Model Railway Scenery Secrets

Celebrating my 20th release

Reaching book release Number 20 with Model Railway Scenery Secrets.

After months of waiting since I finished writing this book late last year, this week marks the official launch of Model Railway Scenery Secrets, a book which also happens to be my 20th book release! While I'll save the ins-and-outs of what the book contains for my model railway readers over on Philden Model Railway, I thought I'd share a little about what it means to reach this milestone and how difficult it has been to get here. Those who are thinking that writing a book such as this is easy, are going to be left disappointed.

This is my 3rd Philden Model Railway Presents release.

"Isn't it just a book about model trains? What could possibly be so hard about writing that?"

Well, to answer that question; the writing. Forget for a moment that the examples I've used within the book have taken hundreds of hours to create. Forget that a hobby such as model railways can devour thousands of dollars at a time on building a project layout. And forget that photography can be difficult whilst juggling a camera, lighting and a delicate model in order to capture the one photo that emphasises the point you are trying to make in the book. It's the writing. Trying to get the idea out of your head and onto a page in a manner which readers can understand and be able to follow on their quest to become better modellers. The writing in a book such as this has to hold up to a weight of scrutiny far greater than any fantasy character or scenario that I've created in the past in any of my novels. People are going to invest their time, and their money into trusting that you know what you're talking about.

Getting here, (to book release number 20), has been far more difficult than writing my first novel back in 2006. It's the process of building a career, coming to rely on your craft as a main source of income, and pushing the doubts aside that take a greater toll on the mind than the task of simply sitting down to write a book. Instead of getting easier as you go, it actually becomes harder to keep going. Keeping the passion alive and the ideas coming is the easy part. My list of new book ideas keeps growing to the point where I don't know if I'll ever get to write them all, and my passion comes from only choosing the projects that excite me the most. But all that other stuff?

It's been a long grind to get here for someone who started writing his first novel at the age of 16. School writing awards followed until... just like that the novel was lost. Not misplaced, but rather the result of some unpleasant years spent being raised under a strict Jehovah's Witnesses upbringing, where people took umbrage to my book collection and burnt the lot one day while I was at school. Including the novel I was writing and a lot of my other short stories and poetry. Despite some poems surviving and one even being published in a national poetry magazine a few years later, it scarred me for a long time. To the point where I didn't pick up another book for close to a decade. What may or may not have become of that first novel is now irrelevant, and I've since found it easier to accept that people have the ability to be horrible at times, rather than trying to understand why.

Instead, after leaving home a year after leaving school when I met my now wife, I took to writing her lovely poems and raising a young family of our own in Queensland. It wasn't until a shoulder injury that required three months off work in 2006 that I told my wife I was finally going to write that novel I was always said I was going to. Although it wasn't the same story I was fumbling my way through when I was 16, as a 34 year-old father of two, there was a whole lot more life experience for me to draw upon. The Long Way Home was published in 2007, and despite being out-of-print for many years now, remains the book I am proudest of.

Fast forward to book Number 20, Model Railway Scenery Secrets... it couldn't be any more different to my first if I tried! Creating a miniature railway that evokes happy memories of raising our two great kids (whom are both now married), and holidays where Dad would always stop to photograph a train or railway station, led to a blog, which in turn led to a book. Now here I am at 50, with a bad knee, a once successful small cleaning business now behind me and opportunities to do anything other than write appearing only like a mirage in the desert. I am thankful I wrote that novel 17 years ago, and that life, and my hobby, has led me to a place where I can be happy at what I'm doing.

You'd think 20 books should be a milestone where people finally take you seriously. Instead, I still get asked how much money I make? Will I one day get a proper job? Do I pay tax? Or the classic assumption that I just stay home all day. It seems that writing is just one of those professions where people have no barriers in asking whatever they want to know. After producing 20 books it is the one thing that still bugs me.

Writing, when you take into account the path I have shared above, is a hard slog. To get to 20 book releases deserves to be acknowledged, along with the moments that have defined and tested me along the way. Sure, all writers face rejection, but I stopped collecting my rejection letters from publishers as though they were validation points years ago. So as my new book debuts on my publishing platform's bestselling list, it's about time I do the same with people's opinions.

So here's to 20 books! I'll give myself another week to promote it before diving into writing the next instalment. As for my first novel, I think it's time the world sees it back in print. Maybe 2023 is the year to do so. What do you think?

Cheers!