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View my page on Writers and Readers of Distinctive Fiction
Hello, I'm Mike Coatesworth
Welcome to my Web site!
How I became a published author
As a boy I hated
learning and spent most of my time playing truant from school. One night
in 1985, tragedy struck; a serious car accident left me in a
wheelchair and a serious head injury
that challenged me to make something out of my life. I attended college
for students with learning disabilities - from which I graduated with
honours. After the accident I suddenly found
that I had an enthusiasm for writing. I just love writing; it's my
passion in life, and at the time I drew on my dramatic experiences in
life to help me write. My ability to write stories has brought me
tremendous happiness in life. After writing all my tales, I finally
achieved the writing of ten books. I have also written more than 4000
short stories over the years with more to follow. Over the past year I
have survived two strokes, but I keep on regardless.
After a few years of
rehabilitation, it was decided by the day centre therapists that I was
ready for college and I was sent to Thomas Danby College in Leeds and
attended classes for people with learning disabilities where after seven
years I finally emerged with seventeen City and Guilds in English
Computer literacy etc
At the college I was taught about English grammar, and I placed what I
had learned from the tutor into beginning my journey to become a
writer, I immediately found the tales not only therapeutic but they were enjoyable.
First of all I began writing short stories about events that had
happened in my life, and I thought they were great until the English
tutor explained about grammar and humour, she also
stated that if a reader could relate to the tales, they would probably
enjoy it more. As I began to write more, the easier the stories became. I had
so much in my life to write about. Almost immediately some readers
criticised some of my work and I soon learned to accept these criticisms
and looked again at some of the tales and edited them. I think it took
three edits to get a final draft.
Soon I had my first book ready for the readers “Time for a Cuppa!
ISBN: 0-595-22495-4”
It
was time for me to find a publisher, oh how easy I thought it would be,
just send my manuscript in to a publishers, wait for them to publish my
work and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. In reality, I sent
the manuscript to over a dozen or so publishers and virtually received
the same type of answers, “Although
your work is interesting and well written, the Publishing Board at its
meeting, decided that this is not something, which it feels able to take
on at the moment. The board that because of the current market
recession, the company has to be increasingly careful of what takes on,
and unfortunately it does not feel that it has the appropriate place for
this book.”
This was the similar type of rejection letter I was receiving from all
the publishers that I had written to.
Wow, was this a wake up
call or what, and I didn’t think that I would ever make it as a writer.
I soon learnt that different publishers had their own ways of setting
out a manuscript and if I didn't follow their strict criteria they
wouldn't even read my manuscripts. So I had to check out
each publishers strict guidelines and follow them to the letter and this
was just to try and get through the front door! There was several
other departments my manuscript would follow and if I had slipped up on
any part of the criteria required and it was picked up further down the
line, then my work would be rejected and I would have to begin all over
again!
I wrote to many agents, but
they always replied that their books were full. I presumed they were
full of famous people and the smaller unknown writers were not
financially viable to them.
Eventually after many months of querying agents and publishers with a short synopsis of
my book, I found a publisher who asked me to send in my full manuscript
and a couple of months later I found that it had been accepted. I was
so elated! But it was to be another four months before I actually saw my
completed book with a great cover. Everyone around me was so proud of
what I had achieved!
From
the time of receiving my first rejection letter to finally becoming
published I had written quite a number of tales, and at first my tales
weren't first class, I guess it
was the rejection letters that had put me off a little and my heart
wasn’t really in my writing, but when I became published for the first
time my tales became more alive! I thought to myself that if I could do
it once, then I could do it again. I had been experimenting with longer
short stories and now I hoped I was ready to tackle a full novel. I
began my romance/tragedy novel and I thought of several titles before I
settled on "One tear is not enough" ISBN: 1-41371686-5
At first my fingers flew across the keyboard and within several weeks I
had a good hold on my work and decided to show what I had written, to my
wife, and after she had read the first few chapters she looked at me
with her eyes opened wide and kindly informed me that I couldn’t let
people read what I had just written, I would definitely need to tone it
down and read a proper romance book before I did anymore writing. So I
picked out a typical romance book and read it, I soon realised that my
work was a little over the top in the romance department, and that I
would have to edit and rewrite my book. Eventually after a year of
editing and rewrites I finally completed my novel and I waited with
baited breath until my wife had finished reading it. The smile on her
face said it all, I had finally got it right and manuscript was ready
for the publishers. I packaged the manuscript and sent it to the
publisher that I had previously used, but I was shocked when they sent
me a rejection slip! I soon found out that although different publishers have
there own type of genre, my romance book didn’t fall into this
publisher’s category. So I had to start all over again with letters to
publishers asking if they would like to read my work. It took over a
year to eventually find one publisher to read my book and get it
published.
