Le Rififi

Harrogate Rehab

2010-07-26T17:38:00.014Z

Harrogate 2010, done. And a fine festival it was too, if the bags under my eyes and still slightly shaky hands are anything to go by. Well done Stuart, Sharon and festival team.

Friday

I arrived Friday lunchtime and after a short detour via TKMaxx to buy a pair of sunglasses (£5 from the women's section if you must know, and very fetching they are too) arrived at the Crown hotel to find everything in full swing. Actually that's a lie. I arrived to find everyone staggering blinking into the sunlight, still recovering from the night before.

Dinner at the Courtyard restaurant followed, hosted by those lovely people at Harper Collins (Rachel R, Alice, Amy, Emad) for myself and Stephanie Merritt / SJ Parris.

Quick review: Food - variable. Decor - smart but a little clinical. Service - willing but disorganised. Overall rating: five stars out of five.

Why the high score given the distinctly average overall experience? Simples. When we ordered the wine the waitress, in what may have been on reflection an inspired stroke of genius, asked whether, before we ordered, she could just check what ages we all were. Aged 37 and they carded me! OK, so the question may have been directed more at Emad who looks about 12, but coming on the back of last week's rant about buying a Volvo, I wasn't about to split hairs. I have therefore no hesitation in declaring the Courtyard to be the best restaurant in Harrogate, and quite possibly, the world.

Feeling suitably youthful, we headed back to the hotel bar, rounded up some other lost souls, and headed out into the mean streets of down-town Harrogate. You think I'm joking but behind the "stunning parks and gardens which testify to Harrogate's status as England's floral town", beneath the thin veneer of "Harrogate's reputation as an antique hotspot attracting people keen to find a bargain" lurks a hard-core party scene. As we discovered.

First place we hit was a small club called Rehab. Within five minutes of walking in a black bra landed at my feet. I looked up and saw that a young lady was, how shall I put it, "dancing in a state of partial undress". Dancing rather too energetically for her safety or for those within striking distance, if you catch my drift. England's floral town indeed. Luckily at that moment her boyfriend, or someone whom I rather naively assumed to be the girl's boyfriend, appeared behind her and reached around to cover the offending items and preserve her modesty. Or so we thought, until we realised that he seemed to have mistaken her for a car, his hands rubbing in small circles as if he was trying to buff up a front wing. We drank up and left, trying not to stare.

Next stop, The Viper Room. Now some of you may have thought that the original Viper Room of River Phoenix notoriety was in LA. And having visited the Harrogate version, I can confirm that you are right. Music was quite good I have to admit - especially a 30 minute late 90s set which brought the memories flooding back - but it had the feel of a school disco, with more make-up and bigger hair (which considering I left school in 1991 is saying something.) I headed back to bed around two, leaving some of my companions to sample the local flora and fauna, and was in bed for 2:30, pausing only to see Kevin Wignall standing in exactly the same spot I had left him in 4 hours earlier...

Saturday

Three nurofen washed down with black coffee kick-started my day - an early one, given that Joe Finder and I had to be at the BBC studios in Harrogate for 8:30 for our Today radio slot. Only problem was that when we got there the doors were locked and no sign of anyone. A few frantic phone calls later and someone appeared from round the back ("didn't anyone tell you?" Er no.) and rushed us into the studio only for the microphones to stop working. Cue furious scrabbling around with dials and switches by the onsite technician and barked instructions from the producer in London who was on the verge of suggesting they call us on our mobiles when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the technician flinch and then surreptitiously flick a small switch on. "Oh it suddenly seems to have started working," he lied.

I won't recount the nature of the conversation Joe and I had. You can listen to it here. Suffice it to say I won...well, that's my story!

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. Lunch at Cafe Rouge with Wignall, Sarah Pinborough, Rachel R, Agent Phil, Simon Kernick and Stephanie Merritt; getting my eyesight tested; buying a 1950s Longines military watch from a junk shop for what seemed like a good price - we'll see what the repair bill is!; catching up with various people in the bar again. And then preparing for my panel.

And what preparation. A few years ago I did a James Bond panel and have forever regretted not going up on stage wearing a dinner jacket. This time there was to be no such mistake. Courtesy of Union Jack Wear I pulled on union jack boxers, tie, socks and lapel pin, all set off nicely by a pair of union jack trousers concealed under my jeans. A quick word in the ear of panel chair NJ Cooper engaged a willing accomplice and at the pre-agreed time she asked me: "James, when you strip British crime writing down to its core, what do you see?" My answer: "Let me show you!"

I've never pulled my trousers down in front of 100 people before - probably never will again. But it was a fun moment, only partially spoilt by my suddenly earthing myself on the floor and releasing the massive static electricity charge the 100% polyester trousers had built up in my groin area...) As to the panel, I would say an honourable draw and my fellow panelists - Joe Finder, Chris Carter and Michael Robotham, were true gents and answered far more thoughtfully than me and I wish them every success.

Then out to dinner at Hotel du Vin where I had two courses with the Harper Collins crew and dessert with my Curtis Brown brethren, with other guests including the lovely Jeff Deaver who had all sorts of interesting things to say about his forthcoming Bond book and the very smart lady in charge of the books side of the Fleming estate, whom I tried to convince should consider commissioning a highly talented but less well known author (great PR value in that!) with a passionate interest in 007 and who had deliberately referenced sections of his debut novel to From Russia With Love and who first became interested in art crime because of a scene from Dr No. - i.e. Moi! Poor woman must get idiots like me suggesting themselves all the time. But I could do it and it would be great.

After that, bar, drinks, bed. You may notice a pattern evolving...

Sunday

By now I was feeling pretty broken through lack of sleep and excess of booze. My memories come in small bursts, like flashbacks, but the gist of it was three hours of extended goodbyes and promises to write (like the last day at Mallory Towers) and then a train home, eyes screwed shut, my forehead pressed to the glass in the hope that it will help stop my head pounding.

Roll on next year...

P.S. Thank-you Ali for the photos

Today Tomorrow

2010-07-23T13:45:00.006Z

Arrived in a blissfully sunny Harrogate for the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival to be greeted by the news that Joe Finder and myself will be on the Today radio programme tomorrow morning between 8:15 and 8:45 BST to rehearse our upcoming epic and hugely anticipated (well someone's got to big it up) festival slot on whether Britannia Rules the Page. (5pm on Saturday 23rd July for those of you who can make it, although it maybe a rather one sided debate...)

Have to say as someone who grew up with John Humphreys and Brian Hanrahan (listening to, not living with them, that is) and the Shipping Forecast (where is Dogger and German Bight anyway?) I'm very excited. My mother, who would have Radio 4 chemically injected if it were possible, is ecstatic.

So see you there - all the details of frequencies / listening online are here.

P.S. Also just want to mention a band that I cam across just outside the station here - Kasiuss. Now I'm not much of a live music buff, but quite apart from the obvious link to arch-villain and Tom Kirk nemsis Cassius, I thought they were brilliant. Check them out on iTunes

Old before my time

2010-07-20T08:35:00.007Z

So that's it then. I am officially old. No denying it any longer.

Of course the symptoms have been there for a while. Hair growing from strange places on my ears; people looking at me as I reminsice about how great Live Aid was with the same blank expression I used to look at my father with when he spoke about the excitement of watching the moon landings; complaining at my local corner shop about how expensive everything is and reminding the hapless shopkeeper that when I was at school a packet of Polo's used to cost 10p...

But the final nail in the coffin of my youth came last week. I bought a Volvo.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Don't worry James. R-Patz drives one in the Twilight films. That's vampire chic. You're hip. You're cool. They're the thinking man's Maserati. The 2010 answer to the Audi Quattro"

But all I can remember is that scene from Crazy People (We miss you Dudley) when Volvos are described as being "Boxy but Good". I don't want a boxy car. In fact that's exactly two letters short of what I want in a car.

What's more, and I think this is the killer for me, my dad used to have one. Now that's nothing against my father - if I end up being half the person he is I will have achieved more than most - but I never liked that car. It was so bloody safe and practical. It had all these compartments for putting things in and roll-bars and automatic fuel shut-offs and lights that beeped if you didn't put your seat-belt on. Worst of all - and this is still true today - were the running lights which led to people flashing you all the time because they thought you were driving around all day with your headlights on. (Note to Volvo: this may be useful in a country where you have 2 hours daylight but in the real world, it's just a pain)

Where's the danger? Where's the romance of never quite knowing if you were going to make it home in one piece every time you switched on the engine? Where's the lost art of balancing a coffee between your knees as you drive because there was no cup-holder?

And the worst thing? I like my new Volvo. I like it's sleek looks, its brushed chrome interior, its soft leather seats, its pimped-out darkened rear windows, its folding tailgate and the headrest TVs. Damn you Volvo. Damn you to hell.

My misery was then compounded was I was informed by a friend a few days ago today (or rather the day he sent me the mail) was the day that Marty McFly had arrived in the future after hitting 88mph in his DeLorean in 1985. Talk about kicking a man when he is down. I remember watching that film when it came out. It was called Back the the Future for a reason, I railed. Otherwise they would have called it Back to the Present. And to add insult to injury, no sign of a hoverboard anywhere!

Luckily, and I believe for the first time in my life, The Daily Telegraph came to my rescue. I had been the victim, it seemed of an elaborate hoax. The actual date that Marty and Dr Brown travelled to is October 21st 2015. That means I won't be old for at least another five years.

By the way, did I mention that R-Patz also drives a Volvo...

P.S. I meant to focus this post on my forthcoming appearance at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival but lost my way somewhere along the line. In case you wish to see me get insulted by former colonials and convicts, I'm on stage at 5pm this Saturday 24th to argue that "Britannia Rules the Page". Still looking for material...

Shamed into action

2010-06-25T13:59:00.007Z

In the end, it was the shame that broke me. Pure shame.

Six months after my last post, I had almost come to ignore the itching sore that my guilt at not updating my blog had become. Then a journalist researching an article for The Times asked to interview me about my blog - why I had started it, what it was about, what advice I had for other blog writers ...

Advice for other blog writers? Hmm, let's see. Well, I guess they should start with actually writing a blog. Unlike me! Anyway, here I am.

I'm a believer in the broken windows theory of blog writing. That is once you miss a post you need to quickly get back in the saddle or the rot sets in and the whole bloody roof will come down on top of you. I've mixed about 5 different metaphors there but you know what I mean.

So this is me jumping back on the horse - not that anyone had noticed I had even fallen off apart from my mum. This decision has of course nothing to do with me needing to drum up publicity in advance of my forthcoming appearances at the ARCA conference (Art Crime Research Association) on 10 July in Amelia, Italy, and at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival between 23rd and 25th July.

Harrogate has been the scene of many a public humilation over the years and there is the prospect of more of the same this time round! My panel is at 5pm on Saturday the 24th on the subject of Britannia Rules the Page:

From Wilkie Collins to Arthur Conan Doyle, from Agatha Christie to Ian Fleming, from Dorothy L. Sayers to Reginald Hill, the lineage of great crime writing is indisputably British. Isn’t it? Crime’s own English rose NJ Cooper promises to remain impartial as U.S citizen Joseph Finder, Aussie Michael Robotham and Brazilian born Chris Carter make the case for their countries own literary pedigrees. Maintaining a stiff upper lip on behalf of the Brits is James Twining.

In other words, I stand up and everyone else chucks grenades at me for an hour. Never mind a stiff upper lip, I'll need a stiff drink. Give me strength. Or better still, someone feed me a few good gags I can lob back.

Anyway, that is all for another day. For now I leave you with the words of advice I volunteered in my interview for any would-be blogger:

"A blog is for life, not just for Christmas."

How. True.

A Sting in the tale

2009-12-17T09:29:00.003Z

Sting. Where did that come from? I mean Reg Dwight becoming Elton John I sort of get. At least it's a proper name, although someone once warned me never to trust a man with two first names (Rory Stewart take note).

But how in all of God's fair creation did Gordon Sumner morph into Sting? Is it just me, or is there something just a little prétentieux about giving yourself one name. Like Jesus or something. I mean even Elvis had two names and he was the king. Maybe that's why "Sting" always looks so bloody "smug"? Bono's just as bad, although much more annoying - his whole save the world routine is really begining to grate (you're a pop singer you daft ejit). As as for The Edge - what the fek? Get over yourself.

Can't fault the man's music though - Every Breath you Take remains genius. Nor can I question his views on the X Factor where he recently argued, rather eloquently, that the show encourages contestants to "conform to stereotypes" whereby they are either Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston or Boyzone and as such "are not encouraged to create any real unique signature or fingerprint."

He goes on to suggest that the X Factor judges themselves have no recognisable talent apart from self-promotion and advising them what to wear and how to look. In short, he says it "has put music back decades."

Which rather got me thinking. Is the book industry any different? After all, you can't write a thriller these days without being better, like, or worse (heaven forbid) than Dan Brown. And if you write an even vaguely successful spy novel, you're by definition the new Le Carré or Fleming. Children's fiction? You know the answer as well as me. The publishers are at it too, pushing "the new Martina Cole" or claiming that someone is like Andy McNabb, except that this writer actually writes his books.

