The Story of Two Suburbs

Seven years after its initial release, my debut novel, Suburb, is being relaunched in paperback. I wanted to write something that explains my feelings towards the novel, and my writing life.

To steal from Goodfellas, ever since I was a kid, all I ever wanted to be was a writer.

I’m not from a family of creatives. My parents ran a small glazing company. If I’d announced (I didn’t) that I wanted to be a novelist for a living, my dad would’ve said, ‘Make sure you get a proper job as well.’ In fairness to Mr Kedie senior, it would’ve been sound advice.

I didn’t know any creative, writer types. There were no novelists living on our cul-de-sac in South Manchester. My friends liked football and music (as did I), not books. Reading books was something school made us do. Writing them? No chance, pal.

I wrote in secret, dreaming up stories, filling notebooks and hoping one day something would change. I did not really know what that change would be, or what my part in it was.

In my early twenties I wrote my version of the stereotypical first-novel-that-no-one-will-ever-see. Mine was about a Rock ‘n’ Roll band. In true writing tradition, it remains locked in a drawer. The novel was evidence I could actually write 80,000 words with twists, arcs, and characters that weren’t wooden. Only a handful of people have read it, which is probably for the best.

When writing that book, I researched how to get published and found it all overwhelming. I felt like the publishing industry worked behind a massive iron door and someone like me would never be able to access the secret codes to open it. It didn’t put me off writing, but I did find the idea of approaching people to sell my work, and myself, anxiety inducing. I convinced myself I was content with writing for me, letting a close circle of friends read bits, and being happy with their nice feedback. I’d tell friends I was working on these fantastic things, but the truth was they were just words on a Word document. No book, no physical product, meant nothing actually real.

As the end of my twenties approached, those words on a Word document turned into a finished novel called Suburb, the story of Tom Fray, a 21-year-old who returns home from university to a suburb of Manchester and starts an affair with a married neighbour.

My friend, Lawrence, read an early draft. He really liked it and provided some encouragement. A few months later, he emailed me out of the blue and told me he’d bought an e-book and the author had simply emailed it to him once the payment had cleared. He suggested we set up a website to sell Suburb in the same way.

By this time I was 30. My first son had just been born, and I got an overwhelming sense that I’d spent long enough at home, re-working drafts and “doing some writing”. I felt I now needed to put something out there otherwise I’d regret it.

And so began the story of the two Suburbs: The Story and The Product.

The Story
I couldn’t have be prouder of Suburb’s story. In some ways, Tom’s story was also my own. Not the university bit, especially not the affair with a married woman bit. But the desire to escape the surroundings of suburbia, the desperation to see more of the world, feeling trapped by home. These are feelings young people experience all the time and I felt them strongly. I did leave for a while. My girlfriend (now wife) and I went backpacking around Europe for a few months, sleeping on trains and pretending home didn’t really exist. When I did return, I poured my feelings into Tom’s story.

Lawrence and I set up the website and, after a few months of work, Suburb was released. People bought it through the site and through Kindle (more of which later). The feedback and reviews of the story were always along a similar line: readers loved the story and confessed often having felt the same as Tom. A reviewer from a book blogging site told me she’d put money into her savings account whilst reading it because it made her question what she wanted from her life.

Another reviewer wrote: ‘I must recommend this to my son who is a similar age to the main character! Enlightening for me as his mother, giving an insight into the workings of one young man’s mind/drives/decisions.’

If you’ll allow me one more indulgent review, probably the best thing I’ve ever read about anything I've written was put on Amazon by a reader, who said: ‘A really cracking read. I’m on holiday in Prague and have read this in a day while drinking cider in a courtyard bar. The characters are very engaging and easy to get to know, you want to be involved in their lives, I actually found this more like a memoir than a work of fiction, and by the end I had a lump in my throat reading how it all came together.’

I mean, bloody hell. A random stranger felt like that about something I wrote. If part of a writer’s job is to make people feel something, then how could I not feel proud?

But... a book is not just a story. A book is a product.

