A Brief Update

I have used an inordinate amount of actual Sellotape!

I’m not going to lie, this was always a fairly daft idea and it has proven to be exactly that, but with the addition of being quite a lot of fun as well as hard work.

Earlier this year I decided to self publish The Ghost Camera, the book that was supposed to be launched by the now defunct Unbound.

I have managed to send over 100 copies to amazing people all over the world who supported the book 3 years ago and have received nothing. Well, now they’ve at least received a copy of the book, and I’ve only had direct feedback from a small selection of people, but it has been very rewarding.

There are people who really like the story and that is a wonderful thing to hear. As I had a few copies left over I thought I would set up (with a lot of help from my mate Addy) a simple bookstore using bigcartel dot com, and no, they are not based in Columbia like some bright sparks suggested.

https://robertsmodernbookshop.bigcartel.com/

Once I decided to do that, I thought, well, I’ve got this new book coming out, Money and Time, that many people have read on this Substack and that is definitely happening. I’m just reworking the ending which was a bit rushed due to other work commitments.

But I also have a small selection of previously published books that I thought I could discreetly relaunch. Yes, I got the bug, old man wants to sit in a little dusty bookshop just off the High Street, only it’s a digital dusty bookshop. But, the great thing is, the books are not digital, they are 3 dimensional, they are made of actual paper, you can hold them. And you have to turn the pages to read them, No scroll feature.

The first book I re-launched was the 1993 hit, The Man in the Rubber Mask which recounts the events that have taken place over the past 37 years on the hit TV show Red Dwarf. I updated the book to cover the most recent productions in 2016 and 2019-20, so it now has 57.4% more smeg than any previous edition.

This book has proven rather popular and I have just run out for the 2nd time. After supper this evening my and the Mrs will pack another 20 copies ready to send off. If you have ordered a copy it will be coming, and I thank you for your patience.

Next up, it’s the 1998 hit, The Man on Platform 5, a romantic comedy based on the early 20th century classic, Pygmalian, a play by George Bernard Shaw.

This idea was later adapted into the hit musical, My Fair Lady.

My version is essentially My Fair Nerd. It’s the story of two very competative half sisters who have a wager that one of them can change a train spotting, sci-fi adoring nerd into a suave, sexy male model with excellent manners.

I had to dig out the original manuscript, comb through it very carefully, cut numerous completely gratuitous sections that distracted from the story and make hundreds of grammar and spelling corrections.

The new cover is being designed and it will be ready in the next couple of weeks.

And finally, I will re-launch News from Gardenia, the 2011 hit sci fi book, set two hundred years in the future where things are generally better than today. It’s not a perfect utopia by any means, but it is the antidote to so much American fiction and fantasy writing which always, always depicts a dystopian nightmare.

This book contains zero zombies, no one has a gun and most of the world is covered in trees again.

So this little update is essentially explaining why some of the books are taking a little longer to arrive at your door than others. I have received rather more orders than I expected, mainly The Ghost Camera and The Man in the Rubber Mask , so I have had to be increasingly organised. We’re getting there, we have a system, it’s like fullfilment in the very early days of Amazon.

Except Jeff Bazos didn’t write the books.