“I was out somewhere with the kids and just happened to check, and there had been thousands of downloads. It really took off from there.”
Calverstown-based author Peter Gibbons had long thought about writing, and was a journalling ideas scribbler, writes Brian Byrne. But with a busy family life and a job in the insurance industry to support them, he’d never found the time to write a story. Until Covid.
“All of a sudden, I was working from home, with no commute. There were no sports for the kids or evening activities. I had a chance to sit down and put a story together.” Which he did, in a complete book manuscript length, set against the conquest of Northumbria and East Anglia by the Viking Great Heathen Army in 856 AD. And soon realised, in his own words, that it was ‘rubbish’. “It was a long, sprawling kind of thing. I sent it to lots of agents, and only one bothered to reply, and it was kind of like, it's a little bit naive, and you need to look at x, y and z.”
Peter got the message. He started to learn about story structure and made improvements. Then he did something that was a game-changer: he invested in a professional editor’s structural assessment. "She read the book and came back with it broken down into what was good, what was bad. Lots of bad, not much good. Which is exactly what I needed; otherwise, my writing career would have died with that first novel that wasn't up to scratch. So I could then go off and learn all those things, learn the craft."
Traditional publishing depends on uncontrollable variables, such as an agent knowing an editor who might be looking for a book type that an author may have submitted. Peter decided to go the Amazon Kindle route, because it was ‘accessible’. “With Amazon, you put it all together — editing, cover, design, and put it out there. The readers decide.” He admits that once he had uploaded Viking Blood and Blade for public judgment, it was as much to ‘get rid of it’ as anything else. “I thought nobody would be interested, and that was it. The ambition is done, goodbye.” Until that time he checked the downloads.
Realising that he seemed to have something people wanted, he wrote sequels and continued on the self-publishing route. Soon, he had a series from his original Vikings-based story. “For some reason, they have all been particularly successful in America.”
Peter was still working full-time in insurance, but he put aside dedicated time for his writing. “I’d get up really early, set a word target and make sure I’d reach it, then head off to work.” Entering writers' competitions also helped. He won some, and the prize money paid for building a dedicated writing room in his garden. One competition win in 2022 moved his game further. “I entered King of War in the Kindle Storyteller Competition and won it. The prize-giving was in the Houses of Parliament in London, where I first met other writers.” Being there with his wife, Fiona, was key to the next step. “I got a traditional publishing contract from Boldwood Books while we were there, and we both realised that maybe I could go full-time.”
Peter’s income from writing had also reached the point where it was equivalent to that from his full-time job. But it was through conversations with other writers at the London event that Fiona also agreed he should move. “If she hadn’t been there with me, it might have been harder to convince her.” Today, Fiona is a key part of what has become the family business. She quit her HR job and now looks after a busy enterprise's accounts and marketing.
Peter makes no bones that his writing is a business. “When you've worked in the business world, that’s what you do. I start work at nine and write until four. I do 4,000 words a day, no matter what.” If something like a school run or the interview for this piece cuts into his writing day, he’ll make up the hours later to meet his daily output. “That’s how the books are delivered, how I write so many books.”
Writing in a specific genre makes managing the digital publishing business efficient, especially in targeting digital ads on social media, which is how he developed the platform for his books. “You can get to people who read authors similar to yourself. You can target people who watch particular television shows or movies in the same genre.”
Peter has always been fascinated by history. Particularly, the Greek and Roman times. But choosing the Vikings era for his historical fiction comes from his upbringing in North West England — Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester — and his 18 years in Ireland, brought here by his Irish wife. “There’s a big Viking history in England and in Ireland. It’s everywhere you go. What I always try to do in my stories is pick a big event; within that, you have a kind of a small story, a guy trying to achieve something else within that bigger story. It could be about family or vengeance or whatever you want, but it's set within that bigger structure. I get an idea. I research. I develop a plot. Then I’ll do a chapter plan. That will change as I go, of course.”
Since becoming a professional writer, Peter has made the time to talk to others aspiring to be the same. “I give them two big pieces of advice. Finish your first draft and don’t spend time tweaking it as you write, or you’ll never finish it. Then you have something like a piece of clay, which you can go back over and mould. So refine, refine, and refine.”
Peter Gibbons is very aware that many people dream of being full-time authors. They can do it the ‘arty’ way, taking a year or years to complete their magnum opus, and never turn it into a livelihood. Or they can recognise that, like any other endeavour, working it as a craft can be developed into a business that can succeed. As he has done.
In addition to the original Viking Blood and Blade saga series, Peter has a Saxon Warrior series published by Boldwood Books, as well as a brand new series set in the time of the legendary King Arthur, in the turbulent period of the late 5th Century AD, when Roman rule had ended and the Germanic tribes were invading. If you think he might be sitting on his laurels, he also has a couple of modern thrillers under his belt, published under the pseudonym Dan Stone.
(This article was originally published in the Kildare Nationalist.)
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