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...

A character by any other name brings notes from your editor

My editor sent me notes this week on the next book in my series and one of the comments made me laugh out loud.

I had used four different names for the same character in the MS and he suggested that I pick one and stick with it.

The funniest thing was, this is not a new character — she actually appears in an earlier book!

Names can be my downfall. Words, coherent sentences, spelling, syntax, plot, dialogue and endings also give me trouble.

I forget character names so easily. I have to write them down on Post-It notes as I go along, just to keep me right. Then, of course, I lose the Post-It note.

Writers have to keep track of a lot of different things. Names, back stories, time lines, whether there is a character with one leg called George (I forget what the other leg is called). I suppose there are apps that can help but I shun the appliance of technology. Until I use it, of course, then I wonder why on earth I was doing all that shunning.

Even coming up with names is difficult, well at least for me. It's easy to devise a character called Jehosephat McGillicuddy. Outlandish names are simple — it’s those that are both memorable and yet everyday that can be problematic.

Whenever I introduce a new character sometimes their names come to me instantly, more often than not I can be found scanning the spines of the books on my shelves to see if anything sparks.

As for forgetting names, this mild form of anomic aphasia extends to real life. I have often carried on complete conversations with someone who clearly knows my name but for the life of me I can't recall theirs!

There is no serious root to this — I hope not anyway. I think it is quite common. With me it is genuinely just a vagueness, even perhaps a lack of attention, caused by having a mind filled with so much nonsense that something has to go to make room for just how many times has Steven Spielberg worked with composer John Williams (I count 28, but there were also two episodes of TV’s Amazing Stories on which they collaborated).

Obviously, I'm not talking about people I know well. The names I forget are people I have perhaps met only one or twice, which I think is perfectly normal.

But to forget the names of people you have created and have spent at least part of however long it takes write a novel is ridiculous and I must do better.

Not losing those Post-It notes might be a start.

Market Forces

Howdy all - Douglas Skelton comin' at ya from the sunlit uplands of the UK, specifically Scotland.

Publication week is usually an exciting time for an author. I say usually because there may be some out there who no longer feel such a publication day thrill.

Me? I find the idea that something I have laboured, sweated, cursed over has escaped the confines of the publishing halfway house that is the space between me typing The End and finally breathing the air conditioned air of the bookstores.

Apologies for what seems like self promotion but as this isn't available in the USA yet, my conscience is clear. Well, clearish. 

I wrote A RATTLE OF BONES while we were still in the clenched teeth of lockdown here in the UK - last summer to be precise - and I've written two more since then. That makes it very difficult when discussing the imminent release because, frankly, I have trouble recalling with any degree of accuracy some elements - like character names - of what I wrote back then. Even when writing I have to note them down because it wouldn't be the first time I changed a character's name midway, leading to extreme perplexion at the editing stage. Who on earth is Mr X? And why does he seem to talk like Mr Y? 

Yes, I could have a read at it but there's nothing more spirit-sapping than revisiting my own work. I always feel I could have done better and it's too late to change it.

Anyway. 

A new one is out there, free at last to run through the sunbeam-dappled forests of readers' imaginations.

Or something. Not sure where I'm going with all this imagery. I think the fine weather we've had here has addled me. In Scotland, fine weather means it hasn't rained.

Of course, the pandemic continues to throw a mask over most live events so there will be no bookshop launch or appearances, no library talks, and even festival events remain up in the air (though organisers are hopeful). I may, however, visit said bookstores, signing pen in hand to deface copies with any scribble. Some of them may even by my own!

I miss performing, which is strange because the real me is very much a solitary person. At social occasions I am the one in the corner doing his best to merge into the wallpaper.

And yet, some strange alchemy transforms me when I am asked to perform. Gone is the quiet, shy, self-effacing introvert and in his place is a wisecracking extrovert who has sung, danced and even donned wigs in pursuit of sales. It's like Jekyll and Hyde. And I'm not certain which is which.

I have recorded some interviews relating to the new book. I think I got away with them.

But the book is out there now, on shelves, hopefully flying from them so fast you can hear the Doppler effect. Come Thursday - the official publication date - it will drop into Kindles.

Will people like it? 

I hope so.

Will people be fooled by any narrative sleight-of-hand? 

I really hope so.

Will I remember my character names? 

What character names?

Getting back to work

Happy Monday to you from Douglas Skelton in a sunny but chilly Scotland.

As you know, I have been moving house. And if you didn't know, where have you been? Do you not pay attention when I'm talking? Yes, I mean you at the back there. Stop your giggling and behave!