Which rather begs the question, if the book industry is like the X Factor, then who are the judges? Well my vote (ba-da-boom) is with the book retailers. After all, they pretty much call the shots these days. They can make or break a name. And you certainly don't want to cross them.

So who's who?

- Sharon Osborne = Woolworths - no longer with us but remembered fondly
- Louis Walsh = WH Smith - fallen on hard times recently but comeing back strongly
- Danni Minogue = Asda - friendly, if rather overshadowed by older sibling (Wall-Mart)
- Sheryl Cole = Amazon - people's favourite and the one all the other judges / retailers secretly want to be like
- And Simon? Tesco of course. At the end of the day, their opinion is the one that really counts. And they have a terrible 1980's haircut / logo.

The supermarkets / judges have always been very kind to me so I can't complain. Maybe I'm part of the generation that has seen the book industry go back decades, although I don't see anyone else doing what I do? You tell me.

Gordon, either way, I'm with you. (Although I still can't forgive you for mangling the role of Feyd-Rautha in Dune..)

How to write the perfect thriller

2009-11-26T09:12:00.002Z

Had a very interesting chat with fellow thriller writer Anna Blundy a few days ago, which led to the following article, originally published in The Browser. God knows if we're right - what do you think?

How to write a thriller by Anna Blundy

For the past ten years I’ve been sitting at home trying to write thrillers. I try not to read them while I’m writing them so that I don’t a) get demoralised because someone’s doing it better than me or b) start stealing someone else’s devices. For five books my heroine was Faith Zanetti, a war correspondent based loosely on myself, my father (who really was a war correspondent – killed 20 years ago in El Salvador) and the kinds of people I sat with in seedy Jerusalem bars when I was little, wishing my dad would take me back to the hotel.

The logo on the front of my first Faith book, The Bad News Bible, was ‘Courage Without Equal. Truth Without Bullshit. Vodka Without Tonic.’ The covers were kind of 70s and James Bond-ish and I thought of Faith as a female James Bond, hiding her complexity with grit. My editor for the Faith books, Rosie de Courcy told me that the secret to a good character is that he or she should represent the writer’s fantasy self so that you end up writing a fantasy autobiography. The art of good thriller writing, she said, was to let the reader know that an axe is hanging over our hero’s head but not to tell them when it’s going to fall. She says you have to ‘show not tell’ and that your hero or heroine can be as vile as you like as long as there’s one undeniably good thing about them – Scarlett O’Hara, Rosie points out, loved her mother and father.

I tried to follow Rosie’s advice but I do always get led astray by my characters and drawn into their inner lives and motivations, wrapped up in the psychological drama. My Faith books always have a big emotional event around which the plot is constructed – the death of a close friend, falling in love, an ex-lover on the prowl, a resurrected relative, the safety of a child. But then I read a Dan Brown book and see that his success lies in entirely ignoring characterisation for a tight plot constructed around an inanimate object.

This week, for The Browser, I interviewed thriller writer James Twining and he had five key rules that he felt must be followed to come up with the perfect thriller – Dan Brown’s core concept is one of them. If only I’d known…

First, Twining says, you’ve got to have a fantastic central character, like James Bond: ‘What Fleming does is he has a central character who’s totally compelling – a fantasy figure who men want to be like and women want to sleep with. He’s sophisticated and charming with a slight brutality. It dates a bit now some of that, the language and the racial depictions perhaps don’t work so well. But you’d have to struggle to look at literary fiction over the past 50 years and come up with a character who has really inhabited the popular consciousness.’ Another classic character is Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon. You can’t think about Sam Spade without thinking of Humphrey Bogard, Twining reminded me.

Ian Fleming, of course, has an immediately recognisable writing style and this is obviously fairly key and perhaps the most difficult thing for anyone considering writing a thriller to achieve. In some ways you either have a good writing style or you don’t. This might not be something that can be learnt.

You also, as noted above, need the action to revolve round an inanimate object that provides motivation for the human characters. Twining again: ‘The Maltese Falcon itself is this artefact covered in jewels that has been painted black to disguise it, but it’s a complete mcguffin! It doesn’t actually matter at all, except to provide motivation for the characters. I’ve used this device in my new book about the illicit trade in antiquities – I’ve used an ivory mask that really was found in London and had been dug up in Italy. I mean, think of Pulp Fiction. We never do find out what’s in the bloody briefcase. You could say it’s a cop out, but it’s no more of a cop out than your best friend dying and having to find out who the murderer is.You need something to get the story in motion.’

Another thing that Twining suggests is key is to have some element of reality in your novel so that readers can think; ‘Ooh, I never knew that.’ ‘I think Dan Brown’s books are often like a lecture embedded in a chase story,’ Twining told me. Another example of this is Frederick Forsyth’s Day of The Jackal: ‘This has a real historical character, General Charles De Gaulle. It’s an amazing trick really because we all know De Gaulle wasn’t assassinated, but the whole way along we’re thinking: ‘Shit! Is he going to die!’ ‘Silence of the Lambs also has elements of reality in it. Thomas Harris has based Lector on Ed Gein, a serial killer who robbed graves and killed woman in order to flay the corpses for their skins. Greene was also the basis for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Psycho. He also uses the real murderer Garry Ridgeway who dumped women’s bodies with objects inside them.’

In Day of the Jackal Forsyth uses another of the devices that Twining recognises as key in that he actually breaks a news story. Forsyth in this book exposed the practise of applying for passports in the name of dead children. ‘People would go to graveyards and look for the graves of children. The government actually had to change the law on the basis of his research,’ Twining said. Thomas Harris does the same in Silence of the Lambs: ‘Like Forsyth in Day of the Jackal, Harris breaks a story in that he popularised or exposed the workings of the FBI’s criminal profiling unit. He put them on the map. Nowadays they are always in any crime drama.’

So, James Twining and I concluded between us that to write a good thriller you need: a brilliant central character, a recognisable writing style (Fleming has his distinctive short sentences and muscularity), some link to reality like a real event, character or detailed research, an inanimate object around which the human story revolves, and a news story that breaks as a result of the novel. Easy.

In praise of ... Geneva

2009-11-22T11:26:00.003Z

Thought you might like to see article published this week in the Sunday Telegraph travel section on Geneva - setting for my latest international bestseller (hey, modesty never sells...) The Geveva Deception. Actually what follows is the original unedited version as they took out all the gags - presumably because of a lack of space rather than because they weren't funny...

Geneva, Switzerland: My Kind of Town

The novelist James Twining offers a guide to the best sights, bars, hotels and restaurants in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Harry Lime was wrong. While the warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed of the Borgias may well have produced the Renaissance, Geneva is proof that 500 years of democracy and peace in Switzerland have led to far more than the invention of the cuckoo clock. Hotbed of Protestant dissent, witness to Byron’s seduction of Mary Shelley, crucible of the luxury watchmaking industry, and now the international home of the UN, WTO, multinational companies and tax exiles alike, Geneva's riches are lying waiting to be discovered.

What do you miss most when you're away?

Mont Blanc in the distance. Boats skating across Lake Geneva's glass mirror, sails snapping in the wind. The clean air and sense of calm. Cheese fondue. Chocolate.

What's the first thing you do when you return?

Wander through the cobbled Old Town ("La Vieille Ville") with old friend and local insider George Hammon, admiring the unspoilt medieval architecture and debating where to have dinner.

Where's the best place to stay?

The recently renovated Mandarin Oriental Hôtel du Rhône (0041 22 909 0001; www.mandarinoriental.com; two-day "festive break" from £145 per night), which blends the qualities of a traditional deluxe hotel with a very modern interior. At the other end of the spectrum, the Hôtel St-Gervais (732 4572; www.stgervais-geneva.ch) is a well-located budget option with double rooms from £68 per night.

Where would you meet friends for a drink?

In winter, the Parc des Bastions, where you can have a game of life-size chess before a warming glass of vin chaud. In summer, the Place du Bourg de Four, the oldest square in the Old Town. Have a beer and soak up the sunshine in one of the bars and cafés that surround the 18th-century flowered fountain.

Where are your favourite places for lunch?

The bistro Les Papilles de Lavinia (rue de Coutance 3; 732 2222) in Geneva's best wine shop, Lavinia. Enjoy Lyonnais food with one of the 40,000 bottles on display to wash it down. Amazing food, great wine, and brave attempts at British humour from the manager, Stéphane.

And for dinner?

Café Papon (rue Henri-Fazy 1; 311 5428). Vaulted ceilings and a terrace stretching out onto the medieval fortifications of the Old Town. Classic French cuisine with a twist, with main courses from £18. At the Mandarin you have the gourmet Indian restaurant Rasoi, by Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia, with tasting menus from £45. And Les Antiquaires (Grand-Rue 35; 311 2416) is a no-nonsense fondue restaurant serving the finest moitié-moitié (half Gruyère, half Vacherin cheese) in Geneva (and possibly the world!) for £14.

Where would you send a first-time visitor?

The Martin Bodmer museum (route de Guignard 19, Coligny; www.fondationbodmer.org; adults £8) is a breathtaking collection of literary treasures ranging from second-century New Testament papyri, and Egyptian Book of the Dead to a Gutenberg Bible and a Shakespeare first folio. It embodies the essence of Geneva – a wonderful place but so well hidden that even many locals have never heard about it.

What would you tell them to avoid?

The area around Cornavin train station, a hideous example of Soviet-style Fifties town planning that has you reaching for a block of semtex and a detonator.

Public transport or taxi?

You can easily walk around the centre of Geneva – it's tiny. But for the full experience be sure to take a mouette (a river shuttle) across the lake and, of course, hop on a tram. Taxis are prohibitively expensive and are best avoided unless you want to be mistaken for a Swiss banker.

Handbag or moneybelt?

Manbag - dare to be continental!

What should I take home?

Empty your bags and load up with Swiss chocolate. Try Rohr (rue d'Enfer 4; 311 6876) or Auer (rue de Rive 4; 311 4286), two family-owned traditional chocolate-makers who have mastered and perfected the art of chocolate-making over five generations.

James Twining's latest thriller, 'The Geneva Deception' (HarperCollins, £6.99), is set in Geneva.

He said. She said.

2009-11-19T22:58:00.007Z

Having posted a few weeks ago about the increasing importance of the web as a source of critical opinion and reviews for commercial fiction, I found myself recently assailed by its evil twin - the unsolicited psycho email.

It actually started, as these things often do, innocuously enough, when this popped into my inbox:

"Double Eagle. Page 170 (paperback). \"Disorientated\". Not a word. You need a proof reader? I'd be great."

No hello. No goodbye. Staccato syntax. A hint of arrogance, perhaps, towards the end? But then people are busy, and frankly I'm always happy to get feedback, good and bad. So I responded:

Really? But people say it all the time - doesn't that make it a word, even if the dictionary hasn't caught up!

You tell me - is there anything in the least bit offensive or rude in that? No, that's what I thought too. But my electronic interlocutor had found reason to take offence, it seemed:

You will find "ain't" in the dictionary. Doesn't make it a word. Just gives people too lazy to use the correct word(s) an excuse to continue sounding stupid to people who know better.

Okaaaay then. Someone's not been taking their medication. Nurse? Nurse?

Now again I'll ask you - did anything I say warrant that sort of response? She (yes it was a she - let's call her Julianne Connors … because that's her name) is actually implying, is she not, that I'm both lazy and stupid? Hell she's not implying it, she's saying it. My wife would probably agree about the former, and I'll leave judging the latter to you, but even so talk about raising the stakes - I toss a tennis ball over the net and she fires back a bloody Scud missile. Not too mention that she is also implying that she is a better judge of what is a word than the dictionary ...

Fine. If that's how you want to play it missy, it's on. It's on like Donkey Kong. The way I see it you have two choices in these situations. You either bite your tongue and let people get away with their crass rudeness. Or you say - "Take that, crazy psycho email bitch – hiya!” (imagine Miss Piggy karate chop). So I simply replied:

OK - in other words I am lazy and sound stupid and you know better

You're clearly as rude as you are pedantic

Have a nice life

j

PS I don't think I will take you up on your offer of being my proof reader

The "have a nice life" line was perhaps a bit sharp (I'd been dying to use it since someone used it on me a few years ago), but turning her down as my proof reader was a moment of utter genius, if I say so myself. Even so, she wasn't about to roll-over yet. A few weeks later (she'd clearly been carefully honing her response!), she came back with this:

Subject: So, so, sorry (who says Americans don't understand irony?)

Mister Twining (finally a greeting - things looking up, perhaps?)

I must say I am a little suprised you took the time out of your busy schedule to respond to, what must have been, a significant hit to your considerable ego. I do hope your attention to my e-mails is not an indication of your fan base.

You mistook my meaning, I fear. It seems to me if a person is willing to undertake all things involved in creating literature, to attatch their name to a work of fiction they hope to be recognized and praised for, one would do all that is possible to insure accuracy and quality.

I merely wanted to draw your attention to the fact that you used a word that is, in fact, NOT A WORD.

Writing a novel is a huge undertaking and I understand that constructive criticism can feel like attack. Take it as you will - I'll not lose any sleep over it. Nor will I be reading anything more from James Twining. Turns out, the students in my English Lit. classes have lost interest in your work as well.

