tom bh

I’m proud to announce that my first book, The Last Beyond, is available from Lulu.com.

It’s currently priced at £7.09, but post and packaging comes to about £4, so it’s yours for about £11. I don’t make any profit from that, it’s all printing costs to Lulu and posting costs to Royal Mail, but the plus side is that it’s available to the world and I don’t have to take care of any admin (taking payments, sticking it in an envelope, etc).

I never knew how much time and effort went into making a book, of course the actual writing is a significant task, but then the editing, re-editing, notes, bibliography, typesetting, cover/art work and all the rest of it has taken me just as much time. All in all, from when I jotted down the first word to its availability on the intertubes, over three years have passed. And it’s only a moderately sized book, maybe 16,000  words, that’s 80 or so pages.

So what’s it about? Well, there’s a nice little description on the back cover which you can read on Lulu.com, but basically it’s a collection of six essays exploring spiritual and philosophical topics often pitched from an autobiographical perspective — so no computer programming I’m afraid! The idea to write a collection of essays, rather than the more typical, series of chapters, was influenced by a few things; firstly I think the fact that, only months previously, I had completed a degree, played a part, but I was also inspired by the ostensibly narrative-less structure of The Faith To Doubt by Stephen Batchelor and the series of collected essays by Chris Arthur (Irish Nocturnes, Irish Willow and Irish Elegies), the acclaimed writer who also happened to be one of tutors.

And is it any good? Well you’ll have to find out for yourself!