s not had a puncture. Ever.

It’s now been over two and half years since I put the Conti Top Touring tyres on it, and rode 2000 miles across Europe – with no punctures. That was amazing enough, but since then the poor loyal Dawes has been relegated to hack bike, as I hauled myself to work down the East Wall Road. And still no puncture.

The tyres have regularly been topped up with air, but never completely deflated. Does this mean there’s ancient air in those tubes? Or French or Italian air left over from the trip?

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

I’m working away on the edits, and that’s going well if slowly. It’s like uncovering a version of the book that I have in my head, rather than creating something new. If I could just chip away at all the crap in the way, while still knowing where to stop.

On the marketing front, myself and the publisher have been working on blurbs and bios and stuff – material to give to booksellers, and to find its way into press releases and the like. After so long being so close to it, it was very refreshing to hear the publisher’s description of the book – actually sounds like something I’d be interested in reading. Which can only be a good thing.