I am now fully ensconsed in my new bolthole, having swapped the peace and quiet of rural Scotland for the excitement and traffic noise of the big city (the new place is Glasgow adjacent).

With the house now in some semblance of order. Books are shelved, pictures are hung, rugs are down and shampooed. Mickey the dog and Tom the cat are more or less settled.

Time now turn my mind to the day job.

That's writing, just in case you didn't realise. 

I have a new book to complete by July. I hit the halfway mark of the first draft just before all the moving madness began but now it's time to pick of those threads and see if I can weave them into something magical. Or at least readable. Or, at the very least, completed.

Halting a work in progress in the middle is a double-edged sword. On the one hand there is the danger that whatever muse was working to get me to the midway mark has flitted elsewhere and alighted on some other writer's brow. 

On the other hand, the break may help me see the piece more clearly and let me attack it with renewed vigor. Or something. (And I hope you noticed I used the US spelling there. I am nothing if not considerate.)

Time will tell, I suppose.

I've used the word time three times so far. Where's an editor when you need one?

I mentioned the muse earlier. People often think of such a thing in relation to creatives.

Here's the thing...

It doesn't really exist.

Writing is a job, at least it is to me. Sometimes it's a chore. It's something I do. It's how I (try to) make a living.

Inspiration - the muse - is that flash at the beginning of the process. In other words, the idea. The big 'What if...?'

After that, it's application. Sitting at the desk, thumping those keys. I'm a two-fingered typist and I tend to poke at the keyboard as if I'm trying to prod it awake. 

The work progresses one letter, one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. Sometimes it's as slow as molasses in January. (Yup, another US reference). Other times it flows like....like...

Oh, dear. I can't think of a simile. 

This does not bode well for getting back to work on Monday.

Writing is something you work at. Books do not appear as if guided by some unseen hand. It has to be written and rewritten, honed, edited, smoothed, manipulated. In our genre (crime, just in case you've wandered in off the street) clues have to be dropped with the kind of legerdemain that could give us membership of the Magic Circle. Twists have to be twisted so subtly that no-one sees them coming. Characters have to step off the page and walk around the room. Dialogue has to sing (not literally, unless you're pulling a Rodgers and Hammerstein. Or Cop Rock. Remember that? Steve Bochco's short-lived show which saw cops burst into song, literally on the beat.)

So by the time you read this on Monday I will have selected a suitable soundtrack and will be back in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Back with Rebecca Connolly and her friends. Back, this time, in a dark world of murder and magic.

Cover me - I'm going in...

Give us a smile

Good Monday to you, Type M peeps - Skelton back at the keyboard.

I am in the throes of a house move, as those of you who tuned in last time already know. Were we last together only two weeks ago? As they say, time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

(Think about it).

I am now ensconced in the new place although perhaps as you read this I will be back in the old one transporting yet more of a lifetime of stuff. I thought I had been pretty ruthless in the game of keep or chuck while packing but clearly I was less ruthless and more ruthmore.

Mickey and Tom seem to have settled into the new quarters quite happily though.

Anyway, while I was unpacking boxes and trying to decide where to put the contents, my writer's mind was stimulated by Charlotte's recent blog on Murdering the Myth, in particular her line about happy endings in which 'the good guys won and the bad guys were defeated'. Charlotte also talked about the increasing tendency in TV drama to allow evil to flourish unchecked.

Here in the UK we are well acquainted with unsatisfactory endings (usually in elections 😁). Our crime dramas often were downbeat, with the bad guy getting away with it and justice not only failing to be served but barely making it to the menu. 

My book 'Thunder Bay' was rejected by one US publisher because (spoiler alert!) one strand of the plot remained unresolved. Naturally, I disagreed. For me the plot played out the way it had to and to try to wrap it up in a neat bundle would diminish the whole.

Having said that, I understand everything Charlotte said. I think we need some hope that good will always overcome evil (it kind of did in 'Thunder Bay', by the way), at least in the world of fiction if not reality. And we need those rays of light in these days of increasingly venal politicians who get away with crimes, rising international tensions and, of course, a global pandemic.

That last statement will surprise any who may have read my books. I remember a conversation I had with Scots crime writer Alex Gray, who said she liked a happy ending. I told her I don't do them.

And looking back on my fiction, I really don't as a rule, although my new title coming out in the UK in August is pretty damn close.

I've not done the old DNA thing so I may not even have Celtic blood in me but I'm happy to self identify. And there is something in that Celtic blood, real or just claimed, that welcomes the darkness, I think. 

