The odd thing about being a full time writer, is that sometimes you can’t find the time…to write. Bizarre but true.

I don’t know when it was, probably pre-Covid (that’s how my memory works these days…finding out if it was pre or post Covid and going from there!) but I wanted to jump on the Blog bandwagon. I didn’t know if anyone had the slightest interest in what I had to say, but I thought I’d give it a go. 

By now, I assumed I’d have a library of about 250 blogs to look back on, but no, this one will be just my 20th. I could list more than 20 genuine reasons as to why I’ve turned what I’d hoped would be a weekly blog into something more six-monthly, but ultimately it comes down to time. 

You see, as a writer, when you have a steady stream of books published, it leads to opportunities, some of which can change the very direction of your life. And because I am in the very fortunate position of being able to choose which of those opportunities I want to run with (self-employment provides that luxury, along with, of course, the abject terror of knowing it could all end tomorrow), the time to plan, research and write a blog can sometimes take a back seat.

If that sounds like a pretty lame excuse, well, that’s because it is. Very lame indeed, but it also happens to be true.

As I sit here today, writing this, my mind is uncluttered and free from any concerns, anxieties or restraints, which are the most lovely, perfect, blog-writing conditions. However, for the last eight to ten weeks, that really hasn’t been the case. In fact, my anxieties have been high and my mind cluttered to its maximum. And it’s all to do with a book. My book. ‘George’s Fateful D-Day’.

I won’t bore you with how the book came about, the inspiration for it, the ideas and research, no, that’ll be for a future blog…probably in about six months time! Instead, I’ll pick the story up just before the book went to final print with my wonderful publishers, Y Lolfa.

It was mid February when my editor at Y Lolfa, Eirian Jones and I became almost joined at the hip! It was edit time of the book, when every paragraph, sentance, word, comma, full stop is analysed. Some of it is pretty straightforward, some not so. A clumsy paragraph here which fails to make the editorial cut means a rather lovely paragraph there will also now face the axe. It’s a very intense, very long process, but one that I actually enjoy immensely. It’s akin to planing down a piece of wood from a bumpy lump to arrive at a perfectly smooth surface. And like any woodworker will tell you, that takes time and patience and is not without the odd frustration.

Eventually, after many weeks of toing and froing you’re left with a book. But of course that book doesn’t exist as such, it’s just a word document split into chapters…but soon the magic happens. Eirian, along with Y Lolfa’s typesetters and designers turn the book into a digital manuscript. Fonts are changed, typeset is made and artistic chapter headings and numbers are created. It’s a magical process and a real delight when you open the email attachment for the first time and get to see how your book is going to look once printed.

Then comes the deadline. 18 April 2025. The absolute last date that ‘everything’ has to be ready by. ‘Everything’ is defined as: the author’s acknowledgments, the author’s notes, the final, final, final edit, the cover (beautifully designed by graphic artist and designer, Nigel Cousins) and the review quotes. Ah, the review quotes.

The request for these quotes deliver a level of stress that sets the blood pressure into the red zone. Every author is looking for the holy grail – ‘This is the best book ever written in history – every human on the planet should buy it – The Times’. To have a quote of any level of positivity on the cover of your book is a dream. But getting one, and receiving it in time is a nightmare of equal measures of hope, despair and anxiety. You see, it’s a classic chicken and the egg. You can’t send the manuscript out to your chosen reviewers until its edit is completely finished, well I mean you can, but if it’s still littered with poor spelling and punctuation (my particular forte), even the most sympathetic of reviewers is hardly likely to be reaching for their 5 stars button. But, if you wait until the final full stop is checked and approved, you leave your prospective reviewer with relatively little time to read your book and get back to you with their thoughts.

But there’s no way around it, you have to wait. Wait until the editing process and typesetting work is done before sending out the digital manuscript. Which reveals the next problem. Publication date.

Publication dates do exactly what they say on the tin. It’s the date that the book gets published and available to buy and hold in your hand. These are negotiable at first, but set in stone once agreed. Now initially, my book was scheduled for release in 2024, for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. As my book contains ‘D-Day’ in its title, then really, it needs publishing on or in advance of that date – 6 June. For reasons outside the control of both me and my publishers, it was clear that 6 June 2024 was not going to be made. It was going to be more like September or even October. I didn’t want that, it seemed pointless, so everything was shelved until the 81st anniversary of D-Day, 6 June 2025. To ensure we made that date, we agreed on a publication date of 23 May to guarantee that if anything at all went wrong, we had two weeks built in to make sure my D-Day book would be on the shelves by D-Day 2025. 

