CWA Specsavers Crime Thriller Shortlist Announced

Two novels from Transworld imprints and a further two from Little, Brown have been shortlisted for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards.
Paula Daly’s Keep Your Friends Close (Bantam), which reveals what happens when a marriage falls apart with fatal consequences, is up against Wiley Cash’s This Dark Road to Mercy (Doubleday), a tale of blood and vengeance in a little town in North Carolina.
Also in the running are The First Rule of Survival (Constable) by Paul Mendelson, a thriller set in modern Cape Town where the discovery of two missing children reveals unwelcome truths, and Louise Penny’s story of rampant police corruption in an isolated Canadian hamlet with no links to the outside world, How the Light Gets In (Sphere).
Meanwhile the shortlist for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for Best First Novel sees Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil In The Marshalsea (Hodder & Stoughton), which depicts the savage world of an 18th century gaol, facing M J Carter’s tale of murder, gambling, opium wars and crime, The Strangler Vine (Penguin Fig Tree). Two other debut novels are shortlisted: The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin (Mantle), which follows an unknown axe-man who gives his address as "Hell", and The Silent Wife by A S A Harrison (Headline), in which Chicago is the backdrop for the slow, murderous disintegration of a marriage.
Robert Harris and Louise Doughty are both shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year, for An Officer and a Spy (Random House) and Apple Tree Yard (Faber and Faber) respectively. Harris’ novel is a fictional telling of The Dreyfus Affair, while Doughty’s is a psychological thriller about a respected female scientist and the single reckless decision that leads to her standing trial for murder.
Also in the running for that award is I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (Transworld), a race against time for a retired US intelligence expert who is drawn back into the world of forensic criminal investigation, and Greg Iles’ Natchez Burning (HarperCollins), where a son’s attempts to defend his father from charges of murder puts him in contact with a hardened, violent gang.
Lucy Santos, director CWA, called them “powerful and fantastic shortlists which we know will provide hours of reading pleasure for all", thanking sponsors Goldsboro Books and Ian Fleming Publications.
The winners will be announced at the awards on Friday 24th October at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, along with winners in categories for film and television.
This September, ITV3 will run a Crime Thriller Season, featuring a TV series dedicated to crime writing. "The Crime Thriller Club", sponsored by Specsavers, will feature "Living Legends", a series of interviews with bestselling authors in the world of crime and thriller fiction. The authors interviewed this year will be Dean Koontz, Denise Mina, Robert Harris, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly and Lynda La Plante, who will all be members of the CWA Hall of Fame.
Each episode of "The Crime Thriller Club" will also include The Crime Thriller Book Club, in which six novels will be critiqued on air. This year’s selected titles are: Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse (Bloomsbury); Entry Island by Peter May (Quercus); Letters To My Daughter’s Killer by Cath Staincliffe (Constable & Robinson); Treachery by S J Parris (HarperCollins); The Tilted World by Tom Franklin & Beth Ann Fennelly (Mantle); and Watch Me by James Carol (Faber & Faber).
Good luck everyone.

Hat tip: The Bookseller

Books to Look Forward to From Cornerstone

When two plane crashes set off a spellbinding chain reaction of murder, inadvertent kidnapping, corporate corruption and financial double-dealing, Niceville detective Nick Kavanaugh has to investigate.  To add to his worries, he and his wife, Kate, have also just taken in brutally orphaned Rainey Teague.  Something bothers Nick about Rainey - and it isn't just that the woman in charge of attendance at Rainey's school has suspiciously disappeared.  In fact, people have long been disappearing from seemingly placid Niceville, including, most disturbingly, Kate's father.  Using his files, Kate and Nick start to unearth Niceville's bloodstained history, but something (or is it Nothing?) stands in their way... The Homecoming is by Carsten Stroud and is due to be published in August 2013.

Down Among The Dead Men is by Ed Chatterton and is due to be published in

November 2013.  This is the dark, gritty second novel in the Detective Inspector Frank Keane series.  At first glance, the bloody crime scene in suburban Liverpool looks like a straightforward murder-suicide - the husband kills the wife and then himself.  But what of their missing teenage son, Nicky?  Is he their prime suspect or the third victim?  With Nicky's holiday job on a film, being shot in the city bringing unwanted press attention, newly promoted head of the Merseyside Major Incident Team DCI Frank Keane knows that time is running out to find the boy.  But all too soon, the case starts unravelling into one that will test Keane to the limit - and haunt him to his dying day.

