Share my pain

It's not often I feel sorry for a multi-millionaire Formula One driver, but my heart went out to Lewis Hamilton the other day. With his sponsors presumably pulling the strings, Hamilton put in a toe-curlingly embarassing performance as the God Apollo when he "descended" into a musical version of the epic battle for Troy dressed in full racing overalls. Remember the moment in Spinal Tap when the miniature Stonehenge is lowered onto the stage - this was much worse than that. Hamilton looks like he's swallowed a wasp - poor bastard.

But then at least he's sold his integrity for a couple of mill. I traded mine in for a coffee and a croissant. I'm talking, of course, about my recent appearance on "Meet the Author", a shameless attempt at self-promotion and glory that you can enjoy at your leisure. I personally haven't been able to bring myself to watch it yet, so I leave it to you to tell me how bad it is. It was actually one of the hardest things I've ever done - speaking for a minute or so, unscripted, looking straight into camera. What made it worse was that the more takes I did, the more rubbish I got. But with The Gilded Seal out in less that two weeks, it's all hands to the pump, all shoulders to the wheel and dignity out of the window.

Apparently Joan Collins was the best they've ever done - you can imagine it can't you? "Hello darlings, Joan here to tell you about my fabulous new book. Sex, money, sex, silicone, sex. It's got it all." Hard to compete really.

Believe it or not, my video escapade is not the most embarassing thing I've ever done. That probably came at university when I had been invited to a dinner at the Oxford Union before a debate on the legalisation of prostitution. I was sitting next to a very nice man, a doctor I seem to remember, who over bread rolls and soup leant forward and asked me in a conspiratorial voice:

"So which one's the prostitute?"

Glancing round to check that no-one was listening, I nodded down the table.

"The one with the blonde hair."

"In the blue dress?" He winked knowingly.

"No," I corrected him. "In the black."

"I think you'll find," He hissed. "That she's my wife."

Literary lottery

Fresh from a meeting with Harper Collins and very encouraging signs about the impending publication (2nd June) of the paperback version of The Gilded Seal in the UK. Pre-orders are looking really strong and all the big retailers are stocking it and including it within their summer promotions. On the back of this, HC is planning to market it with posters etc. at airports and train stations. Woo-hoo.

For someone who first developed a love of thrillers when buying "bumpy cover" books at the airport, this is especially exciting. One of the biggest kicks I have ever had as a writer was when The Double Eagle was first published and I saw a massive floor to ceiling bay at Heathrow.

These days I'm a bit harder to impress. In fact aspiring writers often ask me what it feels like to see my book on the shelf and are a bit disapointed when I say not much. Maybe I've got a bit blase (how do you do an accute accent?) about things as time has gone on or forgotten that just getting published is in itself an achievement. The problem is, I've never seen it quite like that - in my view, if a book gets published it's because a publisher thinks they can make some money out of it, not as some act of selfless charity that a writer should in some way be grateful for. And being on the shelf is nothing (actually that's a lie - you wouldn't believe how hard it is to even get stocked) - it's selling copies that counts!

Depressingly, according to a report I read in The Times late last year, of 200,000 titles sold in the UK in 2007, 190,000 sold fewer than 3,500 copies. More damning still, of 85,933 new books published, as many as 58,325 (or 68%) sold an average of just 18 copies. Can you believe that? All that grief to write and edit and publish a book and then its sells an average of 18 copies. That must mean there are tens of thousands of books selling no copies at all.

In a way, the whole publishing game is a bit like walking across the Peninnes - every time you think you've reached the top of a hill you find that another, higher crest, lies just behind it. Write a book, get an agent, get a publisher, get stocked, get reviewed, get accepted into retail promotions, sell ten copies, ten thousand copies, sell a hundred thousand copies, have a movie made ... It's a never-ending staircase which leads ... God knows where.

Looking back, the hardest part for me was getting an agent rather than getting a publisher. It took almost a year to get an agent, whereas it took my agent a week to get two offers - that's the advantage of having someone who knew exactly who would like my writing. I remember one day when I was visiting him and went to hang up my coat. He pointed me to a large cupboard - perhaps six feet long and eight high - and when I opened it was stuffed neck-high with manuscripts. This was, apparently, their slush pile - unsolicited manuscripts sent in by aspiring writers. And believe it or not it was onto this pile that my own rather rubbish early draft had been slung, slowly working its way up through a series of readers until six months later I got a call from J-Lo lui-meme and an offer to take me on.

We're talking about hundreds, possibly thousands of manuscripts a year, of which they will publish six, maybe ten books. So while seeing my book on the shelf doesn't quite excite me as much as it probably should, I do get a kick every time I think of that cupboard and beating the odds. Now I just need to sell more than 18 copies ...