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

However, I leaven it all with an often hefty dollop of humour. The Davie McCall books had a lot of Glasgow patter, while a wisecrack was never far away from Dominic Queste's lips. 'Thunder Bay' was perhaps the one with fewer laughs than usual but they were back in 'The Blood is Still' and I think even more in the new one 'A Rattle of Bones'. My protagonist Rebecca Connolly is growing older, more assured, and now, at times she talks to other characters like Philip Marlowe on speed.

But that darkness is still there, within me and, by extention, within her. Of course it is. It goes with the territory.

We need humour in our work. No matter how dark things are, there will always be someone who will say something witty. Or just plain stupid. For the record, the person making the latter is usually me.

Lightness of touch is lacking from a great deal of TV drama now. Many crime shows are so bleak and mournful. There's a lot of slow motion walking, mooning about, navel-gazing and staring off into space with furrowed brow and pained eye.

Yes, I know crime is not a laughing matter but we can tackle dark subjects while also bringing much-needed lighter moments. Look at the works of Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane and, the author I grew up with and who inspired me to take up the genre, Ed McBain. They handle some distressing stuff but always find room - where appropriate - to throw in some snappy banter.

(Incidentally, Robert Crais thanked me on Twitty the other day for an RT. I've never been so thrilled.)

Light relief goes a long way. It makes the darkness even darker, it helps build up characters and it makes for an entertaining read. 

And that's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it? Entertaining people? 

Yes, we can explore the human condition if we wish. Yes, we can reveal deep truths. Yes, we can examine issues of concern.

But if we don't tell our story in an entertaining way then all we're doing is preaching and we have enough of that in real life, thank you very much.

Even superhero movies are now places of angst. I just want to grab some of them by the shoulders, give them a shake and say, 'You're in a ridiculous costume, maybe even tights, in a world that doesn't really exist outside of a computer. Lighten up, for goodness sake!'

Thank heavens for Deadpool and Shazam! And, to an extent, Robert Downey Jnr.

The World of Forgotten Things

Hi - Douglas Skelton coming to you from Scotland.

I'm in the process of moving house at the moment. That means I'm surrounded by boxes, bubble wrap and packing tape. 

I have so far resisted the urge to build a fort.

Thank you 'Friends' for that thought.

I've been here for 15/16 years. A lot has happened in that time and packing things away can often be a saunter down that lane we call memory.

As most people do when moving I've been playing what we in Scotland know as Keep or Chuck. 

It's when you have to decide if an item is worth hanging onto or if you should send it to dump.

I've disposed of a fair amount of stuff and more will go. I've handed over old bits of furniture to be given a new lease of life before they go to charity. I've trashed some that were beyond repair. Most of my rugs will be picked up by the local council. Years of dogs, cats and, it has to be said, me have taken their toll.

But it's when you go through drawers and shelves and pockets that you find you have entered into a new world - the world of forgotten things. Little items that are not gone, merely left, stored, placed, sitting sometimes in plain sight and yet still unseen. 

Until you pick them up.

And you remember.

They are generally inconsequential, sometimes even everyday, but they carry with them memories like dust which, as you hold them, come back as if through osmosis. These forgotten things can represent a moment in time that you cherish, a place that you haven't seen for too long, a face no longer visible, a voice no longer heard.

A pen, given on a milestone birthday by someone who was special then and is special now, clipped in the inside pocket of an old suit and long since dry.

A small hip flask, a gift never used, still in its box, but it reminds you of the day it was handed to you by the giver with whom you have long since lost contact.

A book, sitting on a shelf among others, its spine cracked and frayed, its pages dog-eared and loose. It was well-loved, well-read, and well-worn by someone who will never read again.

A concert programme brings back the excitement of seeing composer Jerry Goldsmith in Glasgow. A big deal for me.

A paw print in ink of a dog that has long since crossed the bridge.

And books from my own childhood that have been unnoticed on shelves all this time and never taken down in all these years. My copy of Tom Sawyer. A Pictorial History of World Exploration. My Ed McBain collection, some editions dating back to the 60s. Alistair Maclean. Jack London. Ian Fleming. All monuments to a young boy reading in his room and wishing he could be like them.

And more. Ornaments. Old photographs. A poker chip that came from who knows where but which, for some reason, I keep on my desk.

They are all time machines transpporting me across the years to when life was simpler, or better, or happier. 

I have a friend who says that as a matter of course if she has not used, touched or worn something for six months it goes.