Second Honeymoon is by James Patterson and Howard Roughan and was published in July 2013.  When FBI agent John O'Hara receives a call from a man desperate for his help, little does he know his whole life will turn upside down.  The man's son and daughter-in-law have been found murdered on their honeymoon in the Caribbean.  He wants justice, and will pay O'Hara handsomely to hunt down the killer.  Federal agents aren't allowed to moonlight, but O'Hara is on suspension.  The drunk driver who killed his wife in a car accident two years ago is soon to be released from jail, and O'Hara is battling some serious demons.  He takes on the case, but when another couple are murdered before boarding their honeymoon flight to Rome, it becomes clear that this investigation is far more complicated than it first seemed.  As O'Hara delves deeper, a past he thought was dead and buried soon comes back to haunt him.

Tory Brennan - great niece of Dr Temperance Brennan - and the Virals return for their most terrifying adventure yet.  Life appears peaceful on Loggerhead Island - rescued from financial disaster, the research institute is flourishing once more.  However, the tranquillity is quickly shattered when Tory Brennan and her technophile gang discover a mysterious box buried in the ground.  A seemingly innocent treasure hunt soon turns into a nightmarish game of puzzles, as it becomes clear that one false move will lead to terrible, explosive consequences.  The clock is ticking.  Can Tory and the Virals crack the code in time to save the city - and their own lives? Code is by Kathy Reichs and is due to be published in October 2013.

Gone is by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge and is due to be published in September 2013.Forced into hiding from a mass murderer seeking vengeance, Detective Michael Bennett must decide whether to stay and protect his family, or hunt down the man who is hunting them.  When Bennett arrested Manuel Perrine, he thought he had brought an end to the drug cartel boss' reign of terror and would get justice for the murder of his best friend.  But then, during the trial, Perrine escaped.  In a bloody shoot-out, Bennett killed Perrine's wife.  Now he wants nothing more than to make Bennett suffer, to make him pay.  The whole family are moved to a safe house in California.  But as Perrine's attacks on US soil become more vicious and more daring, it's clear there is a war coming.  No one, anywhere, is safe.

Sacrifice is by Will Jordan and is due to be published in August 2013.  Afghanistan, 2008.  A Black Hawk helicopter carrying a senior CIA operative is shot down by a surface to air missile, its lone passenger taken hostage by a fanatical new insurgent group.  Knowing this man holds information vital to the on-going conflict, the CIA bring in Ryan Drake and his elite Shepherd team to find and rescue their lost operative.  However, nothing is what it seems, and within hours of arriving in the war-torn country, Drake and his team find themselves caught in a deadly conflict between a brutal terrorist warlord and the ruthless leader of a private military company.  In addition, lurking in the shadows is a woman from Drake's past determined to settle old scores.

Favour the Dead is by Mackenzie Smith and is due to be published in October 2013.  My name is Christian McKie and a few months ago, I was killed in military action in Sierra Leone.  I am undercover with the only people who know I am alive.  We were all killed in action.  And now we must use death to our advantage.  We are the Regiment of the Dead.

An Officer and A Spy is by Robert Harris and is due to be published in September 2013.January 1895.  On a freezing morning in the heart of Paris, an army officer, Georges Picquart, witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of twenty thousand spectators baying 'Death to the Jew!’  The officer is rewarded with promotion: Picquart is made the French army's youngest colonel and put in command of 'the Statistical Section' - the shadowy intelligence unit that tracked down Dreyfus.  The spy, meanwhile, is given a punishment of medieval cruelty: Dreyfus is shipped off to a lifetime of solitary confinement on Devil's Island - unable to speak to anyone, not even his guards, his case seems closed forever.  But gradually Picquart comes to believe there is something rotten at the heart of the Statistical Section.  When he discovers another German spy operating on French soil, his superiors are oddly reluctant to pursue it.  Despite official warnings, Picquart persists, and soon the officer and the spy are in the same predicament.  Narrated by Picquart, An Officer and a Spy is a compelling recreation of a scandal that became the most famous miscarriage of justice in history.  Compelling, too, are the echoes for our modern world: an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in the name of national security, a newspaper witch-hunt of a persecuted minority, and the age-old instinct of those in power to cover-up their crimes.

