Influential Reading

Like many readers, there are stand-out books that have influenced my life significantly. Ignoring the obvious answers of In Deep Dark Wood and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (my first favourite book, and the first book in a series that would get me hooked on books), the fiction options dwindle significantly.

Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak threw me into his books quickly, which lead to his overall influence on my life. That was important for me, at age 12, to find a new series that I could read, a new author whose books I adored.

But the non-fiction is where the biggest changes have occurred in the past few years.

When I got my hands on Tim Ferriss's The Four-Hour Work Week, it opened up my mind to the idea that I didn't necessarily have to live a standard life. I didn't have to restrict myself to the idea of working a 9-5 job, if it ever came down to that.

However, it wasn't a full set of answers.

It was Americanised. It presumed prior knowledge or prior work experience. It presumed that I wanted to live my life in a particular way, and it avoided one very important issue: how did I want to earn a living?

While Ferriss's idea of a four-hour work week was appealing (except, you know, if you get paid by the hour), it wasn't for me. I didn't want to set up or own a business I didn't believe in. I would rather work 40 hours at something I loved and could talk about passionately than to do four hours of maintenance per week on a business that was just a source of income.

I couldn't sell the idea to myself.

When I read Nicholas Lovell's The Curve, things changed. I had a model to follow a little more closely. I could see how I could run a business I loved, on a time-scale similar to that Ferriss presented. I could see the value of free, I could see how what I wanted to do in life could be both fun and profitable.

I was almost there.

I had a near-ideal model. I had an explanation of how that model might work for me. All I needed was something to make that model make sense to me passionately.

Enter Syd Field's Screenplay.

I know what you might be thinking. That's not a business book. Hollywood is incredibly competitive. Blah-blah-blah. It's a dream. It's an aspiration. It's something to strive for. But that wasn't all I got out of the book.

I could see myself using his teachings. I could see my craft explode in front of me - not into nothingness, but into something more. It was like a new beginning, and it gave sense to the model. I worked it out.

You see, I want to work in publishing. But publishing is a big business, and a loaded term. It could be my own business, or it could be for one of the biggies, but it's the dream. It's also not a great way to make money.

The only way I see this working is to combined writing and publishing, and the writing can't just be fiction. It needs to be non-fiction that seeks to help others. It needs to be screenplays that, if they're lucky enough to make it to cinemas as a finished film, will give people a sense of joy. I need to be able to teach people about the world in some way, shape or form. Movies change lives. They can show people something with just enough reality that the message gets through.

That's the passion - the message. That's what Ferriss couldn't show me how to deliver. That's what Lovell was guiding me towards. And Field, he finished the job, by going back to the basics, back to where my dreams started - with writing, and with the business of it.

The thing is, I didn't go looking for change. I went looking for an interesting read. The books that influence us most aren't the ones we expect to change our lives. The books that influence us just happen, mostly by accident, and that's where the pleasure lies in them. While there are other books that have helped shape my life in different ways, like Brendon Burchard's The Millionaire Messenger, there's less than a handful that actually piece together to form a cohesive model that I can follow - one that requires my own input in the making. Those are the books I'll cling to, the ones I'll return to for advice and wisdom, again and again.

Childhood Reading and Beyond

I've touched upon this recently, but I think it's worth looking at again: when I was younger, I didn't read much.

My problem was stories. I couldn't find one that I liked. My primary school's library was horribly out-dated. In all the time I was in that school, I found only a few books that I actually enjoyed. The one to start it all?

In Deep Dark Wood by Marita Conlon-McKenna. It had magic. It had dragons. It was perfect for me. If I hadn't read that, if I hadn't realised that that was the sort of book I wanted to read, then I might not have turned into a reader.

Yep, you read that correctly. And you know what? No reading, no writing.

It was thanks to that book that I could find enjoyment in literature as I grew older. I found Harry Potter, which got me hooked straight away. I also read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though I felt certain I was too young for it at the time (10-11). Still, I managed it, and I loved it, and it didn't make me lose my faith in God, which is all the better. (That's a whole other issue. Faith is complicated. Let's move on.)

From Harry Potter, I found A Series of Unfortunate Events. In secondary school, I found Darren Shan. I was also introduced to Garth Nix, with the Abhorsen trilogy. By the end of 3rd year, I'd also found an interest in Douglas Adams, and had begun reading Dan Brown.

That was when I began to change as a reader. I wasn't put off by "adult" books anymore. Over the next few years, mainly as I was getting settled into college, I began experimenting with other authors.

