My ALLi author guest this episode is Mike Carden. He’s an author from England who came to writing in midlife. He has independently published six books. Many of them are humorous cycling travelogues. They mix history, conversation, and self-deprecating humor. Readers connect with his warmth and honesty.
Listen to the Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Mike Carden
About the Host
Author Howard Lovy has been a journalist for 40 years, and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn and X.
About the Guest
Mike Carden lives and works in Dorset on the south coast of England and began his writing career around the start of the millennium, after years in marketing and sales for the textiles industry. He has since independently published six books, starting with a series of quirkily funny cycling travelogues, including The Full English: Pedalling through England, Mid-Life Crisis, and Truly Rampant Man-Flu. He later returned to a long-delayed project, a trilogy of historical novels based on the life of Alfred the Great, and successfully brought it to publication on his own terms. He is currently working on a new whodunnit set in the English Lake District.
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Read the Transcript
Mike Carden: My name is Mike Carden and I live and work in Dorset on the south coast of England. I arrived at writing books in midlife — I was about 40 at around the start of the millennium — and until then I hadn't done any creative writing at all. But since then I've independently published six books. Three of them are quirky, funny accounts of my cycling tours across Britain, and three are a trilogy of historical novels based on the life of Alfred the Great. The process hasn't exactly been straightforward, but I got there. And I'm currently working on something different again — a whodunit, a murder mystery.
Howard Lovy: It sounds like we're of the same generation. If you were 40 at the turn of the millennium, that makes you around your sixties now?
Mike Carden: Yes, exactly.
Howard Lovy: I just turned 60 myself, so I'm right there with you. You said you started all this a long time ago. Where did you grow up, and were books and reading always a part of your life?
Early Life and the Road to Writing
Mike Carden: Books, reading, and history — yes, very much so. I was enthused by history through some extremely good history teachers at school, and when I set off to university I had intended to be an archaeologist. However, I got there and decided I didn't want to be after all, so I changed course and ended up going into business.
Howard Lovy: Quite a difference.
Mike Carden: Yes, indeed. But I kept my interest in history and archaeology. I was forever reading — whether it was straight history books or historical fiction or whatever.
Howard Lovy: So the Raiders of the Lost Ark version of your career — finding lost civilisations — took a back seat to business?
Mike Carden: It did, until I was about 40. I'm not entirely sure why, but I decided I would research the life of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex in the ninth century at the time of the Viking invasions, and write a trilogy of historical novels about him. Which, looking back, was an extraordinary thing to have decided to do.
Howard Lovy: Absolutely. What kind of business were you in, and were you restless the whole time to begin a writing career?
Mike Carden: The business is — and still is, in fact — sales and marketing in the textiles industry. I was, and still am, director of the business. These days it's just me, everyone else having moved on, but I keep it going.
I suppose what I wanted to do was fill a gap. I'd read so much history, but there seemed to be something missing — books that gave you real history but were also genuinely entertaining. At the time — this was before the likes of Bernard Cornwell and The Last Kingdom — there weren't many books that were both factually accurate and really gripping about the Viking invasions and the Saxon struggle against them. So I did a lot of research and I wrote the first book, getting up early in the morning or writing late at night.
Then around 2004 I thought it was finished and sent it off to various agents — only to find that Bernard Cornwell had just written The Last Kingdom and published it. I had a letter from one agent who said, your book may be very good or it may not be very good, but nobody will ever read it because you've just been beaten to it by Bernard Cornwell.
Howard Lovy: Was that crushing?
Mike Carden: It was crushing, yes. I put it all in a box and put it in the attic. But I still wanted to write entertaining things about history. So I thought: what if I cycled from one end of England to the other, taking in historical places along the way — abbeys, castles, historical towns — and wrote about them as I went?
Taking to the Road: The Cycling Books
Howard Lovy: I'll play amateur psychologist here and guess that you were so frustrated you decided to take it all out on the road.
Mike Carden: Probably, yes. I was a cyclist before, but not a very good one. I tend to do fairly short distances and then stop and go into a tea shop. So that's how I approached it — I meandered up the country, stopping to talk to people and making notes along the way. At the end I wrote it up and it seemed to be quite funny. I showed it to people, they thought it was quite funny, and I approached some publishers. They didn't really want to touch it, or at least if they did I didn't fancy them as publishers. So I thought: well, I do marketing and sales — I'm sure I can do this myself.
This was before indie publishing and ebooks were really a thing. The only option if you were going to publish yourself was to quite literally do it yourself. So I taught myself to lay out books with the help of a friend who's a graphic designer, employed someone to design the cover, found a reputable printer and a distributor, and printed 1,500 copies — which looking back was a bit daft, really. But they did sell. They got into Waterstones and so on.
Howard Lovy: That's great. So it wasn't after all.
Mike Carden: It turns out not. My favourite moment was going into a bookshop and seeing my books on the shelf next to Lance Armstrong's. Very weird.