An investigator with the brilliance of Lincoln Rhyme is paired with a former soldier with the

determination and strength of Jack Reacher.  Deacon Munroe is not your average investigator.  He's intelligent, cultured, and well connected.  And totally blind.  Washington DC is Munroe's city.  Now it's a city shaken to the core by the death of a high-ranking general and his wife.  All the evidence suggests that the general killed his wife, before taking his own life.  Deacon Munroe does not trust what other people see - only what he knows is true.  What Munroe soon knows is that the general's death is part of a far greater plan, a sophisticated and brutal plot to kill thousands of innocent people, including those closest to Munroe himself.  But with only a small team at his aid, and just hours to stop a devastating attack on the city, can Munroe unearth the truth in time to bring justice to the city?  Blind Justice is by Ethan Cross and is due to be published in October 2013.

Special Agent Will Trent has something to hide.  Something he doesn't want Dr Sara Linton - the woman he loves - to find out.  He's gone undercover in Macon, Georgia and put his life at risk.  And he knows Sara will never forgive him if she discovers the truth.  But when a young patrolman is shot and left for dead Sara is forced to confront the past and a woman she hoped never to see again.  And without even knowing it, she becomes involved in the same case Will is working on.  Soon both of their lives are in danger.  Unseen is by Karin Slaughter and was published in July 2013.

Dead Set is by Will Carver and is due to be published in November 2013.  Detective Inspector January David doesn't love me.  He loves his missing sister.  He loves his job.  But he doesn't love me.  Not in the way, he should.  I am his wife.  I am still his wife.  And I will do anything for him.  No, matter what I have to sacrifice.

Bones of the Lost is the new Temperance Brennan novel from the world-class forensic anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs.  The body of a teenage girl is discovered along a desolate highway on the outskirts of Charlotte.  Inside her purse is the ID card of a local businessman who died in a fire months earlier.  Who was the girl?  And was she

murdered?  Dr Temperance Brennan, Forensic Anthropologist, must find the answers.  She soon learns that a Gulf War veteran stands accused of smuggling artefacts into the country.  Could there be a connection between the two cases?  Convinced that the girl's death was no accident, Tempe soon finds herself at the centre of a conspiracy that extends from South America to Afghanistan.  But to find justice for the dead, she must be more courageous - and take more extreme action - than ever before. Bones of the Lost is due to be published in August 2013.

How well can you ever really know someone?  As Ben Casper watches his best friend plummet from her sixth-floor apartment balcony, he realises his life is about to change.  Diana had no reason to kill herself, she had to have been pushed.  Diana worked for the CIA, so the investigation into her death is kept tightly under wraps.  But Ben is a political journalist, and can feel that something isn't right.  Ben starts investigating for himself and soon discovers Diana was leading a double life he knew nothing about.  But when more people involved die in questionable circumstances, it's clear that someone doesn't want the truth to be uncovered.  And unless Ben drops his investigation, he could be next.  Mistress is by James Paterson and David Ellis and is due to be published in August 2013.

Angel of Death by Martyn Waites is the sequel to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and is due to be published in October 2013.   Autumn 1940, World War Two, the Blitz.  Bombs are raining down, destroying the cities of Britain.  In London, children are being removed from their families and taken to the country for safety.  Teacher Eve Parkins is in charge of one such group, and her destination is an empty and desolate house that appears to be sinking into the treacherous tidal marshes that surround it.  EEL Marsh House - Far from home and with no alternative, Eve and the children move in.  But soon it becomes apparent that there is someone else in the house; someone who is far deadlier than any number of German bombs...The Woman in Black.

No Man's Nightingale is the twenty-fourth title in Ruth Rendell's bestselling Detective Chief Inspector Wexford series.  Sarah Hussain was not popular with many people in the community of Kingsmarkham.  She was born of mixed parentage - a white Irishwoman and an immigrant Indian Hindu.  She was also the Reverend of St Peter's Church.  But it comes as a profound shock to everyone when she is found strangled in the Vicarage.  A garrulous cleaner, Maxine, also shared by the Wexfords, discovers the body.  In his comparatively recent retirement, the former Detective Chief Inspector is devoting much time to reading, and is deep into Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  He has little patience with Maxine's prattle.  But when his old friend Mike Burden asks if he might like to assist on this case as Crime Solutions Adviser (unpaid), Wexford is obliged to pay more precise attention to all available information.  The old instincts have not been blunted by a life where he and Dora divide their time between London and Kingsmarkham.  Wexford retains a relish for solving puzzles and a curiosity about people, which is invaluable in detective work.  For all his experience and sophistication, Burden tends to jump to conclusions.  But he is wise enough to listen to the man whose office he inherited, and whose experience makes him a most formidable ally.  No Man’s Nightingale is due to be published in August 2013.