Again, over
the years and all the while I was waiting to hear from different
publishers, I carried on with my writing until eventually I had written
ten books. Five of my books have now been published to date and below are
the books that I have had published over the past few years. It hasn’t
been easy and I would ask any potential writer to be patient, as it can
take several years to see your work in the bookstores and I would
suggest writing for magazines to gain practise and to become known. The
best editor for a book is yourself and if you don’t enjoy reading your
own book, then neither will anyone else. Personally I enjoy my work and
still get a laugh about some of the antics the characters got up to.
My latest
novel is my autobiography of which I
have had some great reviews and classed as must read and book of
the year.
My autobiography “Find a soft spot to land on”
is on sale in the bookshops / bookstores now. ISBN-10: 1843866412
and ISBN-13: 9781843866411
Be happy when
you’re writing and truly enjoy your work and we’ll soon be seeing your
books in print.
Michael
Coatesworth
My books in the bookshops/bookstores and
online stores
My autobiography “Find a
soft spot to land on” ISBN-10: 1843866412
and ISBN-13: 9781843866411
“Time for a Cuppa!
ISBN: 0-595-22495-4”
"One tear is not enough" ISBN: 1-41371686-5
"Peter and Sarah, A Single
Rose"ISBN of paperback
book “Peter and Sarah” is: 0-595-44196-3 ISBN of the eBook editions of
“Peter and Sarah” is: 0-595-88527-6
"Homespun Yorkshire Tales"
ISBN: 978-1-84753-337-1
*****
My Dear Friends
A big thank you to
all my friends who replied stating how much they enjoyed my video
Thank you very much for your emails, and I’m truly I’m
delighted that you enjoyed my video on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv3djvDwBdY
I hope that you will
tell and email all your friends about my video.
As I stated on
YouTube, I’m not well and still recovering from my stroke, so it took a
few takes and effort to get the video as I liked it, so it will be the
only video that I will be doing.
Anyway, as requested,
I would be grateful if you would inform your friends, place it on
facebook, twitter, or any other public domain or club that you use.
I truly do value our
friendship and over the years its truly been great corresponding with
you.
You have a great day.
Your friend
Mike
My
autobiography “Find a soft spot to land on” is on sale in the bookshops
/ bookstores now
Paperback
Publisher:
http://www.pegasuspublishers.com/; 1st edition (7 July
2010)
ISBN-10: 1843866412
ISBN-13: 9781843866411
On sale at all major bookstores and all major
online bookstores
Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie Publishers Ltd:
http://pegasuspublishers.com/
W H Smiths UK http://www.whsmith.co.uk/
Waterstone's Book Store
http://www.waterstones.com/
Amazon UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Amazon USA, http://www.amazon.com/
Barnes and Noble, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
Blackwell http://bookshop.blackwell.com/
Synopsis of my book
Find a soft spot to land on
By
Michael Coatesworth
As a child I hated
learning and spent most of my time playing truant from school. Being
stabbed by my father for taking a slice of bread and locked in the coal
cellar, suffering years of abuse, torture and hospitalised at the hands
of my step-mother, I quickly learned to find a soft spot to land on.
We were five children
being brought up by a deaf blind aunt, which led to jealousy and a
physical assault on my aunt by my stepmother, and she had to fight back
ferociously to survive the onslaught. My birth mother deserted the
family when I was two. I was thrown on to the streets by my father when
I was 14-years-old. Next
to the youngest of five children, I missed being part of a family, and I
lived rough on the streets, and I was on the verge of suicide.
It was
at the age of 17 that my older brother Alan managed to save me at the
last minute and helped me to take stock of my life. He took care of me
and encouraged me to join the army, and I took his advice.
Having my brother
murdered by a burglar was a great shock to me.
One night in 1985, as
I was working as a security guard, tragedy struck, and I was knocked
down by a car and I suffered serious head injuries. The accident left
me wheelchair bound and unable to tell a tin of beans from a tin of
rice, so that I had to learn everything again. Day centres and carers
were constantly trying to stimulate my brain in an attempt to make me
learn how to live my life again. The funny thing was that I still
retained my memories of my childhood and teenage years.
I attended a college
for students with learning disabilities, and I was taught all about
computers and how to design my own web page albeit simple. As my life
improved and I learnt more about the wonders of technology.
While on holiday in
Majorca, I met a healer, he told me that he would make me walk again.
Just as I was
preparing myself for a possible enhancement in my lifestyle, I was
diagnosed with a tumour on my spine, now I had another battle on my
hands.
Here is my story
Mike Coatesworth
Mike Coatesworth
A professional review
of my book
"Find a soft spot to land on"
“Find a soft spot to land on” is the life story of
a troubled man: his struggle to find himself a place in the world and a
stabilising focus for his confused emotions.
