A rekindled childhood passion and a DIY punk ethic
Author Nick J Brown on his path to publication.
It had never occurred to me that I could be a writer. At school it wasn’t mentioned as a career path, and I certainly didn’t know anyone who wrote. My mum was a nurse, my dad a jack of all trades: security guard; car salesman; ex-soldier. I had aunties who were a dinner lady and a nurse; uncles who worked for the gas board or drove a lorry. I had no real idea what I could be.
I did, however, know one thing: I loved to read. The library in Swinton or the smaller one on the Height near my gran were regular haunts, giving me access to so many stories I felt inspired me to create my own. Together with a friend at school, I created a comic called Paper Wings That Flap.
“It was great fun, especially seeing the finished article passed around class.”
I remember coming up with three strips: the High-patheticals, a bunch of second-rate Greek philosophers; an American golfer who was actually a spy and whose golf clubs all contained hidden 007-style gadgets; and lastly, the continuing adventures of a paperbag named Colin. This was the early nineties and so it was all done by hand. Progress was slow, but it was great fun, especially seeing the finished article passed around class.
From there I’d taken an interest in art and later, at college, design communication. I had ideas of going on to university but that didn’t happen and in time I got a job with Royal Mail in a sorting office. Fifteen years later, I was still at that sorting office. My creativity had moved on though, from drawing to trying to play the guitar and bass, even considering help a colleague reform his old punk band.
Then I met someone who was a writer and watching her get up every morning and sit tapping away at her laptop ignited something in me. At the time I was going over to Germany to watch football and gigs, so I wrote about those trips. I began contributing to a football fanzine and later started a blog about watching cricket after a long exile from the sport. I took to non-fiction quite easily as having real events to write about gave me something to build around. But, after three years of this, I started to feel constricted. I found the pieces where I deviated from reality more interesting to me and so turned to fiction.
“And that was it, the seed. A fictional band who didn’t last, leaving me to come up with the why.”
I had an idea and started a novel but hit a wall. Soon after, I had another idea and began that only to find myself stopping at a similar point. On both occasions I’d got the basic plot of the story down, somewhere around 20,000 words but saw no real way to flesh the story out to four times that size. I did, however, have a short throwaway scene I thought I could do something with. The characters were in a pub, and one had a newspaper and was reading aloud various headlines, one of which was this:
CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE TO PEN INCENDIARY TRACT
From here someone asked what ‘incendiary tract’ meant and was told, ‘it’s that feeling when you urinate, and it burns like fire on the way out.’ Another voice cut in with, ‘no, no. Incendiary Tract, Salford punk band. Three singles, no album.’ And that was it, the seed. A fictional band who didn’t last, leaving me to come up with the why.
When I finished the book, I was hugely proud of it, yet the next stage took longer than hoped. Rejection and silence from agents and small presses could have dented my confidence but positive feedback from an editor at a traditional publisher and my own belief that what I’d written was good enough and that an audience for it did exist spurred me to self-publish through KDP, an experience I found hard work, but my earlier design skills helped with.
On the 5th of September To Rise in the Dark was released, and at 46 I finally feel I’ve found what I want to do. I’ve a second novel virtually finished and I’m just beginning a third. On publication day I posted on Facebook and received messages from friends and family, in amongst them were a few people I’d not spoken to in years who, to my surprise, still remembered the comic I’d done 30 years ago at school. I’d like to think, in three decades time, a similar thing might happen with my book.
Nick J. Brown was born in Salford sometime between the death of Elvis Presley and the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. He has worked at Royal Mail for over twenty-five years, and lives in Manchester with his partner. To Rise in the Dark is his first book.
In early nineties Manchester, Pete and Jim are high on music, sarcasm and dreams of success. With Devon and Steve they form a band, play four gigs, then suddenly implode.
Thirty years later, Jim is a warehouse worker with a wife, two kids and back trouble. Threats of medical retirement loom over his future.
Cult singer Pete is gone, leaving behind five albums, a history of belligerence and a daughter, Lauren, who wonders why the last 45 spinning on her father’s turntable is a record by a group she’s never heard of and no one wishes to speak about.
At Moran’s funeral, Lauren reunites his old bandmates, leading them on a booze-fuelled odyssey through Manchester in search of a secret they would rather remained buried…
A tale of working class dreams realised and unfulfilled, and the easy hit nostalgia can provide but also what it can bury, the scars that don’t show and conversations never had.
Find out more about Nick J. Brown and TO RISE IN THE DARK at https://nickjbrownwriter.wordpress.com
Follow Nick on: Twitter @NorthernMailman and Bluesky @northernmailman.bsky.social