Thank you so much for your well-wishing. Much the same to you.

Let's just be clear on one thing Julianne - I took time out of my "busy schedule" because I figure part of the job of being a writer is to talk to your readers, and that if someone has taken the time to write to you, you owe them the courtesy of writing back. And for the record I get emails all the time, all of them better written and more civil than yours, even the ones inviting me to accept a transfer of $3 million in stolen Nigerian oil money. So no need to feel special on my account.

If all you had really wanted was to draw my attention to a word not being a word, why go nuclear when someone asks, what is I think quite a reasonable (and dare I say interesting) question about whether language is dictated by a text book or current usage?

And in case you were unsure, calling someone stupid is not constructive criticism, which I welcome. It's just plain rude.

You got one thing right though - emailing you back would give you the wrong impression about the importance I attach to you or what you have said. Far better to lay your bitterness out here for all to see and enjoy. The Internet. Love it.

P.S. Julianne, despite your keenness to correct my vocabulary and desire to be my proof-reader you misspelled both “suprised” and "attatch" above and when you say "insure accuracy and quality" and think you probably meant "ensure" unless you wanted to take out a policy on something. I see that scarily enough you teach English Lit classes. Give yourself an F.

Blood from a stone

2009-11-04T12:00:00.004Z

Ever wondered where the expression "like getting blood from a stone" comes from? It does not, as some of you may believe, come from Giovanni Torriano's Second Alphabet (1662) but rather was an expression popularised in the early part of the twenty first century to describe the near impossibility of getting a book reviewed unless you are:

a) a first time writer
b) a celebrity or in some way related to a celebrity (butler, gardner, brother etc.)
c) afflicted by some (preferably terminal) disease or physical defect

I am, happily, none of these. And as a consequence am suffering the slings and arrows of editorial whim. It's a shame, as I know lots of reviewers have enjoyed and would like to review The Geneva Deception, but are finding it hard to get the space. Still, all is not lost. The internet, which is fast replacing the mainstream media's book pages (increasingly the exclusive preserve of revisionist (again) second world war histories, 900 page biographies of Henry VIII's third torch bearer etc.) as where real book people go if they want to learn about books that actually sell - bitter, moi? - is stepping into the breach. Exhibit 1 for the defence is below from Books Monthly and I'll share anything else that comes my way - including 4 stars from Closer, I hear!

The Mafia, a secret society and the world's greatest treasures all converge in James Twining's all new jaw--dropping thriller featuring reformed art thief Tom Kirk. It begins with a young man hanging from the Ponte Sant' Angelo Rome, his pockets weighed down with lead whilst the current of the river below slowly tightens the noose around his neck. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, retired art thief Tom Kirk is asked by an old friend to investigate a case involving the theft of a long lost Caravaggio painting. When tragedy strikes Tom is left holding a blood-soaked body.

Back in Rome police photographer Flavia Salvatore has been called to the Parthenon where a second body has been found, but this time the body is surrounded by mannequins. When a third body is found crucified upside down in the middle of the ancient forum Flavia realises there is a sinister link between the murders. Someone is staging famous Caravaggio paintings. Suspecting the detective leading the case is corrupt Flavia begins her own investigation.

Spurred on by grief and the desire to avenge the murder of his friend, Tom follows a trail to Rome where he finds Flavia piecing together a similar mystery. Before long they both finds themselves submerged in a vast criminal conspiracy involving the police, politicians, the church and a secret society born of a pact between two Mafia families decades before.

Tom Kirk is the new James Bond - no doubt about it - the book simply roars along like a Formula 1 grand prix, with thrills and spills at every corner, every bend, every curve. James' ability to mix fact with fiction makes for superb reading - and Kirk's ability to get himself out of a tight spot reminds me of 007 himself. What's more, there are now four Tom Kirk novels and James doesn't seem short of ideas to keep the idea going for loads more capers. Far better storie and much better written than The Da Vinci Code, this series is crying out for either small or big screen treatment - not that that would enhance the reading experience, but it just seems to me that there's an opportunity here for something rather special. Brilliant stuff!

Also thought the following might interest you - an interview with the influential Art Theft Central blog. Laters

Where were you?

2009-10-30T11:19:00.014Z

Oh I do like a party! Special thanks to performance poet Ryan Child and singer Georgia Strand who were both brilliant and really made last night's The Geneva Deception publication bash go with a bang, and to the lovely people at Goldsboro for setting up shop. For those of you who were there, it was great to see you and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to speak to you all properly. To everyone who was invited but couldn't come...you missed out, but you can still earn some slim shot at redemption by buying a copy! To everyone else, next time I'll book a bigger venue.

Thanks Ali and Joanna for the photos...

Relieved the bloody thing is out at last!

The gathered masses (Part I)

Georgia Strand

Steve Folwell from The Guardian trying to look interested

Reviewer Barry Forshaw and Wayne, my editor

Random punters?

Liz, Ayo and Miles - fellow memers of the crime / thriller fraternity

My agent Jonathan Lloyd and Victoria (my missus)

Editor Wayne and me

The gathered masses (Part II)

Rachel and Neil Bradford

Not sure if I'm about to laugh or cry

My mum

It's my party ...

2009-10-22T22:01:00.005Z

Interesting event the other night at the Guildford Book Festival, where I was on a panel with Christopher Fowler and Patrick Gale. Where were you?

The topic was "From small beginings" and no, before you ask, this wasn't about erectile dysfunction disorder, but rather the influence of importance of our childhood reading on our writing today. I have to be honest and admit that this wasn't something I'd thought about until about two minutes before I stepped onto the stage. My fellow panellists were rather better prepared and certainly better read - I hadn't heard of half the stuff they mentioned and Patrick Gale gave me a look caught somewhere between contempt and envy when I mentioned that I had mainlined Enid Blyton for years as a kid.

I have post-facto created a list of my top eleven (ten was so 2008) childhood books. I'm going to define childhood as the years prior to me buying the Sam Fox edition of Mayfair. It's my blog so I can do what I want:

The Treasure Seekers, by Enid Blyton - if you haven't read it, you wouldn't understand
How things work - genius book with cross-sections of ships and pyramids and skyscrapers which showed you, quite literally, how things work
That book about dinosaurs with the blue and yellow cover and a T-Rex on the front - memory getting a little hazy here, but it was good
1956 Lion annual (see picture) - I particularly remember the story about a couple of plucky Tommy's giving Jerry the slip by discovering a secret tunnel behind a fireplace
The illustrated Bible - Great stories, gory pictures. Fiction writing at its best. (ooohhh - contraversial!)
Anything by Roger Lancelyn Green - King Arthur, Robin Hood etc.
French graphic novels - Oh yes, I was quite the cosmopolitan so and so, aged 8. Well that and the fact that I was brought up in France might have had something to do with it - Tintin, Asterix, Gaston Lagaffe, Largo Winch, Blake and Mortimer to name but a few
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl - always much preferred this to C&CF, BFG, J&GP etc.
Some book by Richard Scarry where on each page you had to try and find the little yellow duck or something - used to keep me amused for hours when my father would turn the page saying, "well there isn't one on this page" and I'd say "Yes there is, yes there is!" and frantically turn the page back ... you get the picture
Another book, whose name I can't remember - God this list really is self-indulgent twaddle isn't it - but that showed you basic spycraft like how to write invisible ink, do a dead letter drop etc. Vital skills for any eleven year olds
The Valley of Adventure, by Enid Blyton - a second entry by Ma Blyton, but it is what it is. Loved that book and the cheeky parrot.

Anyway, onto more serious things. The Geneva Deception is out there, although I was reminded the other day that it's official launch date isn't until next week. Does that make me like the Queen with two birthdays, or Elton John (one's THE queen, the other's a queen), who came out ages before he actually "came out".

Either way things going well so far. First 3 days of sales were very good, in fact, so here's hoping things continue on the same track. Launch party set for Thursday next week with special appearances by Essex poet Ryan Child (you'd be amazed how many words rhyme with Matalan) and singer / songerwriter Georgia Strand.

Can you make it? A few invites available for selected faithful / attractive fans - just drop me a line. And yes, Mum, I guess you can come along too.

Births, Deaths and Marriages

2009-10-16T07:56:00.003Z

The Geneva Deception, a novel, weighing 12 ounces. Born October 15 2009 to proud father James Twining of Islington, London. A brother to The Double Eagle, The Black Sun and The Gilded Seal.

Blink and you'll miss it

2009-10-13T21:19:00.005Z

As Harper Collins's PR wheels grind into motion in the weeks running up to the publication of The Geneva Deception - sorry I mean accelerate up to 88 miles an hour just as the lightening strikes the clock tower - a word of thanks to Emma Walsh, the President (and as far as I know sole member) of my Irish fan club, who continues to work her subtle magic when it comes to unofficially promoting my books.

Take the photo to the right, extracted from a recent article for which she was interviewed. Blink and you'll miss it, but look again and you'll see my name top right, where she has strategically positioned the spine of one of my books for maximum "bling, in ya' face, wattcha lookin' at mofo" impact.

Talk about subliminal. If I was a chocolate bar, this picture would probably have been banned by the ASA because tens of thousands of kids would have been inexplicably raiding their piggy banks and rushing out and buying KitKats. Actually if I was a chocolate bar, I'd like to be a Crunchie. Or maybe a Lion bar. It's tough to choose.

But I'm not a chocolate bar. I'm a writer with a new book coming out in a few weeks. Buy it.

I don't do subliminal.

Haircut?

2009-10-10T20:37:00.004Z

They say the mark of a good haircut is when you can't tell whether someone has had one or not. Well on that basis, my website has just had the equivalent of a colour and trim by Vidal Sassoon.

There is a scene in Brideshead Revisted, I can't quite remember now which, when Cousin Jasper warns Charles Ryder that he will spend his second year trying to lose all the friends he made in his first. So it was with my website. I stuck in all these pages and features a few years ago that no-one ever really looked at or used and which in the end became a real pain in the a** to maintain. The most recent entry in my "Latest News" section, for example, was a signing at Chorleywood bookshop in 2006... 'Nuff said.

So while the website pretty may look pretty much the same to you, a whole bunch of useless stuff has been lopped off and now things like the mail form actually work. Plus you can stick in your email address to sign up to to get a fresh steaming pile of this blog into your inbox every time I post and there is an entirely new section on soon to be published New York Times #1 bestseller (hey, might as well aim high!) The Geneva Deception. Most importantly, at least from my perspective, editing the site is no longer like cutting a lawn with nail scissors.

The man responsible for my makeover? Rick Siedle. Sign him up quickly before all the Hollywood A-listers start flying him out to do LA for a short back and sides on Oscar night.

Dan Browned if you do, Dan Browned if you don't

2009-09-09T10:43:00.022Z

Only a few days to go now until September 15th. Mark it in your diaries. Capital letters. Red ink. Now circle it - once, twice. Then underline it. Done.

Why the fuss? No it's not to commemorate the feast day of Our lady of Sorrows. Or to remember the date of the Battle of Signal Hill (1762), Darwin first reaching the Galapagos Islands (1835), the passing of the Nuremberg Laws (1935) or Vanuatu becoming a member of the UN (1981). Neither is it to celebrate the birth of Marco Polo (1254), Agatha Christie (1890), Fay Wray (1907) or Princess Letizia of Spain (1972 - vintage year that!). Nor indeed to mark the death of André Le Nôtre (1700), Jumbo (PT Barnum's elephant - 1885), Willy Messershmitt (1978) and Johnny Ramone (2004).

It is, of course, to celebrate that only a month now stands between you and the publication of The Geneva Deception on October 15th. Oh, and apparently some chap called Dan Brown is publishing his new book that day too. It's called The Lost Symbol. Oh you've heard of it too?

I'm lucky, I've got a month's breathing room until TGD comes online. Imagine if you were the hapless PR dolly handed the task of publicising another book in the same week. Or even month. It would be like trying to hold back a steamroller with a spoon. In New York, publishers have been running scared, even changing Stephen King's (the Stephen King for Christ's sake!) release date to avoid being trampled underfoot. And who can blame them? The Da Vinci Code spent 68 weeks at No 1 in The Sunday Times bestseller lists, 120 in the Top Ten, and was crowned the UK’s biggest-selling paperback novel ever (Guess who also wrote the books at 2, 3 and 4).

There are apparently 81 million copies in print. 81 million. Just to put that in context, Ian Fleming, who published the first of his twelve Bond novels in 1953, has sold ~100 million books over the last 56 years. DB has got 80% of the way there off one book in 6. Or put it another way, if you were to lay all the books DB has sold end-to-end, it wouldn't reach half-way to how smug his agent must be feeling right now.

Not that I'm complaining. I've been the grateful recipient of various crumbs that have fallen from DB's table over the years, including a Sainsbury's "If you liked The Da Vinci Code you'll love ..." type offer a few years ago and the current promotion that Border's are running now whereby if you order The Lost Symbol, you get a copy of The Double Eagle for (take a deep breath, count to ten) free when you collect it. In fact this is the actual in-store ad.