***
By the way, conference season is starting soon so thought I would tell you about two upcoming events I'm speaking at, where I am hoping not to have to repeat last year's Daphne du Maurier fun and games (see Mild and Bitter):

CrimeFest - Bristol - 5-8 June
SCARED TO DEATH: CHILLS AND THRILLS - 7th June (9:00AM)
CHAIR: Declan Hughes
PANEL :Katherine John, Michael Marshall, Jason Pinter, James Twining
CrimeFest website

Harrogate Crime Writing Festival - 17- 20 July 2007
JAMES BOND - THE SPY WE LOVED - 18th July (5pm)
CHAIR: Simon Brett
PANEL: Joseph Finder, Catherine Sampson, Charlie Higson, James Twining
Harrogate website

American Pie

If there's one question I get asked more than any other, it's to inquire when The Gilded Seal is coming to the good ol' US of A.

Actually, that's a lie. The question I get asked most often is whether I want to buy some cheap Viagra. The answer is no. No I don't want any. And no, even if I did, I don't want it cheap. I'm sure that, like Champagne, I would enjoy it more if it was very, very expensive, because I wouldn't allow myself to spend that much money and not have a good time. And while we're at it, I don't want a perfectly crafted luxury timepiece either for $39.99 plus P&P - same argument applies.

So let me rephrase. The question I get emailed more than any other by my 'army' of devoted readers is to ask when The Gilded Seal is coming out in the USA. So I thought I'd answer it. After all, it's not that often I can find an excuse to post a picture of three blond triplets covered in body paint - yes, look closely, that is body paint. (I know what you're thinking - why even claim to need an excuse?)

So here you go. The Gilded Seal is being published by Harper Collins in America in ... the Summer of 2009. Yes, I know it's a hamster's lifetime away, but such are the vicissitudes of the publishing industry.

Why the delay? Well I have to say, the whole American experience has been a rather mystifying one for me. When I was writing The Double Eagle, I was convinced that if the book was going to work anywhere, it was the US. Ex CIA agent, beautiful FBI officer, a forgotten slice of American history, glamorous locations... And so it proved initially, the book quickly selling to Harper Collins for a decent advance who then found themselves on the receiving end of a huge amount of interest from independent booksellers who are so critical to the US market and a (at the time unprecedented) 100% recommendation rating from HC's 'First Look' panel. Emboldened by this, they spent a lot of money on PR and marketing, even flying me out for a whistlestop tour of a couple of major US cities, which for a first time writer is pretty rare. And I even struck PR gold when ten Double Eagles showed up the week before publication.

And then ... well not a lot really. The book came and went, in both Hardback and Paperback, and everyone was left a little ... underwhelmed by the sales numbers. Worse than that, HC were left, I think, feeling a bit bruised, because they had got little real return on their investment and effort. When it came to publishing The Black Sun, therefore, I don't think their heart was really in it (although they would argue differently I'm sure) and they certainly weren't going to risk throwing a lot of money behind it again and without money - well you can see how a vicious cycle can begin.

Why didn't it work as well as everyone thought it would? To be honest, I'm still not sure. The easy option might be to blame Hurricane Katrina - the book was published the week it struck New Orleans and at the time people were more worried about gang rapes in the Superdome than they were interested in buying a book. I could blame the book itself for not being up to the notoriously high standards demanded by the most voracious and demanding thriller readership in the world, but then I get such positive emails from those of you who have bought the books that I can't be that far off the mark, especially when you remember how well the books have sold here, Germany, France etc.! Maybe it's because I'm here and they're there and it's the old 'out of sight, out of mind' problem. Or it could just be that as many people have found before, the US is just a very, very difficult market to break.

That's probably as it should be, to be honest - the prize is so large that the bar needs to be high, and I'm certainly up for the fight. I do sometimes wonder though if a bit like like that great Mercedes 'Lucky Star' advert, you need to somehow get all the traffic lights to turn green at the same time to really have a chance - or have Simon Cowell get you onto Oprah.

All of this meant that when it came to offering me a new contract, HC were a little, how can I put this, slow. Especially after my editor decamped to pastures new. It took six months in the end and Jedi mind tricks from my US agent George Lucas to swing it my way. (yes that is his name. Can you imagine how excited I was when he first ever called and left a message for me? Holy shit - George Lucas has called ... It was hard not to sound just a little bit disapointed when I realised that the jet was quite yet being fueled for a trip to Skywalker ranch to sign the contracts on the movie deal!) The upshot of all this is that with everything having taken so long, we have missed all the slots for this year, so 2009 is now the only the option. (Although you can buy it from Amazon Canada or a specialist crime bookstore if you can't wait.)

