TEARDOWN
William Campbell Powell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE:
|
LGBT+ Romance |
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BLURB:
Growing
up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no
escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.
Two
weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany,
their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake
and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the
new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.
Dogged
by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows,
zig-zagging between chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws
near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with their audience, and even
the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and
then…of Lars.
As
the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s
keeping a dark secret. Lars? Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The
band? Or will that dream crumble too?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt
Two:
So I pulled the mic stand around to the side of the kit, set
it up so it didn’t get in the way of the hi-hat, and we gave it a go. I picked
‘I Come from the Blues’, which was one of Clay’s compositions. It had fallen
out of the set sometime in the last six months, but I loved Clay’s soft, jazzy
butterscotch vocals on it. If it had been up to me, it would still be in the
set, but Clay had said he wanted to move on.
Where did I come from? I come from the blues.
Where am I going? I’m going to lose.
Where is my future? I’m sure I have none.
Where is my hope? My hope is all gone.
I’ve always sung along—off-mic and under my breath—so I
didn’t have any trouble fitting the words in the right places. And I’ve got
decent pitch and rhythm. So I think I did all right.
Now, Jamie wouldn’t meet my eye.
“What?” I demanded. “What was wrong with that?”
He mumbled something.
“I can’t hear you, bro. What did he say, Jake?”
Jake looked away. He didn’t want to get involved in any
squall between me and my brother. Besides, he’d used up all his words for the
day.
“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice.
It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll. No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”
“I see.”
“Look, we’ll ask around our friends. Social media. There’s
got to be something online.”
I didn’t say anything. I was thinking lots though. About how
I’d discovered that this was something I really wanted to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Teardown wasn’t a quick book
to write. I got the idea for the book around June 2014, a couple of months
after my debut novel – Expiration Day – got published. But that’s all it was –
an idea. A couple of lines in my “Ideas Bucket”. Writing-wise I was busy
promoting Expiration Day, then suddenly work went sour and I was spat out in a
mass redundancy in April 2015. I can see the first couple of pages were written
in early May 2015.
I have a rule when writing a
new novel. If I can get to 8,000 words, then it’s OK to continue, If I lose the
will, or can’t find the inspiration to get that far, then the idea goes in the
trunk. In that phase, there’s no routine – I just write when I have the
inspiration.
I reached that magic 8,000
words about 3 months later. I also had a new job, so the routine shifted to
‘After midnight’ (when all the family were in bed), finishing around 2am or
when I’d written 1,000 words, whichever happened first. Uh, research (by which
I mean googling the etiquette of German saunas, or finding videos of how to
make an origami swan) also counts.
I think this was also the
novel where I switched to Scrivener and stopped using Microsoft Word. It was a
decision I’ve never regretted, and it’s made a huge difference to keeping a
writing project coherent. The immediate benefit was that whenever I wrote
something about a character – like their age, height, hair eyes (but also their
mannerisms, motivations) – it could all go into a character profile, and I
wouldn’t inadvertently write something conflicting. And all the research can be
kept together in a project folder.
Then there was a hiatus of
about a year, because I was writing a sequel to Expiration Day, and then
rewriting a fantasy novel that had got some agent interest. Neither got
accepted. (The Expiration Day sequel was probably the right outcome, but I
still have hopes for the fantasy novel.) Along the way I was also writing and
submitting short stories, and I got my first short story sale around that time.
So up to mid-2016 I was mostly working on other projects. It took a whole year
to get Teardown to first full draft (to mid-2017) and a year of editing (in
collaboration with professional editors) to get to something that was – I hoped
– submission ready in mid-2018.
That’s become the pattern of
my writing life – there’s always a current project on the go, but interleaved
with that there are older projects being revised, others out on submission or
out with an editor. Everything competing for that two hour window of time.
And then at the start of 2024
Teardown found its home with NineStar Press. But that didn’t mean the writing
was done – I went through another 2 or 3 intense 2-week rounds of editing with
Elizabetta at NineStar, filling plot holes and polishing. Hard work – evenings
and weekends solid editing – but also a joy, because Elizabetta has such a
flair for inspiring creativity.
I’ve left one of the more
unusual aspects of writing Teardown to last, which was the songwriting. Having
been a musician from an early age, it was both natural and necessary (for
copyright reasons) for me to write original songs for Teardown. Lyrics and
music were both required. The songs themselves need to be stories in miniature,
with a theme and a progression. Sometimes the tune wouldn’t come right away,
but as snippets came, I’d hum or sing them into my phone. It was an opportunity
to push my songwriting skills as much as my writing skills, to experiment with
more adventurous chord progressions, getting a little jazzy at times.
When I thought I had matching
words and music, I’d then capture the whole thing with just guitar and vocal on
a digital recorder (better sound quality than my phone). Towards the later
stages of the NineStar edit process, I started to create fuller demos of each
of the songs, using multi-track recording software. Those demos are up at https://bit.ly/TeardownMusic for
readers to listen to.
I was songwriting pretty much
up to the wire – Elizabetta and I were working on tightening-up one of the
central questions – why Dom joined Kai’s band. Writing a new song and weaving
that into the narrative was one of the last significant edits I undertook.
And then it was done.
Thank you for following
through to this point – I hope you found it interesting (and not too
technical).
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
William
lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes
speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, EXPIRATION
DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for
better than half-decent science in a YA novel—the citation actually says
"Excellence in Children's Science Fiction Literature".
William’s
latest novel - TEARDOWN - was published 10th December 2024, by NineStar Press
in the US; it is an LGBT+ romance/road-trip.
His
short fiction has appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and
other outlets.
By
day he writes software for a living and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays
guitar and writes songs.
My
websites: https://williamcampbellpowell.com/
Buy
Links: https://teardownbook.co.uk/#where
The book will be on sale for $0.99
Social
Media:
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/WillCamPowell/
Instagram:
http://www.instagram.com/willcampowell
BlueSky:
https://bsky.app/profile/willcampowell.bsky.social
My
comps for the book:
The
novel combines elements of LGBTQIA+ romance with Road Trip fiction, and - with
its focus on music - might sit alongside Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘Daisy Jones and
the Six’ (2016) or Dawnie Walton’s ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’
(2022), or - with its focus on (Kai's) gender-ambiguity and relationships -
near Camille Perry’s ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ (2018) or Beth O’Leary’s ‘The
Road Trip’ (2022).
One
USP: The book is about a band and contains original songs, for which I have
created demos – see/listen: https://williamcampbellpowell.com/music/music.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY
William
Campbell Powellwill be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn
winner.