The Case of the Love Commandos is by Tarquin Hall and is due to be published in October 2013.  When Ram and Tulsi fall in love, the young woman’s parents are dead set against the union.  She’s from a high-caste family; he’s an Untouchable, from the lowest strata of Indian society.  Young Tulsi’s father locks her up and promises to hunt down the “loverboy dog.”  Fortunately, India’s Love Commandos, a group of volunteers dedicated to helping mixed-caste couples, come to the rescue.  But just after they liberate Tulsi, Ram is mysteriously snatched from his hiding place.  The task of finding him falls to India’s “Most Private Investigator”.  Unfortunately, Vish Puri is not having a good month.  He’s failed to recover a cache of stolen jewels.  His wallet has been stolen and he’s having to rely on his infuriating Mummy-ji to get it back.  And to top it all, his arch-rival, suave investigator Hari Kumar, is also trying to locate Ram.  To reunite the star-crossed lovers, Puri and his team of operatives must infiltrate Ram’s village and navigate the caste politics shaped by millennia-old prejudices.

She was ten years old, but knew enough to wipe clean the handle of the bloody kitchen knife.  The night was stifling; the windows were closed, sealing in the chaos.  A table upturned, shattered crockery.  Her distraught mother, bare shoulders raw with welts, knelt beside her motionless father.  The child snatched up her backpack, and ran...London sweats in the height of summer.  The parched city has slowed to a claustrophobic shuffle and there's no end in sight.  Heroin-addicted investigator Catherine Berlin hides her scars from prying eyes while working on the worst of all cases: matrimonial.  The capital's junkies suffer from a drought of a different kind.  A strung-out ghost from Berlin's past turns up on her doorstep with a desperate plea for help: her ten-year-old daughter is missing.  Reminded of a debt owed, Berlin agrees to help, but the search becomes far deadlier than she could ever imagine, drawing her deep into an underworld of corrupt detectives, ruthless drug dealers, and a child killer...A Bitter Taste is the second instalment in the crime series by Annie Hauxwell featuring civilian investigator Catherine Berlin, whose long-standing heroin addiction is only part of her story.  A Bitter Taste was published in July 2013.

A two-day creative writing workshop held at Hotel du Vin Harrogate, 20th & 21st September 2013

 

 

PLOTTING AND WRITING

CRIME FICTION 

Crime fiction is the most popular literary genre on the planet. The fascination with murder on the page has long been recognised by authors and critics, and has been demonstrated by the stratospheric sales of many crime novels.  But how do the successful crime novelists create plot, structure and pace? How do they create believable victims, perpetrators and investigators? How do they get in the head of a killer?

The Writers’ Academy from Random House are holding a creative writing workshop at the beautiful Hotel du Vin Harrogate (home to the famous Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival) to aid participants in the writing process.  Over the course of two days, Henry Sutton, crime author, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Co-Director of UEA’s flagship MA in Prose Fiction, will draw on the past and the present, critics and authors, to teach the key skills needed to create gripping plots, convincing characters, sharp dialogue, startling settings, and suspense. From the police procedural to the psychological thriller, what’s always crucial is the writing – exactly how you tell the story.

Participants will be taught, through a series of examples and exercises, how to control the flow of information and develop pace, how to create cliff-hangers, how to structure their novel, how and where to break convention, when to deploy unreliable narration and devices to tease the reader, what research needs to be done and how, understanding the uses and abuses of violence, humour, and sympathy, and ways of avoiding cliché and being original.

The course is open to people who have made a start on their novel, or are about to. Henry Sutton will read a 1000 words of each participants’ work ahead of the course in order to familiarise himself with each participant’s writing style.  Up-to-date market information will also be highlighted, and advice given on the best next steps to publication.

Henry will be aided by guest tutor S J Watson, author of the bestselling thriller Before I Go to Sleep.  

Places on the course are limited to 14 and cost £375 each to include Hotel du Vin Bistro lunch and refreshments over the two days and a rewarding glass of wine!  Preferential rates at Hotel du Vin Harrogate are offered for the dates of the course alongside the purchase of a place.

For further information please contact

Chloë Johnson-Hill on 020 7840 8490 or cjohnson-hill@randomhouse.co.uk

Notes to Editors:

Event details:

Date:                     Friday 20^th and Saturday 21^st September 2013

Time:                     10am to 5pm daily

Venue:                 Hotel du Vin Harrogate

Tickets:                 £375 (limited to 14 places)

Website:              www.thewritersacademy.co.uk

Tel:                  020 7840 8490

My Criminal World by Henry Sutton is published by Harvill Secker, price £12.99. Henry Sutton is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UEA and Co-Director of UEA’s flagship MA in Prose Fiction.