All of the above is probably a little too honest, but then I can't just share the silver linings with you and not show the occasional clouds. Writing is a tough business, which is just as well or everyone would be doing it - actually sometimes I feel they already are! And to be honest, I know I shouldn't complain - I've got a deal, which is brilliant and more than many. Harper Collins are an excellent publisher and there's a lot of you out there who have read and liked the first two books and are spreading the word. And I've got a new editor and a new slot and probably a bit more humility having appreciated the scale of the challenge.

Who knows, you might see me on Oprah yet ...

***

PS Some of you have asked about Book IV - well this is what I'm prepared to share at the moment

Genre Fiction

If there's one word I hate it's genre. Not because of what it means, but just because it sounds so bloody pretentious. A bit like gourmet, oeuvre (c.f Merci Jules!), cortège ... It's not that I have a problem with French words - after all, 40% of English is of French origin apparently. It's just the needless dressing up to sound clever that annoys me. I mean what's wrong with category, class, family, genus, group, kind, set, species, taxonomy, type ...

Anyway, ignoring that for a moment, one interesting current trend in contemporary crime fiction is the way it seems to be sub-dividing into different genres or sub-genres (e.g. crime versus thriller, versus serial killer versus psychological crime versus police procedural ...) Of course, it's not clear if this is organic, or whether it is instead being deliberatly orchestrated by publishers and retailers who need some way of classifying and understanding the thousands of books on their shelves and the customers buying them?

If it's the latter, they have an interesting precedent in the New World wine industry, who have been incredibly successful in growing their sales by carefully labelling their wines by grape variety, rather than expecting everyone to know what type of wine they are buying from the name of the Chateau, as they rather sniffily do in France!

My own personal view is that I’ve never read a good crime novel that wasn’t thrilling, or read a thriller that didn’t revolve around a crime. In many ways, therefore, from a writer’s perspective these types of labels are at best simplistic, at worst overly constrictive.

Speaking for myself, although I am classified as a thriller writer, I deliberately write across genres. The heart of The Gilded Seal, for example, is an old fashioned thriller – international locations, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, a charismatic hero battling against the forces of evil. This is then counter-balanced by a police procedural investigation – a brutal murder, forensic evidence, a roster of possible suspects, a determined but flawed detective. This is then all set against a historical backdrop, where the action stems from and is then driven forward both by events that took place many years before and their modern day repercussions. Finally I add in few extra ingredients to bind the whole thing together - a race against the clock, a treasure hunt, a chase…

Classifying my work as a thriller is as good a label as any, I guess, but in my view it’s more than that too. I actually think most readers are happy and may even value this sort of ambiguity.

Maybe it’s the publishing and retailing industries who struggle to understand it!

***

P.S. In case you're wonndering, the picture is of the Chimera di Arezzo - an Etruscan bronze of a monstrous creature made of the parts of many different animals!

Merci Jules

Sad news this week, with the death of cinema legend Jules Dassin on Monday. Those of you familiar with his oeuvre (you see, I'm trying to toss in a few French words this week) will know that he directed, wrote and acted in film noir masterpiece Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes - from where my blog gets its name. You see, there is method in my madness...

For those of you who haven't seen it, it is a heist movie set in 1950s Paris which contains one of the greats scenes in cinema history (it runs the opening sequence to Indiana Jones as my favourite scene of all time*), a 33 minute safe-cracking extravaganza entirely without dialogue or music. Thirty three minutes! Imagine any of the studios agreeing to that today. Apparently the Mexican interior ministry even banned the movie in 1956 after a spate of robberies mimicking the crime.

An article that accompanies the current DVD release describes it in far more elegant (and pretentious) prose than I could ever muster:

"And yet, even in a film of such generous superlatives, something does stand out, towering over it all. For Rififi is that most hallowed of films, a film that contains a monument within. Like the Grand Hall ball in The Magnificent Ambersons or the pickpocketing sequence in Pickpocket or the crop-duster chase in North by Northwest, the virtually silent, gleefully long heist scene at the center of Rififi is a tingling, ecstatic, sustained act of brilliance—a sacrament of the cinema. For an astounding 33 minutes, Dassin removes all dialogue, hushing the soundtrack to the mere sounds of breath—the accidental note from a piano is enough to stop your heart—as we observe the criminal team at work, breaking through the floor, silencing alarms, cracking safes, checking watches, and signaling each other. It is a scene you’ve seen before (shameless imitators have been cannibalizing it for decades), but you will never see it so purely, respectfully done as here. The fetishistic shots of the safecracker’s tools, the rope that comes out of the suitcase already knotted and ready for climbing down, the team’s proprietary language of hand-gesture, the justly famous (and I won’t give it away) conceit of the umbrella—all of these elements are so lovingly described, it makes you want to cry out."