Once the publication date was agreed back in February 2025, all eyes were on 23 May. It was the classic immovable object. In terms of reviewers of the book, I had an incredibly small window. It was about the first week of April that the final manuscript was completed, which gave me less than three weeks to get it out to reviewers for them to read and – hopefully enjoy – and then, if they agreed, send me a quote to add to either the book cover or inside pages. This is where anxiety levels soar. An author has zero control over what a reviewer might feel or say. You hope for something akin to my fictional Times review above, but after a couple of weeks of silence from your chosen reviewers, you start to think that you’d settle for, ‘Buy this book if you’ve got nothing else to spend your money on – The High Wycombe Bugle.’

Amongst all of this, Deb and I went on holiday with the girls to celebrate Deb’s milestone birthday in Cyprus. A time to relax, recharge and chill under a golden sun. Or, as it turned out, a time to fret, stress and check emails constantly to see if any reviews were coming in…and if so, were they more ‘The Times’ than the ‘High Wycombe Bugle’. Thankfully, they were not in the style of The Bugle. One particular email I received while lying on the beach was from Robert Kitson, Chief Rugby Writer of The Guardian. His review was incredible, so good that it pretty much stopped me in my tracks. But his email in which he very kindly included a personal note about my writing and the power of the messages in the story was even nicer and made me finally realise that I might just have something with this book. The Aperol Spritz’s went down rather well that evening.

So, we returned from the sun armed with 5 star reviews that were sent to Eirian, for the Y Lolfa typesetters to add to the book. End of stress.

Alas no.

Two words – Book Launch.

I honestly don’t know why we do it to ourselves. Well I do actually, it’s to sell books! 

I might have written the best children’s war based rugby book in the history of publishing. Or the worst. But neither of those things matter if nobody gets to hear about the book. We live in a world of distractions. Everybody has got something going on in their life and also a million other distractions linked to that task. Our attention spans are less (is anyone still reading this?!), so authors like me have to fight for your attention. One of those ways is a book launch.

Book launches come in all shapes and sizes from initimate ones with a small gathering of family and friends at home to a packed out celebrity event at the Dorchester attended by the great and the good and, of course, Sir David Beckham, who will seemingly attend the opening of a fridge door. (Congrats on the gong, Becks.) The Dorchester were busy for the date I had in mind, but I was extremely fortunate to have Swansea’s own version of the Dorchester, Morgans Hotel, free on the evening of 10th June. (I’d wanted 6th June for obvious D-Day reasons, but a Friday evening book launch is a big no-no in the publishing world, as frankly, nobody turns up as they’ve got their own Friday nights out taking precedence, so a mid-week one is always a must.)

And so, thanks to my old friend, Martin Morgan, he ensured that the Banquetting Suite of his flagship hotel would be made available for me on Tuesday 10th June. Martin is an incredibly successful businessman who has achieved great things in his life, but we’ve known each other since our early 20’s, where the only thing that really mattered in our lives was going down the Vetch to watch the Swans, and then going out to Harpers in the night! He’s always been incredibly supportive of my life as an author, and making his premier room available to me on 10th June is typical of his generosity. Thanks Martin. 

So that was it. Book Launch 10th June 2025. My own particular D-Day was now set in stone.

Once the date was confirmed, I was now in the Kevin Costner mode of, ‘If you build it, they will come’. My fragile mindset however was now whispering to me, ‘If you invite 120 people, will anyone come?’.

I’d given myself about five weeks to arrange the evening. It seemed a lot of time. As it turned out, it really wasn’t!

First I had to think about what I wanted the event to look like. Because I became an author relatively late in life – I was 43 when my first book, ‘There’s Only Two Tony Cotteys’ was published, and remained in full time employment until my first children’s book, ‘Champion of Champions’ was published when I was 52 in 2017, like most people out there, I have been blessed with making friends with literally hundreds of people from school days, sports teams, work places and the neighbourhoods I’ve lived in. 

So many of these people have taken a genuine interest in what I have been trying to do with my life, and have continually put their hands in their pockets to buy my books and support me. They haven’t unfriended or unfollowed me on Facebook or X or Insta, despite no doubt sighing as I post yet another plug for a book, or a school visit or a talk I’ve just given. These good people understand that Social Media is the only shop window I have to keep my name out there to continue to pick up work which allows me the time to continue to write. That’s how it goes for us non-JK Rowlings and non- David Walliams, we have to use our book writing careers to create opportunities to diversify into book related areas of work – my paid author school visits for example – to help fund the time needed to block out the calendar to actually write. 

