Harry Rigby: The ‘Lost Get Back Boogie’ Years

I was ‘down home’, as we say, in Sligo last weekend, and went for a stroll on the shores of Lough Gill early on Sunday morning, which was where my good lady wife took the photograph above. It was incredibly still and peaceful, as the shot suggests, and it got me thinking about a ‘lost’ Harry Rigby novel, which is largely set around and on the lake.
  For those of you unfamiliar with Sligo’s geography, by the way, Lough Gill is about five miles from Sligo’s city centre; the Garavogue river empties out of Lough Gill and wends its leisurely way through Sligo and on out to the Atlantic.
  Anyway, I got back to Wicklow from Sligo and had a rummage through my old files, in search of the ‘lost’ Harry Rigby. And lo! It transpires that there are in fact three Harry Rigby novels gathering dust in the files, as well as a standalone thriller set in the Greek islands.
  The books were actually written when I was living in Sligo. I wrote EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, the first Harry Rigby story, while living in Dublin; when I heard it was going to be published, I thought it’d be no harm to take a little time off from the day job and write another book, to have it ready when (koff) publishing’s ravening hordes came kicking down my front door.
  And so, being single and with no great financial commitments, I took a year off and worked part-time as a teacher, and wrote a sequel to EIGHTBALL. It wasn’t published due to reasons far too boring to get into here, but by the time it wasn’t published I was two years into my sabbatical and writing like a demon. During that period I wrote the three Harry Rigby novels and the Greek islands thriller mentioned above, roughly 80% of what became ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and all of THE BIG O. I also wrote a heap of short stories and about two drafts of a book I like to call THE GOD OF LIGHT AND MICE, which has since received three or four more drafts, and which will be my next writing project – if I can find the time.
  In the meantime, I’m sorely tempted to publish the Harry Rigby novels as e-books. I bought back the rights to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE a couple of years ago, and e-published that, and the other three books – well, they’re just lying around gathering dust. I’ve since written SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, a Harry Rigby novel published last year by the good people at Liberties Press, but the three unpublished stories are of a piece with EIGHTBALL and SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, and would work well as a series, I think.
  Given how well EIGHTBALL has done for me as an e-book, I have to say it’s the classic no-brainer. What that then means in terms of my future vis-à-vis the publishing industry, however, I have no idea.
  I think it might be fun to find out, though.