Don't be confused by his name, by the way. Born in Connecticut in 1911 as Julius Dassin, he was blacklisted by Hollywood when he was named to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951. He moved to France and reinvented himself as a Director there, before marrying the Greek actress Melinda Mercouri (star of heist classic Topkapi), moving to Greece and joining her fight as Greek Culture Minister to have the Elgin marbles returned. A real man for all seasons.

Au revoir Jules et merci.

* The tracking shot in the nightclub in Goodfellas is probably third, with the helicopter raid in Apocalypse Now fourth

James Brown?

If there's one thing I hate, it's my books being described as being "like Dan Brown."

The problem is that the unprecedented success of The Da Vinci Code means that reviewers now use it as the yardstick by which to judge other thrillers, in the same way that all children’s books have to go through the Harry Potter litmus test, and all spy novels get held up against Fleming.

In a way I guess this is understandable, as it helps create a shorthand by which books can be placed in an easy to understand context for readers and the market. But it is clearly overly-simplistic and symptomatic, in many cases, of lazy journalism and commentary - it’s temptingly easy to dismiss or praise a book because it’s like something else rather than recognise its individual qualities or failings.

Personally, I don’t think the comparison is particularly valid or useful, although my publishers invited it to a certain extent by adopting a very similar colour scheme to DVC for The Double Eagle. I’ve always seen my books as more James Bond meets the Thomas Crown Affair with a bit of Indiana Jones thrown into the mix! But then I'm just the author so what do I know?

If there are comparison points, they come because Dan Brown and I share an interest in spinning a story around some interesting historical event(s), but then Robert Harris does much the same in Archangel. We both make reference to art and art works, but then so does Dashiell Hammet in The Maltese Falcon. We both sprinkle facts and trivia into our writing, but then so does Thomas Harris in Hannibal.

My point here is that the success of the DVC has led many to give Dan Brown “ownership” of certain topics, approaches and techniques, as if no-one else has used them before and that if you do so you are somehow following in his slipstream. The truth is that many of these have been used by other writers for years. And my ideas for a sequence of Tom Kirk books were fleshed out before I’d even heard of Dan Brown. A far more useful comparison for my books, in my view, is with some of the old school thriller writers like Ludlum, Higgins, Flemming, Maclean, Follett and Forsyth.

You might say I shouldn't care, but I think every writer wants to be judged on their own merits and not by comparison with someone else. Especially when for every person who thinks DVC is a well-crafted, interesting, page turning thriller, there is someone else who views it as badly written with terrible dialogue and two-dimensional, caricatured characters!

Still, I wouldn't mind a fraction of his sales ...

Amber Room green light?

First some Double Eagles are found, then the Madonna of the Yarnwinder shows up. Now, it seems, the legendary Amber Room may surface after fifty years of rumour and intrigue. I appreciate that when you write about stolen art, it's an occupational hazard that some of it may turn up, but this is getting ridiculous, if not downright suspicious!

For the uninitiated, the search for the legendary Amber Room is the main premise of The Black Sun. I won't bore you here with this history - you can read it here - but suffice it to say that it was described as the Eighth Wonder of the World (why is everything described as the eighth wonder, never the ninth or tenth?), was stolen by the Nazis. and then lost in the fog of war.

There have been a succession of conspiracy theories as to its current location ranging from an abandoned silver mine in Thuringia and the bottom of a lagoon in Lithuania. In 1997, the son of one of the German officers who had accompanied the wartime convoy from St Petersburg to Königsberg was arrested for trying to sell a small section of the room. Although it is not known how the officer got it, this fragment remains, along with an intricately inlaid chest, the only part of the original Amber Room known to have survived the war.

Now it seems a German MP is convinced he has located the Amber Room's final resting place in an underground chamber near the northern German village of Deutschneudorf, of which he is also mayor. (No conflict of interest there, then. No attempt to boost the local tourist economy, let alone his re-election chances...) What's more, he believes that whatever is hidden in the underground chamber might be protected with explosives and poison traps and that "There are rivals who want to get to the treasure before you, and there are people who don't want you to find it." This guy should be in Hollywood, not politics.)

For the record, my view (and the one they will whisper to you in St Petersburg) is that having been packed into crates by the Nazis, the Russians destroyed it themselves when their troops set fire to Konigsburg Castle. But rather than admit it, they have deliberately used its loss as a negotiating tool with the Germans every time they have raised the possibility of the Russians handing back all the German loot they still have hidden in their secret storerooms.

When the story broke, my publisher raised the prospect of me writing a piece for the Daily Mail (they love a good Nazi story, if that isn't an oxymoron). They turned me down, saying that the angle they really wanted to cover was that the room still existed.

You've got to love the press - why let the truth stand in the way of a good story.