I can understand that ethos but there is something within me that cannot part with these and other items, so they are packed away and will find a new home with me. 

The world of these forgotten things is one that I will carry until I am part of it.

All's well that friends well

 Douglas Skelton at the Type M keyboard.

A couple of years ago I was invited to attend the annual prizegiving at a Scottish high school. My job was to shake hands, congratulate each prizewinner and then pass them their certificate or trophy. I managed it without any serious difficulty. 

Young people often get a bad press but they’re not all video game playing hoodie drop–outs but the students I met were bright, energised, engaged and active. 

However, it set me thinking about my own school days. They weren’t so long ago – after all I’m only 30.

I’ll pause here to allow those who know me to guffaw and snort tea down their nostrils.

I had a love-hate relationship with learning. I would have loved to have been an egghead but hated the idea of working towards it. My head, as we say in Scotland, was too full of broken biscuits and more than one teacher observed that if I applied the same amount of effort into studying that I did into basically acting the fool my grades would be much improved.

It started off so well, too.

Apparently on my first day of primary school I came home at lunchtime and announced I wasn’t going back because ‘I knew it all.’

I don’t recall this and I’m not sure what particular all it was I knew but that arrogance didn’t last long.

Truth be told, I was not the brightest bulb in the box. I’m still not.

Neither was I proficient at anything sporty. Science was beyond me. And maths and arithmetic were a mystery. That’s still the case, apparently, because just recently someone told me the plot of one of my books just didn’t add up.

What I could do, though, was string words together. Sometimes even in the right order. And I could make stuff up. As an adult, I eventually gravitated towards an occupation where being able to string words together and make stuff up came in handy.

Naturally, I became a journalist.

(I’m kidding. No angry letters from outraged reporters, please!)

School has changed, though. In my day, computers were something in ‘Star Trek.’ Even calculators were akin to science fiction. My fingers were my calculators. For complex sums the shoes and socks came off. Not a fragrant experience on a hot day. And examiners frowned upon a question like ‘what is 5x4’ being answered with '10 plus 10 little piggies.’

However, as I said, the complexities of mathematics were beyond me. I thought a logarithm was a dancing lumberjack. And when a friend told me he’d passed Highers in French, German, Latin and Algebra, I wondered how you said ‘Good Morning’ in the latter.

What you have just seen was an example of why I didn't do well at school. There is a serious point to my blog this week but I go for the laugh. That point occured to me while I was writing something on spec that, at its heart, deals with friendship - and a realisation that all my fiction is based firmly on the concept - and that in turn prompted a memory of that ceremony.

During that prizegiving, a terrific speech from the outgoing school captains underlined the value of friendship.

I still have a few friends from my youth. I don’t see nearly enough of them but they mean a lot to me. And they know that everything I’ve said above is very nearly true. They’re also the ones wiping the expelled beverage from their upper lip at me being 30.

There are a couple of lines about friendship from the film ‘Stand by Me’ (I’m not sure if they’re in the original Stephen King novella, ‘The Body’). One is, ‘Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant.’

That is true. Friends can come and go. I hate that they do, and sometimes it's been me who has done the come and go routine, but as a wise perspon once said, that's life.

The other line is this – ‘I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?’

That is both true and false.

There’s something about friendship when you’re young. It’s not something you think about at the time, analysis comes when you’re an old fogey like me. To the young, friendship is just something that is. Friends at that stage in life are more important than anything, even family.

As you grow older, you drift. Pressures of work, of family, of life take precedence. Soon those people who you roamed the streets with, who you played with, who you fought with, who you thought would be there forever are gone. Maybe in later life you hook up – a reunion, more likely a funeral – but the spark of what had once been sparks no more. 

So I think myself lucky that I’m still at least in contact with a couple of people who knew me way back then.

Of course, I’ve made more friends since school. Good friends. Close friends. Friends I rely on. Friends I know will be there when the solids hit the air conditioning. Friends I no doubt annoy regularly but are still there. Some are authors, some are not. Some are recent, some I’ve known for years. But they, like my old school chums, remain as vital a part of my life as the need to breath. I’m glad I have them.

I've lost friends, too. Sometimes my fault, sometimes theirs, sometimes nobody's. They let me down, I let them down, or that old saying That's Life did its thing. 

The school captains said their friendship would last.

Wouldn’t it be great if they were right?

Keeping the faith

 Douglas Skelton calling from a snowy part of Scotland.

OK, it's probably nothing compared to what some parts of the US of A experience but it sure beats the rain!

