So.
After 3 years, or thereabouts, my first book ‘Inside the Cyclone’ is to be published. It’s been a long road to get to this point, especially for someone who only managed a ‘D’ in his GCSE English Language exam, all those years ago.
Still, I’ve come a long way since that arrogant ‘I know best’ teenager who had no interest in writing whatsoever and thought it was far more fun to bait the English teacher.
My interest in writing can be traced back to 2014 when I started to learn to fly. Whilst learning I decided to keep a diary of each lesson to help me learn more quickly and to keep me, at least metaphorically, grounded. As I grew into the ritual, I quickly found it was extremely therapeutic to write with a pen and paper and gradually began to expand these business-like notes to include anecdotes and feelings. It was a small step from here to starting this blog where regular readers – well as regular as you can be given my random unpredictable publication schedule – will remember I experimented with my writing ‘voice’ and started to learn what worked and what didn’t.
Then eventually I plucked up the courage to send in ‘Forgive me Feather‘ to Microlight Flying magazine as an exemplar of my style. I expected some critique and pointers from the editor on where I could improve, but what I got back instead was an email saying that it would be published in the next magazine! For those that missed it you can get a PDF copy from the downloads section on this website.
With confidence soaring I continued to write more and more pieces for the magazine and then got invited to write the introduction to the British Microlight Aircraft Association’s ‘Official Guide to Microlighting‘ which was published a couple of years ago – and is also in my downloads section!
During all of this time I was gathering stories and formulating a structure for my first book, ‘Inside the Cyclone’.
What I didn’t realise was that writing the book would be just the start. Formatting and cover design is an extremely painful process too and it has taken me a further 3 months to get from a finished manuscript to a print ready book.
I hope you enjoy reading the book when it is released on 24th October 2020 and will share your thoughts and reviews on here and on Amazon.
If you want to be among the first to read it, you can pre-order (e-book only, and I still hate the term ‘pre-order’) by following the link below:
Inside the Cyclone – A story of ups and downs…
I look forwards to reading your comments.
Dan
Dan Roach Flying Author 