I’m on the blog tour for The Pursuit of Ordinary by Nigel Jay Cooper today and I have a great guest post to share with you.
The Pursuit of Ordinary is available to buy in paperback and ebook now. You can purchase your copy of both here.
Before I share the guest post with you here is a little bit about the book.
Book Blurb:
After witnessing a fatal car accident, a homeless man wanders the streets of Brighton, trying to ignore the new, incessant voice inside his head. But he can’t forget the crash, can’t get the face of the woman cradling her dying husband out of his mind. She stared into his eyes, his soul. He has to find her. Is Dan ill or has he really been possessed by the spirit of Natalie’s dead husband, Joe? If he hasn’t, why does she let him into her home so easily? Does she have secrets of her own? The Pursuit of Ordinary is a twisting tale of modern life and mental health where nothing is what it seems… Following the success of debut novel Beat the Rain, Roundfire introduces the second book from bestselling author Nigel Jay Cooper.
Guest Post by Nigel Jay Cooper:
How reviews inform authors, tears & all
I’ve learnt some things this past week about my second novel, The Pursuit of Ordinary. You see, once a novel is set loose on real-life readers, it has a tendency to become something else, something unexpected. With my debut, this took me by surprise but this time around, I’m enjoying the ride more – I love getting a look inside the heads of my readers.
Let me caveat this entire article by stating the obvious: all authors are different. In my case, I don’t know what I’ve written until I see it through the eyes of the reader. I know what I think I’ve written – but that’s not the same thing at all.
Writing is quite organic for me – I’m not a great planner. I tend to write character-driven stories, and I enjoy exploring characters and finding out who they are and where they take me.
Once I’ve told their story, it’s the readers who tell me what I’ve actually created – I honestly don’t feel capable of saying what the book’s about – it’s not mine anymore, it’s the reader’s. (For this reason, I find writing synopses and back cover blurb particularly hideous).
Being an organic writer doesn’t mean I don’t research – I take the issues I deal with (homelessness, mental health etc) incredibly seriously. But I can honestly say I didn’t write a novel about those issues. I wrote a love story. A weird, contemporary, messy love story, granted – but a love story none-the-less.
So what surprises have readers given me in my first week of publication? Firstly, their generosity and willingness to take an unusual journey – one of my narrators in The Pursuit of Ordinary is a disembodied voice inside another man’s head, something which could so easily have put people off. I’m genuinely amazed how readers have embraced and empathised with both characters.
One reviewer wrote: ‘This author has a genuine talent for creating characters that feel like real people who could be living next door to you.’ – Not something I expected to hear about a homeless character with a history of mental health problems who may or may not be possessed by a dead man.
There were many things in this novel I thought would be polarising – my depictions of mental health and homelessness for a start – but the narrative structure wasn’t one of them. But it seems this has become one of the biggest discussion points.
I deliberately revisit a number of key scenes from different character perspectives in The Pursuit of Ordinary. I wanted to explore how two people could experience the exact same event and yet perceive it completely differently, even if they remembered, by and large, the same details. In everyday life, we bring so much of ourselves to a situation, I genuinely think it’s dangerous to assume your memory of an event is the ‘truth’ and I really wanted to explore this in the novel.
My key learning from that? Some readers really don’t like this approach at all – and others absolutely love it:
‘I really didn’t like the way the same events were relayed by different characters…’
‘The story is told in a sort of overlapping episodic style where we see both sides of what is happening. There were plenty of ‘Nooos!’, ‘Whaaaaats?’ and ‘Bloody Hells!’ from me.’
The above are two examples, but many reviews echo one or the other position – I suppose the reason this has surprised me is that it’s not one of the things I thought much about before publication. I certainly didn’t think it would become a talking point.
My biggest positive take-home from the reviews so far is how many people say they finished the book and now see the world a little differently – again, not something I expected but definitely something I cherish hearing.
The main point of this blog is to reinforce the importance for reviews.
Reviews aren’t important solely to help authors sell books or to help other readers make an informed decision when buying a book. They are also one of the ways – perhaps the only way – a writer can discover the objective truth in the novel they’ve written.
Thank you Nigel for this great guest post. I wish you lots of luck with your book.
About The Author:
Nigel is an author, father, businessman, ginger-dog owner and sometimes-runner. He co-founded global social media agency Qube Media and previously worked as a writer and editor for Channel 4 Television. His first book Beat the Rain has fast become a bestseller on Roundfire Books and was Semi-Finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 for Best Debut Author. Nigel lives in Brighton, UK.
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Over The Rainbow Blog 