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson is published by Black Swan, price £7.99.  The book was the bestselling literary debut of 2012 and spent 10 weeks at number one.  It has been translated into over 30 languages and a film of the book, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth and directed by Rowan Joffe, will be released in March 2014.  

Harvill Secker is an imprint of Vintage Publishing and Black Swan is an imprint of Transworld Publishers, both divisions of the Random House Group.

Harvill Secker and the Telegraph are currently running a competition to find an unpublished crime writing star. The winner will receive a book deal and a £5000 advance.   Deadline 30^th November.  Full details can be found at: www.telegraph.co.uk/crimecomp

Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Book of the Year short list

The shortlist for the inaugural Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Book of the Year award has just been announced -  

 A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming (Harper Collins)
Dead Men & Broken Hearts by Craig Russell (Quercus)
Gods & Beasts by Denise Mina (Orion)
The Lewis Man by Peter May (Quercus)
Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr (Quercus)
Redemption by Will Jordan (Random House)

Broadcaster and journalist Sheena McDonald chairs the judging panel, and her fellow judges are Waterstones’ crime fiction expert Ewan Wilson and Len Wanner, author of The Crime Interviews Vol 1,2 and 3. The award is in association with Waterstones.

The winner will be announced on Sunday September 16th during Bloody Scotland, where the winner will be presented with a trophy and a cheque for £3,000.

The Award seeks to recognise and reward excellence in Scottish crime writing, first published between 1 August 2011 and 31 July 2012. Over 40 books of fiction and non-fiction were submitted by UK publishers. Eligible books were by writers born in Scotland, by writers living in Scotland, or books set in Scotland.

Bloody Scotland which is Scotland's first International Crime Writing Festival is due to take place in Stirling between 14 to 16 September 2012.

Congratulations to all the short listed authors.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants by Robert Pobi

Today’s guest blog is by Robert Pobi whose debut novel Bloodman was recently published.

Now that Bloodman is hitting the shelves (in atoms and bits), the questions have started. I find them unsettling. Surreal in a way. Years of isolation taught me a certain independence – I used to live on very little in the way of encouragement. I wrote. The novels got built. The drawer got fed. End of story. I never really discussed my work because no one was interested. Then I sent Bloodman out into the world.

All of a sudden I have become interesting. People want to know about what I do. Where I get my ideas. Why I write what I write. What my favorite food is. I am asked to do blogs, interviews, answer questions about a process I am not quite sure I understand and am even less confident I can explain. In a way, it’s something that isn’t that complicated: I sit at my desk, open my head, and after a finite number of decisions, I have a novel.

The first time I let Bloodman out to play was at a tavern on the fringe of SoHo. We had a table in a quiet corner – something I have learned to negotiate since I blew out a good chunk of my hearing in a handgun accident. Cocktails ran sixteen bucks a crack and they had foie gras thrown on everything in sight. Between rounds of their cheapest most inferior booze, my agent asked if I was working on anything new. I nodded. Gave her a few sentences. Some character traits. Maybe a scene or two. When I had finished she just stared at me for a while. I could see the gears grinding around behind her eyeballs. She finally shook her head and asked me where I come up with this stuff.

Where did Bloodman come from? The kneejerk answer is that I don’t know. If I think about the question a little bit, I start to wonder if maybe it has always been there, buried somewhere in the static in my head. The truth is I have been writing for a long time – a lot of books in a lot of years – and I have learned that the secret to a good book is in the decisions. That first answer is partially true, of course – I don’t really know where the idea came from. In a way I never do. All I know is that there are more than enough. Everywhere. All the time. And if you are going to be a writer, you have to learn to make decisions on which ones to follow and which ones to leave in the ditch.    

The crime novel is well-trodden ground – hallow to some. And fertile. What could I bring to it that hadn’t been done before? Cormac McCarthy nailed it when he said the ugly fact is books are made out of books. There are a finite number of basic story lines when it comes to the novel – only one if you narrow ancestry to Robinson Crusoe. So it’s been covered. More than once. But you know what? No one had written the crime novel I had always wanted to read. And it seemed like the kind of place where I could open up the throttle.  

I wanted to bring something new to the genre – something that resonated – something that was my own. I’ve read a lot of crime novels and by extension I’ve read a lot of novels that focus on serial killers. But I’ve never read the book that dealt with all the things I wanted to see in one place. The book that cranked the dial to eleven and kept it there. I wanted to write my crime novel.  

