It all started like this: I had already spent quite a few years in the food logistics business. (Logistics used to relate to an army supplying itself with ammunition, sandwiches and toilet rolls, but the road transport industry hijacked the term because it sounded more technical than either road or transport, which are in turn, a vast improvement on shifting stuff from A to B). I had been called a Distribution Manager, Lorry Driver and a few other things as well; I can even comprehend what some of them mean. I may have had my fingers around your food if you ever ate in a Happy Eater, Little Chef or Trusthouse Forte Hotel, but mainly if you consumed food from a supermarket between November 1994 and June 2012. Sometimes I used to wash my hands, mainly when I got home. But I always kept my fingernails short; for cleanliness yes, but mainly so it doesnt hurt so much when scratching ones a*se. I met an awful lot of different characters during this time and as I may be a bit Asbergery, I made mental and sometimes physical notes of them. I built up a head full of scenes and sketches and one day, started to put them together into a book. It wasnt this one. It was pure filth. It never got further than a couple of chapters and never achieved a title but Fifty Shades of a Driving Agency may have been suitable. I would have been too embarrassed to show Emily, my proof reader/mentor, her being a female woman and all. The foundation stone of Raser Drivers was an event involving the lady on whom some readers favourite character Glenda, is based. It took place at a store in Birmingham and having conceived a scene, the story evolved around getting all the players in place. Other scenes also came together and were all happily floating around in the ether waiting for a catalyst. The BBC tries to encourage new talent through its Writersroom webpage and I was one of its loyal subscribers. Every newsletter had Opportunities and always several writing competitions. I hoped that one day they may have a writing competition I would actually qualify to enter. It seemed that each one had a different exclusion - you must be: disabled, under 25, from Manchester or the surrounding area or all three. Then came Laughing Stock, a free-for-all sitcom writing competition. A sitcom - brilliant! Just the vehicle (ouch!) for my stories. It took a while and a lot of work but I put it all together into a half-hour show and with excitement and trepidation, I took the thick envelope to the local Post Office and sent in my entry by special delivery; it was March 2011. I received an acknowledgement so at least I knew someone was going to read it. I was never disappointed with not getting anywhere in the competition because I realised how poor I must have been at setting up the scenes; writing a story is one thing but applying that story to the disciplines of production is another skill altogether. My lack of experience must have been obvious. I was and still am though, confident in my story telling. No, the big disappointment came when Sky TV started showing trailers for their new sitcom, Trollied, before the Laughing Stock result was out. Even if mine had been brilliant there was never room for two sitcoms on the same theme. And that buried it. But only until there were rumblings of voluntary redundancy. That is why food from supermarkets has been safe to eat since June 2012 and this book was nailed together from the sitcom script. Sorry, I meant to write carefully constructed. You would think the conversion from one to the other was straight forward enough after all, the story was already there. No. It was full of wrong tenses like, Alice and Sonia turn and walk across the aisle which had to become Alice and Sonia turned and walked across the aisle. All had to be changed and without spelling mistakes or rubbish grammar, they are surprisingly hard to see. And another thing: the sitcom was the story of one driver, one delivery, one shift, and it only managed 20,000 words so I had to write in Dogger and his trip to Norwich to get to the minimum 40k for a novel. Thats the story in brief and now its here and available, I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Please review it after reading and feel free to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you. Floyd.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 22:41:39 +0000
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