Bit of background on Peter Travers, author and journalist
Peter Travers was born in 1972 in Bristol, where he grew up on the outskirts in the village of Mangotsfield. He was a bright, hyperactive little tyke, going to Barley Close Primary School and Mangotsfield Comprehensive. He notched up the grand total of three GSCEs with a C grade and above; three Ds and a paltry E for English. A typically immature boy, Peter was more interested in running around outside than sitting indoors reading books.
Peter left school at 16 and accidentally fell into the construction industry, where he worked a four-year apprenticeship to become a Building Services Contracts Engineer. Never really having a clue what he was doing, he was happy to be made redundant during the recession in 1993: this also meant he could go travelling around the world in 1994. While others in Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia were trying to discover themselves, Peter discovered the joys of bungy jumping and skydiving, and more importantly, the joys of literature. From that year on he became a voracious reader and devoured any novels he could get his hands on. He also began writing; a diary at first, some book reviews, then short stories...
Peter came back home to England and, despite lacking any proper English qualifications, had the foolish idea to work in magazines. He enrolled on a Journalism course at a college in Bristol and in 1996 started at Future Publishing in Bath; the largest magazine publisher outside of London, now publishing over 150 monthly titles in the UK, US, France and Italy.
Since joining Future Publishing Peter has worked on the following magazines: N64, T3, InternetWorks and What Mountain Bike. He is currently Deputy Editor on PhotoPlus, the UK’s fastest-growing photography magazine, which enables him to indulge in his other passion of photography.
Perhaps more interestingly, he is also a freelance writer who contributes features to all sorts of big and important publications. You can often read his work in The Sunday Times, BBC magazines and other best-selling titles such as Total Guitar, SFX, Mountain Biking UK and many others.
Most important of all, Peter has written an exciting new contemporary novel called TOP 10 HITS. His first novel, Peter worked studiously on the book in his spare time on his laptop and thoroughly enjoyed writing every word. He'd especially like to thank his beautiful fiancée for all her support, encouragement and home-cooked dinners. Peter hopes you enjoy reading TOP 10 HITS.
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Q&A interview with Peter Travers, author and journalist
Peter Travers is a British author and journalist who writes for The Sunday Times, BBC magazines and many other bestselling publications. TOP 10 HITS is his first novel.
How does it feel to have published your first book?
Great. Unreal and amazing. For me, writing my novel, TOP 10 HITS, was a bigger deal than publishing it. Writing a novel was easily the most difficult and challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, and also the most enjoyable and rewarding. Self-publishing it afterwards was easy compared to writing it, although self-publishing is still a huge amount of work; it’s a big responsibility as it’s like launching your own little business.
Why did you decide to self-publish?
I actually managed to get a literary agent last year who believed in TOP 10 HITS and me as an author. My TOP 10 HITS manuscript then got sent out to his contacts at 10-15 various-sized book publishers. I liked the guy, and we got on well, but he developed secretive working practices, and unfortunately, in hindsight, I don’t think his contacts were up to scratch. He’d only ever really got his authors’ books placed with small, independent publishers, and his contacts at the big publishers weren’t up to date. A fair few of the publishers we tried didn’t even deal in novels…
I tried to get a new, more established agent earlier this year – but as many new authors know, it’s harder than ever these days (not too mention with the looming credit crunch) as less agents are taking on first-time authors (catch-22 for new authors!) and these days book publishers only seemingly want bankable celebrity chefs, celebrity chef’s wives or celebrity chef’s adulteresses’ books!
So, as I believed TOP 10 HITS was good enough (and better than the stuff some very established fiction authors-who-will-remain-nameless are churning out) I thought I’d self-publish instead.
I must admit, I hadn’t really thought about the amount of work needed to get a book printed and published – book cover design, ISBN nos, barcodes, printers specs and jargon, finding the money, typesetting the words, Nielsen Bookdata, distributors, 60% non-negotiable discounts from the likes of Amazon, domain names, web hosting, email accounts, website design and html code, Paypal payment gubbins, sorting out book costing, working out postage, packaging, the list goes on. And this is after flogging yourself writing the thing… in your spare time! Self-publishing is setting up a new business, basically – but perhaps blindly entering a new arena of work is the best way to go into some things otherwise you’ll never bloody do it.
Tell us a bit about TOP 10 HITS…
TOP 10 HITS is a modern-day tale of music, murder and mayhem. It’s a wickedly entertaining story about a cynical music magazine journalist and pretty pop photographer who jump from hit parade to hit list when they get drawn into a creative Hitman’s sadistic plot to kill off his Top 10 most-hated pop star wannabes.