The only thing that a writer can bring to the table that no one else has is his – or her – voice. That voice is the only tool we have to fall back on. Everything else is just fancy footwork. The talent is in the telling. Like the man said, books are built out of books. It’s not about doing something new – it’s about building on what has gone before. It’s the keystone of writing. A lot of Bloodman’s bearing walls were built out of books that other people have written. Again, I had decisions to make. All writers do. And we get to learn from the blood of others.

The only real challenge in writing Bloodman was figuring out which tried and true elements I could make my own. It was a dark and stormy night has become clichéd. Why? Because it’s been there forever. Nothing loses impact with lightning strikes - it’s been working since Macbeth. So I ripped it off. And turned it into a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on my characters. Damaged protagonist? I could start a list of broken literary loners and never finish it. But no one has written him like I did – that sonofabitch is mine. Abusive alcoholic artist? Read it a thousand times. Maybe more. Mine paints in his own blood. See what I’m getting at? This stuff has been around for ages. The trick is making it your own.

I used to plan. Outline. I’d start off with a beach house on Long Island where a family out of central casting spent their time. Wrote a dog into the narrative. Made the father a painter. Gave the mother a vintage convertible. Everything read like a big happy smile. Problem with me is that it wouldn’t last past the second paragraph – just when I started to lay down the tracks according to the outline, my characters went screaming off the page in search of something else. So I don’t outline any more. Or plan. I just fire up the prose machine and sit back to see what happens. You’d be surprised at the things I’ve seen happen.  

Bloodman was built in 110 days. If I compare the first draft to the final edit, the foundation was there from the beginning. I’ve written enough now that I trust the voice to be there for me. To help me with the choices. He tells me when I’m trying too hard and bitches at me if I start believing my own crap. If I get too cute, he’ll kick the chair out from under me. He’s a bit of a prick but he does his job and if I listen to him, I get to do mine. Everything works out well.

Whenever I hear a writer say that it isn’t a job, it’s a vocation; I slap him (or her) and try not to spill my drink in the process. Vocation? That’s a load. The reason we write – at least the reason I write – is pretty simple. To get there, I have to go through a few of the reasons I don’t write.

Money? If someone starts to write because of the money, it doesn’t last long. It takes years to get this ship into the air. You have to learn your chops (although self-publishing is rapidly changing that). You have to develop good work habits. And you have to be relentless. If money is your motivator, it’s hard to develop good work habits and keep at it when no one is paying you. Trust me that gets old real fast. When a writer starts making money, it’s usually at the point that they’d keep doing it for nothing – it’s become a part of them.

Fame? If you put five of the five top-earning writers on the planet in a line-up, how many could you identify? Exactly. Fame is not coming to this gig.  

Do we do it to travel and meet interesting people? I was hanging out with interesting people before I was writing full time. Now that I do this, I get out a lot less. Never, some of my friends would say. Travel? I’ve seen a lot of hotel rooms in the past year. A lot of lunches and dinners. But sitting on a beach chilling out? No time. Too much work to do. A book a year doesn’t sound like much until you add in all the business that has to be done in the name of the game. I used to spend 100% of my work time writing. Now that the book is out there, 50% or maybe even 60% of my day is taken up with business. Interviews. Blogs. Guest blogs. Mailings. Email. Agents. Editors. Publicity people. Marketing. Phone interviews. Radio interviews. Skype interviews. Newspapers. Updating the website. It’s endless.

So it’s not a vocation. It’s not about money, or fame, or traveling to exotic locales. It’s not about wearing tweed jackets or the free booze at book signings. So why do I write?

Because it’s fun. 

The Jackal Turns 40

I was delighted to see that Random House UK have just released a special 40th Anniversary edition in Hardcover of one of the greatest thrillers of all time, namely Frederick Forsyth’s ‘The Day of The Jackal’. Naturally I have several paperback editions of this ground-breaking [in the truest sense of the term] thriller, but when it came out [in the 1970’s] I was a poor student, and had to make do with reading it in mass-market format. Now as a book collector, I have always wanted to own a hardcover edition, and finally my wish has come true. Out this week is a handsome edition for the collector though priced reasonably at £20, it’s a perfect excuse to re-read a novel that can be truly termed a ‘definitive’ work of the thriller genre.

