Dan Newman News and Cover reveal for November 2013

The UK cover reveal for debut author Dan Newman whose book The Clearing is due to be published by Exhibit A Books.

The Clearing is Dan Newman’s debut novel; a dark and atmospheric psychological thriller. Full of intrigue, terror and superstition, The Clearing examines our deepest fears of the unknown.

To celebrate publication on 29 Oct (US/ebook) and 5 Nov (UK/ROW) Exhibit A Books have 5 advance reader copies to offer Shots readers, with this international cover reveal. To win your copy of The Clearing, send your full name and address to Shots Competition and five names will be pulled from the hat after the closing date on 21 September 2013.

Dan Newman was born in England, grew up on St Lucia in the Caribbean – where The Clearing is set – then in the Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland in Southern Africa, then Canada, then England again, then Australia, and then…you get the picture. Dan has had a variety of jobs including playing semi-professional football in Africa and working as a plant pot cleaner, and a beer brewer. Now living in Toronto, Canada, he’s settled on corporate communications but uses his degree in journalism to write terrifying thrillers, alongside his blog and website, and can oft be found chatting on Twitter.

In 1976, four boys walked into a jungle. Only three came back alive.

Haunted by terrifying childhood memories he doesn’t fully understand, journalist Nate Mason returns to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia where he grew up.

Back then, as the son of a diplomat, he was part of an elite social circle. But during a weekend of whispered secrets and dares in a decaying jungle mansion staffed by the descendants of slaves, Nate’s innocence was torn apart.

The survivors of that gathering blamed what happened on a myth, an unseen terror from the bush. No one believed them. But now. almost forty years later, is the truth finally about to come out?

Within hours of arriving back on the island, Nate becomes convinced he’s being followed. He soon discovers that his search for answers could cost him his sanity as well as his life, as he realises that some childhood nightmares never go away.

Can childhood nightmares haunt you for the rest of your life? How much do you need to believe in a monster for it to become real? The Clearing is a dark and atmospheric psychological thriller, full of intrigue, terror and superstition, which examines our deepest fears of the unknown. A potent mix of the friendship and bravery of Stand By Me and the betrayals and fear of Angel Heart.

For more information please contact Caroline Lambe on 44 (0) 115 933 8421 or at caroline.lambe@angryrobotbooks.com

Twitter: @angryrobotbooks 

Will Sutton's Murder, Music & Metropolitan

Diary of a diabolical book launch

Will Sutton

© Caroline Lambe

My wife Caroline looked horrified. "Tell me you're not going to do the fiery nipple tassels, are you?" 

I love a show. Don’t you? A song, a few laughs, a story. I also love book readings, panels and launches: pearls of wisdom tossed before us bedazzled readers. As I’d spent the weekend performing at Lounge on the Farm and enjoying the twisted darkness of the Boom Bang Circus cabaret, I wanted more than your average book launch. When I told my wife I was going to try something a bit different, she feared I might try to recreate some of the wilder Boom-Bang moments with tassels, hoola-hoops and lingerie.

Fun for all the family

Instead, I co-opted the talented Noel LeBon, troubadour and actor, to help me launch my Victorian crime novel, Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square, with a show:

Music, Murder, Metropolitan at Waterstone’s extraordinary Gower Street shop.

 When a normal employer sees my CV, I blush at the gaps in my employment history: Withnail & I North London wilderness years; run away to Brazil; difficult second novel.

© Caroline Lambe

When my publicist looks at my CV, she loves the nonsensical lacunae: Brazil cricket team; longest play in world; tutoring Sugababes.

I squandered much of my youth hanging around with out-of-work actors. Rehearsing clowning skills chez Ecole Philippe Gaulier, I learned how the audience enjoy the actor’s pleasure: it is the only theory I know that explains Connery, Caine, Burton and Cary Grant.

I survived Ken Campbell’s theatrical epic, The Warp by Neil Oram. From Ken I learned that audiences love things that start, change and then come back again, so we can all pat ourselves on the back and say, “Oh, I get it now.”

From Peter Brook I learned that holy theatre quickly turns to deadly theatre, and that rough magic can be conjured out of nothing with good will.

Surviving the book launch

We novelists pour into our books all the love and hate, fun and frenzy, passion politicking that we can. But in performing, it is tough for us to be as entertaining as our books. Which is a shame. We are probably fascinating if you catch us at our ease, in the pub, or at a festival.

The pressure to perform, to impress, to sound erudite and informed can stultify the magic of the writing. After all, erudition and information are not the primary reasons for reading. They are bonuses. But what is thrilling is to be entertained and only later realise how much substance you have absorbed.

That is why I was over the moon to discover the ReAuthoring Project, with whom I have performed in restaurants, ships, fields and tents. Here’s a bit of their manifesto:

1. The author is at the centre of ReAuthored performance, delivering their own work. They do not have to pretend to be an actor.
2. ReAuthoring keeps the audience in mind. It seeks to entertain, inspire, bemuse and generate emotion.
3. ReAuthoring is a valid offering to the audience in and of itself. You do not have to have read the book to ‘get it’. It stands alone.