As I mentioned at the start of this (now overly long) blog (apologies!), that extra curricular work can sometimes get in the way of the principle goal – writing – but Mr Mortgage man and Mrs Car Loan lady expect their monthly due and I can’t pay them in copies of ‘Ashley Williams – My Premier League Diary’, I need to find opportunities to uncover paid employment, whether that’s a day visit at a school or a week long project with an organisation, delivering talks and presentations. In the words of that great philosopher, Nariyoshi Keisuke Miyagi (better known simply as Mr Miyagi, late of The Karate Kid), ‘Life is about balance’, and sometimes it’s not easy to get that balance right.

Anyway, I wanted the book launch to be less about me and the book, but more about an evening of entertainment combining music and words that I could invite the people who have provided these opportunities and the friends who have consistently hit the like and share buttons, as a genuine thank you for their support and to give them a really nice night of music and laughter. Oh, and to sell some books too…well, I’m not completely altruistic!

The idea was sound. Now I had to come up with a plan. First the music. Mal Pope. Not just one of my favourite singers, but one of my favourite people. Mal is a force of nature and a power for good. His career inspired me to try to become an author. We both originate from the 19th century industrial area of Brynhyfryd. He has a song called, ‘Dream Outloud’. It’s brilliant. It encapsulates the dreamer in me, that has defined my life for as long as I can remember. I watched Mal in a Brynhyfryd school concert in 1974, when he was just embarking on a recording journey with the one and only Elton John, and I’ve followed him from that early start through to his successes as a TV Show host, documentary maker, Song for Europe entrant, radio host, musicals writer, author, leader of the UK’s best covers band and charity fundraiser. His talent is only matched by the size of his heart, and it’s the understanding that a boy from the same streets and classroom as me managed to achieve all these things, that made me believe that I might just be able to carve out my own small niche in the writing world. When you see that one of your own has done something out of the ordinary, the task of you making your own small mark becomes that little bit easier. Was he free on the 10th of June? Yes. Would he present the evening and open with some songs…including, Dream Outloud’? Yes.

I was off and running.

Next, the sporting part of the evening. I think it was about 1989 when I went to my first sports Q&A eveing. My dear brother-in-law, Nigel Harries, had been involved in the organising of one for NatWest Bank. Hosted by BBC’s Edward Bevan, it included Glamorgan greats Don Shepherd, Alan Jones and Malcolm Nash. It was a mixture of funny tales, dressing room secrets and genuine, informed thoughts on the game. I was transfixed and absolutely loved it. I’ve been to literally hundreds since, even hosted many myself in the Eddie Bevan role, and knew how much fun they could be. I wanted to put one of them in to the running order for the launch evening. But who to ask?

I could write another blog about the personalities of Tony Cottey and James Hook – and you’ll, be relieved to know I’m not going to do that here. Suffice to say, Tony is my oldest and best friend, the person who changed my life by providing me with the opportunity to become an author, and James has become one of my closest friends, a friendship nurtured in the writing of our (award winning…have I ever mentioned that?!) books and continued to this very day. The fact that both of them have glittering sporting careers behind them is a happy coincidence for me. Would they come along and be interviewed by me in a Q&A format? Yes. Were they both free on the evening of 10th June? Well, initially no…cue the rising of the Brayley blood pressure…but eventually yes. Phew. That was the Q&A sorted.

When I carry out my school visits (feel free to book me to visit yours, any teachers reading this!), one of my favourite moments is reading from one of my books. I enjoy it, I put a lot into it, but I’m not a natural performer. Book launches demand a reading from the book in question, and I’ve attended several over the years, where, like me, the author concerned is not as confident in reading the book outloud as they would have been writing it. I wanted the audience of my launch to be read to by an expert. There was only one name I had in mind.

Richard Mylan.

The only problem? I didn’t know him at all. 

I first remember watching Richard Mylan in a football based film back in 2001 called, ‘Score’. It was about a George Best type footballer and featured people like Robert Pugh and Sue Johnston. There was something about Richard that I loved in that performance, and – much like I’d done with Mal Pope – I followed his career from afar as it moved into starring in shows like Waterloo Road, Belonging, Casualty, The Bill, Grown Ups, Where the Heart Is and many more. But it was the documentary that he made with his autistic son, Jaco, that really brought him back to my attention. My eldest daughter Georgia, who had started to work in the field of speech and language therapy for autistic children, alterted us to the documentary, ‘Richard and Jaco: Life With Autism’, which we watched as a family. I was amazed to find that the ‘Richard’ was the Richard whose career I’d been following all those years. 