I have continued to read Forsyth’s work ever since I picked up that second-hand paperback of Jackal in the 1970’s, though that debut work has inspired a generation of writers [and continues to do so]. F. Paul Wilson even wrote an essay about it in David Morrell and Hank Wagner ITW 100 : Thriller Novels. I was fortunate to meet and talk with Forsyth last year at the Specsavers CWA Dagger Awards, while Selina Walker of Transworld / Random House explained how Forsyth had extreme trouble finding a publisher.

In the Telegraph, Forsyth explains the process –

He hawked his book around from February to September 1970, when it was finally accepted by a publisher, who told Forsyth he could see why The Jackal had been so roundly rejected. “They told me I’d broken all the rules,” he says. For starters, de Gaulle was still alive (he died in November 1970) so readers knew a fictional assassination plot (set in 1963) couldn’t succeed. Forsyth had even told readers, early in the novel, that de Gaulle would die in his bed. The publishers were also wary of a book whose central character has no name. The Jackal slips out of alias after alias, eventually being buried anonymously.

A small print run was planned. Then, to the surprise of both Forsyth and his publishers, buyers at bookshops began reordering copies before publication. “The run went up to 8,000 copies,” he says, “and that was felt to be one hell of a risk. There were no reviews. The book slithered out through the summer of ’71. Slowly, the orders began to move faster. It was all word of mouth. Then my publisher phoned me at 4am in my bedsit. He’d sold the book to an American publisher for $365,000, which was roughly £100,000. And I got half of that. I’d never seen money like it and never thought I would. My family were disbelieving. They read it. My mother, God bless her, never quite understood the reference to fellatio.”

Read More Here

As an amusing aside related to this novel, I must tell you about the time Mike Stotter [Shots’ Editor-in-Chief] and I flew to New York for ITW Thrillerfest II in 2007. Thanks to Zoe and Andy Sharp we managed to get first class tickets at a very specially discounted deal with ‘Max-Jet’ [who unfortunately have since gone bust]. Neither of us had flown first class across the Atlantic before, so after a particularly grueling time [prior to our Thrillerfest trip], we decided to relax and soak up as many of the delights of that first class cabin as we could, including plenty of smoked salmon to soak up the Champagne and Malt Scotch we were knocking back. As the drinks flowed, we were laughing at some of our past miss-adventures and the absurd things we’d witnessed, and generally having a great time. Mike got up and excused himself to take a toilet break in a ‘staggering’ manner due to excessive champagne consumption. While he was gone, the head stewardess came over to me and smiled holding up her clipboard checking my name. “Mr. Karim, we’re delighted that you and Mr Stotter are having a good time on the flight, but for the benefit of the other passengers, could we ask you to keep the noise down a little please.” She said in a clipped American accent. Now I had consumed a great deal of Champagne and Malt Scotch at the time, and have a mischievous streak, so I smiled back and replied “Sorry for that, but Mr Forsyth is enjoying your hospitality, but I’ll ask him to keep his voice down”. I am still amazed how I kept a straight-face while staring at the Stewardess straight in the eye. She looked back at the passenger manifest on her clipboard and shook her head and checked the seat numbers above us. “Sorry, Mr Forsyth?” She flipped the manifest over, checking all the names. “Sorry, I should have mentioned, Mr Frederick Forsyth likes to travel incognito, he has a ‘special’ identity - Michael Stotter. Like in his novel.” She looked at me quizzically. I cleared my throat and in the most authoritative upper-class English accent, I continued. “I’m Karim, Ali Karim his security man. You know must know who Frederick Forsyth is?” She looked confused. “You must know!” I continued stretching my arm out like a sniper taking aim “The Day of The Jackal.” I could hear a few people in the seats behind whisper “hey, did you hear that! Frederick Forsyth is on the plane!” And then I noticed other passengers looking at us and before long more whispers spread back along the cabin like a Mexican wave. The stewardess looked back at me and said “of course, I saw the film with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere! and the Jackal is a master of disguise.” I heard the toilet door open and a decidedly ‘wobbly’ Mike Stotter stumble out. I didn’t want to remind her of the novel and the original Fred Zinnemann film so I continued, “precisely!”

