The Journey Begins Again

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

And so, dear reader, at the dawn of 2026, we begin again, anew, afresh, and march ever onward, with a spring in our step and a gleam in our eye.

After an exceedingly dubious end to 2025, when the publication of The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner was heartbreakingly cancelled, I’m choosing to start the new year with a BANG.

The thing about having a book scheduled for release is that you have to spend a lot of your time promoting it. I’d wasted much of last year hammering socials about that novel, and now that it’s all up in the air, I’m refocusing on what I’ve already got. You see, I’m lucky (although it didn’t feel that way in December) because I actually have a book published with a wonderful publisher, one I’ve let fall by the wayside when my attention was elsewhere… until now!

New Gillion Street is back in vogue, dear reader, so expect to hear more about it from me. I’ve spent the first week of the year busily contacting bookshops across the country to see whether they would be interested in a quirky, weird book in their lives. So far, I haven’t heard anything yet, but I live in hope! I’ve also contacted an event, which is more promising, so watch this space! I still believe in the story of my debut novel, and with each passing year, it becomes increasingly relevant. In an era when Donald Trump & MAGA/GOP are actively trying to destroy hard-earned post-war agreements for "spheres of influence" and resources (oil), this book starts to make a LOT more sense!

And that’s not all! I’ve come to realise I didn’t give my self-published weird horror short-story collection, The Strange Tales of Gillion, a fair shake. I’d half-heartedly pushed the book and hadn’t given it the attention it deserved. So I’ve purchased a new, eye-catching cover from Don Noble and Nicholas Day of Rooster Republic Press (no AI was used in its creation), re-jazzed the interior, and tweaked the pricing and keywords on Amazon to appeal to the right readers.

(I’ve also added a little in-joke on the back cover for the eagle-eyed among you... You might wonder whether I've started my own publishing house. Well, I don't plan to, but ask me again in five years, ha!)

I think you’ll agree it looks FAR better than it did before, and stays true to the aesthetic of the era, as well as the horror genre, so I hope you’ll be tempted to buy it in Paperback  for a very reasonable £7.99, or at the mouth-wateringly cheap 99p on Kindle. It’s also available on Kindle Unlimited. 

And what's more, the ebook is now available on Kobo for 99p, Kobo Plus and Apple Books. I've never tried these venues before, but I'm keen to push the collection beyond Amazon and into newer climes.

As for The Peculiar Journey of Cecil Tabiner, I'm still trying to find it a new home. The book was good enough for one publisher, so why not another? Or even the Holy Grail: an agent. I’ve begun sending the novel out to see if I can generate some interest, which will hopefully be aided by a bit more success with the other two books in the series. If I get no bites. I'd happily self-publish it. If I can make a decent go of the other two, that might not be a bad place to be. Self-publishing can be successful if you know what you’re doing, and I do, to a point, but there’s always room to learn!

Anyway, that's enough from me. You can expect more updates as the year progresses, so keep your fingers, toes, eyes, and whatever else firmly crossed!

Thanks for reading.

Elliot J Harper

Author of quirky SF novel, New Gillion Street, published by Fly on the Wall Press, and the independently published weird horror short story collection, The Strange Tales of Gillion.