From my childhood, I knew I liked the paranormal, fantasy, science fiction, superheroes. These were things I could look for in the future. They were things I relied upon, these guideposts for reading. Yet, slap bang in the middle of all that were Lemony Snicket and Dan Brown, and that gave me the push towards trying other books.

John Green, Maureen Johnson, Andrew Kaufman, Philip Roth, all of these on top of the other authors I found myself following, like Barry Hutchison and Andy Briggs and Steven Erickson.

And, eventually, I found non-fiction.

I now balance my reading between fiction - still lots of YA, but delving more into books intended for older readers when one looks interesting to me (as before, it all comes down to story - I won't read an "adult book" just because it's intended for older readers) - and non-fiction. I read a lot of books on writing, and business, and lifestyle management. I've touched upon books on mental health, and science, and to be honest, I'm happier with my reading habits now than I've ever been.

And it all started with a boy, a girl, and a neighbour with pet dragons. Who would have thought?

I Found a Hero

When I was growing up, if someone asked me who my favourite author was, the response was always the same: Darren Shan. It wasn't because I liked his books better than everyone else's. It wasn't because I especially loved horror. No, I liked him because of the author he was, not the books he wrote.

To make sense of this, we need to go back a few years. As in, primary school. I read two different authors' books - JK Rowling and Lemony Snicket. Rowling was my favourite of the two, and continued to write some of my favourite books right up to the time when I got my first job. (Specifically, the midnight release of The Deathly Hallows was when I was offered my job.) Snicket, on the other hand, I only picked up - and this will sound ridiculous - because Klaus Baudelaire looked like Harry Potter.

Yep, I was that shallow.

I was completely enamoured with Snicket and Rowling, whose books were published regularly throughout the first four years of my secondary school life. But it wasn't enough. I needed a new author.

That was when I found Darren Shan, upon the suggestion of perhaps the first friend I made in second school, after a friend from primary school recommended them to me a couple of years beforehand. What was most important, then, was that the library in school actually stocked the books. I had a ton of books to catch up on, and by the time I finished them, he was getting ready to release another series.

I was also open to reading different books, the more I actually read different authors, which was a major plus. Garth Nix quickly found his way onto my book shelves, and by the time I started working I was ready to try new books by new authors.

In the meantime, I got to meet Darren Shan for the first time - on the day I arranged work experience in the shop that I would later work at on weekends. He was funny, he strangled everyone, and he made everyone in the queue for signing feel welcome.

The next few years are a blur of me showing up at every signing I could, reading The Thin Executioner even when I was supposed to be studying for exams. He imparted some wisdom upon me when my shop closed down, and helped me through that period of my life, until, a couple of years later, I moved from fan-in-a-queue to guest-at-launch.

Yes, in the summer of 2012 I got to sit down at the big fancy dinner held my Simon & Schuster to celebrate the launch of Zom-B and his moving over to them from Harper Collins. All around me were authors and journalists, booksellers and book buyers, publicists and Shan. It was wonderful, and he made sure I was comfortable before the night began, introducing me to different people from different places so that, when we sat down for dinner, even if he wasn't there, I'd know somebody.

When I was a boy, I thought authors were hermits, sitting alone in a room writing their books. I thought authors didn't know how to talk to people, because everything about the idea of writing a book seemed isolated. I think, for me anyway, I needed to meet someone like Darren Shan, whose real life personality was as big as his narrative voice. I needed to see that an author could be outgoing and write books that people loved. I needed a hero, and I found one.

A Bad Seven Months

A recurring question in interviews seems to be to ask someone what the most difficult period of their life is. I don't understand that. I don't know why, if there are no guarantees that someone has moved past that period, anyone would ask that question.

So here's the thing - I don't want to be asked that. If anyone wants to know what, at the time of writing this blog post, the worst period of my life was, they can just look here, for a glimpse at that time. There's some stuff I'd rather not talk about at all, online, which you'll just have to accept. Anyway...

It started in February 2010. In the space of a week, I lost my job, an online friend went missing, and - less catastrophically, more upsetting with the others happening at the same time - my iPod broke. (Actually, it was dropped on the floor by someone else and broke, but that's not the point.)

I felt broken inside, lost and confused and with no idea how any of this was going to pan out. I didn't know how I'd fund any sort of writing career, if I ever hoped to have one, and I didn't know whether or not my friend was going to turn up safely.

