Author Tom Cox appeals for stolen book notes

An author is appealing for help to trace his stolen Moleskine notebook which contained a year’s worth of notes for his next title.

Tom Cox, author of The Good, The Bad and The Furry (Sphere), said the notebook was in his bag which was stolen from The Red Lion pub on Whitehall Road in on Saturday night (18th August).

Writing on Twitter, Cox said: “My bag was stolen last night from a pub in Bristol. It had a lot go very important stuff inside it: my wallet, my car keys, my phone and - most agonisingly of all - a notebook containing a year’s worth of thoughts towards my next book. All undoubtedly unrecoverable.”

He added: “I’m putting this on here… in case anyone spots a black Moleskine notebook lying about in a street or hedge near The Red Lion pub on Whitehall Road in Bristol... Obviously the phone/wallet are upsetting but the worst things in the journal.”

Cox said following the theft he had endured a trying round trip to Devon and back to Bristol to collect his spare car keys.

“After I’d cancelled my cards and called the police, breakdown recovery couldn’t come out to my car until Monday so I then got the train back to Devon first thing today, a very expensive taxi to and from my house to pick up my car keys, then a train back to Bristol, a five mile walk to my car (including the best where I got lost), then drove the two hours back home, all after 45 mins of sleep last night," he said.

"I guess the only way you can really look at stuff like this is that, as upset as I feel right now, it could all have been a lot worse, I’m not physically hurt.”

It is not the first time Cox has experienced bad luck with a draft book. He also lost 23,000 words of his 2017 book 21st Century Yokel (Unbound).

“I recovered from that, so I’m sure I’ll find a lot of the words somewhere in my head and it will all work out,” he said.

Cox has sold a total of 119,697 print books for £854,575, in the UK through Nielsen BookScan, with his bestseller The Good, The Bad and The Furry shifting 24,782 units.