the story of
E J DOBLE
The Who?
My name is Ethan. I’m 24. I’m a self-published author from the UK, where I’ve lived my whole life.
By profession, I am a Quality Assurance Lead in a cheese packaging factory. Before that, I worked as a waiter, a lifeguard, a swimming teacher and a secondary-school teacher. I also had a short stint at university studying History, but dropped out after a year.
Alongside writing - which occupies a lot of my free time - I am also an avid reader of fantasy, crime fiction, history and politics. I swim for fitness, and go birdwatching on my weekends. I also do a lot of travelling, and have visited fourteen countries on three continents, with hopefully many more to come.
I am also a staunch football fan, supporting Manchester United F.C. in the English Premier League and Fiorentina in the Italian Serie A. I also follow some American Football, supporting the Detroit Lions.
The When?
I started writing just before my seventh birthday, if you can believe it. I wrote short stories about a young man called Sam and his pet velociraptor, as they went out on Indiana-Jones style adventures in search of lost artefacts. I wrote about hidden underwater temples and magical forest kingdoms tucked away down old sewer drains. I read extensively when I was younger: a fact I give credit to my parents for, who would always readily supply me with more literature to devour whenever they could.
And it was from those humble beginnings that I went on to develop my writing over the next ten years, while discovering the wonderful fantasy worlds of Tolkien, Paolini and Heitz. At the age of ten, I wrote a one-hundred-page rip-off of The Hobbit, featuring a merry band of adventurers and some very obnoxious songs. At twelve, I wrote a four-hundred page book about magical dragon-hunters and ancient ruined kingdoms. Then at fifteen, I wrote a six-hundred page book as part of a new series, all about a demon lord bargaining with a soldier to open a portal to the ‘Under-Realm’. Each iteration brought new confidence and maturity to my writing, developing magic systems and fantastical worlds as well as personal relationships and dialogue styles. I tried to get a number of the projects half-heartedly published as well, in the hopes of being the next Mary Shelley, but they ultimately fell flat at the first hurdle and were consigned to my archive folder.
And then, all of a sudden, my writing dried up. My confidence ebbed. For three years, I hardly wrote a thing, losing my love for the craft. In many ways, I thought it was a sad end to a fun childhood hobby: another anecdote I could laugh about and reminisce when I was old.
And then 2019 happened…
The Why?
Picture the scene: I’m eighteen-years old, in the second year of a two year course, preparing for a gap year before studying at university. While researching the Russian Revolution and Buddhist teachings on Nirvana, I fish around in my desk drawers for notepaper and stumble upon an old memory stick. Plugging it into my old laptop, I find files and files of finished and unfinished stories on there, all date-stamped and archived as if from a museum. I read through some of them: some of them are quite good; the rest leave much to be desired. But there is one that catches my eye: an English writing project that I had completed two years before. It is five pages long, heavily descriptive, and details a dark figure on a shoreline standing over the body of a ruined king. Something about it impresses me - to this day I couldn’t tell you what - and in that moment, I decide that those five meagre pages are worth more than their exile on the memory stick. So, brandishing my keyboard, I write up a few notes.
And, three days later, I start writing what would become The Fangs of War.
It was a story of chance. A strange origin. At no point during writing did I have any idea how it would turn out. I wrote consecutively for about eighteen months, almost relearning how to write in the process, with no real plan and very little idea what I was doing. But then, in the summer of 2021, I finished the five-hundred-and-fifty page draft of The Fangs of War: and with it, I began my journey as an author, that continues on to this day.
But there was one last hurdle before that became a reality and it was one that I really should have thought of sooner.
Namely: how do I even publish a book?
The How?
With the book finished and edited to the best of my ability, I opted to try traditional publishing first, seeking out agents and then publishing houses to try and score a book deal. I had tried before when I was a teenager, with the guidance and support of my father, so had some understanding of how the process worked and what was required of me. I queried with 30 different literary agents from across Europe and the U.S.A. over the following week, and I admit that I was very surprised when I heard back from most of them within the first month, and thought this might finally be my time to shine.
But ultimately it was not destined to be. Every return email I received was a [polite] rejection, citing post-COVID financial risks for publishers and how my book was not appropriate for current market trends, which were at the time full of ‘romantasy’ and ‘cosy’ fantasy which my book was definitely not. So, despite feeling quite dejected by the whole business, I at least understood why my book had not been taken on, and the number of agents who said it had “great promise” was enough for me to feel like there was something there to work with at least. I would not give up on the idea, but it would need a rethink.
And then, one fateful day about a month after the last rejection came in, the fateful words were spoken:
“Why don’t you just do it yourself?”
Looking back on it now, I will admit that I was slightly ignorant when it came to self-publishing and the path of ‘do it yourself’. It seemed like a lot of work for very little reward, often ending in dismal failure. I knew next to nothing about my options, or the services on offer; I had no idea how to run things like a business [in many ways, writing this now, I still don’t]. My understanding at the time was that there were two ways into publishing: through an agency and publishing house in the traditional manner, or to pay a lump sum to get a small unsolicited publisher to do it for you. Those were my two paths, my only options. The nuances of what self-publishing actually was were entirely lost on me.
So, proactively, I did some research, and came up with some results - ones that genuinely surprised me. I found that Amazon KDP was the easiest way to publish without costing you any money; that an established wholesaler would be useful for good quality paperbacks and expanded distribution; that you can find cover artists everywhere online; and legitimate barcodes were actually quite easy to buy. All of this came as a pleasant shock to me, and suddenly the path of ‘do it yourself’ didn’t seem as daunting.
So the next thing I knew, by the end of the year I had contacted a cover artist who made The Fangs of War’s notorious snake cover; I had contacted a cartographer to make a beautiful map of the Icebreaker Sea; I had bought my first barcode, and established an online social media presence on multiple platforms. As for the book, it was still a bit rough-around-the-edges, and I had no idea what I was doing going forwards, but on the 11th January 2022 - shortly after my 20th birthday - I hit ‘publish’ on my debut novel.
And the rest, you see, is history…
An Afterword
One day, I hope writing can be something I wake up and do every morning, and go to bed planning every night. For it to be my career, and not just a ‘big hobby’. I want my books to be my legacy, and to entertain people across the world.
But, until that dream becomes a reality, it is people like you, reading this, who keep me going and keep that dream alive. It’s people like you that mean I can wake up and do what I love every day, even if only for a few minutes. So, whether you’re here because you’ve been here from the very beginning, or you’re just passing through on today’s browsing journey, I want to give my wholehearted thanks to each and every one of you for giving me a moment of your time. Every click and every scroll and every purchase means the absolute world to me, and I can’t imagine my life now without this. You’ve made the little seven-year-old me who dreamed of this day incredibly happy.
I hope I can do you all proud.