Howard Lovy: Two cyclists — there you go. And I think of Bill Bryson when you mention humorous travel writing. What kind of humour is it?
Mike Carden: As well as poking fun at myself, I do tend to talk to my bike a lot — and unusually, my bike talks back to me. My daughter calls my bike my grumpy alter ego. It seems to work. The book sold, so I reprinted and reprinted again. Then I did the same in Scotland — cycled from one end to the other, talked about Scottish history, poked fun at myself. And then I did another one set in the English Lake District where I lived at the time, cycling over all the mountain passes and past all the lakes in my own slow and difficult way.
Howard Lovy: You're making me tired just thinking about it. Does your bike have a name, by the way?
Mike Carden: Yes — it's Scott.
Howard Lovy: Scott the bike. So the travel writing became your niche. Was that what you thought you'd be doing?
Mike Carden: Well, yes, it really was. I did those three books, and eventually the physical copies started to run out. Kindle had come along in the meantime, so I taught myself how to turn them into ebooks, and put them on Kindle and print-on-demand. I didn't have high expectations, but they took off again — and bizarrely, they ended up at the top of the cycling book charts on Kindle in the UK.
Howard Lovy: You and Lance Armstrong. How do you approach the research for these books — purely observation, or do you hit the library too?
Mike Carden: Both, very much so. But what happened then, of course, was that lockdown came along and I had time on my hands. So I got Alfred out of the attic.
Alfred Out of the Attic: The Historical Trilogy
Howard Lovy: Ah — tell me about the trilogy. Is it a blend of fact and fiction?
Mike Carden: Yes. There's only a limited amount that's known with certainty about the ninth century, when the Saxon kingdoms were being invaded by the Vikings. There are certain fixed points you have to hit if you're going to be historically accurate, but you can blend into that a story that's hopefully entertaining. That's what I've tried to do, and it seems to have worked.
I rewrote at least the first book during lockdown and didn't bother trying agents this time. I knew how to do it on Kindle from the cycling books, so I published it there. And I've since completed and published the trilogy.
Howard Lovy: How do you market yourself when you're both a travel writing author and a historical fiction writer? Is that tough to combine?
Mike Carden: It is quite different, yes. I don't actually market the cycling books anymore — they seem to do it themselves a bit now. The Alfred books are different: I advertise them on Facebook, which I started doing properly when the trilogy was complete at the start of last year. That seemed to reach the audience I was looking for, so I'm continuing with that.
Howard Lovy: So you advertise the books rather than yourself as a person?
Mike Carden: Correct.
Howard Lovy: Do the two sides of your writing feed each other creatively?
Mike Carden: I think I learned a lot about writing from the cycling books. When I got Alfred out of the attic, I had learned more — particularly about dialogue, which seems a bit strange, but during the cycling books I did a lot of talking to people and writing down the way they spoke. That carried over.
Howard Lovy: They say write what you know, and through your travels you've encountered a lot of different people and dialects.
Mike Carden: Yes, I suppose so. I did travel all through England and all through Scotland. That's true.
What's Next: A Murder Mystery
Howard Lovy: Have you thought about taking Scott out of the garage and going back out on the road?
Mike Carden: It would be nice — it could happen. I've got other projects on first, but yes, I have thoughts about that. There is another route I quite like the idea of. But I might have to finish what I'm doing at the moment, which as I said at the start is a whodunit — a murder mystery. I'm well into the editing now and I hope to have it out, self-published, in the next few months.
Howard Lovy: You don't even think about finding an agent or a traditional publisher? You've done it yourself for so long now.
Mike Carden: Well, yes. It has worked so far, and unless somebody came along with a better idea, I'm not sure I can face going back to the agents and all of that. What I've done has worked, so I think I'll probably do the same again.
Advice for Indie Authors
Howard Lovy: Looking back at your long, non-linear path, have you learned anything about patience, timing, or independence that you'd want newer indie authors to hear?
Mike Carden: Certainly patience. A couple of things, really. You have to be confident in yourself, but you've also got to work out how to sell your books. Everyone will have a slightly different audience, and it's one thing to write a book — but if you want people to read it, you have to work out how to get it in front of them so that they're tempted to spend good money on it.
Howard Lovy: You mentioned that your cycling books seem to sell themselves now. They've taken on a life of their own?
Mike Carden: I think so, yes. Every now and then they jump up on Amazon again and a few more sales appear. I don't quite understand it, I must admit.
Howard Lovy: There must be something that resonates. What do readers tell you about it — is it the humour, the travel, your perspective?
Mike Carden: I think it's the humour more than anything else. People who go cycling and are not professional cyclists — maybe they like to read about somebody who doesn't take it too seriously, who just enjoys the ride.
Howard Lovy: Right. Well, it sounds like you've enjoyed the ride as an indie author from way back. Good luck on the whodunit too.
Mike Carden: Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to getting that out there. We'll see how it goes.
Howard Lovy: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Best of luck, and safe travels.
Mike Carden: Very good. Thank you very much, Howard. Goodbye.