That's not a standing stone, by the way - it's all that remains of Kyle Castle in Ayrshire. Nothing much of note happened there, although Kyle is derived from Coelus, a king from ancient times who ruled this part of southwest Scotland. He is better known as Old King Cole but I have no idea if he was a merry old soul. Given this was before whisky was widespread and there was no Netflix, he probably wasn't.

The dog is Mickey and he is mine. Or rather, I am his servant. Between him and the cat I do wonder if this opposable thumbs business is all it's cracked up to be.

Anyway, happy 2021, folks! The year that shall not speak its name is now a bad memory and we should look to the future with optimism.

That's where the whisky and Netflix will come in, perhaps.

Seriously, we have a period of tumult ahead but I do believe we will get to better times. As long as people continue to take the virus seriously and follow precautions, give the vaccines time to roll out and for goodness sake don't listen to politicians who downplay its dangers. Naming no names, of course, but you know of whom I speak.

The book world reels from the effects of the year that shall not speak its name. Increased sales were reported - and not just in digital as you might expect but also in hard copies - but titles that were postponed will begin to appear. There remains a domino effect, though, for books that were perhaps due to hit the shelves this spring have been delayed.

I can vouch for this, for my Rebecca Connolly books generally surface in the UK around March but the third one will not see the light of day here until August. Good thing/bad thing, only time will tell.

(The second, by the by, hits US shelves on January 12 in hardback but I will regale you with that when next we are together.)

In the meantime, I am pressing on with something I am writing on spec. I've given myself until the end of January to complete a first draft because then I have to move onto the fourth in my series, which must be with the publisher by July. Failure to do so will result in a severe finger wagging and perhaps punishment, like being forced to read literary fiction. (I joke, don't write in).

So summing up - Happy New Year, everybody. Keep the faith, we can get through this. 

I must leave you now for Lord Mickey is pacing and it must be time for feeding. It's only a matter of time before Tom (the cat) surfaces from whatever warm spot he has found and goes on the demand. He does not like to be kept waiting.

Where was I?

Hi, Douglas Skelton this end.

This year will the strangest Christmas in living memory, thanks to you-know-what.

Here in dear old Blighty families should not congregate to tuck into the turkey over the holidays. The original advice not to do so was reversed to allow a period of five days when they could get together but that reversal has itself been reversed to only one day.

Honestly, there are so many reversals it's like reading a William Goldman novel. Especially when the uppermost question on our minds when we think about popping out for a pint of milk is 'Is it safe?'

The wacky world of publishing appears to shutting down for the holidays nonetheless.

Well, at least the bit that signs off on deals and edits and, importantly, signs the cheques. For the benefit of the US, that's the correct spelling of check. Yes, I know it's simpler but that's not the point. Standards must be maintained and once we are contagion-free I will be despatching a team of spelling and pronunciation missionaries to your fair land to educate with evangelistic zeal. 

I'm kidding, of course, and to prove it here's a smiley face - 😀

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes...

For the next two to three weeks there will be no queries from publishers or agents. No deals being made. No edits being demanded. 

Many authors will not be shutting down. Oh, they may take some time on Christmas Day to pull a cracker (if this blog had been for the UK market I could have made an off colour remark at this juncture followed by a virtual Sid James/Carry On dirty laugh. And I apologise to anyone who doesn't understand all this but it's been a long day and I'm tired so please bear with me because I may veer off at a tangent at the drop of a Christmas Pudding, this paragraph being a case in point).

Now, where was I?

Oh yes...

I for one will be treating the holiday period as, well, something that is not a holiday period. I have a new book I am writing on spec and I want to complete at least its first draft by January or February because then I have a deadline for the fourth in my Rebecca Connolly series. That's not until the summer but time flies like an arrow they say. And fruit flies like a banana. I remember the first time I heard that line, I laughed fit to bust. Ah, laughter - those were the days.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes...

How many other scribblers of words, sometimes in the right order, will be thusly labouring while others are Zooming and Skyping? 

Quite a number, I'll bet, for the creative process recognises no Yuletide fun and brooks no New Year stoppages. Of course, in Scotland, we call New Year's Eve Hogmanay, which sounds like Hug Many and there will be none of that, thank you very much. In fact, I would quite happily see the whole huggy/kissy things banished for good. Not that I get much of that, of course, for traditionally the women here hang me up and kiss the mistletoe.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes...

