AR’ BACK YARD

Get those pre-orders in right now...

 

FUCK!!! My head is banging – what a hangover I’ve got. But for all the right reasons I hasten to add. Basically after all this time and all the months of editing and proofs with Ar’ Back Yard I finally got to tear open the box containing the first copies of the book.

 

And what a feeling it was. Jeez – I can’t believe that it is actually here. I have the copies in my hand after all this time. So quite obviously ar’kid, my brother in law and I celebrated and the drinks flowed (well actually more like me and my brother in law seeing as ar’kid is pregnant so can’t bloody drink – sorry ar’kid but we’ll make it up to you in August eh!!!)

 

Hence why my head feels like I have a spiral steel staircase inside of it with someone wearing metal boots is clambering up and down it continuously – not to mention that my tongue feels like a vulture’s armpit. Nice eh!!!

 

Anyway – enough whinging.

 

Although Ar’ Back Yard isn’t available right at this moment in time – you can however get your pre-orders in right now by going to http://www.arbackyard.com/ and through either The Book page or the Further Info page you simply click on the picture of the cover that will direct you to where it is possible for you to be the first to get your foot through the door and order the first copies of the book.

 

So what you guys waiting for – get those orders in right now....

 

So anyway let’s get back to what I originally set out to write about. I feel I should apologise right now for that last Blog you all read – I mean c’mon – what a stink it caused.

 

You see after I sent it to you guys I have received numerous responses from all over the world – from Manchester to New York – London to Las Vegas – Blackburn to Barcelona – Cheshire to even China of all places. It’s been the best feedback I have received to date.

 

Albeit the response has been varied (with a few threats along the way thrown in for good measure) I think a lot of you think I am a little crazy for revealing so much and putting my neck on the line with the kind of things I told you.

 

But what can I say?

 

I told it how it was – and I even apologised back then if I upset or shocked anyone. I know that for those of you who have only known me for the last several years never knew shit about any of that side of my life – so fair enough – I imagine that it came as quite a shock.

 

But like I said – I was a horrible little cunt back then (even I admit that) I am not glamorising that world in anyway. I’m just being as truthful as possible.

 

However – if I am being fair, there wasn’t too many negative feedbacks that were emailed to me. It was more emails with a lot of concern for what I had said and revealed about my past.

 

But hey – fuck it – if I hadn’t said it myself it would have just come back to bite me in the arse.

 

It’s not like the press can now go, “Hey guys guess what we just found out about Anwar Dharma – he used to be a horrible little shit that did this – and did that…” Because I’m not giving them chance – I’ll tell it now in my own words.

 

Anyway – thanks for all the feedback. It’s been a huge response and one that I am very grateful for.

 

I am even grateful to those of you that took the time to email me with such things as – amongst several other descriptions – and I am quoting here – a “Fucking Manc Twat”.

 

So you ask yourselves – what the fuck is he going to tell us now…

 

Well to be honest this ain’t gonna be a shocker – I just got to thinking last night after I finally got my hands on the book what a trip this has been so far… that some of you may find the journey of finally bringing Ar’ Back Yard to print an interesting read.

 

So here goes – it all started with a Readers Report I received after the Editor in Chief at my publishers read the original manuscript that was dated 30th April 2007….

The first thing that struck this reader – and everyone must remember that a novel, or any creative writing, takes every reader differently – is the huge strength of the narrator or the authorial voice, the distinctive, tough, amoral voice of Chopper. This is an effectively presented chunk of a certain type of real life, the vicious jungle of the underworld that reads with authenticity. It is a novel of gritty urban desperation, sex without love, violence, profanity, big bucks, drugs and music. Manchester is a convincing backdrop. Anwar Dharma takes the reader into a world of the author’s devising, of seediness, daily betrayals, and big time gangsterism; but I guess that is what that world is like, an certainly the book has the ring reality. The tone is tough and hard, and it has the proper voice of personal experience. All novels are a little autobiographical, whether they draw on actual or imagined experience, because it is from personal experience and observation that the novelist creates a world of the imagination, where, as in this book, the characters move and behave in keeping with the novelist’s rules of engagement. But this is more than that; it is an art object that, on feels, has almost come about accidentally, like a “found object”. AR’ BACK YARD has this authenticity, this ability to cause the reader to enter another world and suspend disbelief. It is an accurate picture of one of the underbellies of life, with startling effective images. The dialogue and conversations in their stream of consciousness mode are true to life. The manuscript is clean and accurate (although some editing is needed). We are proposed to offer Anwar Dharma a publication proposal or AR’ BACK YARD. 

So there you have it just as I had it. That was the report I received after I sent the original manuscript to the publishers.

 

And I have to say that hand on heart – after so many years – I was like the kid who had found the keys to the candy store.

 

I even (very sadly) carried the report around with me for a week. I suppose I couldn’t quite believe what had happened. Once all the contracts, etc were signed though that’s when the real work began.

 

The fist stage from here was to officially submit the manuscript once again to the editors at the publishers.

 

Now this is where complete inexperience on my behalf kicked in. I honestly thought that when they edited it – it would come back all typed up differently.

 

Obviously that was not the case. What you eventually receive is a print out of your original copy and all over that copy is an array of squiggles and symbols – that to someone like me meant shit.

 

So after I’d got over the first few chapters and started to understand what it all meant it began making sense what the editor was suggesting. I think that it’s really important that you take on someone else thoughts to your work – no matter how good you think your work is – getting a fresh perspective on it really helps.