How does it feel to watch punters hand over £18.99 for DB's latest oeuvre and then receive my book for the princely sum of the square root of f***-all? Honestly? Mixed emotions. On the one hand it's a bit like watching someone run a key down the side of the car you worked three different weekend jobs to pay for. On the other hand, anything that gets my book into people's hands, shows them what I can do, and hopefully gets them to buy the others, is a very good thing indeed. And unlike Simon Kernick, I haven't had to deal with the fallout of changing my cover!

Who knows, I may even compare rather favourably, although in polite company even being mentioned in the same breath as Dan Brown appears to be the literary equivalent of coughing during the Black Death. Has anyone in history sold so many books, and yet found so few people willing to admit they read and enjoyed it, I wonder? It's like trying to get someone in the 1950s admit to having voted for the NSDAP in 1933. He's a walking cream cake - a guilty pleasure you will only admit to yourself or snatch a bite of when no-one is looking.

Well I'm happy to stand up and be counted - I am Spartacus, as they say. I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. There I've said it now. On reflection it's perhaps not the most well written book in the world, it's true. And some of the characters are a little ... flat. But at the time all I noticed was the gentle fan of the pages as I sped through it, desperate to get to the end, totally hooked. Isn't that the essence of a good thriller? Rather that, than some worthy Booker winner where it takes 350 pages for someone to get up, get dressed, smoke ten Gauloises, argue with their mistress, reflect on the futility of life and then go back to bed. It certainly didn't and hasn't warranted the mauling it has received, nor has DB himself, by all accounts a very nice man, deserved the abuse directed his way. But then that has been less about the book and more to do with some faceless intellectual elite, horrified by anything so vulgar as a popular book, adopting it as some sort of surrogate barometer for intelligence and cultural sophistication. Not slagging off the DVC basically marks you out as riding the short bus. All I know is that those 81 million copies didn't walk off the shelves themselves and yet that seems to be brushed over as some sort of social aberration or mass hysteria, like all those people crying when Lady Di died. The arrogance of the literary world remains breathtaking. Damn you, you faceless intellectual elite.

The bigger mystery for me is why (beyond Qarper's ceasless energy - thanks guys) I qualify for these Dan Brown promotions and offers in the first place. Is it really true that "If you like Dan Brown you'll love James Twining? If I can get a fraction of his sales I certainly hope so, but beyond both of us writing thrillers, I've never been convinced my books are that similar to his. That said some people have made the comparison in the past and I have to admit that Harper Collins invited it to a certain extent by adopting a very similar colour scheme to the DVC for The Double Eagle.

If there are similarities, they come because we share an interest in history and in spinning a story around some interesting historical event or fact, but then Robert Harris does much the same in Archangel. We both make reference to art and art works, but then so does Dashiel Hammet in The Maltese Falcon. We both sprinkle historical facts into our writing, but then so does Thomas Harris in Hannibal. Okay, so the third book was about the Mona Lisa, but not in a secret society / hidden code / all Catholics are evil sort of a way but in a bullet-strewn / heist sort of way. Are certain topics now judged off-limits because Dan Brown has written about them?

The truth is, I don't care who people compare my books to. The important thing is that they read them and then they can make their own minds up. If that happens to be as a result of me being caught up in the Dan Brown literary tsunami, God bless him, then so be it.

The only comparison I care about is that I seem to remember that the DVC was Dan Brown's fourth book (having published three books previously with only limited success), as The Geneva Deception is now mine. Wouldn't it be nice if ...

Stendhal Syndrome

2009-08-18T12:26:00.015Z

It's been an eventful few days, and I'm not just talking about Arsenal's 6-1 walloping of Everton or the fact that I'm on holiday (Provence, since you ask, and very nice it is too.)

First two thefts from the Nicholas Roerich Museum on the Upper West Side. Then the heist of ~£40m of gems from Graff on Bond Street, which has given the media a field day with tales of Mission Impossible style latex masks, mysterious Middle Eastern buyers and the notorious Pink Panther gang. And to cap it all, news of the latest attack on the Mona Lisa by a Russian tourist armed with a ...mug.

Those of you who have read The Gilded Seal will know that La Gioconde and I have what might be called "previous". You will also know that attacking the Mona Lisa armed with a mug, even a sharpened one, is a rather pointless affair. The painting sits in a 2cm thick bullet-proof plexiglass case, a gift from the Japanese when it went on tour to Tokyo in 1974, that is designed to maintain a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and fifty-five per cent humidity to stop the wood cracking. And stop the occasional flying mug.

Of course, it's not the first time that the Mona Lisa has been attacked. In 1956 the lower part of the painting was severely damaged when a vandal threw acid on it. Then in December of the same year, a young Bolivian named Ugo Ungaza Villegas damaged the painting by throwing a rock at it. This resulted in the loss of a speck of pigment near the left elbow, which was later painted over. And in April 1974, a handicapped woman, upset by the Tokyo National Museum's policy for the disabled, sprayed red paint at it (by now safely housed in its new case) while it was on display in Japan.

Neither are these acts of violence isolated affairs. Other art works have also suffered at the hands of assorted vandals, piss artists, performance artists and nut jobs over the years. In July last year, for example, a 32-year-old woman wearing lipstick kissed a painting by American artist Cy Twombly on display in Avignon ("to make it even more beautiful"), leaving a red smudge. At the Muse d'Orsay in Paris a year earlier, five drunk men broke in and punched a hole in Claude Monet's Le Pont D'Argenteuil, while a few months before a self-proclaimed performance artist attacked Marcel Duchamp's 1917 Dadaist work “Fountain” - a urinal - with a hammer at the Pompidou Center in Paris. And famously in 1972, Lazlo Toth attacked Michelangelo's sculpture of the Pieta in St Peter's in Rome with a geologist's hammer, shouting, "I am Jesus Christ - risen from the dead", in the process breaking Mary's arm at the elbow, damaging her nose, and chipping one of her eyelids, forcing the rest of us to now have to gaze at the restored statue through a perspex box.

Which brings us back to the Mona Lisa, and why. Not why use a mug, although that is a very good question (my limited research suggests that a hammer of some description is any would-be assailant's weapon of choice, although admittedly harder to shove down your bra and smuggle past the security guards), but why did the Russian tourist attack it in the first place? Could the answer, as some papers suggested, lie in Stendhal Syndrome?

No I hadn't heard of it either. So I looked it up for you - that's the sort of guy I am. And apparently, it's a "rare condition that causes dizziness, confusion or violent acts when an individual is exposed to art". [see here for excellent article] It gets its name from the time when a young Frenchman called Marie-Henri Beyle — better known as the French novelist Stendhal — visited Florence in 1817 and found himself overwhelmed by the city's intensely rich legacy of art and history.

"I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.''

So let me get this straight? You are so overwhelmed by a painting's beauty that you lob a mug at it? Hmmmm. Well the French police didn't buy it either, and with good reason. It turned out that she purchased the mug from the museum shop, smuggled it into Salle des Etats (where the Mona Lisa is displayed) in her handbag and then threw it out of frustration at her failure to gain French nationality - which just goes to prove quite how much of a nutter she is, if you ask me!

Maybe she should try the UK. Remember the Mona Lisa is only 77cm x 53cm and she hit it plum on from fifteen feet through a crowd. God knows we need her for our bloody cricket team.

Dr Jaegermeister, I presume

2009-07-28T17:09:00.006Z

So that was Harrogate 2009.

A festival of new acquaintances being made and old ones being renewed, most notably in the form of Dr Jaegermeister. Actually, I've no idea if he's a doctor at all, but the name sounds German, and they dish out doctorates over there like we serve up ASBOs in Cardiff, so why not? Our meeting went a bit like this:

JT: Hello Dr Jaegermeister

DJ: Hello excellent thriller writer James Twining. Would you like a scrummy drink from my little green bottle?

JT: That's very kind of you Doctor J. Here's five pounds.

DJ: My pleasure. Here's a hammer to hit yourself on the head with in the morning.

JT: (slurring badly) Damn you Doctor Jaegermeister.

DJ: We will meet again, my young apprentice. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.

I last met Dr Jaegermeister, aged 20, on a university ski trip, when he kindly introduced me to his friend, Herr Groehe, whom porcelain connoisseur's among you might recognise as a close cousin of our very own Mr A. Shanks (of the Norfolk Shanks's, of course.)

I've not been able to touch a drop since, so the "ice bombs" I had on Friday night - jaegermeister + coke :-) - was something of a back to the future moment, although thankfully not accompanied this time by 7 hours curled up on the bathroom floor. Instead, I had to spend most of Saturday in sunglasses and knocking-back painkillers like they were smarties. Actually, they may well have been smarties - I was finding it hard to focus.

This of course gave me the perfect excuse to take advantage of the sunshine as I tried to piece the evening together. So far it's come to me in flashes: ian rankin's glass tankard, agatha christie's mug, cafe rouge, red ribbons, hotel roof, robbery, helium balloons ... fun, fun, fun.

Saturday night was a rather more abstemious affair, starting off with the author "murder mystery" dinner. Amazingly, my table won by guessing that Martin Waites had killed Mark Billingham because his huge success had been built on an idea he had stolen from him when they had been living together as students. I was pleased. The last time I won anything was my third form history competition (which I later learnt I was the only person to enter), so I thought that perhaps my luck was turning. Then I saw the "prize" - the latest Billingham opus. Signed.

Talk about a hollow victory.

Elsewhere, there was unfounded talk that there was a literary festival going on. Kevin Wignall and Steve Mosby sank to new depths of colour coordinated depravity (c.f. exhibit A, on the right). And controversy raged (is still raging)over Kernick's Dan Brown / WHSmith deal. Frankly, I don't see the problem. Actually let me rephrase that - I can't afford to see the problem. I have two deals coming up with Sainsbury's and Borders to co-promote my books alongside DB's - all I can say is well done HC and ker-ching! Frankly, I'd be more worried if I was DB, in case people read Simon's, then his, and then draw the inevitable conclusion ...

Big shout out to the Harper massive (Fiona, Wayne, Sarah, Rachel, Alice, who have I missed ...?) who did their usual excellent job in entertaining us.

Which brings me full circle to renewing old acquaintances, (c.f. awkward link to opening paragraph in a lame attempt to round the post off) and how good it was to see Stav Sherez and his crazy hair and unconstrained nicotine/caffeine addiction again. You've been missed, man

PS - Find me on Twitter - @jamestwining - come on, you know you want to.

Surprise! Surprise!

2009-07-03T16:31:00.004Z

Life is full of surprises. Some good, like seeing your mate's face when you put a fresh cow pat under the passenger seat of his car on the hotest day of the year a few hours before he takes the girl he has been trying to date for 6 months out on a date, or opening the paper and being confronted by this. Some bad, like Barcelona sticking two past us in the last ten minutes of the Champions League final, or my father handing me a tube of shaving foam when I was seven and claiming that it was a new brand of toothpaste. Not funny.

But I have to confess to biggest surprise of all a few months ago now when, defying all confident diagnosis, statistics, hundreds of years of old wives tales about the shape of bumps, and the man who followed the wife off the bus (yes, really) to tell her that he had a gift for being able to forsee such things, we (or rather she with me looking) had a baby boy.

I. Was. Totally. Amazed. Still am.

After having two girls, you come to think that the dice are loaded to come up pink, so to roll blue on the third attempt ... well, let's just say it was like that moment in Terminator II when Arnie turned out NOT to be the bad guy. OK, so maybe it was a bit more special than that. More like when you realise that Bruce Willis is actually dead in the Sixth Sense.

Which leaves one question that readers of my last post will be interested in knowing. What did we call him?

Anyone who has read my books will understand that in the end, there was only one choice: Felix. Or more specifically Felix Ludovic Robert Twining. Actually it wasn't that simple. Our initial choice was Ludovic, but our resolve faltered when half the people we told the name to pronounced it (for some reason I still haven't been able to fathom) Ludvig, and the other half made some sniggering reference to US gangsta' rapper Ludacris.

Naming him after a master art thief was an easy choice after that!

Naming rights

2009-03-24T10:05:00.006Z

With the birth of child number 3 only weeks away (gulp!) my thoughts have, rather predictably, turned to what we're going to call the little blighter. This is a responsibility I take very seriously. A name is, after all, something you carry with you your entire life (unless your name is Steven Demetre Giorgio / Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam) and can define at least part of who you are. I, for one, still bear the scars of being one of four James' in my class. In fact, I'm sure it is some latent insecurity from then that still compels me to introduce myself on the phone as "James Twining", convinced that if I just say "James", they'll confuse me with the two hundred other James' that I assume are cluttering their address book. How I envied classmates Lakis Kakouris, Giles Channot and Umair Khan. You don't get two of those to a packet...

We don't know what flavour the baby is yet, so for a boy I'm now thinking "Dante Napoleon Lincoln Twining" and for a girl "Cleopatra CoCo Twining". No-one's going to confuse them with anyone else. No siree! At least that's what I'm telling my wife. You see, when we had our second daughter, we struck a deal that she could name her Jemima on the condition that if we had a third, I would get exclusive naming rights, making me a sort of latter day Rumplestiltkin (now there's a thought...) It's given me hours of pleasure over the last few months to run ever more outlandish suggestions past her, especially ones where she only realises a few days later that the initials spell out a rude word - anyone for Frederick Arthur Robert Twining?

