18258 RGS ONA Issue 99.qxp_v 06/02/2017 09:40 Page 6
ONs IN PRINT
Keep On Keeping On If you’re one of those people who has always believed you’ve got a book in you, never bin those early efforts, says writer and BBC producer, Paul Bajoria (73-83).
The Printer’s Devil trilogy: a mystery of convicts, murderers and the shady inhabitants of the London underworld
I
f there were such a thing as a Pulitzer Prize for Procrastination, I’d be a shoo-in. Many’s the time in recent years, therefore, that I’ve had cause to be grateful in retrospect to my 24-yearold self for knuckling down and writing a book when I had a brief interlude with nothing better to do. I’d come back to Newcastle from Canada where I’d taken a Masters in 20th century literature – and I was living at home while I worked out what kind of career I might conceivably be qualified for. I’m sure my parents were exasperated that I seemed to be spending hours on end sitting at the dining table writing a novel, instead of poring over the careers ads and firing off application forms in all directions. (In my defence, I was doing that too, some of the time.) But the story – an oldfashioned adventure for children set in 1820s London, mainly in the dark – had taken shape in my head while I was abroad, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any to let it come out. Of course, in my naïveté, I harboured more than a flicker of hope that it might interest a publisher, and that in the end I wouldn’t need to bother too much with the application forms.
6