The stewardess moved away and smiled as Mike took his seat. The stewardess winked at me and said “Anything we can do for you Mr…..Stotter,” and winked at him. Mike smiled back and replied in broad cockney, “more champagne would be nice” and with that the stewardess went back to the galley. Mike looked at me and screwed up his eyes intently, “is it me, or are people staring at us?” I shrugged and told him it was his imagination, but I heard a voice tut behind us “that’s not Frederick Forsyth, I’ve seen him on TV, he’s much taller than that and a damned sight older!” I looked innocently at my feet. “Did you hear that? Freddy Forsyth’s on the plane?” Stotter retorted. I didn’t have the heart to tell him anymore till we got into the Hyatt, instead I knocked back the champagne. “Did you notice that stewardess?” Mike said as she left our glasses filled with bubbly, “she keeps winking at me…..” I could only but laugh as the rest of first class stared at us and I tried hard to keep a straight-face.

To read more about our adventures at Thrillerfest 2007 click here, here and here – And this year we’re unable to attend Thrillerfest, but will be at Bouchercon St Louis in September….traveling economy.

Photo © 2010 Ali Karim “Selina Walker with Frederick Forsyth” at the Specsavers CWA Dagger Awards 2010 Grosvenor House London

The 2010 “Notables” in Publishing

PW has issued its 2010 ‘Notables List’ and is certainly interesting as it mentions The IPAD as one 2010’s notables –

It may seem surprising to name a device among our publishing people of the year, but this has been a surprising year, especially where devices and their impact on publishing are concerned. The iPad has had a colossal impact on the book business in 2010, both in terms of what's already happened because of it, and the promise it holds for the future of books. Everybody wants to be on the iPad, and, for the most part, everybody is: the iPad lets users read books from not just iBooks but from all the e-book stores—Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and, soon, Sony—via each company's apps. And then there's the App Store itself, which is brimming with stand-alone enhanced e-book apps as well as games and utilities based on books. Plus, all kinds of straight-to-iPad publications are debuting all the time: we can only assume we'll see more and more built-for-tablet books. And with Google in the e-book game, forget about it—it'll be all about the iPad.Of course, iPad won't be the only tablet in town come 2011, but it has set the bar: every other tablet that hits the streets will be an iPad competitor, though almost certainly not an iPad killer. Whether or not E-Ink e-readers survive the tablet revolution remains to be seen, but you hardly hear anyone talking about the Kindle these days without comparing it to the iPad.

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While Sonny Mehta of Random House US has benefited from spotting the potential of Stieg Larsson Trilogy making him once again listed as a 2010 ‘notable’ at PW -

Today Random House is predicting that Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, launched with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, will sell 15 million copies in all formats in 2010 alone. Larsson has become an American publishing phenomenon, and it's largely thanks to Sonny Mehta.Mehta, who's been at Knopf since 1987, is certainly no stranger to big authors, big books, and big deals. Although Larsson came to U.S. shores with a track record—when I spoke to Mehta in 2008 Knopf said Larsson had sold over two million copies in his native Sweden alone—there's no telling what would have happened if his books had landed in the hands of a different publisher. For Mehta, it was all about Larsson's punk hacker-with-a-heart, Lisbeth Salander. "I knew [the books'] potential success rested squarely on Lisbeth's shoulders and was banking on American readers being as captivated by her as I was," Mehta says in an e-mail last week. (In a letter by Mehta inserted in ARCs for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he called Salander "one of the most original heroines to come along in years.")

Incidentally, the Larsson novels are the most downloaded ebooks currently, and were the first to break the 1,000,000 download barrier.



Christopher Fowler’s Paperboy Recognized

One of my favourite horror / thriller writers is Christopher Fowler, now renowned for his surreal Bryant and May Detective series. So I was delighted to learn that his superb memoir has won the Green Carnation Award –

The Guardian reports –

Fowler's memoir recounts the tale of a suburban London boy who divides his time between the cinema and the library, devouring stories and taking refuge from a tense family environment in the world of words. The prize panel called the book "beautifully written", and "a rich and astute evocation of a time and a place", recalling a childhood "at once eccentric and endearingly ordinary." Chair of the judges, novelist Paul Magrs, said Paperboy was "about the forming of a gay sensibility – but more than that, it's about the growth of a reader and a wonderfully generous and inventive writer".

Magrs, who is also a lecturer on the Manchester Metropolitan University's creative writing MA, helped set up the Green Carnation prize earlier this year after realising there was no literary award for gay men's books in the UK. He described the lack of such a prize as "scandalous", saying: "There ought to be something that celebrates and publicises the breadth and variety of their work. Writing by gay men can be funny, exciting, harrowing, uplifting and challenging – and it can range right across the genres. It can also be created by men from all classes and races."

Read more from The Guardian Here and from Chris Fowler’s Blog Here while here’s a short clip of Chris Fowler speaking at Frightfest 4 about ‘Paperboy’