Still, at least all this is a hell of a lot easier than naming a book. I've posted before about the difficulties of settling on The Gilded Seal as a title, but the experience of naming Book IV has been a really painful one. It's certainly not been helped by Harper Collins's sales department, whose ability for lateral thinking should seem them all apply immediately to Mensa.

My first suggestion was The Delian League - a reference to an alliance of city states in Ancient Greece that features in the novel. Their reaction? People might think it's a cookery book! I'm serious. They thought people might seen Delian and assume it had something to do with TV chef Delia Smith. So much for trying to rise above the masses and write a thriller with an intellectual edge!

Undaunted, I reached for my back-up option - The Skeleton Key. Cue sharp intake of breath through teeth. It's good but it just sounds a bit ... morbid; Like it might be a horror book?

Okaaaaay... The Time Lock? Too Science Fiction. The Carravaggio Conspiracy? Too unpronounceable. The Da Vinci Code? Perfect ... Oh wait a minute, I think someone else has had that already.

In desperation, I turned to my Joker: The Ivory Key. Polite cough. Is it about pianos?

In total I suggested 88 different titles. Yes that's right, 88. Don't believe me? See for yourself below - I've copied them at the bottom . Have you any idea how hard it is to come up with 88 titles for the same book, of the strange corners of the mind you have to dig around in? And the winning suggestion, after 8 months of debate?

The Geneva Deception.

Actually, I quite like this, although by the end I would have happily accepted Mr Floppy's Big Banana just to put me out of my misery. Geneva is where a lot of the action happens. The title also hints at the failures in the Swiss legal system that make it a haven for art smuggling and is an interesting play on the familiar Geneva Convention as well as hinting at The French Connection which can't be a bad thing.

So, one naming dilemma solved, which still leaves me with the question of what to call my latest offspring. What about Cosmo Uther Nemo .... Oh do grow up!!

***

The 88 titles!

1 The Vegas Deception 2 The Geneva Deception 3 The Rome Deception 4 The Vatican Deception 5 The Roman Deception 6 The Apollo Deception 7 The Ivory Deception 8 The Merisi Deception 9 The Caravaggio Key 10 The Caravaggio Legacy 11 The Lost Caravaggio 12 The Ivory Mask 13 The Ivory Face 14 The Ivory Key 15 The Ivory Mask 16 The Ivory Face 17 The Ivory God 18 The Lost City 19 The Eternal City 20 The Geneva Connection 21 The Mafia Connection 22 The Twisted Serpents 23 The Serpent's Shadow 24 The Serpent's Tail 25 The Serpent Divided 26 The Serpent's Tomb 27 The Forked Serpent 28 The Serpents' League 29 The Mafia Legacy 30 The Mafia League 31 The Mafia Connection 32 The Mafia Key 33 The Merisi Legacy 34 The Merisi League 35 The Broken League 36 The Fractured League 37 The Hollow Ring 38 The Severed Ring 39 The Sixth Watch 40 The Hidden Tomb 41 The Secret Tomb 42 The Roman Tomb 43 The Carved Face 44 The Carved God 45 The Pale God 46 The Fractured Mask 47 The False Shuffle 48 The True Count 49 The Rider Bet 50 The Cut Card 51 The Burn Card 52 The Split Bet 53 The American Wheel 54 The Combination Bet 55 The Street Bet 56 The Flat Bet 57 The Pair Split 58 The Wild Card 59 The Tomb Robbers 60 The Shadow League 61 The Dark League 62 The League of Shadows 63 The Secret League 64 The Viper League 65 The Veiled League 66 The Vegas Betrayal 67 The Coiled Serpents 68 The Glittering Serpent 69 The Locked Serpent 70 The Dark Serpent 71 The Veiled Serpents 72 The Ivory League73 The Ivory Gambit 74 The Ivory Gamble 75 The Missing Watch 76 The Seventh Watch 77 The Missing Nativity 78 The Lost Watch 79 The Empty Grave 80 The Grave Betrayal 81 The Fractured Grave 82 The Open Tomb 83 The Bare Tomb 84 The Barren Tomb 85 The Floating Lead 86 The Spoils of Death 87 The Looter's Prize 88 The Looter's Charter

20 years on

2009-01-26T16:10:00.010Z

I read the other day that the most difficult thing about writing a blog is starting a post. There are, apparently, three main approaches: 1. Make a witty observation. 2. Pose a thought-proving question. 3. Go on about about how hard it is to start a post. So here we are...

It's been a while since the last one. Over five months to be precise. Sorry. I missed one week, then another and before I knew it a couple of months had gone by and then it was Christmas and I ate so much chocolate that I could barely get out of my chair. It tastes sooooo good. Anyway New Year, new blog, although I'm sure I said much the same last year).

So here's my big news. We're having another baby. Another mouth to feed as we stumble into the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. Impeccable timing. It's pretty grim out there now. I'm never entirely sure how recessions affect book sales - do people view books as luxuries and so buy fewer of them, or do they spend more on them, because they end up going out less? One thing's for sure and that's that people are going to be flying a lot less, now that the pound is making the Zimbabwean dollar look like the gold standard, which can't be good news for the old airport thriller sales.

In fact the last time I remember things being this bad was in the late eighties (hence gratuitous Miami Vice pic above). One moment, in particular, from that period stays with me - a school trip up to Liverpool where we were due to give a concert in the Cathedral. In between rehearsals I remember following everyone out to the neighbouring park to read a book. An hour or so later and with the light fading fast, I looked up and realised that everyone else had wandered back inside, leaving me on my own. Well not quite alone. Three "youths" (yobs and ASBOs hadn't been invented back then) spotted me from where they were stamping on a bike frame and surrounded me like hyenas might a wounded zebra. In retrospect, a white shirt, grey mini-me suit and polyester tie wasn't exactly great inner-city camouflage.

"What's that?" One of them pointed out from under his hood.

I looked down and realised that he was pointing at my standard schoolboy issue Parker pen, neatly secured inside my top-pocket with its arrow-shaped clip. It was a birthday present and was very cool (or at least as cool as a Parker roller-ball pen can be to a seventeen year old) with a Rambo inspired camouflage pattern.

"What are you listening to?" The second one asked with one of those feral faces you just wanted to slap. I had a Walkman strapped to my belt - a huge thing the size of toaster that I had borrowed specially for this trip from my friend Faraz, on the condition he could borrow my Sam Fox Penthouse special for a week. Before I could answer he took the headphones from around my neck and put them on and started rolling his shoulders to the beat. (In case you're wondering it was U2, or Duran Duran or something cool like that. It definitely wasn't T'Pau.)

"Nice watch," Another one giggled through his acne, pointing at my wrist. This was my pride and joy - a Casio Databank received the previous Christmas that I had painstakingly loaded up with every conceivable date and phone number I could lay my hands on, including the Samaritans number that I had spotted on the side of a bus, which my mother found rather worrying when she absent-mindedly scrolled through my contacts one day. "Can I try it on?"

Now at the time I wasn't exactly what you might call "street-smart" - an over-protective mother and safe, suburban upbringing had seen to that. But even my blunted instincts could tell this was not good. Alone. In a park. In Liverpool, a city that to my fearful mind might as well have been Kabul. It's getting dark. I'm surrounded. One of of them's wearing my mate's headphones. And now another one wants to try on my watch? Computer says ... shit!

But then I had a brainwave.

"Forget the watch," I said, taking the headphones back. "Look at this."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ... flick knife. No I'm not joking. You see when I said I wasn't exactly "street-smart" I was lying. I was actually a complete and utter muppet. I mean, how many people do you know who when finding themselves being mugged would then hand their attackers a knife?

Actually, strictly speaking it was a stiletto - green with a three inch blade that shot up when I pressed the little black button on the side. I'd bought it on a school trip to Boulogne a few years before along with industrial quantities of bangers, and then smuggled it back into the UK in a teddy bear that had a zipped compartment in the back for keeping my pyjamas in. You see - I was knocking on the door of 00 status even then.

My thinking was that if I gave them this, I might be able to somehow distract them from my pen, watch and Walkman and ensure the safe return of my Sam Fox special. But it didn't take me long to realise the scale of my naivety when the eldest grabbed the knife from me.

"Great. We'll have this and everything else you've got," He sneered with the satisfaction of someone who had just seen every stereotype of how stupid, feckless and pathetic all Southerners really were, resoundingly fulfilled. And in retrospect, who can blame him?

By now I was getting desperate, and a little scared, but I spotted my opening. As the two other boys crowded around the knife, the third away so he could have a better look. Clenching my fist, I swung out and punched him in the stomach. In the same instant I started to run, not stopping to look if they were following but convinced they must be, not sure I'd even really hit him. Down the hill, through the park, up through the cathedral gates. Laughing maniacally, although I can't remember whether this was out of fear, or relief that my Sam Fox special was safe.

It was only later, when I was trying to rationalise the whole "hand your attacker a knife" incident as a clever diversionary tactic that I had ruthlessly followed through with a clinical punch to the solar plexus, that I realised they had won after all. My camouflaged Parker pen had gone, slipped from my pocket when I had been distracted. I felt sick.

Of course the poetry of this escapade was lost on me at the time, although I see it clearly now:

I handed them a sword. They took a pen. It's a beautiful thing.

Pole vault

2008-08-20T17:19:00.004Z

I hope you appreciate the title to this week's (very brief) post. A little topical Olympic reference for all you sports fans out there like me (okay, so I'm shallow!) Not that this post has anything to do with pole vaulting as such. At least not pole vaulting of the long bendy stick variety. Or of the straight stick variety (which would probably be a lot more interesting). In fact there are no sticks involved at all. Or vaults, for that matter. In fact, if I'm honest, it's all a bit tenuous.

But the point is (yes there is a point) that earlier this week I got an email from a (non-vaulting) Pole and I thought I would share it with you:

"Hello. I've recently read your book, The Black Sun. And I wanted to share one thought with you. It's about the Amber Room.

I'm a franciscan friar, a Pole. I live now in X, in a Polish friary, in the northern Poland. In our friary 25 years ago lived a famous friar, Andrzej Klimuszko, a clairvoyant. He was able to locate people (or their bodies) from the photographs, could name the desease of the people looking at them, was famous for his knowledge of the herbs of which was preparing the infusions and so on.

And once he was asked about the Amber Room. What he said was a surprise for many - he said that it didn't exist. It was buried totally. So this is what I wanted to tell you. Of course he never saw any documents nor heard about the "russian mistake".

Regards
Pax et Bonum
fr. Matt"

I have to say, it's not often that I question the wisdom of Trekkie Monster, but in this case I think he had it wrong. The internet wasn't made for porn. It was made for random emails from remote Polish friaries peopled by clairvoyants with a knowledge of "the herbs" and the likely last resting place of the Amber Room! A resting place that, in the best mythical tradition, was taken with the unfortunate friar to his grave.

Brilliant.

Question Marks

2008-08-08T17:39:00.007Z

Maybe I'm spoilt? Maybe the fact that I didn't grow up counting myself lucky to get a lump of coal and an orange for Christmas has made me soft? Maybe I'm just too old to rough it, like I used to when I was a student? Or maybe, just maybe, there's something about finding a pubic hair on your pillow that makes your stomach turn, however old or hard you are.

Not one of my pubic hair's you understand. Someone else's. On my pillow. In my bed. At the hotel I was staying at in Harrogate at the recent Crime Writing Festival. A big fat hairy question mark, staring me right in the face from the moment I first let myself in the room.

I was actually planning to use this post to write up this year's festival (belatedly I have to admit, but then I am in a frantic race to finish Book IV). But then I thought, screw that. Why bother, when Jake Kerridge has done it already far better than I ever could (see Day 1 and Day 2)? And I didn't get to beat anyone up this year (See Harrogate A-Z), which all in all made for a rather quieter few days. So instead, I thought I'd dedicate this entry to naming and shaming the worst hotel in Britain.

Step forward, The White Hart. (I wish I could do one of those music effects here where the trumpet fanfare falls flat and fades away into a raspberry)

Don't be fooled by its appearance. I fell into the same trap when I was turned away from the Crown and told that I'd been booked in here instead. "Nice from far but far from nice", as my ever sensitive friend James Johnstone used to say of women who had revealed themselves to be, on closer inspection, not quite as attractive as they had first seemed from the other side of the bar. I'm actually struggling to put into words quite how bad this place was once I got up to my room (anyone know a writer?) but if I tell you that it was a cross between a student bedsit (anywhere in Cardiff), the Linton Travel Tavern , and a hospital waiting room, I think you'll get my drift.

The carpet, a swirling mass of brown and orange whorls that I doubt was fashionable in the seventies which is when I'm guessing it was put down, felt sticky underfoot. The chintz-tastic curtain was little more than a thin sheet. There were stains on the sheets. The TV screen looked like something from the Fifties. The furniture was that horrible Hansel and Gretel pine stuff, all knobs and twirly bits and varnished a treacly yellow colour that made it look even dirtier than I suspect it was. And of course, in the corner, the pièce de resistance - the plastic tray loaded with mini-kettle / tea-bag / condensed milk / instant coffee / hot chocolate / cellophane wrapped shortbread. White Hart? More like Black Death.