So Christmas Day will see me banging away (see reference above to Sid James and Carry On movies). I may stop for a mince pie or two - for reference, it's not made of minced beef but minced fruit - before I make myself something suitably festive to eat. I'm not ignoring the midwinter feast completely. My name is not Ebenezer Scrooge, you know. At least, I don't think it. Hang on while I check the name tag sewed into my collar.

Nope, not Ebenezer Scrooge. I seem to be called Machine Washable.

Anyway, if you are still with me, thanks for sticking with this ramble. I'm going to head back into this world of mayhem I am creating.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes...

(PS - I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and that 2021 will be better than this disaster movie of a year has been).

Hi, my name is Douglas and I am a crime writer.

As this is my first post here on Type M for Murder I thought I'd set out my bona fides from the start.

I've been labouring at the coalface of crime writing for many, many...OMG - MANY...years. Setting aside being a crime reporter in the weekly press in Glasgow (I was also film reviewer, inputter and tea maker on occasion), I've been writing about mayhem in book form since the early 90s.

I began with true crime, including investigating and then co-writing a book that exposed a notorious miscarriage of justice here in Scotland. I produced 11 non-fiction works before I made the leap into fiction in 2013. Some police officers said that I had been writing fiction for years.

Since then I've had nine novels published, with a tenth coming out here in the UK next spring.

My Rebecca Connolly books have been sold into the US, with the second - THE BLOOD IS STILL - heading across the Atlantic in January 2021 (ArcadeCrimewise).

The point of all this ego stroking is to show that I am not a freshman. I've been at this game for quite some time.

But here's the thing - it doesn't get any easier.

In fact, for some reason, I find it gets more difficult.

I am currently in a staring competition with the first draft of a new work. And that first draft of a new work is winning.

The little cursor blinks at me in what I now see as a contemptuous manner. You think you've got what it takes, pal, it says. But you don't have what it takes. 

Yes, in my mind it talks like a screen tough guy.

You got nothing...

I listen in awe as other writers say that they sit down and hammer out thousands of words a day without as much as breaking a sweat. Words used to flow as easily with me as a politician's promises but these days it's like hacking granite with a spoon. And a blunt one at that.

You lost it, boy...

I often wonder if I would get on better if I was a plotter, although I do end up reminding myself the only time I tried planning a new book I diverted from it so wildly when actually writing that the time spent plotting was wasted.

There is a side of me that seems to delight in not knowing where on earth I am going with a story. I'm not very fond of that side because it does seem to enjoy punishment. I feel it would be better served visiting a leather-clad Amazon called Madame Whiplash sporting an array of props of a very specific nature.

I am, by nature, a seat-of-the-pants writer. I bumble my way through a first draft then spend subsequent drafts finding the book somewhere in the mumble of words, ideas and characters. In the process some of those words, ideas and characters will change, go, be replaced, be stored away for possible future use.

You can't take me on...

One of my novels, The Dead Don't Boogie, was written with such a speed that, to paraphrase Neil Simon's line in 'Chapter Two', I'd reached about 40,000 words before I'd thought a story. I had to stop, step away from the keyboard and go for a long walk with the dog to see if I could come up with a reason why a wide variety people were pursuing a young woman in Glasgow and beyond.

I've tried that with this one but I'm coming up wanting.

Here's the thing though - I have been here before. And I will be here again. I will beat that darned blinking, sneering little cursor.

Come ahead, buddy, if you think you're tough enough...

Cover me - I'm going in...

Please welcome Type M’s newest member!

If you have sharp eyes, you’ve no doubt noticed there is a new name on our site: Douglas Skelton, and it is my pleasure and honour to introduce Douglas to you all.

First, here’s a bit of bio information he’s supplied:

Douglas Skelton is the author of 12 true crime/Scottish criminal history books, including one which exposed a notorious miscarriage of justice in Scotland. Since 2013 when he turned to fiction, he has written ten crime novels set in Glasgow, the Scottish Highlands and New York.

Open Wounds, the final part of his Davie McCall series, was nominated for the McIlvanney Award in 2016. The first Rebecca Connolly novel, Thunder Bay, was similarly long-listed in 2019 and is available in the USA from Arcade Crimewise. The Blood is Still will be published by them in January 2021.

Please look in the righthand column where partway down, you will find a link to Douglas’s website and Twitter feed.

Second, Douglas will be alternating on Mondays with Tom Kies. Look for his inaugural post this coming Monday.

Also, I heartily suggest that you dip your toe into his books. I’ve already ordered Thunder Bay, and I suspect I’ll be ordering the rest.

Again, welcome Douglas!

Have a great week, everyone. I’m sure we’re all looking forward to Monday.