A Lawless Launch

Arriving at Gower Street, we found a sign: The Law section will be closed from 6 o’clock. Which meant that, for our launch, it would be a Lawless bookshop.

© Caroline Lambe

Noel and I presented a cabaret version of the play. It started with subterranean protest songs, in the spirit of the book (if not the era). The larksome japery went on with a character parade. I particularly enjoyed being Mrs Marx:

“Karl makes it so difficult for himself writing the way he does. If only he could write a bestseller like Mr. Dickens. I feel sure he could.”

While Noel’s urchin Worm made people look up from their Pimm’s and Garibaldi biscuits:

“Tug on your cover-me-properlies, your stampers and fumbles and bonarest fakements, and toddle along. Shift your crabshells, you doxy old fishbag!”

We sang London songs by the Pogues and the Smiths and rebellion songs by Eddie Vedder and Jamie West. The highest praise came from @oldmapman: “Heck of a way to launch a book!”

Why Victorian crime?  

By mistake. I found:

-          a picture of the banquet for tube opening day, 9 Jan 1863

-          that 10,000 were made homeless by the Metropolitan diggings

-          that the Fleet Sewer broke in just months before

-          that a driver crashed on a trial run, overrunning the sidings at King’s Cross

With this recipe for revolution, I fell in love with subterranean London. I already loved Willkie Collins and his “mysteries that lie at our own doors”. I learned that it’s no accident that evolution, crime fiction, criminology and psychology began simultaneously.

I had to become an 1860s expert, yes, but setting a techno-thriller in the past has advantages. I could be blunt about terrorism. Is there never a justification for revolutionary action? Not even in a society that’s crazily unjust?

© Caroline Lambe

Larksome Sprees and Japery

Waterstone’s bookshop entered into the spirit providing Victorian biscuits (Bourbons and Garibaldi’s – thanks, Sam). The audience entered into the spirit singing along my ridiculous song:
Ooh, the Victorians:
so lusciously lascivious, so strenuously stentorian.

Ooh, the Victorians:

hysterical histrionics to enravish a historian

Using all the voices I had just tried out recording the Audio book, I had a lark. There were ridiculous moments, but I think they helped convey the book’s serious side too. And next time, maybe I’ll try Boom Bang circus style tassels.

Phillip Patterson (Agent) and Ayo Onatade

© Caroline Lambe

© Caroline Lambe

 

www.william-sutton.co.uk

ExhibitA Books

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Voice Morphing by J B Turner

Today's guest blog is by thriller writer J B Turner who is  a former journalist.  Hard Road his debut novel was published by Exhibit A and his next novel Hard Kill will be published in July 2014.

There is a fine line between fact and fiction. Lines get blurred. Did that actually happen? Did they actually say that? Were they misquoted? Never is this more true than a statement delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

“Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government.”

The problem was that although the voice sounded remarkably like him, it was not Steiner.

It was in fact the result of voice “morphing’ technology, developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

What happened was scientist George Papcun recorded a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner’s voice. Then in near real time, he managed to clone speech patterns and developed an almost perfect replica.

It was said that Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

Researching for my thriller Hard Road, I came across this information. And I incorporated it into my storyline where a former National Security Agency voice analyst, Thomas Wesley, intercepts what appears on the surface just to be an innocuous, albeit annoying 1980s pop song by The Bangles. But when Wesley digs deeper, he realizes there is an encrypted conversation, which talks of an imminent terrorist attack.

The voice on the intercept is not, however, the actual voice it at first appears to be.

Wesley is so concerned he contacts an old college friend, a Congressman, and asks him to listen to the real conversation identifying the actual person, as opposed to the voice clone.

Voice morphing is also known as voice transformation and voice conversion and is the software-generated alteration of a person’s natural voice. The purpose could be to add audio effects to the voice, to obscure the identity of the person or to impersonate another individual.

It also has its military applications, most notably psychological operation, PSYOPS.

Former intelligence analyst and acclaimed Washington Post journalist William Arkin said: “Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video . . . might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.”

American’s military planners started to discuss digital morphing after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Covert operators are said to have come up with the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or in some sexually compromising situation. The plan was for the tapes to be sent into Iraq and the Arab world. But it never made the light of day.

Voice morphing has distinct possibilities in military psychological warfare and submersion. For example, it could be used to provide fake order to the enemy’s troops, appearing to come from their own commanders. What if the voice of a rebel leader urges his followers to lay down their arms?

Former American Secretary of State Colin Powell was another whose voice was morphed and he was heard to say, “I am being treated well by my captors.”

Except that, Colin Powell didn’t say that. His voice was simply a chilling replica of his voice. 

You can follow J B Turner on Twitter @jbturnerauthor and on Facebook.