Friday, September 22, 2017
Tom Cox is a writer I have been following recently on all social media platforms. I was first alerted to him by my daughter who insisted that here was a writer to look out for. He especially has a love of cats, and being a cat lover myself, I decided to follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also read his blog posts.
Tom is a Nottinghamshire-born British author, now based in Devon. He has published nine books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Good, The Bad & The Furry and Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain’s most inept golf professional, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief Rock Critic for The Guardian newspaper and went on to write columns and features for many other newspapers and magazines, before quitting print journalism altogether in 2015 to write pieces exclusively for his voluntary subscription website. He also hosts a monthly show on the experimental radio station Soundart. His new book, 21st Century Yokel - “a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before” which crowdfunded in a record-breaking seven hours - will be published by Unbound in October, 2017.
Tom Cox posts news of his books, his philosophy on life, family and especially tales about his cats, Roscoe, Ralph and sadly The Bear (who has since died). He highlights his writing with his own personalised photographic record, and sometimes a video of Sweary Cat. His concerted efforts to self-promote have gained him as many as 23.6K followers on Instagram, 69.3K on Twitter and 805,000 followers on Facebook (approx).
Tom's views on publishing his latest book 21st Century Yokel with Unbound.
As I began to write 21st
Century Yokel, I could see other potential commercial decisions ahead of me
that had nothing to do with whether or not the book ended up in the Pets
section of Waterstones. I had sold all of my previous eight books to publishers
on the basis of a synopsis and two or three sample chapters. Being sensible and
thinking about my own financial security, I would do the same here. But to do
so I would have to package the book with a very rigid theme that appealed to a
sales department. It would need to be honed: made into a “journey”.
Unfortunately, the word “journey” - if used in any literary sense - makes vomit
spontaneously appear in my mouth and I enjoy writing a synopsis roughly the
same amount that I enjoy crawling about in heavy sleet cleaning up the contents
of a split bin bag. I know why synopses need to exist but writing them is, in
many ways, the opposite to writing books - or at least all the factors I most
enjoy about writing books. It’s unfreeing, self-branding, corporation-pleasing.
My favourite non-fiction books are on quite diverse subjects but tend to have
one uniting factor: none of them would have made sense as a three thousand word
pitch. I do not think it is any coincidence that my worst book, Educating Peter
(reminder: don’t buy it), made for the pitch that was most exciting to a
publisher. A book needs coherence and rhythm and theme but coherence and rhythm
and theme are often a mystery that can be hit on only by doing one thing:
writing that book.”
His website : www.tom-cox.com
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