 

So the first stage was to go over the work and read through checking and making changes to the story. I remember at this stage we were just completing the refurbishment at the restaurant and trying to organise the re-launch party so to say that it wasn’t exactly the best time for it to have arrived would be an understatement.

 

Anyway – I eventually got through the work and then exerted the five sample chapters that you guys would have read through by now. However I should point out now that it goes through more changes so if when you guys finally read the story and find it’s slightly different to what you’ve previously read then there is the reason why.

 

So off it goes again to the publishers. Then the next stage is to wait for the initial proofs to come along.

 

However that’s not to say that I was sat around doing nothing but playing the waiting game. Basically I had a number of projects on the go at the same time – along with trying to run the bar and restaurant at the same time.

 

One of those projects was of course the website. Now I have to say that we really did get a little carried away with ourselves at this point. I think that when we discovered the book was to be published I got very carried away with it. We came up with this idea for animation that in all fairness was only gonna be the first chapter and it was like Manga style with this old skool Beat Street style hip hop playing along.

 

Now if I remember correctly this was created from a serious hangover brought on from celebrating signing the contracts with the publishers. I had this girl – well she really ain’t a girl at 40 years old is she – but she’s young at heart (not to mention feisty as fuck) Audra who gets a mention in the acknowledgements of the book.

 

Anyhoo – Audra used to be a backing singer with Macy Gray amongst others she has worked with and at the time was working with Maxim from The Prodigy. She was all hyped up (she’d previously begun reading the book just before I discovered it was to be published so had an idea of what was going on) and to top the fact she thought she could get Maxim on board which obviously would be awesome – and then to top that her husband Toby was into animation and worked as a website designer.

 

So we all hooked up and like I said before – got carried away with ourselves with just what we was gonna do. Toby was initially gonna do the animation but when he realised how much work would be involved he decided that he would concentrate on the website itself.

 

So then I had another lad I worked with, Junior who has gone on to put together a short film and we used as an advert at work and also then went on to redesign the book cover as the initial one the publishers came up really wasn’t happening but we’ll come to that later.

 

So Audra got Maxim on board and he supplied us with these great instrumental tracks that we went on to use with all five pieces of animation.

 

So now you’re wondering where the animation came from and that was the reason for mentioning Junior. He had a friend called Thiago who is this quality animator who has done so much great work in the past with music videos and so forth.

 

Now he took the five extracts and he came up with the ideas he was going to use. As we was originally going to release the book in September it literally only left a matter of around eight weeks to put this together. Which looking back was ludicrous to think Thiago could have done it in that timescale.

 

Anyway – now we had gone from the one piece of animation to five pieces. So when I say we got a little carried away you see why now. 

 

Then we launched the site looking back and the fact we were originally going to release the book in September – way too early.  But I suppose it has been a way to keep in touch with all of you and the feedback I’ve been getting – all the good and all the bad – either way it’s been good to know what you all think.

 

So anyway – seeing as I’ve got a little ahead of myself here – I did actually receive the initial proofs of Ar’ Back Yard whilst all this was happening. Now this is the stage where you start to see what your book is actually going to look like. The layout is the same as the book and you start to get the feel of how the book will eventually look.

 

You do the same as the editing process whereby you go through and read everything and make changes and give feedback. Now at this stage you’re really getting to know just how and what you’ll all see and the flow of story really starts to pull together.

 

However after this – you are left waiting for the final proofs and this can take a while (which it did) and the longer it takes the more ideas you start to have. When I eventually got the final proof copy back I found I still had numerous changes and additions to action.

 

This is also the stage where they send you a draft of what the cover should look like. Now I am not laying the blame at anybodies door here as I had a specific idea in mind for what the cover would look like.

 

For those of you who had read the last Blog will know that I had this idea for the book with me for a number of years. And then one day back in 1998 I saw this article about some lads (brothers actually) whom I had known and this photograph that represented the article featuring them.

 

Well to cut a long story short – it was that photo I wanted to kind of improvise. I searched for hours at a time – for days and days to no avail in finding the article or the photo. And to be fair to the design department at the publishers they tried to come up with what it was that I had requested... only it failed miserably – and through no fault of their own.

 

It’s just that I think if you’ve got that image in your head and no matter how you describe it, it will never be the same. So even after I enlisted the help of Junior and he had a pop at it – well – basically – I gave up.

 

So Junior came up with several designs – but in the end I thought about we’d got so carried away with the website that we should not go overboard with the cover. So after one great design concept after another – I finally asked if he could try out one last idea which he did. And the design he came up with was superb. We’ve gone for a straight up quality no fuss – yet very fucking striking design – and I think once you’ve seen it you’ll all agree that he has done me proud.

 

Now at this stage you should really just hand it over and then let it go to final print. However – as I wanted to be one-hundred percent I requested that I see that the changes were done before I signed off.

 

So you play the waiting game once again. Only this time it was December before I received the amended copy. And the more you read it over and over the more you tend find mistakes that have been overlooked.

 

There is still one mistake that is to be amended which I will have to talk with the publishers about next week.

 

But what can I say – it’s finally here. I have the book finally in print. Through all the hard work and with the help of the publishers and the quality guys around me the book is looking great and once you’ve all had chance to read it – hopefully you’re all gonna enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

 

And don’t forget – this is only the first instalment. You’ve still got a long way to go before all will be revealed.

 

Only a month to go now... Don’t forget to pre-order through http://www.arbaclyard.com/ to be the first to receive your copy.

 

Take it easy as always.....

 

Anwar.