The call went to voicemail last week, while I was in the shower.

When I returned to my desk, I saw the call had come from my friend John Higgs' mobile. Nothing strange about that, I thought to myself, while pressing play on the voicemail.

That’s when the unmistakable tones of Alan Moore filled my ear and the room went as hot and hazy as Arizona.

“Jason, I thought Jack Sparks was an excellent book,” said the man behind Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The final twists were absolutely amazing.” He went on to say some other ludicrously nice things, but they would spoiler you, so I’ll draw a veil.

Incredibly, when I finished playing this voicemail back, I did not wake up. Seriously, I didn't. Not even after the twenty-seventh play. While this was very much the stuff of dreams, it had actually bloody happened, in reality and everything.

I had known that John Higgs, who is a friend of Alan Moore, had placed a copy of my Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks into the great man’s hands at some point last year, motivated by the belief that Alan would appreciate a modern take on horror. But who knew if Alan would ever read it, let alone even vaguely enjoy it? Far as I was concerned, I’d have genuinely been happy if the book had ended its days propping up a wonky table in the Moore residence.

I sat down for a while. Then stood up and paced around. Finally I mustered the courage to phone John back. After picking up, he handed me over to Alan (apparently my tinny voice was heard squeaking out of the phone at this point, going, “Oh fuck!”), who said ludicrously nice things all over again, but this time directly into my brain in real time. All I could really do was try to balance my insane level of gratitude against the need to stay relatively cool while talking to Alan Moore. That, and try to ensure that I listened a lot more than I spoke.

I definitely jabbered about how I’d been recently been watching and enjoying Show Pieces, his and Mitch Jenkins’ collection of linked short films. That aside, I’ve no idea what I said. Hopefully I really did just listen. But what a very lovely man.

Before leaving John's company that day, Alan hand-wrote the following blurb quote about The Last Days Of Jack Sparks...

‘Classic supernatural horror that takes a frenetic and self-obsessed modern world in its confident stride. The Last Days Of Jack Sparks gives us ingenious and funny diabolism, repurposed for the 21st Century. A magnificent millennial nightmare.’

Wow.

Wowww.

I still haven’t got my head around this. No, not at all. It really is the cherry on the cake after such kind words on the book from the mighty likes of M.R. Carey, Sarah Lotz, Chuck Wendig, Christopher Brookmyre, David Schneider, Lisa Jewell, Paul Tremblay, Andy Nyman, Rick O'Shea, Ken Bruen and Andrew O’Neill.

Also, let's be clear: this blurb means that if you don’t enjoy The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, you might as well be calling Alan Moore a liar.

Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what it means. Ahem.

Partly because writing is really really tough, my writing confidence had blipped, the day before Alan Moore’s voicemail arrived. Happens to us all from time to time. And sometimes the universe seems to know exactly you need and sets about delivering it to you in a bizarre and surreal manner.

I now have possession of Alan Moore’s actual handwritten quote on Sparks. It’s going up on the wall above my desk, to remind me never to doubt myself again. Not unduly, anyway. Regular flashes of self doubt are absolutely essential, in a Can I Do This Better? or Have I Taken A Wrong Narrative Turn? or Would Crystal Meth Reaaaally Help Me Hit This Deadline? kind of way. When self doubt gets out of control, though, that’s when you run the risk of paralysis. And we simply can't have that. Like sharks, we must swim or die.

So. That’s put a spring in my step for the rest of the millennium. If you haven’t read The Last Days Of Jack Sparks and would like to become an early adopter, here’s my handy Jack Sparks page listing various worldwide outlets. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a lie down with a cold flannel on my head.

For some months, I've been working on my second novel for Orbit Books. It's going great now, thanks for asking, but in the early days the book hurled some alarming curveballs right at my face, because that's what books do.

Smoke grenades led me staggering down blind alleys of narrative. Characters who had once seemed integral to the story, actually needed to be winched clean out of the manuscript forever, taking many thousands of words with them. Ideas that had once seemed great in my head, actually weren't so great and it turned out there were far better ways to do this. Cue more thinking, more planning, more gnashing of teeth, more demons dancing around my head shrieking, "You can't do this writing thing! You're an idiot!"

