'A' IS FOR AUTONOMY

When seeking a publisher for this book the single most important consideration from my point-of-view was what degree of autonomy I was going to be granted? Sure, a big London-based publishing house might have the muscle to guarantee ten of thousands of sales in the first few months, but that was never my main concern. What would be the point if the final product bore no resemblance to my original vision?

I make no bones about the fact that creatively-speaking I am a total and utter control freak, so when Tangent Books offered to help me realise this thing 100% as I pitched it to them, it was an offer too good to pass up (albeit a frankly foolhardy one, considering I've never written a book before). Plus they're local, they publish books by Big Issue vendors and infamous anarchist agitators, and despite being a Bristol Rovers fan, big cheese Richard Jones is one of the most easy going and eternally optimistic people I've ever met. 

Admittedly concessions have been made, but only one or two. Some artists had to be left out, because we ran out of pages, and a blinding concept for the cover was abandoned simply because we ran out of time. Apart from that everything from the fonts and illustrations, to the amount of swear-words and jokes at the police's expense that made it in to the final version of the text are as I originally intended. So if it's a load of rubbish blame me, not the publishers.

('CIDER APPLE' ILLUSTRATION BY CHEO)