While Darren Shan helped me cope with the job-loss-writer-problems, bad news was around the corner. My friend, a young writer by the name of Jonny Havron, was found. He had fallen into a river on a night out with some friends.

A couple of months later, my aunt was admitted into hospital, having just given birth to her second child. She went into a coma, and stayed that way - undiagnosed - for several weeks. During that time, while studying for exams, we had to accept that this was not going to end well - if she woke up, she wouldn't be the same. If they couldn't wake her up, she would remain in a coma. And if they couldn't fix what was wrong with her, she would die.

I can't say I coped very well with that idea, the finality of which hit the week after my exams. It took a lot for my best friend to calm me down over the phone.

A couple of weeks later, after a "successful" diagnosis of vasculitis in her brain, she entered the recovery stages. When she eventually woke up, she had no memory of giving birth, of naming her daughter, of feeling ill before her hospital visit.

There's more, things the family as a whole are still dealing with, but four years later she's still in permanent care. She's not the same woman she used to be, emotionally, mentally, in terms of personality, but she recognises her children, she recognises her husband, and she has some good days when she makes her family laugh.

Anyway, back to 2010.

After six months of hell, between the job (which I got back - Rise of the Phoenix sort of stuff with the company), my friend, my exams, and my aunt, I was on edge. That's putting it lightly.

The icing on the cake came in September, when my best friend - the same person who calmed me down after our fears over my aunt - left college. (There were circumstances, but that's not my story to tell.) That tore me up inside in ways I can't really describe (not without explaining the circumstances, anyway.)

It felt like I'd lost him as a friend - which I didn't, not really - and after everything else I'd gone through, it just felt like too much. It was a couple of months before I really integrated myself back into social groups properly, and longer still before I could talk about a lot of this stuff with people without getting upset all over again.

I'm putting it all down now for one very clear reason: this isn't something I want to talk about all the time. This is a time in my life I want to put behind me. I will always remember it, but I don't want it to rule me, and I don't want it to be something other people fixate on about me.

Let it be clear: I have moved beyond these seven months of my life. I finished my degree. I published my first book. I'm about to start a Masters - which I saved up for myself. I'm happy with my life, and the fact that it took me a long time to say that doesn't make it any less true. Sure, this isn't the full story, but the end result is the same. In the four years since all of this, I've learned to cope, I've learned to grow, and I've done a lot to make myself proud.

Presently, For a Living

The big dream for so many writers is to do it full-time, without having to work a "regular" job to pay the bills. I'm no different. Unfortunately, I'm still at the "regular" job stage of my career. I work in a bookshop, which is no longer just a bookshop, with three days a week at the moment.

I get paid minimum wage to process deliveries, work on the till, help out with the magazines with the senior staff member in charge of them is out, price and merchandise books, and generally keep the place clean when I'm in. And that's just the half of it.

There's very little I don't do in the shop, but the standout task for me is recommending new books to people. It tends to happen more often in the children's section than anywhere else in the shop, because I have the most experience of personal reading in that section out of anyone else in the shop - though the staff member in charge of book orders would know the section better than I would from more direct involvement in the stock processing.

No other job in the shop is quiet like getting to recommend a new book series to a teenager who's only figuring out what they like to read, or finding something similar to books someone's read and enjoyed.

Recently, with the big John Green craze, it means getting to recommend The Perks of Being a Wallflower and We Were Liars to readers. For fans of The Hunger Games, I just to Gone, and fans of Divergent to The Mortal Instruments. Figuring out what people would like is a big job - and one that relies on their personal taste as much as my opinion - and it's the thing I don't mind dedicating a little bit of extra time to, especially if it means that someone will have something to look for the next time they come in.

It's not quite a job for a living, not the same way my parents' jobs are for a living, because I'm still lucky enough to be living at home while still in part-time employment. However, it's let me save for a Masters. It's let me replace my old laptop, with one of the hinges shattered to pieces so that it can't close, and get some equipment for the Masters and beyond. It's a job that's let me go to the cinema on a regular basis, and buy books when I feel like it, keep up with magazine subscriptions, go see friends and eat out for dinner every now and then.

It's not a living, not with a mortgage and bills and a car to run, but it is a life I wouldn't have otherwise.

What I Studied At College

Anyone who knows me can pretty much skip this post entirely. It'll be of no interest to you to read about my college studies.

I won't go through a year-by-year analysis of modules and courses, but I can break it down into three major categories: Religion, English, and Education.

The Religion aspect of my Undergrad degree covers:
- Church history,
- Liturgy,
- Scripture,
- Philosophy,
- Ethics, and
- World religions.

