In the unlikely event there ever is a legend surrounding my life as an author, Bandwagon will loom large in it. This, after all, is the book where it finally came together, where I was first able to construct a tight, continuous narrative and sustain it for a decent number of words. This year being the tenth anniversary of the book, I've decided to make the edited 2007 "Digital Remaster" freely available - hopefully people will enjoy it, but hopefully it will also help build the audience for Erasmus.

So where did Bandwagon come from? What inspired me to write what is essentially a musical comedy with science-fiction trimmings? The trigger, as is often the case with me, was a thought arising whilst watching a film, in this instance "That Thing You Do". For people unfamiliar, this was a pet project of Tom Hanks following the career of a fictional Sixties one-hit wonder band aptly called The Wonders. Plucked from musical obscurity by an ambitious impresario (played by Hanks), they make it briefly big with the film's title track.

There's a key scene in the film where the band perform their song for an important audience. The drummer, nervous and fired with adrenalin, plays the opening drum riff at an increased tempo, thus speeding the song up and inadvertently propelling it to become a hit. In so doing, however, he creates a tension with the band's songwriter and ultimately triggers the break-up of the band.

Two things struck me in that moment: the first was that it was an oblique reference to the Beatles' Please Please Me, a song which started out as a slow, Roy Orbison style number, but which the band sped up when producer George Martin rejected their first version. The other element - and this was the key - was that the speeding up of the drummer was something like a robot developing a fault. In that moment, both the referential and the science fiction nature of Bandwagon was born. And me being me it had to be a comedy.

Obviously, parodies of bands have been done before. Terry Pratchett brought music to Discworld in Soul Music, and Christopher Guest has created memorable musicians in both Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind; Bandwagon needed to be different - and this required something more than funny characters and a silly story. The inspiration for that missing element was provided by a magazine article about David Crosby. The story as I remember it goes that back in the 1960's Crosby was frequently high on something more than life. In fact, he could be said to have something of a chemical dependency. One day, short of cash and desperate for a fix, he sold his car to a friend. The car was then stolen by joyriders who dumped the car, conveniently enough, outside Crosby's house. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Crosby sold the car to someone else for another fix. Shortly later and by a staggering coincidence it returned again.

I don't recall whether Crosby sold the car a third time, but what I do remember is the thought that the story was just the kind of thing you wouldn't believe if it weren't in a reputable magazine like Mojo. I think the column was actually called "Would I Lie to You?" - a reference to a Eurythmics song. Further, I realised that music history is full of these things, from the fake Fleetwood Mac which briefly operated in parallel to the real band, to Becker and Fagen's onstage antics in Jay and the Americans. Since I was steeped in the lore from years of music biographies and documentaries it seemed it would be relatively easy for me to reference these as part of a broader musical universe for the book, changing the names and cranking the insanity up to eleven for effect. It was also an ideal opportunity for me to write Douglas Adams style narrative gags, something I'd avoided in my previous books for fear of direct comparison.

Tone determined, I set to work, crafting a distinctive history for my band in their crazy universe. As the book began to take shape, I found myself finding other ways to layer in reference. Parodying song titles was obvious and made for some easy jokes, but the next leap came from the memory of an interview with Paul Simon, recorded by his biographer Patrick Humphries. In the interview, Simon talked about the genesis of his breakthrough "The Sound of Silence" and the way in which the lyrics have subsequently gained a meaning significantly greater to the one he intended. This immediately gave me an idea for another silly song title and a joke, which I stored up ready for the appropriate scene.

Of course, if you leave an idea floating around in the brain of a creative person, it tends to mutate. By the time I came to write the chapter in question, various of my neurons had got together and were now petitioning me to make a little more use of the notion. Presented by my subconscious with some of the lyrics and tune I was forced to put aside the computer, pick up a guitar and compose the whole thing. The result, "Listening to Nothing," would become Blood and Oil's signature song. More than this, however, it would open up another interesting vein in the novel, as I described the band's performance with reference to the song's actual arrangement (although their version is more keyboard oriented than mine, because Keys was already earmarked as the writer). This new kind of descriptive narrative - I still viewed the book very much as an exercise rather than a potential product - informed later scenes where I described the band playing onstage and referenced genuine songs in their performances. Finally, I wrote a number of set-piece scenes drawn from song lyrics - an early example of which takes place in the electrical store right at the beginning of the story. The result of all these different layers was a book which rather more densely referential than is usual, so much so that some readers spotted jokes I never even wrote, relating elements of Blood and Oil's story to tales they've heard about other musicians.

So far, so straightforward, but although I am a comic writer by virtue of an inability to take life too seriously, I am also a dramatic writer by virtue of an obsession with making things logically consistent and (in its own terms) real. Bandwagon is the book which taught me about blending these elements. During the writing I was occasionally concerned about the way a comic narrative gag would be followed by a tense or emotional scene with the band. I called this issue "density of humour" and at the time I saw it as a serious problem. However, I happened to catch an interview with Neil Gaiman where he talked about BBC executives confusion at the variation in tone in his seminal series Neverwhere, and I realised maybe this wasn't so much a problem as I thought. Reading back some years later, I can now see it wasn't. Indeed, it was a vital step in my development, so that by the time I reached the second Erasmus book I also mastered black humour - adding the dark matter to the joke itself.

Bandwagon was completed in early 2003, submitted to a grand total of six publishers and then - as my confidence waned - issued through a self-publishing service called Publish and be Damned. Self-publishing was pretty slow in those days, however, so by the time the book actually emerged the more accessible Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow had already been accepted by its first publisher. Bandwagon was allowed to languish, unpromoted, on Amazon's then relatively obscure site. I suspect the only extant print copies are those I personally handed out to friends and family. The book sank into obscurity faster than an English entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.

Looking back from a decade on, I wouldn't say Bandwagon was perfect. There were definitely lessons learned in the writing and editing of Erasmus which advanced my craft further, and as a result, if I were writing Bandwagon now I'd do some things differently. But Bandwagon remains a book for which I have a soft spot. It's not just its place in my history, more that like an errant but charming friend you're bound to love it despite its faults. That's why I tweaked it just a little back in 2007 for the "Digital Remaster"; it's why it continues to provide inspiration for my songwriting and the sleeve notes for the albums I send friends and family each Christmas; it's why, when I was trying to rebuild my self-confidence as an author in 2012, it was a sequel to Bandwagon I chose to write. And it's why now, ten years after the original publication, I have chosen to fix a few typos in the Digital Remaster and release it gratis for a new audience. Take, enjoy, and pass it on - maybe if enough people like it I might get round to editing the sequel...

Bandwagon is available for free at Smashwords.