Chances are, if you write then you've experienced similar issues, regardless of your experience level. Every new project feels like it requires a brand new skillset.

And you know why that is? It's because you're conjuring up something out of absolutely nothing, out of the clear blue sky. And that's incredibly difficult. If we writers are all gifted at one thing, though, it's forgetting that it's always hard. Oh yeah, we're great at blaming ourselves until we remember how hard it always is.

As I quacked on Twitter recently...

There are positive sides, however, to accepting just how brain-meltingly tricky writing should be. More positive sides than negative, I'm saying.

​First of all, what's the alternative: labouring under the delusion that writing's a breeze? That's a surefire way to churn out complacent and under-cooked work. Whereas if you know how hard writing is, you know how high you need to aim. As a result, you're much more likely to turn a realistic and unblinking eye to your work and see its flaws and problems, hopefully before non-editorial readers get a chance to point them out in an excruciating Amazon-based smackdown.

I certainly never thought writing fiction was easy, but I suspect there was a time, many years ago, when I reckoned it was easier than I do now. I multi-tasked more and was probably more productive in terms of the number of projects I took on. But looking back, perhaps I wasn't aiming quite as high as I thought I was. These days, I hope I genuinely aim to write something properly great. I may very well fail, and that's for the reader to decide. But I know I devoted more back-breaking work to my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks than I'd ever put into anything before. Because in a world that effectively offers endless alternative channels of entertainment, why should we expect readers to commit to a book that's anything less than great? Anything less than next level, even, in some respect or other? These thoughts are as terrifying as they are true.

Regardless of whether we succeed in our lofty aims, acknowledging the size of the challenge and facing up to it, that's half the battle. And I think that's why writing perversely seems to get tougher, the more experience you gain: you realise how insanely perilous this mountain you pig-headedly keep attempting to climb really is.

You come to realise exactly what writing takes. What it really takes. Especially when you're operating on a landscape liberally studded with geniuses.

So. If you often feel like writing is tougher than wading through a swamp in concrete boots, and the sheer difficulty of it all regularly inflicts a terrible paralysis upon your very soul, then congratulations: you're so one of us. Because the vast majority of writers feel exactly the same way. Here's to tipping your head back, gazing up at the mountain's peak and feeling the fear, then digging the first crampon in anyway. (And of course, if you find writing a breeze, then I'm delighted for you and you're still one of us. Just a bit weird.)

We'll end with the words of one of those aforementioned geniuses. One who, in this great quote, references two other geniuses.

Steven Moffat: "There isn’t one single script when I’m not, at some point, sick-makingly terrified of my inability to write it. I mean, it’s just hard! I asked Russell T Davies, 'Do you ever wanna stick your head out the window and shout that you don’t know what you're doing?' And he said, 'Oh God, every day.' He then mentioned it several times, saying how Cardiff Bay was echoing to his cries!"

"And every time I make a script work," Steven continues, "it feels like luck. I don’t think that feeling ever goes away. It really is that hard, and that’s what it’s supposed to be like. The sheer amount of thinking you have to do, to make this work! When I read scripts that are bad, it’s often because they’re just lazy. The writer hasn’t thought things through in the way that I would. There was a quote from John Cleese, around the time he was ruling the world with Fawlty Towers: 'If I’m any good at writing comedy, it’s because I know how hard it’s supposed to be.' And that’s it. It’s shockingly difficult and emotionally upsetting!” 

I don't go on ferris wheels, but they're fun to watch. So when the Brighton Wheel was being built on the seafront five years ago, I found a suitable vantage point to take a few snaps. 

And now sadly, the Brighton Wheel has gone, to make way for the ludicrous donut on a stick that is the i360. But I took a few snaps of the wheel being dismantled too.

So here, for your pleasure, is The Rise And Fall Of The Brighton Wheel. (Click on Read More to reveal the photo gallery.)