I originally came up with the idea of killing off rubbish boy bands – as I can’t stand that sort of ballad-led drivel and the constantly bad cover versions they feel compelled to spew out – then that developed into knocking off dumb girl bands, talent show losers, punk posers, rock clones, hip hop wannabe gangsters and R&B divas. There’s so many stupid, celebrity-seeking, talentless, deluded pop star wannabes ripe for the picking!
I didn’t plan that much more at all at the beginning. The title, TOP 10 HITS, came about, after that I simply decided on ten chapters, with the possibility of a ‘pop star hit’ every chapter. I then thought about the option of having dual narration from the Hitman and the music magazine journalist, Hardy. That was pretty much all I planned, just the bare bones, then I got on with writing.
The other characters followed later. Sophie the pretty pop photographer and Hardy’s love interest; Hardy’s reliable tabloid journalist friend, Fat Pat; DCI Johnson, all I knew about him was he was going to say excellent a lot!
Somehow, it all began to flow naturally from god knows where and I couldn’t stop typing. The plot started to build and I began to totally believe in the characters, and they really did take on a life of their own which helped the book, in a terribly clichéd way, write itself.
So you must hate The X Factor and other talent shows?
I actually don’t hate The X Factor. I enjoy laughing at the auditions at the start – even if it is the modern-day equivalent of a Victorian Freak Show – but with TOP 10 HITS I wanted to remind people that these talent show twerps aren’t talented at all, they’re just glorified karoke singers. They can’t write songs, play a musical instrument or read music, they’re just parroting someone else’s songs – and the bottom line is they’re not trying to break into the industry to make music, they’re in it for the money and fame.
There may be 10 million tuning in to watch X Factor every week as another set of desperate fame-seekers do glamorised karoke and ruin song after song with their naff cover versions, but that also means there are 50 million British people with decent music tastes still out there… so I’m hoping that a few of 50 million might like and be entertained by reading TOP 10 HITS!
What inspired you to write the book?
I just felt like writing some fiction. I was writing (and still write) lots of magazine features and I wanted to just write something fun for myself for a change, not following strict mag styles and commissions.
To begin with, I just thought I’d play around with a rough story idea, and maybe have a go at writing the sort of novel I’d like to read, it all grew from that little seed…
Essentially I wanted to write a ‘romantic black comedy thriller’ as I love romantic comedies and thrillers in equal measure. I kind of wanted TOP 10 HITS to be a sort of, loose literary version of the film Grosse Pointe Blank (with John Cusack and Minnie Driver) but set in the British music industry. I’ll leave it to readers to decide if I got anywhere close!
Did you have dreams of musical stardom yourself?
Not at all. But I am quite passionate about music and felt strongly enough to write about knocking off crap boy bands and other manufactured artists… it wasn’t hard though really, there’s a lot of rubbish bands and fame-seeking singers around these days isn’t there?
When did you first start writing?
I was a late developer. I was rubbish at English at school – got an ‘E’ in my GCSES, didn’t do A-levels or go to Uni – and I didn’t read books for pleasure until about four/five years after I’d left school and I went travelling for a year in Oz, NZ and Asia back in ’94. After that, I couldn’t stop reading novels… which lead me to writing a travel diary of sorts.
Back in Bristol, I retrained and got a job at Future Publishing in Bath, as a sub editor at first, but I started writing magazine features and reviews of everything and anything to get my eye in – and because I just really wanted to write. I remained a senior sub editor but always wrote mag stuff (a fair bit of freelance too) when I could. I’m now deputy editor on a photography magazine (PhotoPlus) and get to write more and more these days, which I still enjoy. As freelance I’ve recently written from The Sunday Times and do stuff for BBC and travel mags among other titles.
Although I didn’t actually start writing any fiction properly until TOP 10 HITS. It’s my first novel.
How long did it take you to write TOP 10 HITS?
On and off, about two years. When I knuckled down, I bashed out the last four-to-five chapters (and final two thirds of the book) in about three months. I really motored near the end.
It must have been challenging fitting it around a full-time magazine job. How did you manage your time? Describe your average writing day...
Challenging it certainly was. I just poured myself into writing the book but really looked forward to getting home from work every day and diving straight on my laptop to write the bugger. Weekends and my social life also revolved around my writing.
Every day I’d wake up thinking about the book, making notes or typing sections and changes I’d thought about in my sleep before work. Some lunchtimes I’d proof read printouts of my stuff, and after work I’d come home, and get stuck into writing, stopping briefly for dinner, then typing away until midnight most days. It’s surprising what you can get done when you don’t slump in front of the TV every night!
I became pretty obsessed with the whole thing – just ask my very understanding and beautiful fiancée – and talked about little else for far too long… I still do bang on about it too much probably, although it’s about the publishing side of things these days. But I think it does help to become incredibly dedicated and driven with your book, as that’s what it needs to get it finished. I’m naturally no quitter so, if you’ve got that side to your personality, you may also have what it takes to write a book.
