PRESS RELEASE!

What happens when we are called to face the past and the darkness within ourselves? How do we respond to the challenge to change? An engaging story in an evocative Christmas setting that will make you laugh and cry A respectful but provocative reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in modern clothes

A CHRISTMAS CALLING by Chris Cottee please see below for our latest release available now.   A recent article in The Observer revealed that the friendship between renowned English author Charles Dickens and fellow literary giant Hans Christian Andersen had been killed when Dickens found Andersen to be a ‘bad house guest’. Christmas, a time to celebrate the peace and joy of Christ, is, ironically, often a time of irksome house guests as families come together to celebrate. Chris Cottee’s A Christmas Calling features a protagonist who, like Scrooge, in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, has cut himself off from other people to protect himself from his own crippling issues. Like Scrooge he has to face his past through encounters, not with ghosts, but with a mysterious companion whose voice is but one of many he might be influenced by In the hustle and bustle of modern life we are constantly exposed to all manner of ‘voices’ inviting us, beckoning us to think, act and believe in a certain way. Yet how many of those ‘voices’ are authentic and calling to us with only our ultimate good in mind? How do we know whom to listen to and, if a voice for our good calls to us, will we recognize it for what it is? Will we respond positively? Do we believe that change in us and in other equally unlikely people is possible? In A Christmas Calling Chris Cottee captures these questions in a tense drama strongly reminiscent of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but with a more sensitively worked main character and a differently drawn hope of reclamation. The book heralds all the things we associate with Christmas: fun, snow, excitement, children, lights, parties and celebration meals. We meet David Sourbook, a callous man. Locked inside his sneering heart, Christmas jollities and festive cheer leave him cold, stone cold. This year though, a chance encounter with a mysterious companion, Angela, could herald a change. But can she be trusted?  Was she a friend or an angel? Angela guides him through the town, immersing him in an alien world he has not known, and, as she seems able to keep on loving him with enormous patience, his frozen heart begins to melt. They run across violence from a local gang, along with failure, death and sickness, and even trouble with the police, making David question whether this woman is really a bad influence on him. Is Angela human or an angel?  Yet he experiences the redemptive power of simple kindness. He halts and hesitates. But deep and dark secrets from his past, hidden even from himself, have to be released, with shocking effect. We experience with him a powerful sense of yearning, pulling both from deep within and from inestimably far, felt through the simple medium of watching the dusk from his seat at his cottage, looking across the fields and the distant sky. There is an intriguing question throughout - who is it that's speaking to David, and how, and why? Is it God or something darker? Will David listen? Will he experience redemption? About the author Chris Cottee is a vicar in Watford and previously studied clinical psychology. He has a passion for the outdoors, working with children, and writing poetry and fiction. For review copies and media enquiries contact Manoj: info@instantapostle.com Tel: 07932 463 951.   A Christmas Calling ISBN: 781909728707 by Chris Cottee is published by Instant Apostle and available now from Christian bookshops, bookstores and on-line retailers. Fiction. 304pp £8.99

SECOND ATTEMPT TO POST BLOG

First review from publishers of manuscript for second book ('A Spring Awakening' probably) came back. Always a kick in the teeth! 'Lose 20,000 words, cut dialogue between main characters, chop this bit, lose this reference...' Hard because you've labored over it, and some of those bits are essential to plot or characterisation. But there's a helpful phrase I came across: writing is rewriting. The perspective of another set of eyes tells you when the padding sucks energy and movement from the plot. People read what moves. There, that's a saying with at least a couple of meanings. People read what moves. Moves along. Moves them. Moves society. And maybe I tend to be verbose in my writing, which is ok in a reflective piece, but not a novel. A novel must have pace. Pace not peace! Not until the end anyway. I do favour a happy ending!
But then again, what's the point of having pace, if the reader isn't engaged with the characters? I like the view for fiction: 'just because it's not true, doesn't mean its not real'. The characters have to be 'real' for the action to mean anything. Otherwise it's like one of those Sci fi films where the whole budget has been spent on eye - boggling action but the people and what happens to them doesn't engage. Boring! So there's a balance here. Shall I cut out everything that makes the people real, a lot of which is interaction through dialogue? Of course not. 
A balance. The reviewer must be obeyed! But not completely! Otherwise, why not just write shorter books? Chop out every alternate chapter! And, by the way, I love the chunky feel of how 'A Christmas Calling' has come out. Thank you Instant Apostle #IA
For my future biographers: A PICTURE OF THE AUTHOR AS A YOUNG MAN