It is labelled an ‘autobiography’ on the title
page, and in the introduction. It is written in the style of a
conventional autobiography, and my intuition tells me that this is in
fact what it is: a memoir.
The story opens with a road accident, in which the
author was hurled through the air and landed on his head. His injuries
led to many years of therapy and treatment. This partly explains the
wry humour of the title, though ‘finding a soft spot to land on’ has
been the guiding principle of his life. To tell that story, he goes
back to the beginning: his birth into a poor family in Bradford in
1948. The background is filled in concisely and skilfully, with a
sketch of the circumstances of his birth. His father was a tram-driver,
left to bring up his five children after their mother abandoned them to
go to America with her GI boyfriend. The children were mothered by
their father’s sister, Chrissie, who also helped the family drag itself
out of financial debts. Chrissie is a pivotal character in the story,
the author’s emotional focal point.
The story is narrated in the form of a sequence of
episodes which have been woven together so that they form a continuous
narrative. The episodes add up to a convincing portrait of a life: the
petty sibling frictions, the difficult circumstances, and the ties that
held the family together. It is also a credible portrait of a young boy
gradually becoming a young man: his perception of the world is
reconstructed with an authentic touch which is often absent from similar
memoirs.
It is this element – the recapturing of the
perspective of youth – that unifies the first part of the story. This
is what it is all about: his experience of the universal childhood
struggle to understand the world, and to find one’s place in it: as the
title has it, to find a soft spot to land on. As it turns out, he lands
on some pretty hard spots along the way.
The prose style is simple, unpretentious, and the
narrative leavened by humour. This is especially marked in the tales of
childhood escapades and pranks, but even the episodes dealing with the
author’s experience of beatings (from teachers, from his father) and his
adult hardships have humour in them. That is not to say that the tone
is jokey – far from it. A pitfall that many amateur memoirists fall
into when trying to inject humour into their stories is to adopt a jokey
tone, often highlighted by a rash of exclamation marks. Not so with
this author, the humour is always dry, often wry, and entirely natural.
While on the subject of style, one of the features
that marks the manuscript out as a memoir is the near-total absence of
dialogue in the first half. Ii is notable that among the exceptions to
this no-dialogue rule are the scenes involving his relationship with his
aunt Chrissie, his surrogate mother. These are narrated in greater
emotional detail than other scenes, especially after her premature
blindness. The relationship between the troubled young man and his
mother-figure are remarkably touching, especially in the period
following her departure from the household.
Gradually, frictions and departures whittle the
household down to the author and his father. Unable to settle to life,
and with his emotional anchor gone, he runs away from home. After
living with a travelling commune, he finds himself living rough in
Piccadilly. This is the beginning of a spiral. He is sent to an
‘approved school’, from which he absconds. This results in a spell
borstal, from which he escapes. His path into adulthood is about as
inauspicious as it could be. Living alone, he struggles to make ends
meet and to cope with his loneliness:
My mind was in turmoil … At the time, the only
thing that I had done wrong was to grow up. As far as I was concerned,
nobody wanted me and I couldn’t get a job. My stomach rumbled and the
thought of food entered my brain … any moment I expected to be ejected
once again, out into the freezing cold winter that surrounded the City
of Bradford … My only thought at the time was to end it all before life
became too unbearable, then all my problems would be over.
He is pulled back from the brink by a
reconciliation with his older brother, Alan. Determined to sort his
life out, he joins the army.
At last he has found a role, a focus in life, and
his sense of self-worth grows. Following a period in Hong Kong, his
regiment does a tour in Northern Ireland. The troubles are at their
height, and he finds himself at the sharp end. Amidst the violence,
though, he finds another emotional anchor: his first encounter with
Betty, the woman who is to become his wife. Stints in Germany, Canada
and Cyprus follow, along with promotion. He and Betty have children.
Life seemed to be complete: he has found a soft spot to land on.
Eventually he leaves the army and takes work as a security guard.
Here we reach the point at which we first entered
the story: the accident in which he was hit by a car and suffered head
injuries. The last part of the story takes us through his recovery and
his story down to the present.
In conclusion, I remain convinced that this highly
involving story is primarily a memoir. The product of the author’s
storytelling skill makes it feel fully authentic. There is something
else too. What really sells the story is the novelistic structure of
the narrative arc. Throughout the second half of the story – the
narrator’s adulthood – the key events of the narrative involve returns
to his family at pivotal emotional moments. This does mark a strong
sense of the emotional arc of a novelistic narrative.
I strongly recommend this manuscript. It is
authentic, highly engaging, entertaining, absorbing content, and
provides a wholly satisfying emotional cycle from beginning to end.
Finally, I find Find a soft spot to land on
as a most worth book and any resulting publication would have a
potential readership amongst a wide mainstream audience and could
generate a great deal of interest.
*****
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