Apollo Memories is now at the printers, and I for one can't wait to see it in book form.... Over the summer I finished writing it, but that wasn't the end. I then had to design and produce the thing, which included typesetting, image retouching and outputting to production quality PDFs. Printing a set of proof pages took nearly four hours alone, and it nearly drove me mad. Yet again I promised I'd never write another book!

But now the dust has settled a bit, I'm getting excited about publication. The date was originally set as 23 September but due to the things that happen in the weird and wonderful world of publishing, it will be 11th November now.

I'm proud to be able to offer you a small preview of the book in this downloadable PDF here. It'll give you a wee taste of what to expect: the kind of writing, the kind of pictures and the layout style. Like SAHB Stories before it, I've designed Apollo Memories to be easily readable, full of interesting images and a fast, fun style. The aim is to make it look good as you flick through it in the bookshop - so you'll buy it!

I hope you're all planning to do that anyway - and if so, I'm hoping you'll help me with a bit of a promotional campaign. The more pre-orders we get the more likely bookshops are to stock it, so with that in mind I'd like as many people as possible to pre-order by following this link. You won't be charged any money - the system will just take your email address and then notify you when the book's available. But more importantly it'll tell the publishing trade how many people are interested in advance - and that's essential. The more interest there is the more coverage we'll get, and that's good for the book, the website and the memory of the Apollo - which, of course, is why we're all here in the first place!

I'm now starting work on the rest of the promotional campaign. We hope to get a lot of press coverage and a good bit of radio too. I hope you'll join me in spreading the word to as many bands' websites as possible - tell everyone!

Getting Apollo Memories published is only the beginning - there's a lot more still to do to preserve the Purple Palace's place in cultural history. But with a book, a website and various other projects helping, I believe it's going to become a lot easier. I hope you'll stay aboard for the ride - it's going to be a good one!

Update soon!

Martin