First review from publishers of manuscript for second book ('A Spring Awakening' probably) came back. Always a kick in the teeth! 'Lose 20,000 words, cut dialogue between main characters, chop this bit, lose this reference...' Hard because you've labored over it, and some of those bits are essential to plot or characterisation. But there's a helpful phrase I came across: writing is rewriting. The perspective of another set of eyes tells you when the padding sucks energy and movement from the plot. People read what moves. There, that's a saying with at least a couple of meanings. People read what moves. Moves along. Moves them. Moves society. And maybe I tend to be verbose in my writing, which is ok in a reflective piece, but not a novel. A novel must have pace. Pace not peace! Not until the end anyway. I do favour a happy ending!
But then again, what's the point of having pace, if the reader isn't engaged with the characters? I like the view for fiction: 'just because it's not true, doesn't mean its not real'. The characters have to be 'real' for the action to mean anything. Otherwise it's like one of those Sci fi films where the whole budget has been spent on eye - boggling action but the people and what happens to them doesn't engage. Boring! So there's a balance here. Shall I cut out everything that makes the people real, a lot of which is interaction through dialogue? Of course not. 
A balance. The reviewer must be obeyed! But not completely! Otherwise, why not just write shorter books? Chop out every alternate chapter! And, by the way, I love the chunky feel of how 'A Christmas Calling' has come out. Thank you Instant Apostle #IA
For my future biographers: A PICTURE OF THE AUTHOR AS A YOUNG MAN

GET THE BOOK!

It's arrived! The copies of my book 'A Christmas Calling' from the publishers - the copies I now have to sell.

As mentioned previously, it's based on the story of Scrooge, and it's aimed at an adult readership, to light the festive fires in our hearts in the run-up to Christmas (there were Christmas things in the shops today!). I hope you'll buy a signed copy from me.
I can sell them at less than the Amazon price, at £8. Postage and packing is £3 and remains that same price for anything up to 6 copies. So, 1 copy is £11, 2 copies is £19, 3 copies is £27, and so on.
You can request copies by email (chriscottee@sky.com) or post (61 Westfield Ave, Watford, WD24 7HF). Please make sure your name is clear and tell me if you have a particular wording you'd like me to put ('My dearest and oldest friend', 'the true inspiration behind all my writing'!!)
Send a cheque or you can transfer the money by BACS: my sort code is 60-00-08 and account number is 49111841 account name REVEREND C P COTTEE)
So ... buy a copy! Buy copies! They will make great presents both for Christians and those who are not. Send me HUGE amounts of money!
By the way, if you're in Watford and you see me from time to time we can arrange delivery without postage and packing costs. If you're abroad we need to negotiate P&P!

Well, it's done! My publishers, Instant Apostle #InAp contacted me a week ago to say, 'can we have the completed manuscript for the second book in two weeks, please'. Now, on the one hand, as a writer it's lovely to be able to say those two wonderful words, 'my publishers' after, like many aspiring authors, so many years and so many manuscripts (about 15 in my case - I still have hopes for all of them!) but to find oneself staring down the barrel in quite that fashion is sobering. 
And guess what! I finished it this afternoon! Another 20,000 words or so, hitting its lowest depths and highest heights in bringing it to the intended conclusion, while still working at my 'day job', in a week! I'll try to do a preliminary review this week before sending it in. 
Which is fabulous. 
But this evening, I went out for a walk with my older son, Tom, who still lives with us. It was a bit drizzly, but really nice as we saw sheep, countryside, and the inside of a place of refreshment. And I realised - give me the choice of finishing a manuscript or being able to go out with Tom, and I'd take the time with Tom. Give me the choice of being a fabulously successful author (!) and being able to go out for walks with Tom, and I'll take the latter, any time. 
I'd have to say I'm pleased with, proud of even, my priorities.
Oh yes, I know, having to finish the second manuscript just 3 weeks before the first is published sounds suspiciously like a kind of madness.

IT'S TOM!

MY PUBLISHERS!

Oh yes, it's being published by Instant Apostle #InAp
Look them up. They're a young firm doing some exciting work.

In just over a month, my first-published book comes out. It's called, 'A Christmas Calling' and will be available on Amazon or, preferably for those that know me, direct from me, and signed. You could say it's all about getting festive. Though it isn't. But my hope in writing it is that it will stir those festive fires in adult readers - may even become a favourite to be read every December.

Children get that festive Christmas feeling quite easily. At the first real sign of its coming, something flickers to light inside them. A most glorious sense of anticipation, of rightness, of an unnameable blessing such that the very air, and every encounter, and every mention, increasingly fills them with a bright joy. 
Adults often remember that seasonal glory, but find it much harder to recreate. The story centres on a man desperately searching for the festive fizz, because his life is a lonely, soulless grind, lacking any kindness. And then a woman drops into it, seemingly offering a way out of being Scrooge, and into a bigger, brighter world. Is she an angel, or an invitation to disaster? Their hopes of joy together are doomed if he really is immune to kindness; doomed if her friends won't accept him; doomed because she starts getting him into trouble from the first day they meet. 
And what is that yearning that calls to him from afar and aches as it echoes in the hollow caverns of his heart?