A Prisoner of Fan Fiction

Writer Mike Bodnar has published his first novel, Unity, knowing that no matter how popular it becomes he will not make a penny from it...

I've recently finished writing my first novel. Thank you; a hat will be passed round shortly.

Image of Patrick McGoohan courtesy of Cultbox

However, to be clear, I had a springboard to leap from, and I can't lay claim to the original idea on which Unity is based. That, dear reader, is all down to one Patrick McGoohan (see pic), and if the name rings a bell it's because in the 1960s he was famous for playing agent John Drake in the British TV series Danger Man (Secret Agent in the United States), and, in 1967-68, as the unnamed eponymous lead in The Prisoner. It's this latter enigmatic series from which my novel takes its inspiration.

Why? Because The Prisoner has, for the past 55 years, confused, bewildered and beguiled audiences around the world, and still to this day people ask, what was it all about? What happened in the end? Did he ever really escape? And, just generally, WTF?

Prisoner fans re-enact the human chess game
from the episode 'Checkmate' during a convention.
(Image courtesy Welsh Holiday News)

There are multiple fan clubs and associations devoted to scrutinising The Prisoner's story arc(s) and quirks in minute detail. If you add up the memberships of those groups on Facebook alone you'll find almost 30,000 devotees. And there are multiple websites which attract membership from around the globe. There are even cosplay-style annual conventions. In short, The Prisoner very quickly acquired cult status, and shows little sign of slowing down.

As a result, there are many, many books that have been written about The Prisoner, some factual, others speculative, along with many novels and novellas. The - excuse the pun - captive audience laps them up, so I knew before starting out on my writing venture that there was a market out there hungry for more. I hope so; I'm banking on it.

Initial trial print run

Or rather, I'm not banking on it. Because I can't. I cannot - in fact am not allowed to - profit
from this work because I do not own the rights to the original work itself, the TV series. That is now held by television company ITV. And before you ask, yes I have tried to buy the rights, but have met with a blank refusal, along with a warning to 'seek independent legal advice.' But I will not be pushed, stamped, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered, to quote The Prisoner himself, and am determined to see the drooling audience satiated. I am resigned to not making any money from it though.

So why bother? I hear you ask. Because, although not a rabid fan or cult follower, I have been intrigued by The Prisoner since first being enthralled by it as a 13-year-old, and have enjoyed watching the odd re-run over the years since. I have also now had over fifty years to ponder what McGoohan was trying to say with the series, and - thanks to the Prisonerverse - I've been able to view numerous documentaries, interviews and other random material, all of which have also tried to answer the same questions. There is no shortage of analysis, and I thank all those who have done all that research for me.

Portmeirion, the charming yet menacing 'village'
where The Prisoner was held captive
(Image: Mike Bodnar)

But that doesn't answer your question. For a long time I've had oblique thoughts about the obverse side of The Prisoner's story. If he'd resigned and was then captured and interrogated as to why, then what was it that made him resign? Why did he need to be caught and incarcerated? What threat was he? And who held him prisoner?

With those thoughts tumbling around in my head for a few years it was no surprise to me when they finally coalesced into a plausible storyline, told from the side of his captors. This - unlike so many of the other tie-in stories - doesn't aim to continue the story after The Prisoner TV series ends; mine is instead a contemporaneous narrative, paralleling what happens in The Prisoner from episode one to the final bewildering act. Although, if I were to base my story on all seventeen episodes it would be pushing 200,000 words and likely be a trilogy, and given that there's no financial reward to be had I was not about to embark on such an epic adventure. 

Be seeing you

Instead I have taken what many regard as the seven 'essential' episodes of the series and written a 1967-based spy thriller that sits alongside those stories and, hopefully, makes sense of them, or at least provides a viable explanation as to WTAF is going on. It is a more palatable 80,000 words, or just over 300 pages in paperback form. As stated in my foreword, the book aims purely to entertain, not to swell any coffers, and if there is inadvertent profit it will go to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the RNLI.

I self-published the book as, to be honest, I couldn't be arsed sending it to publishers or agents who these days don't bother reading anything and don't respond anyway. Also, as a tie-in novel they're unlikely to be interested. So the sale price of Unity will be to cover production/publishing costs.

I'm officially launching the book during the 2023 Prisoner convention (21-23 April). Called Portmeiricon, it's being held at 'The Village' itself in North Wales, and the organisers have very kindly given me an hour's slot in Hercules Hall at 7pm on the Saturday (22nd) for the launch. Copies of Unity will be available. I'll even sign one for you!

(However, would you like to be one of the first to read it? You can get Unity on Amazon right now!)

But where, then, do I get my reward? Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed writing Unity over the past two years, and that in itself is profit of sorts. If readers actually like it then that also is a bonus, as any favourable reviews will be. But there's more; while I openly admit to having used the basic storyline of The Prisoner as my muse, I have in the process created a raft of original characters within the zeitgeist of 1967 London and the British intelligence community.

The author pretending to work

I've grown to like these characters, and as I wrote the last few pages of the book it dawned on me that I could craft a sequel, only this time using my own dramatis personae, and a story not related to the TV series; in fact having no reference to The Prisoner at all. This makes the next book a stand-alone intellectual property of mine, and one which, fingers crossed, I can make as much money from as people will throw at me. Form an orderly queue.