And you know the best thing of all? The room rates were the same as at the Crown. I felt like I'd been mugged. Mugged and then made to pay for my assailant's taxi home.

Not that I blame the festival organisers. Far from it. Sharon and her team did a great job as always and I think they were as shocked as anyone. But the lesson is clear. If you go to Harrogate, don't stay at the White Hart. It's dirty, ugly and leaves question marks on your pillow rather than chocolates.

***

Okay, so I will say a few words about Harrogate. Generally excellent fun - Simon K had done a masterful job at assembling a good line-up (and me!). Kevin "only gay men wear hair gel" Wignall was on top form as usual and Mark Billingham bought me a drink - see, miracles can happen. (Only joshing Mark old bean). And there were the other usual suspects - too many to list here - although Nick Stone, Alex Barclay and Fiona Cane were missed, except in the quiz where they are all notoriously rubbish. Those lovely boys from Crimesquad were there too and together with Dreda Say Mitchell gave me right tongue lashing - no, not that sort - for being too down about things. I'm a sensitive soul, what can I say? And I overheard someone mumbling something about ghosts and writing and Andy McNab. Don't know what they were saying - maybe he's into fortune telling or weird voodoo shit?

And then of course there was my Bond panel. No panic this time round since I came well prepared - I spent two hours before the panel on Wikipedia reading through the plot summaries. As it turned out, this made me something of an expert compared to the others who had "depth" having read a few actual novels (hey, I've seen the movies. They're basically the same aren't they?) but not my "breadth". Or did we all come across as knowing as little as we did? Either way it was fun, although it was only later that I realised that really I should have done the whole gig in a tux. Last week I said that the best Bond moments happen when no-one's around to see you. Well I was wrong. The best Bond moments happen in your head, long after the moment itself has passed ...

Bond moments

2008-07-07T08:56:00.010Z

When I was fifteen or so, on a family holiday in Majorca, I befriended a group of local Spanish kids. They were older than me and led by Juan, an eighteen year old whose father was one of the richest men on the island. Juan drove Number Five, a Ferrari red catamaran that his father had co-piloted to third place in the world speedboat championship a few years before. It was a monster.

I mention this because my research trip to Monte Carlo last week (see Toilet Humour), reminded me that for most men, the meaning of life (beyond beer, football and sex) is really the pursuit of as many "Bond moments" as possible. Bond moments like the one where I dived off the rocks in front of the villa where we were staying, swam across to where Juan, his girlfriend and the girl who'd caught my eye down at the harbour were waiting for me on Number Five, twin Lamborghini V12s idling, and then roared away to a hidden inlet where we moored up for the day. Double O-tastic!

Monte Carlo was, of course, the basis for the fictional resort of Royale-Les-Eaux in Casino Royale. And I have to admit our trip (I was with the missus) did start auspiciously enough, as we were whisked away from cattle class on sleazyjet to a waiting helicopter and the five minute dash along the Cote d'Azur. We arrived at the hotel, as you can imagine, shaken but not stirred.

A day at the pool was followed by dinner up in Eze - a beautiful medieval village perched on a rocky outcrop that can only be reached by a bridge. Again things went well - the Maitre D' greeted me with the classic Bond line - "Welcome back, Mr Twining. Your usual table?" He showed us to a small table on a private balcony with an unbelievable view over the sea. The Sommelier even complemented me on my choice of wine - "Excellent choice, Monsieur Twining. The spiciness will offset the richness of the beef perfectly" - as if I was Robert Parker. So far, so Bond.

And then I got the bill.

All 565 Euros of it. That's $895 or £448 in real money. Victoria's bloody caviar had cost 300 Euros. We'd misread the menu and thought it was 10 Euros for ten grams, not 10 Euros a gram. That's almost a street price. Bond, of course would have just won the necessary cash in a bet with a crippled megalomaniac or had it flown in by a busty intern at the Treasury. No such luck for me. Instead I had to play it cool and make it look like this was the sort of bill I regularly fielded. A sort of Monte Carlo equivalent of a trip to the local chippy.

Things got worse when I got back to the hotel to get changed for the casino. Don't forget that this was to be the realisation of a long held ambition to play the tables in the most famous casino in the world. Not to mention adding to the list of Bond locations I've visited (what do you mean that's sad?) Then I realised. I'd forgotten my cuff links. My big Bond moment, and my cuffs were flapping around my wrists like Austin bloody Powers. It was too late to buy any replacements as all the shops were shut. So I had to wear paperclips instead. Double O my ass.

The casino itself was beautiful. Truly amazing. The clientele a little less attractive - the men (mostly Russian) were as old and fat as the women (mostly knockout) were young and thin. But as you can imagine, feeling somewhat self-conscious that everyone would think I was being sponsored by Staples and having seen Victoria hoover down 300 Euros of raw fish eggs, I wasn't exactly feeling like bigging it up on the tables. Even so, we decided to chance our arm and in true Bond fashion, gamble our way out of trouble. We lost a hundred Euros in about two minutes flat. License to lose.

With the gambling not working out, I headed to the toilets to research their layout and complete my original mission. Anyone interested in seeing what they actually look like should click here. I hope you like them, despite having to turn your head sideways - they cost marginally less to produce than the first surface shots of the moon. With the "blueprints" safely stored away for future use, I returned to the table for one last spin of the wheel. But as I placed my pathetic little chip on the table and prayed for a miracle, the man next to me smiled through his cigar smoke and whispered conspiratorially.

"Tiffany?"

This was it. The code word from the Russian sleeper agent I'd been praying for. What was the correct response? Breakfast? Lamp? Then I realised he was looking down at my cuff links.

"Tiffany?" He repeated?

"What these?" I smiled, nonchalantly, then lied. "No I have these made by a man in Vienna."

He nodded wisely.

"Very nice," A pause. "I have a man in Vienna too. He makes my ammunition." He gave the slight bulge under his left arm a longing pat.

I looked around, desperate for someone to have witnessed or overheard a classic Bond exchange. But Victoria was gazing dreamily at the Formula One driver across the room betting the gross domestic product of Liberia on the turn of a card.

But then that's the thing about the best Bond moments. No-one ever gets to see them but you!

P.S. Report from Harrogate and my Bond panel soon!

Toilet Humour

2008-06-27T12:22:00.007Z

A friend of mine once flew 5750 miles to get laid.

He (obviously only a man would do this) flew the 11.5 hours from London to Rio, did the dirty, then hopped back on the plane and headed home. We (his friends, although he may revise this description if he reads this) didn't even know he'd done it, until we chanced upon his passport one day and noticed the Brazilian stamp and the whole sorry tale came out.

At the time we made fun of him - you sad b*****d - flying to Brazil for a sh*g etc.- but later I came to see that there was something rather romantic about flying half-way around the world to see someone you love, even if the stingy sod did travel as a courier to avoid shelling out. I think he thought it was quite a grand gesture too, although the later revelation that the entire Oxford men's rowing team, who had accompanied the female team to Brazil, had had slightly less far to travel to enjoy similar favours, left a rather bitter taste in his mouth. And quite possibly hers too ...

Anyway, I mention all this because this weekend, I am flying 645 miles to ... go to the toilet. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. You see, there is a scene in my fourth book set in the casino in Monte Carlo. Set in the toilet at the casino at Monte Carlo to be more precise. And never having been to the toilet in the casino in Monte Carlo, I felt I needed to go to make sure I properly captured the mood and smell of the place (the casino that is) as well as the layout and fixtures and fittings of the facilities themselves.

I'm taking the missus, of course - you try having a conversation that starts "Darling, I'm going to Monaco for the weekend" and not end up having to bring your better half too! The whole trip is costing me a bloody fortune. Flights, helicopter transfers, hotels, food, gambling money, cocktails. You probably even have to pay to have a pee. The things I have to go through to in my unselfish drive for authenticity!

- good thriller - £6.99

- holiday and palm tree to read it under - £1000

- knowing that the description of the toilets is 100% accurate - priceless (except for me)

Giving good panel

2008-06-09T10:40:00.005Z

There's a moment in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie where Elizabeth Swann invokes the right to "parley" under the Pirate Code, and Captain Barbossa dismisses it as "more of a set of guidelines than actual rules."

Well, much the same could be said for the unwritten agreement that exists between writers invited to speak on a panel together. There are no written rules, more a set of commonly understood basic and principles:

1. Give everyone their fair chance to speak - don't hog the microphone or jump in at every opportunity, especially if some of the other panellists are a little shy
2. Promote but don't sell - don't hijack the session into a sales pitch at other people's expense
3. Humour not humiliation - don't belittle or criticise your fellow panellists to get a cheap laugh
4. Humility rather than smugness - don't batter everyone with your sales figures or the size of your advance (yes, I said advance) or with how clever or funny you are

Or maybe these principles aren't as well understood as they should be. At last weekend's Crimefest, I witnessed numerous instances of mike-hogging and selling, where well-behaved panellists lost out to some of their more vocal and pushy colleagues.

Even in my panel, (See Graveyard Shift), Michael Morley (a TV producer turned novelist who has just published his first novel, Spider) was guilty of reading out two paragraphs of his book at the end of the session. He was trying to illustrate how your imagination can lead to small things running away with themselves and suddenly acquiring a greater significance - a good point, granted. But surely not one that warranted the four other writers, all equally keen and deserving for the opportunity to promote their work, being forced to sit there while he turned the session into a private marketing event. The look on moderator Declan Hughes' face was priceless - the sort of strained smile that losing nominees give on Oscar night.

Maybe I'm just being too sensitive. Michael seemed like a nice guy - family man, successful and interesting TV career. In fact I later went and brought a copy of Spider, because I thought it sounded interesting. So this was probably just him being unthoughtful, rather than showing a deliberate lack of professional courtesy. The same probably couldn't be said for Tony Broadbent, a thriller writer who I shared a panel with a few years ago, who started every reply, interruption and "If I could just build on that ..." comment, with variations on, "Well as you will see in my novel X,..." or "Well when I was writing my novel X."

I think I was asked to sign about twenty books after that session. He had about five.

There is a God.

Graveyard Shift

2008-06-04T16:04:00.006Z

So it's finally out there! The Gilded Seal has hit the shelves and the agony has only just begun. Tuesday morning next week is when I'll get the first TCM (Total Consumer Market) "flash" numbers from Nielsen and a feel for how the book is doing. With any luck ... God I hate this time - the feeling of powerlessness, of my fate being out of my control and in the hands of chance and a fair wind.

The Tom Clancy story is a good one. Having (amazingly) failed to get a publisher for The Hunt for Red October, he eventually convinced the Naval Press to knock out a small run given his submarine warfare based plot. A shipment ended up in a small bookstore in Washington DC and a copy sold to a woman. The next day, she returned and bought the entire shipment - apparently her husband had been so enthralled he'd stayed up all night to finish it and was now insisting on handing copies out as gifts at a cocktail party they were hosting that night. Two weeks later Ronald Reagan, a guest at the party, was seen getting off Air Force One with a copy under his arm. When asked what it was he gave the title and said that it had been written by "a great American patriot." The rest, as they say, is history. Just imagine if Gordon Brown was seen reading one of my books...not entirely convinced it would help!

The good news is that Harper have really pulled the sales and marketing stops out this time. The image above is the poster that they are running in four and six sheet versions at UK airports and railway stations serving airports. And go into any bookshop for the next few months and the chances are you'll find it in the chart or in their front table summer promotions. What do you mean you thought that books were placed there at random or based on merit? True the bookshops have to accept you into their promotions based on whether they think you will sell enough copies, but you have to pay for the privilege of them making money. With any luck, because it's the summer, it will hang around a little longer than the average 6 weeks that most books spend out before relegation to the shelves at the back of the shop.

Anyway, with all this going on, I haven't really thought about this weekend and the panel I am doing at Crimefest in Bristol. You may think think that a graveyard shift is midnight to six am as a security guard on an industrial estate, but you'd be wrong. It's 9:00am on Saturday 7th June 2008 on a panel discussing Chills and Thrills (whatever the hell that's meant to mean) when you just know that everyone will have been out on the lash the night before and that the room will therefore me empty. This is the equivalent of being on BBC3 at 3am.

Maybe Gordon Brown being seen reading my book wouldn't be so bad after all ...

Share my pain

2008-05-23T11:07:00.004Z

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

2008-05-12T21:11:00.015Z

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

2008-04-27T08:28:00.007Z

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

2008-04-16T20:13:00.008Z

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

2008-04-04T10:31:00.004Z

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?

2008-03-24T13:17:00.009Z

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?

2008-03-02T17:28:00.009Z

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.

Dr No strikes again?

2008-02-21T20:46:00.009Z

First the good news - those nice boys at Crimesquad have named me as one of their top ten books for 2007 (click here). Last year's news you may (quite accurately say) but they only just told me!

Secondly the bad news - another set of priceless paintings has gone missing, this time in Zurich. Four thieves broke into the Emil Buehrle Collection, threatened a guard (with a gun) and walked out with $160 million dollars of Impressionist art including a Monet, a Degas a Van Gogh and, most valuable of all, Boy in a Red Jacket, by Cezanne (pictured). This only a few days after two Picassos were stolen from an exhibition, also near Zurich.