The Product

When it came to creating Suburb the product, I was naïve.

We, Lawrence and I, did everything ourselves: building the website, book cover design (I said: “We'll just take a photo of me on a cul-de-sac with a rucksack and sort it on photoshop, it'll be fine” ... it wasn’t fine. It was average at best and put next to other books that had been through professional design, well, you can imagine how it looked), proofreading. No matter how many times you read your own words, you will not spot every error. A friend of mine had just done a proofreading course so the natural fit was to ask them to do the work. It improved the draft, but someone with a bit more experience would’ve taken it to the next level.

At the time, doing it all ourselves, felt like we were ‘proper indie’. We were small, learning as we went and, most importantly, creating something. It was fun and exciting. The problem was we just didn’t have the skills to make it work. A harsh lesson to learn when you are supposed to be living your dream of having a book out in the world.

We launched the website and people bought the book. Because initially this was our sole platform to sell, we struggled for reviews. Research led to the world of book bloggers, who we started reaching out to. We tried to be professional in our approaches to them but found out that people wouldn’t review the book if it wasn’t on a platform such as Kindle or Kobo.

Getting the book on Kindle was the answer. You’re probably reading this thinking: ‘Well, yeah. Obviously.’ But this was seven years ago and hindsight is wonderful and all that. At the time I’d never heard of Kindle Direct Publishing, I didn’t own a Kindle, and we’d decided our model was to sell through our own site. As I said: naïve.

When Suburb was released on Amazon, a decent percentage of the reviews were along the lines of ‘Great story BUT...’ The ‘but’ was always in reference to proofreading and editing. The reviews are there for you to read. They are an important part of Suburb’s life and part of my decision to relaunch this book.

For a while, I read everything I could on indie-publishing. Twitter was a great source. I got involved with the Manchester Bookbash, which lasted for about a year. I met some great people, swapped stories and shared advice about writing, publishing and book blogging. A friend put me in touch with Mark Barry, an indie author, who was generous with his time and advice, and kindly shared contacts with me to help me move myself forward in the indie-publishing world.

Life moved on. A new house (and bigger mortgage), followed by a second child, followed by a new (more stressful and demanding) day job, all stopped the flow of what we were doing. I didn’t have the time or energy to promote a book (product) that I was starting to grow frustrated with. Lawrence and I decided to wrap up our joint venture, both agreeing that although we were proud of getting Suburb out into the world, we didn’t quite achieve what we wanted for the book.

I grew downhearted and actively stopped any promotion. I left the book on Amazon Kindle, but when I thought of it, I was filled with disappointment that the first book product I had put out into the world was not what I wanted it to be. I wasn’t proud of the product. And that was my fault.

Since completing Suburb the need to write has never gone away. In fact, as time went on, and my frustration with Suburb (the product) increased, I did what I always do when I need to escape the real world. I went back to “doing some writing”.

I wrote another novel, Running and Jumping, about an Olympic rivalry. The book took six years to finish, slowed by the enormous amount of research needed.

Which brought me back to Suburb. If I was going to put another novel out in the world, one that was a better-quality product, then maybe I should try and sort out the issues with the first one. A few months ago, at the start of the Covid19 pandemic, possibly, without looking too deep into it, driven by the constant feelings that time was short and the world won’t wait around to do shit for you, I decided it was time to revisit my past mistakes.

I contacted Emma Mitchell, an editor who works under the name Creating Perfection, and told her the story I’ve just laid out for you. “I just want to put something out there that I can be proud of,” I told her. “Can you help me?”

And Emma said she could and she went to work on the draft.

I also contacted cover designer, Amanda Horan (LetsGetBooked), and provided a brief for what I wanted the new cover of Suburb to look like. Amanda added some detail of her own and the final version is not too far away from the initial idea in my head nearly eight years ago.

And now, although it never really went away, Suburb is back. Rested, refreshed, with a smart new jacket.

It feels incredible to be able to say it’s available in paperback.

Finally, a story and product I’m proud of.

Thanks for reading.

Steven