The thrill of seeing a book for the first time

 I've done it.

Typed THE END.

I think I speak for all in this room when I say, "Phew!"

The last time you and I were together, dear reader, I talked of climbing the mountain of words to reach the summit. That was simply to finish the first complete draft. To be clear, I had already revised much of it but hadn't written the final confrontation between my protagonist, Jonas Flynt, and the bad guy. That is now done, I have revised the entire thing, on screen and on paper, a step I find is vital because I spot more on the printed page than I do on a screen. Curious, I know, but a fact nonetheless.

And I have added those two simple words above. 

I can now lie down in a darkened room and decompress to soothing music. John Barry is my composer of choice for such moments. In fact, he is playing right now, the CD 'Endless Echoes' if you're interested.

I can do that, right?

Eh, no.

I can listen to the mellifluous music of Mr Barry but the lying down bit will have to wait.

I have a busy year. I've already completed two books but I must have another written by the end of December. 

Add to that household chores, pulling together my income and expenditure for the benefit of what is now His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (our Internal Revenue), plus festival appearances, interviews to conduct, research, a comedy play to revise and, let me see, oh yes - eat, sleep, walk the dog and be a servant to the cat.

I'm not complaining. Okay, maybe about the household chores. And the tax thing, because nobody likes that. But the writing? Hell, no - because that's what I do and although the physical act of stringing words together often makes me groan, I do enjoy (as Dorothy Parker once noted) having written.

But here's the nub of today's lesson, dear reader.

Writers write. 

Yes, I will moan about it, about deadlines, about editors not understanding my brilliance (although generally they are right), I don't sell enough, I don't make enough, not enough people praise my work etc., etc.

But would I stop writing?

You might as well ask a bird not to fly.

It's something that's in me and sure, maybe one day I'll win the lottery, become filthy rich and stop. For a while. But then that familiar sensation would return and I'd want to write something, perhaps how hard life is for the filthy rich. Mind you, we have entire governments telling us that.

And to stop writing, to stop being published traditionally, would deprive me of another pleasure.

The thrill of holding the first copy of that book you sweated over for months never gets old.

This week I received my author copies of my new book 'An Honourable Thief.' Opening that box is always filled with anticipation because it's the first time I get to see the actual fruit of my labours (as well as the hard work of the editor, cover designer and the myriad of folk who beaver away under cover of an author's by-line).

Will it not look as good as it did on the screen? Will I feel a sense of anti-climax?

In the end, as I took out the first copy, the response to those questions were - it did and I didn't.

It's a hardback, so it's got heft. I like a book with heft. I'm from Glasgow so we're always on the lookout for a weapon. (I'm kidding, don't @me).

 

(Pic courtesy off my agent Jo Bell because I'm too lazy to take my own 

and, anyway, I didn't get a bookmark with mine!)

The one I have completed will today wing its way to my agent. I'll take this week to do as many of the other tasks as I can before I head off to Stirling for Bloody Scotland on Thursday. After that it's nose to the grindstone again.

But that, dear reader, will be another story...

Just when you thought history was a thing of the past

 Some of you may remember the secret project I hinted at a few weeks ago. 

No?

What, am I typing into the void here?

Don't answer that, the truth may make a grown man cry.

Seriously, I did drop a little hint in the middle of one of my meanderings but can now reveal what the tease was all about.

Basically, I've written an historical novel.

The genesis of this story goes back over 20 years ago - I'm not sure exactly how long but I think it was while I was writing my non-fiction book about the Edinburgh Tolbooth - the old town's jail, dubbed by Sir Walter Scott The Heart of Midlothian. I stumbled over a line in a book about a secret will that had perhaps bequeathed the nation to her half-brother, James Edward Stuart, who was living in exile on the Continent.

Over the following two decades I added characters, plot strands and background details to the mental file, because to actually note anything down would be too much like organisation and we don't do that in this house, no sir.

What I didn't do was actually begin to write the thing. 

Until last year, when the opening chapter of my last Rebecca Connolly book, 'A Rattle of Bones', which was set in the mid-18th century caught the eye of bestselling author Denzil Meyrick (we are contractually obliged to call him that, even when just meeting him in the street. His agent is tough, let me tell you).