Is this a blip or part of a long term trend? According to one survey, the value of contemporary art has risen by 55% in the past year alone. The record price paid for a painting in 2004, $104 million, has been surpassed four times in the last year, with Jackson Pollock's No 5, 1949, topping the list at $140 million. At the contemporary art sales in New York in 2007, a total of $837 million of sales was achieved by the main auction houses, with more than 120 artists' records broken. The comparative total last November was a mere $550 million.

The Zurich thefts are a potent reminder that the inexorable rise in art prices over the last ten years has come at a cost - As the expression goes, where there’s brass, there’s muck. Often called the world’s second oldest profession, art crime is believed by the FBI to be the world’s fourth largest area of criminal activity after drug smuggling, arms dealing and money laundering, and to be worth some $6bn a year. 90 to 95 percent of stolen art is never recovered.

The question I am asked most often is who might be behind the thefts, given the well documented difficulties in selling them on the open market. Well there are four main theories which I thought I'd share with you now:

1. Dr No - Many claim that these priceless works are stolen to order, with visions of criminal masterminds bent on world domination decking out their hollowed-out volcanoes with Vermeers and Renoirs looming large in people’s imaginations. While there seems little doubt some of this goes on, it is probably not as prevalent as people (like me) would like it to be.

2. Funny Money - More likely, is that they are taken as a form of currency with which to sweeten a drugs deal or to pay for something, then circulating for years in the criminal underworld – in 1986, for example, the IRA leader Martin Cahill stole 18 paintings worth £30 million from Russborough House in the hope of exchanging them for weapons.

3. Ransom - You'll never get the police or the insurance companies to admit to it, but thieves often try to ransom whatever they've taken back to the original owners and money does change hands in the form of finder’s fees and “legal costs.” Some have said, although it's wrong I'm sure, that the Tate went down this path when it successfully recovered its two stolen Turners

4. Laurel and Hardy - The rather more prosaic, but altogether more likely answer is that most of these thefts are entirely opportunistic, the thief only belatedly realizing the value of what they have taken and the difficulty of shifting it. This certainly appears to be the case with the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, found last year.

The early signs are that the Zurich heist was a Laurel and Hardy affair - two of the paintings have been recovered already, dumped in a car. The question is, when will the other two turn up? Assuming the panicked thieves haven't already burnt them ...

Damned if I do...

2008-02-09T19:22:00.000Z

So here's the thing.

My editor, Bruce, has given me a manuscript to read, in the hope that I will provide a quote. It's by an American writer that Harper Collins are planning to publish here, and they want to stick a line from me on the back. Something like "If you read one thriller this year, make it this one", or "A new and thrilling voice", or "A roller-coaster ride that left me breathless and dying for more." You get the cut of my jibe.

I have to admit, I was actually quite flattered to be asked in a 'well, they must think someone out there values my opinion' sort of way. And I have to admit that I've benefited from this myself in the past so felt like I should return the favour to someone else - Christopher Reich and Jack Higgins "blurbed" (that's the technical term, I'm told) my first two books and it definitely helped provide a bit of credibility for an otherwise unknown writer that the reviewers had (predictably) passed over in favour of [insert title of a biography of inconsequential person drawn from the bowels of history or some such rubbish] that only went on to sell five copies - bitter, moi?

So I agreed. Big mistake. You see the problem is, this book is utterly pony (US translation: pony trap = crap). I barely made it through the first five pages before giving up, my eyes bleeding. The pity is the premise is actually quite good, but this seemed to be an example of the type of book that gives thriller writers a bad name - nice idea, but (in my humble opinion) shit writing.

What's worrying me now, is whether Messers Reich and Higgins thought the same when they read The Double Eagle and The Black Sun, but said nice things because that's how the way the game is played. Is there some sort of prisoner's dilemma for writers - henceforth known as a writer's dilemma? - where faced with the choice of slagging another writer off, and risking them returning the favour in some public and humiliating way, everyone stays schtum in the hope that everyone will roll over so their tummies can be tickled?

Of course I could just blurb it now and be done with it - the three I wrote above without even opening it would do - but then if I'm right and it really is pants, then by association, it'll drag me and my books down too.

So what should I do?

1. Refuse to blurb it, piss off Bruce, break the unwritten writer code and make a mortal enemy, should he ever find out, of the snubbed writer? Or,

2. Swallow my few remaining vestiges of pride (and anything I ever held dear about the innate beauty of the English language), blurb the bloody thing and take one for the team?

Answers on a POSTcard please.

***

P.S. Diz, thanks for your comments on my Roman Holiday post - I agree, sometimes I feel like I'm sitting here sending fireworks into the air without ever knowing if anyone's reading it! But then maybe that is a blogger's burden ... after all, no-one is forcing me to write the bloody thing!

Torture Porn

2008-01-25T18:03:00.000Z

I did an interview for Sky a few weeks ago. Well not actually for Sky, but for a show on Sky, or at least on one of the channels carried by Sky that is sandwiched somewhere between BidUp TV and World's Deadliest Hamsters.

Anyway, they asked me to choose a short extract from the new book The Gilded Seal and without really thinking about it, I gravitated towards a rather gruesome scene where a naked man fondles himself while watching someone get crucified - yes, believe it or not, I did manage to mark my UK television debut by saying the word penis.

The choice of scene was instinctive rather than considered, but on the train back to London I began to wonder if I hadn't rather let myself down. Had I, dazzled by the glitz and glamour of daytime TV, passed over the subtle charms of some of my more dramatic and lyrical scenes (yes there are some!) for the crowd-pleasing certainty of a bit of random violence and structured perversion. Had I become a pornographer?

There's been a lot of debate over the Torture Porn phenomenon over the past few months, or as one inspired commentator labeled it, Goreno. Any of you who have seen Saw, Hostel or Captivity will know what I am talking about, but for those of you who haven't (and can therefore still go backpacking in Eastern Europe without fear of someone taking a power drill to your thigh), this term describes the increasing appetite (some would argue arousal) of cinema audiences for the depiction of horrific acts of sadism (most often against young women), where the camera is as unflinching as the violence is extreme. Jaded by graphic violence, some, it seems, are turned on by more extreme thrills ... torture prolongs the suffering and, for some viewers, the adrenalin.

Not that Hollywood is the only culprit. The BBFC recently refused the video game Manhunt a license on the grounds of its "unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying". And an unforgiveably hostile article filed after last year's Harrogate crime festival in the Independent used the same argument to put the boot into modern crime fiction, saying that "Like the Sunday gutter-press, it offers a titillating, vicarious pleasure from what it purports to expose and condemn, turning violence into a kind of pornography and contributing to the coarsening of our national sensibilities." Utter crap of course, but it might me wonder if I had fallen into this trap? Was I appealing to humanity's basest instincts for a quick sale and a sharp intake of breath?

I'd like to think not, although I have to admit that I find violence much easier to write about than, say, sex. A love scene makes me feel 15 again - all fumbling hands and awkward silences. But a violent scene can have a certain stylised elegance, edge and excitement that makes it strangely compelling to write, and captivating to read. You know what, it's fun to shock people. How many of you read this post just because of its title?

At the first writer panel I was ever invited to appear on (Left Coast Crime in Bristol in 2005), a member of the audience asked us if books could ever be too violent. A few of my fellow panelists were adamant that they couldn't, as long as the violence was necessary to the story, a rather convenient get-out clause if you ask me, along similar lines to the "public interest" one the tabloids trot out whenever their debateble paparazzi tactics are called into question. None the less, I grudgingly have to agree - The Black Sun featured two live amputations which I would argue were central to the story and understanding the characters of those involved! The danger, however, is that "quickie" violence becomes a convenient and crowd-pleasing (read "lazy") way to establishing character, motivation and pace.

I don't know about you, but I always find the violence you can't see or read about far more effective. Remember the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr Blonde severs the policeman's ear off-screen to the sound of Stuck in the middle with you. Or how much more frightening the original Alien is than any of its sequels precisely because you never catch sight of the creature (better explosions in Aliens though). And how terrifying The Silence of the Lambs is, even though you thankfully never see Buffalo Bill actually do anything to his unfortunate captives. In skillful hands, the threat of violence is far more chilling than the act itself.

Which brings me back to my interview on Sky and my choice of scene. Did I chose it to shock? Certainly not consciously, although it's hard to remember exactly what runs through your head when the studio lights are on and the clock is ticking. The question is as long as it's a good scene, does it even matter?

***

P.S. I really am rubbish at this blogging lark! My last post before this one was on 2nd December 2007, for God's sake. Contrast that to the brilliant four-letter-splattered, alcohol-inspired Arsenal blog I subscribe to, which I even received on Christmas Day! So my New Year's Resolution is to drink more - more booze = more blog

Push my buttons

2007-12-02T10:03:00.000Z

Back in the summer, my publishers came up with a brilliant idea. Why not devise an online game as part of the publicity campaign for the new book, and then scatter it across the Internet to help spread the word. Great idea, I said. We could set it in the Louvre and have a thief dodging infrared lasers to steal a painting. Hell, while we're at it, let's have him stealing the Mona Lisa!

And then a moment of pure genius. Why not have him collect some items as he makes his way from room to room, that help him escape? Some ... hieroglyphs (you have to have read the book to understand why) which need to be arranged in the right order? And - wait for it - let's print the hieroglyphs in the right order on the cover of the hardback, so that people who have actually bought the book can finish the game quicker and have a better chance of winning some prizes!!! What people in the trade (don't ask me which trade) call an online promotional tie-in. Go on, admit it, it's pretty cool.

And gues what, they went away and did just that - don't believe me? I'll wait here while you go and get your copy and have a look ... See. The symbols are all there.

The only problem was that, as far as I can tell, having done all the hard work, they didn't let anyone know about the actual game. Not even me. I only found it because someone emailed in and told me (thanks Kate) that they'd found it on some random site.

And the pity is it's brilliant! Perfect for wasting time at work in the run up to Christmas (only remember to have a spreadsheet open that you can quickly switch to.) Maybe they're holding their fire until the paperback comes out in the summer?

Well there's no reason you should wait that long - give it a go and tell me what you think. Click here for The Gilded Seal, the game - and remember to have your copy to hand!

http://www.ugoplayer.com/games/thegildedseal.html

TV Time!

2007-11-15T18:55:00.000Z

Okay so it's not Parksinson and the channel's wedged somewhere between QVC and re-runs of Hogan's Heroes, but here's your chance to hear me making a fool of myself being inteviewed by Nina Sebastiane (yes, you would) on BookZone about The Gilded Seal.

Read it and you’ll love it

2007-11-05T22:20:00.000Z

This blog is a great way of venting, but for once I have good news to share. The guys at Crimesquad have named me as their book of the month and written a great review which I wanted to share, because if I don't tell you, who can I tell! It's followed by a Q&A you might also find interesting.

"James Twining is fast becoming a shining star in the thriller-writing firmament – and justly so.

Using the clever conceit of basing his stories on real art world cases, he weaves brilliantly plotted, intelligent, believable and highly literate stories from the threads. In a genre somewhat dominated by American authors he deserves to take his rightful place on the world stage – and this could be the major breakthrough book that does it. Move over Dan Brown!

All the elements of a truly great thriller are here – a brilliant central premise, strong main characters, believable villains, fabulous and interesting locations, a dash of romance and a very decent dose of death and mayhem. Tom Kirk is also a more confident and likeable hero in this third outing. His connection with and understanding of the underworld characters that he encounters, and a strong sense of natural justice, often belie his putative role as a ‘good guy’. Kirk is tortured by his past and still uncertain quite where he fits in. Both perfect ingredients for a classic hero.

The story moves along at a cracking pace and – utilising the classic style of the genre – manages to mix parallel storylines into a delightful cocktail of cliffhangers, twists and turns. It’s genuine page-turning stuff.

However, what makes this thriller stand out from the crowd, aside from the stroke-of-genius link with one of the world’s most famous art icons, is its truly outstanding use of language. The writing is often breathtaking. Whole passages and key phrases literally sing out. The author’s intelligence and empathy for his characters make this a genre-busting novel that deserves to rate serious literary merit.

Buy it, read it and you’ll love it. Guaranteed"

Party time

2007-11-02T11:54:00.000Z

Last week went from bad to worse. As if my two near-death experiences at the hands of BA and then a suicidal taxi driver (See Roman Holiday) weren't punishment enough, I was then subjected to the excruciating torture of a book signing on Saturday morning. Not that a book signing is in of itself painful, of course. That is unless no-one turns up to get their books signed...

Actually, I'm lying, as I did sell 5 copies of The Gilded Seal. Five whole copies in four hours. That's 1.25 books an hour! Believe me, there's nothing more depressing than loitering expectantly around a stack of your own books, nursing a tepid cup of tea, looking up expectantly everytime the door opens while trying not to look desperate, and then having to grit your teeth as they sweep past and head straight for the latest Katie Price or Jamie Oliver. The shopkeeper claimed it was the slowest Saturday she'd had since she'd opened the shop, but then after the week I'd just had, that seemed entirely predictable! Oh well, from small acorns etc. etc.