All I can tell you at this stage is that it's set in Britain and the island of Ireland in 1970, and is called (working title) The Liscannor Intercept. Yes it's another spy thriller, and yes I have started writing it. But obviously, it's classified, and if I told you more I'd have to shoot you.

Update, at 25 October, 2025: 

The new cover on the second edition

Here I am almost three years on from when I first published this blog, and I have recently released the second edition of Unity. Content-wise there's not much that's changed; I dropped links and references to the book's website which, alas, no longer exists as it became prohibitively expensive to renew the site. I also dropped the crowdfunding link because, well, nobody was funding me, so that didn't work. Never mind.

Reviews for Unity on both Amazon and Goodreads have been fantastic (including, importantly, from Prisoner fans), and it gets a five star rating on both sites, so if nothing else that tells me not to mess with it too much!

The biggest change for the second edition is a new - and I think more dramatic - cover, and I present it here for your consideration. The book remains available in three formats: paperback, hardcover, (in the UK) and as a Kindle eBook. Sales haven't been great, and I'm still waiting for a film deal. I have, however, dropped the Kindle price to a very reasonable 99p (in UK money), so now is your chance to check out Unity. Thank you.

The Success of Self-Publishing

 Mike Bodnar looks at what opportunities the Covid pandemic has created for aspiring authors...

The impacts of Covid-19 on the mainstream book market are many, with closed bookshops, cancelled book launches and publishers' strategies in disarray. However, none of this seems to have stopped writers. If anything it's given them a new lease on life.

With more time stuck at home due to the pandemic, an increasing number of people are using the opportunity to write that novel, memoir or history book, and submit it in the hope of publication, fame and fortune. You've probably got an idea for a best-selling book tucked away in the back of your mind somewhere too, haven't you? Go on, you know you have.

However, all this time for creativity has ironically increased the workload of publishers and literary agents, even if their sector is in chaos. In a recent Guardian article, one publisher said that their normal workload of four or five manuscripts a day had increased since Covid to as many as 16 a day, while a literary agent complained that her quotidian in-tray now included as many as 27 manuscripts. Yes, you read that correctly: per day!

So competition for publishers' and agents' attention is intense, but you can bypass mainstream publishing altogether by self-publishing, which an increasing number of indie authors are doing – and not necessarily due to a fear of rejection.

Self-published books are finally breaking through the decades-old stigma they've suffered, namely that if it's self-published then by definition it's inferior. (And yes, it has to be said that some self-published books are sadly wanting, if not dire.) On the upside, self-publishing has become the method of choice for many successful writers because it generates a bigger share of sales revenue, while offering more control over the work.

Out of this world success

Waving the flag for independence are fêted titles such asThe Martian, Fifty Shades of Grey, Still Alice, and The Shack – all successful self-published works. But what 'success' looks like is important, and not always to do with how many copies an author sells or how rich and famous they become, as we'll see.

Then there are self-publishing companies, providing everything from proofreading and editing through to cover design, printing, marketing and sales management. You choose how much of a package you want, or can afford. The main difference between these companies and the big established publishers is that you pay them to publish your work, not the other way round.

Self-publishing options today are many, largely thanks to the internet and digital publishing opportunities; on-demand printing, eBooks, and audio books can be achieved easily, with no publisher involved and with potentially much greater profits than traditional publishing.

But before you start you need to ask, 'How will I define success?' In the examples of sell-out self-published books above, success is in sales numbers, rave reviews, publishing contracts and film deals. But success can be a lot more modest and diverse than that.

For example, let's say you wish to write your family history. Your 'market' is likely

Rave reviews...

 your immediate and extended family. So, they get to own a professionally-published record of the family chronicle, while you have the satisfaction of being the originator of the work. 

There's no financial reward and no film deal, but your market – small and intimate as it is – will be delighted with what you've created (and they'll give you all the rave reviews you want).

Or you might write a travel memoir, based on your adventures riding a motorbike halfway round the world. Here you want to entertain and inspire others, so your target market is the armchair traveller and would-be adventurer. Success therefore might be readers saying they enjoyed your book so much that they're now planning their own adventure.

Avoid clichés like the plague

Then of course there's the novel, that edge-of-the-seat thriller, sci-fi drama or fantasy battle between the forces of good and evil etc. and so on. Self-publishing allows you to indulge in all the clichés that mainstream publishers would reject out of hand. Just be aware that your target market might do the same! 

Success here could be that despite all the science-fiction that's been written in the last 200 years, you come up with something unique that grabs the imagination of the public and nets you sales in the millions. Or maybe you'll just win an award of some sort. Clear space on the mantelpiece now.

But success could also simply be the extremely practical result that your publishing and promotional costs have been covered by sales, to the point where the book doesn't owe you anything. Any subsequent sales are a bonus, (maybe enabling you to create an audio book version!).

This, as a matter of interest, is the situation I find myself in; I sold all 500 copies of my self-published travel book Against The Current (a modest but practical number to print) and although now out of print, the eBook version is still selling, plus I've made enough from sales to not only cover the costs of publishing but also to fund the audio book version (which so far has sold around 200 copies and is still going). I call that success, even though I'm still waiting for someone to buy the film rights off me.

Sold out, sorry...

So success in self-publishing is what you make it, and not just about rave reviews, getting on a best-seller list, or striking a movie deal.

If you've been thinking of using lockdown to finally turn that book idea into reality, go for it. But decide upfront what your success is going to look like. That way you won't be disappointed.

Now, get on that keyboard!