How many drafts did you go through before you decided it was ready to publish?
A fair few… TOP 10 HITS was in fairly good shape when my old agent sent it to publishers. I was fortunate as I’d had a couple of experienced magazine editor friends who read it and gave me honest/harsh feedback – which is what you need, you can’t improve it if people just tell you nice things about your writing. After I’d edited it according to their suggestions, I’d then sub it again myself, then I’d get my fiancée to edit it too. She’s a completely natural sub editor and having a Masters in English Literature meant she was far more knowledgeable about my use (or lack of!) of the English language and brilliant at pointing out ways to improve the plot and dialogue etc.
After getting no joy with publishers last year, I left the Word doc alone for six months or so. Then I re-read, re-wrote and re subbed it twice all the way through. I chopped off about 11,000 words then, stuff I wasn’t as close to and knew it would help the plot flow better if I ditched it. The finished article’s about 155,000 words. Finally, before sending it to the printers, I got my fiancée to proof it one last time!
Proofing your book takes twice as long as you’d think, I found. Especially when you think, ‘Right, let’s change or remove this bit… aah, that means this happens here, and earlier he wouldn’t know that, and later he doesn’t need to do that.’ There’s always a bloody knock on effect, and it can really test your brain power and patience late at night, but it’s actually quite fun trying to remember how it all ties in together when editing bits out.
I was a sub-editor for five years so I know how to rewrite and sub stuff, but, I won’t lie to you, it’s ruddy hard subbing your own writing. My advice is: write a chapter, then sub it a month or two later. If you write it, then sub it a week later, you’ll be thinking ‘I can’t chop this bit out because I spent all last Wednesday night writing it!’
Are you a member of any writers’ groups or online forums?
I recently joined the Harper Collins run Authonomy website. It's a way of getting your book noticed and getting (mostly helpful) feedback from other authors. The top rated manuscripts/books each month are read by Harper Collins' book editors – so it's possible you could get a book publishing contract via the online exposure... You can check TOP 10 HITS on www.authonomy.com by clicking here.
Other than that, I've no time to keep up with it all… too busy writing and now promoting the book. I should do really. I guess some people like having the support and group understanding of going through the same challenging process, but for me, I was happy with what I was doing and didn’t really seek any support through forums etc. There’s a lot of very helpful people out there online… that said, from working on magazines, I always take forums with a pinch of salt – there’s a hell of a lot of self-professed experts who want to be seen to be imparting their wisdom on forums, regardless of how inaccurate their advice might be.
Or from the brief exploration of writers forums I noticed there seemed to be a fair few frustrated, angry and bitter wannabe-published-authors out there ranting away! This is why proper writers websites like www.essentialwriters.com are more important than ever.
Do you have to do all your own publicity?
Yep, and it’s part of the whole publishing wheel that I’m enjoying. It’s pretty full-on, but I just starting to get some coverage in local magazines and newspapers. I’m about to start sending press releases and review samples of TOP 10 HITS to all the national papers, and music and lifestyle magazines that might be interested as well as radio stations.
What’s next for Peter Travers?
I’m still up to my eyes in promoting the book, and I’m also going to approach a few book publishers directly to see if they’re interested in TOP 10 HITS. The book’s selling really well from www.petertravers.co.uk and customer feedback has all been hugely positive and encouraging, proving there’s obviously a market for the book, so hopefully a clever publisher will recognise that and take TOP 10 HITS into the mainstream.
After that, have a break and enjoy reading the pile of novels I’ve been meaning to read for ages! Then, depending on how well TOP 10 HITS goes down, and if a nice, big publisher picks it up and runs with it… maybe, a bit later, I’ll pour some energy into carrying on the second novel I started writing a little while ago.
What advice would you give upcoming novelists?
Crack on. When people hear I’ve written a novel, so many journalist friends and people say to me ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’ve this idea, but I’ve never blah blah’. People are quick to put up their own barriers for reasons why they can’t write a book. Smash ‘em down and get stuck in. Once you start writing you’ll find it’s not as hard as you thought – it’s at least twice as hard! But the bigger the challenge the bigger the rewards.
Come up with a story, an idea or just a premise you really believe in, with rounded characters (who will hopefully take on a life of their own) then just bosh out your book. Just go at it, and enjoy it all, the ups and the downs, the times when it flows and the times when you get stuck. If it’s meant to become a book, the rest with follow… if you’re lucky.
TOP 10 HITS is available from Peter Travers Publishing at a discounted price and including free delivery from www.petertravers.co.uk
An edited version of this interview is on http://essentialwriters.com. Click here to check it out.