Anyway, he is a huge fan of historical fiction and he urged me to try my hand at it. When I told him that I had one bubbling around in my head he practically ordered me to get it done. At first I scoffed at the notion. 

"I scoff at the notion," I said. Writing a chapter was one thing, but a whole novel? That was daunting.

But it stayed with me and I thought, what the hell - what harm would it do to give it the old college try?

Three months later I had a complete first draft. I don't think I've written anything so fast since the first Dominic Queste book 'The Dead Don't Boogie.' 

It was as if it had all been perched in whatever lobe of my brain controls this sort of thing, just waiting to leap onto the screen.

I'm calling it an historical adventure thriller crime spy story. With a bit of horror. And romance. I'm leaving little to chance here.

Seriously, it's designed as a swashbuckling, but sometimes dark, adventure thriller set against the underworld and political skulduggeries of 1715 and it will be the first in a new series featuring Jonas Flynt - thief, gambler and, when he needs to be, killer.

The book will be available in September 2022 from Canelo.

So - have I hijacked Type M for Murder to do some marketing?

Certainly not and perish the thought.

He said, hoping people will believe him.

There is a writing point to be made, too. And that is that writers should never throw any ideas away. Even material deleted from one manuscript can be of use in another - it wouldn't be the first time I've done that. You may not be ready to write a particular story immediately but who knows how you will feel further down the line. I believe Clint Eastwood sat on David Webb People's script for 'Unforgiven' until he was old enough to do it justice.  It's the same with storylines, or genres. Store them away.

Oh - and I would recommend actually writing them down. Perhaps do what I suggest, not what I do being the operative phrase here.

Creating a new character and a new series

I believe I've hinted a time or two about a new series I'm embarking upon (embarking on? On which I am embarking? Ach - you know what I mean).

Well, the news has now dropped.

I will now have two series running in tandem.

In addition to my ongoing contemporary Rebecca Connolly series, published by Polygon in the UK and Skyhorse in the US, Dumont in Germany and Cicero in Denmark (get me, Mr International), in October the first of my new historical crime series will be published here in the UK by Canelo. 

'An Honourable Thief' is set in 1715 against a turbulent political backdrop (when is it ever not?) and features Jonas Flynt - thief, gambler, unwilling agent of the Crown and, when he has to be, killer. The action moves from London to Edinburgh at the time of the Mar Rising, when a Scottish noble with an eye to the main chance raised the Jacobite standard in Scotland. The catalyst to Flynt's involvement - the Maguffin, if you will - is a mysterious document written by Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, which may (or may not) have somehow pledged the throne to her half-brother James and not George of Hanover. Flynt must find the document before it falls into the hands of the Jacobites.

I've mixed real-life historical figures with those of my own inventions and actual events with those I have imagined. There is even one historical incident that I have fictionalised and moved around 20 years back in time.   

My approach was to present a fast-moving tale featuring what is hopefully an interesting protagonist. Along the way the reader will learn more about Flynt and why he is the way he is - an 18th century version of Chandler's tarnished knight walking the mean streets of the 18th century. And boy, were they mean!

Which takes me on to the posts by Rick and Sybil about character background. 

I think we need to make our characters as real as we can, even if they are involved in fantastical events as in fantasy and science fiction. This first book is as much about Flynt and his past as it is about the plot because I need people to understand him a little in order to propel the series forward. He begins as a blank page but bit by bit I hope I have filled in enough of his past to help him walk from those pages - and out of the 18th century - and into the reader's room here in the 21st.

It's a tricky business - how far do you deviate from what is designed as a rip-roaring read to sketch in the character bits? While also painting a picture of life back then? And also leaving enough wiggle room for future development as the series progresses?

I'm not an historian, I'm a storyteller but I do hope I have not made any serious factual howlers. In the end, though, the entire world is one that I created and manipulated to my own ends. Hence lifting that real-life incident from 1736 to 1715 and tinkering with it a little for my story. Again, the use of that incident was all part of the character development, to show how Flynt and others peopling my story react, interact and act. 

And that's the secret I think. Elmore Leonard said that all character can be shown through dialogue and to an extent he was right but I would also add that it can be revealed by the actions they take and why they take them.

It's a difficult job but hey, that's why we get the big bucks.

I'll pause here to let you all roll about the floor in hysterical laughter.