The documentary had a profound affect on us all.For Georgia it confirmed that she had found her vocation in life, which would culminate in a Masters degree in the subject and a career as a Speech and Language Therapist specialising in Autistic Young People in Edinburgh. For me it meant that James Hook and I would include the leading character of ‘Oscar’, an autistic boy in our second rugby book, ‘Impact’, with a view of positively portraying an autistic child in our story, not just using the character as a token with the usual sympathetic tropes.

Richard is now behind Grand Ambition in Swansea, an organisation that provides opportunities for young performers and writers to begin and develop careers in the world of theatre. I’ve been to a couple of their shows and seen Richard at them…but always bottled out of approaching him and explaining the impact of his documentary.

So, one evening, about a month ago, I finally found that I had a backbone, and dropped Richard a message via social media. I briefly explained who I was, what I had planned and what I would love him to do. I didn’t really expect a response, and I certainly didn’t really expect him to agree. But, within a day or so, I had both. I was thrilled. Richard would do the reading.

The weeks leading to the launch quickly passed, the invite list was written and rewritten. The room could hold 120. My first list had 275 names. It wasn’t easy relegating some wonderful people to list B. In fact it was heartbreaking. But it had to be done.

I sent the invites out, and now, because I knew the evening I’d planned was going to be so good, filled as it was with such talented people, I was terrified that only 35 people would turn up to witness the combined talents of Mal, Tony, James and Richard! 

Despite all the signs to the contrary, when you suffer with the level of imposter syndrome I carry on my shoulders, you convince yourself that everyone will be on holiday or have other commitments or just not fancy coming along. The negativity of it all can quickly get into your head and drag you down. I have to pay tribute to my daughters here, Georgia and my chief social media expert, Olivia. Every time I would get down on myself with worry and concern, they would unshakeably tell me that the event would be a brilliant success and not to worry. Thankfully they were to be proved right.

Mal had suggested ending the evening with him doing an interview with me about my life, my journey and my book. He had known of my worries about anyone turning up and my anxieties of being the centre of attention for the evening. I’ve got an ego as much as the next person and it’s a lovely thought to think that kind people will put their hands together and clap for you. But that imposter syndrome dictates that you feel like a fraud and should actually be sitting at the back, out of the way. Mal understood how I was feeling, and referred to it in one of his questions as our chat was coming to an end.

I can’t remember Mal’s exact words, but it was something like, ‘David, take a look around you at all these people, all these friends that have come out tonight to support you’. You can imagine, as I did look around at well over a 100 faces in that gorgeous room, I began to well up. I forced myself not to get emotional, as I did have something I wanted to say.

I slowly looked around the room, trying to take in every face; loved family members, former school friends that I sat next to in class, teammates I’d walked out of dressing rooms with to play football and cricket, work mates at Swansea council who managed to bring light and joy to what had – for me anyway – become the daily drudge of the 9-5 existence, people I’ve worked with on literacy projects, dementia projects, films and documentaries – everyone in the room was a friend who had in no small way helped give me a life so full of rich experiences and memories that I would never have had with out them.

I think I managed to express my thanks and hope I made the point of my gratitude to every single one of them for every kind word, every like, every review and every share on social media that makes such a difference. I also wanted to point out that I was so grateful to so many of them for giving me such a variety of opportunities like working in their projects and making films or giving talks.My whole journey has been based on this organic world of word of mouth recommendations by friends. I was so pleased to be able to thank them.

Before you think I’ve lost my mind, I know where I sit in the world. I’m not someone providing the cure for cancer or working to end poverty or caring for people facing challenging health issues. I’m just a writer. And on that score, I understand that I’m not the best writer in Wales, or Swansea…I’m not even the best writer in my house, my two girls are far better than me. But I am a person who gives things a go and tries his best…even if sometimes, I can’t even find time to write a regular blog.

I’m just glad that this week’s book launch gave me the chance to say thank you. Thank you to Mal, to Tony, to James and to Richard. But mainly, it gave me the chance to say thank you to friends…just as the blog title states…Thank you for being a friend. And if, friend, you’ve managed to stick it out to the end of this overlong and frankly – at times – rambling blog, well, thank you too.

Cheers Dave

Oh, and if you fancy buying a book, do click on the link below…Mr Mortgage Man and Mrs Car Loan Lady don’t rate my altruism as highly as I’d like to think!

George’s Fateful D-Day – available here