New author profile: Peter Breakspear
Winning a competition organised by WM and Matador Books led to publication for Peter Breakspear’s debut novel. He explains the feeling of becoming an author and his approach to writing, to Adrian Magson
It’s fair to say that the majority of debut authors follow the same route to publication, and the stops along the way are now familiar territory to most aspiring writers: develop the idea, write the book, edit and revise, submit to agents and/or editors, receive an offer of representation and/ or publication, say ‘yes, please’ and soak up the feeling of becoming a published author. Simples.
But not every author does that. As regular readers of Writing Magazine’s Publishing Behind the Scenes series in recent issues will know, Peter Breakspear, from Weymouth in Dorset, did things a little differently. He followed the writing and submission part of the route, but then found himself experiencing a process that most writers don’t even begin to see.