What that meant was trying to balance my strengths and weaknesses across several completely different fields in an effort to attain the best possible grade for Religion overall. As it happens, the history and scripture modules were always my worst in terms of grades. I put it down to (a) the amount of material and (b) the marking style of the lecturers. It's a known fact that grades at third level vary according to the student doing the writing, and the lecturer doing the correcting.

All in all, it was interesting. I loved the Religion and Science module we had in third year, and surprised myself with a high grade in one of the scripture exams in first year. And, it's safe to say, I'll never want to be examined in Religion as a field of study - like that, anyway - ever again.

The English aspect of the degree was split into:
- Fiction,
- Poetry,
- Theatre, and
- Film.

Yes, we got to watch movies as part of our lectures. Yes, it was fun. And, if you did the same course as I did, it was all scarring. Blue Velvet is just one of the prescribed texts that will forever haunt me.

The English lectures were my favourites by far, because they focused on my longest-standing interest. While I came to enjoy Religion and Education lectures, I had always been excited about what we were studying in English, whether it was Shakespeare, Tragedy, Epic and Romantic Poetry, or Adaptations - even if I had no interest in reading the text, I loved learning about them.

The Education aspect of the degree was split more dramatically than anything else into two sub-categories: theory, and practice. The theory consisted of learning about the history of education, child psychology, methodology, and other such things that are Department-prescribed. The practical aspect of it... well... did I ever tell you the story about someone throwing a table at me in the middle of class?

I won't name names, but it happened. It's my horror story. It was a one-off event, in a heated situation, and I had to learn on the spot how to handle that - because no amount of theory of education can prepare you for the real thing!

Teaching practice was, and will probably always be, the most difficult and formative experience of my life as a student. I couldn't just talk to the students blankly about the topics - which usually covered someone I might have studied myself in college. I had to figure out how to make it interesting and engaging and relevant to them - even if that meant asking them, openly, what was the first thing they thought of when they thought of Muslims? (I won't lie, 9/11 and terrorism were offered as answers most of the time, a fact of which they were ashamed. Don't worry, I set them straight during my time as their teacher - they really didn't know any better.)

Of course, that was just my Undergrad degree. From September onwards, I'll be entering the world of the Masters, with war stories from the classroom to share with people when we're introducing ourselves to one another!

Where I Grew Up

Specifics aside, Dublin is and always has been my home. When I was a toddler, we lived in a tiny little house on a hill in a suburb, the road diving off to the right as you left the garden, the driveway a nightmare. We shared a bedroom, myself and my two brothers, and it stayed that way for a long time, even after we moved into a new house.

This new house - the one I'm living in now, until I really begin to Adult it up a bit and move out - gave us a bigger bedroom, with lots of extra room to play with our toys. They were simpler days. Eventually, my older brother moved to the boxroom, and later to the attic, and rooms in the house switched around, to the point that I'm the only person to have lived in all four bedrooms in the house since we moved in.

How's that for a fun fact?

Residents to what my parents described as a "main road" - really just the busiest road in the area until you reached the real "main road" - we were suddenly surrounded by families with children. By the time we were old enough to be allowed cross the road by ourselves - that was a thing in the 90s, that you weren't allowed to cross the road by yourself until you were older - there were at least thirty kids prowling the streets, coming from our road and one of two cul de sacs in the area.

We were loud, some of the mass of children were troublemakers, but all in all we were just living the suburban life of playing with a football on the road and watching out for cars. We rode our bikes, played football, hung around on swing sets in back gardens and ran away from dogs together.

A far cry from the city we live so close to, everything in my childhood was quiet and restrained and peaceful. With the odd exception of Halloween and New Years, there was barely any trouble worth mentioning that didn't boil down to neighbours just not understanding that kids will be kids.

(Side note: one Halloween, some of the teenagers in the area, when I was only about twelve, build a bazooka to shoot fireworks from. Wasn't that a fun discovery, when one of their rockets exploded on the other side of a window I was walking past!)

This little suburban life is probably what led to me wanting to travel a lot as I grew older. It can feel too small sometimes, especially when the option suddenly presents itself to leave the suburb, for the big park a few minutes down the road, for the city that's just a short bus ride away, to either one of two shopping centres on a single bus route, or three swimming pools, or any number of newsagents in walking distance (we had our favourites, back in the days of ten pence crisps and penny jellies).

It was a small world to grow up in, but it was safe, and it was homely.