Anyway, all that was soon forgotten on Monday night at the publication party for The Gilded Seal at Adam Street. There were about 80 people there - friends, fellow writers, journalists and publishers - and we sold over 60 books. In fact the bookshop ran out and by the end of the evening was taking orders. My publishers Bruce said some very nice and completely true things about me and I mumbled some slightly incoherent but no less heartfelt response. Everyone was polite and clapped, helped no doubt by the free booze. Happy times.

One of the things I mentioned in my speech was that I'd heard that morning from my German publishers that The Double Eagle had sold very well over there. That news made me feel, let's be honest, pretty good about life, until my wife pointed out that this effectively made me the "David Hasselhof" of the thriller world - for those of you who don't know, David Hasselhof is famous in the UK for being a hugely popular singer in Germany but no-where else - he was even invited to sing at the offical ceremony that marked the bringing down of the Berlin Wall!

To be honest, I didn't mind the reference. After all, like many of you, when facing a particularly tough dilemma or decision, I often ask myself:

"What would the Hoff do?"

Roman Holiday

2007-10-30T22:19:00.000Z

I've just got back from Rome where I spent one of the most self-indulgent weekends of my life. Actually, that probably makes it sound a bit racier than it actually was - sorry, no torrid revelations this time round! What I actually mean was that for the first time in a long time, I did something just for the sake of doing it. There was no reason for it, no deadline or pressing commitment, no ulterior motive. It was done because it could be. Because I wanted to. And there is a strange, childish freedom in that I haven't felt since ... well, since a long time ago.

So what was this defiant statement of personal freedom? Well when you put it like that, it sounds a bit lame. But I'm too far into this now to rewrite it, so here goes: I saw every single Caravaggio painting in Rome. Bit random, right? But then that's half the point.

In case you're wondering, there are actually 22 Caravaggios in Rome. 21 if you want to avoid a diplomatic incident and count the Vatican separately. 20 if you want to exclude the St Francis in the Chiesa dei Cappuccini, whose attribution is much debated. In case you're interested I've provided the details below so you can complete the pilgrimage yourselves on your next trip.

It was a fantastic experience. Rome is so jam-packed full of the most amazing art and buildings that, after a while, it can all sort of fade away into a jumbled haze. Focusing on this one painter and on seeing his works and his works alone, not only turned the weekend into a bit of a treasure hunt as I tracked them all down, but also gave me a completely different, and much deeper, perspective on Caravaggio. I'm still not sure why I like his paintings so much. Partly the daring and subversive compositions and subject matter, partly the dramatic use of light and dark and the incredible faces. Mostly though, I think, because of who he was. It is a wonderful paradox that such a flawed man - he was a noted gambler, drinker, fighter and, ultimately, murderer - from such lowly origins could rise to paint with so much daring and originality and beauty.

But just before you start worrying that I've been carried away right up my own a**, you'll be pleased to know that BA brought me back down to earth (very nearly literally) with a bang. Actually, it was less of a bang that a sudden loss of power in the cabin at 30,000 feet, a marked change in the engine note, and then a slightly strained announcement from the Captain that we would immediately be diverting to Nice. Well, it could be worse, I thought, the image of a pleasant meal in the Vieux Port springing into my head. No such luck. Having staged a brief re-enactment of Bridge over the River Kwai by keeping us on board for two hours in temperatures of 38 degrees, they eventually bussed us to the terminal and then left us there for another two hours before finally announcing what everyone else had already guessed anyway - the plane wasn't going anywhere that night.

Having by now lost all confidence in BA's ability to manage its way out of the proverbial paper bag, I took my fate into my own hands and booked myself on the next available flight out of Marseille the following morning. But the best was yet to come. My taxi driver, it turned out, had recently got divorced and was intent on flooring it the whole way there to try and take his mind off things. Now I'm no psychologist, but even I can diagnose someone who sends texts while doing 170k an hour, as verging on the suicidal. Two hours later I staggered white-faced into the Novotel in Vitrolles (never, ever go there if you don't want to catch something) and then was up 3 hours later (and another £90 down) to catch the first flight home.

I guess that self-indulgence, like all good things in life, comes at a heavy price!

***

Caravaggio Tour of Rome:

Galleria Borghese (need to book in advance)
- Sick Bacchus
- Boy with a basket of fruit
- Madonna dei Palafrenieri
- St Jerome
- St John the Baptist
- David with the head of Goliath

Santa Maria dei Popolo
- Crucifixion of St Peter
- Conversion of St Paul

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini
- Judith and Holofernes (above right)
- Narcissus

Chiese dei Cappuccini
- St Francis

San Luigi dei Francesci
- The calling of St Matthew (above left)
- The martyrdom of St Matthew
- St Matthew and the Angel

Sant' Agostino
- Madonna of the Pilgrims

Galleria Doria Pamphilj
- Magdalene
- Rest on flight to Egypt

Musei Capitolini
- The Fortune Teller
- St John the Baptist

Galleria Corsini
- St John the Baptist

Odescalchi Collection
- The conversion of Saint Paul

Pinacoteca Vaticana
- The Entombment

Into the void

2007-10-22T07:07:00.000Z

So there you have it. The Gilded Seal is published and out there, and now all I can do is sit back and wait and see. It's a horrible feeling, this sense of powerlessness, of things being outside your control and influence. It reminds you of how big a role luck can play in things, which for a logical, rational thinker like me, is an unpleasant truth.

I don't know if you have ever been bungy jumping, but there is this moment, just after you have finally resolved to tip yourself forward towards the void, that you think, 'Christ, what am I doing? What if the rope snaps? What if the ankle restraints don't hold?' But by then, of course, it's too late - your body weight has already carried you past the point of no return. That's where I am now, plunging headfirst towards the infathomable waters of commercial success, worrying about things that it's too late to change and that were, in any case, decided months and months ago in a darkened room between my publishers and the various retailers. (Sorry about the picture, but it made me laugh!)

It doesn't help that I made the fatal mistake on Friday of checking whether my local Waterstones were stocking the book. They weren't yet. In a huff, I headed down to Border's where I had better news - 10 copies in a plum position in the middle of the New Releases bay. Of course, it was difficult to see them over the mountain range of new Ian Rankin hardbacks, but still, they were there. Finally at Heathrow Terminal 1, I headed expectantly over to the books only WHSmith - not a sausage. You can have all the luck in the world, but if the book's not on the shelf ... As you can imagine, I left a rather concerned voicemail for Bruce, my editor, who assured me that it was all down to delivery and stock rotation dates and that the orders were already looking better than the previous two books. Let's hope so!

The good news is that I have already begun to hear back from some of you who have all (so far at least) loved it. But please don't tell me, tell all your friends! The reviews have begun to trickle in too - Gateway Monthly, one of the top online review sites, says:

"James's knowledge of the art world and local history (in this case the Paris catacombs) is exemplary and assists in the credibility of the plot. Deservedly named as one of the top six thriller writers in the UK, James goes from strength to strength. Tom Kirk is a real winner of a character, and the books just get better and better. A real pleasure to read, 10/10 for enjoyment - absolutely first class entertainment. I'd list him in my top four favourite modern authors without hesitation."

And The Daily Sport, no less, commented:

"The plod should be twitching at Twining's latest, about a £100 million da Vinci theft. If you follow the news you'll soon see why. Hyper dapper art-blagger Tom Kirk returns to hunt down the painting, quickly finding himself in the middle of an even bigger mystery. Glamour is supplied to the intricate, interwining ploys by a sexy FBI agent, Jennifer Browne. As the corpses pile up, the pair's destinies merge with Paris and Napoleonic secrets that need unearthing. Ripping stuff."

I don't know why I'm worrying. When a review starts with the immortal line "The plod should be twitching..." and then continues with "Hyper dapper art-blagger ...", things can only get better!

***

Book signings
I am out and about at a couple of signings over the next few weeks, so do come and see me if you can:

Saturday 27th October:
Chorleywood Bookshop - 10:00am - 12:00pm (4 New Parade, Chorleywood, Herts, WD3 5NJ)
Gerrard's Cross Bookshop 2:00pm - 4:00pm (12a Packhorse Road, Gerrard's Cross, SL9 7QE)

Tuesday 30th October:
Official booksigning at Goldsboro Books at 1pm (7 Cecil Court WC2N 4EZ)

PR without the pain

2007-10-07T22:33:00.000Z

My problem has always been that I've never had a life threatening disease, or lost a loved-one to a freak accident, or been a drug addict, or been beaten by a drunken relative, or been through a harrowing divorce. Unencumbered by any of these traumatic life events, it's proved virtually impossible to get any PR coverage for my books!

You think I'm joking, but you'd be amazed at the difficulty in getting any media interest without the benevolent shadow of some sort of personal disaster. I actually had one magazine ask once if I could emphasise (i.e. invent) some marital difficulties because they had a "writers have dysfunctional personal relationships" angle to their piece. Charming.

The problem is that, ironically, non-fiction sells fiction. In other words, journalists are always looking for the personal stories and real-life angles to tell their story. That's fine - I understand that. What's annoying is that all too often the balance seems to tilt towards the "misery memoir" end of the scale. I guess bad news sells. Especially if it's other people's bad news. As the lyrics go in the fantastic Avenue Q:

GARY AND NICKY:Schadenfreude!

GARY COLEMAN:People taking pleasure in your pain!

NICKY:Oh, Schadenfreude, huh?What's that, some kinda Nazi word?

GARY COLEMAN:Yup! It's German for "happiness at the misfortune of others!"

NICKY:"Happiness at the misfortune of others." That is German!

The people at Harper Collins have always done as good a job as they can, but the odds are stacked against them. In fact it seems to get harder with each book as at least when you're a debut novelist it's easier to create a bit of buzz and excitement. By the time you're onto your second you're already yesterday's news!

The great news is that the recovery by the police of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder that I reported to you the other day has provided me with an unexpected PR windfall without me having to simulate any sort of terminal disease. As an example, there was a great piece in The Daily Record and a brief mention in The Scotsman, with lots more on the way.

Bring it on, that's what I say. Which reminds me, one of the great marketing things Harper Collins have set up are a series of competitions to win a bottle of champagne and some copies of the new book.

In case you're interested here are some links to where the competition is being run:

The Times

Hello!

All in London

View London

Good luck!!

Stranger than Fiction

2007-10-04T21:57:00.000Z

Is history repeating itself?

A few weeks before the US publication of The Double Eagle in 2005, the US Government made a sensational announcement. Ten 1933 Double Eagles, the same incredibly rare $20 coins that feature at the heart of my novel, had been seized from the family of one of the dealers implicated in the original 1940s enquiry. Given the plot of my novel (the recovery of five Double Eagle coins stolen from Fort Knox), it was an incredible coincidence that did not go unnoticed by American reviewers at the time:

"Last month, 10 double eagle coins that disappeared 70 years ago mysteriously resurfaced. Federal agents fell on them as though they were grenades. They are now back in Fort Knox. Twining's publicist at Harper Collins should send the Secret Service a fruit basket."

Now, this very evening, I read that the police have recovered da Vinci's Madonna of the Yarnwinder, a painting worth around $70 million that was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in a daring raid in 2003. So what, you might say? Well here's the thing - that theft and the painting's fate form an integral part of the plot of The Gilded Seal!

If this happens much more often, the cops will be paying me to feature high profile heists in my books in the hope that they might have a chance of recovering whatever was taken! I should charge a commission. Or at least place a bet.

Maybe my laptop has had some strange gypsy curse or Voodoo spell placed on it?

Squeaky bum time

2007-09-27T21:46:00.001Z

I'm up to 11 fans on my Facebook fansite now. Eleven. Onze. Elf. Once. Undici. Whichever way you say it, it doesn't get any bigger. Come on guys. This is getting serious now. Here's a bribe. My publication party is going to be on 29th October in London - I still have a few spare tickets if you'd like to come. Just drop me a line.

Anyway, a little over two weeks to go until the publication of The Gilded Seal and the sleepless nights have started in earnest. You would have thought that after a few books, I'd be a bit more chilled about the whole thing, but if anything, it's got worse with each book.

Maybe that's because I had no real expectations for how The Double Eagle would do at all - to be honest, I was just grateful it was on the shelf. When it sold well I was both surprised and excited. But these feelings were soon tempered by the realisation that its unforeseen success had subtly changed the rules of the game. Naive enthusiasm was no longer a viable strategy - instead, I had stepped into a quicksand of insecurity and stress that seems to rise a little higher with every book.

By the time it came to publishing The Black Sun, therefore, my youthful insouciance had been replaced by a dry-throat, sweaty palms and daily calls with my publisher about the pre-order numbers and whether they were any good. And needless to say, as soon as it was out, I was checking on my Amazon author rankings every hour, on the hour, to see how things were going - oh look, I've moved form 3,523 to 3,428. Yippee.

Now, with The Gilded Seal I seem to have translated my nervousness into insomnia and an inexplicable craving for Jaffa Cakes. Is this what it's like to be pregnant, I wonder?

Actually, that's not quite such a fanciful idea as it may seem (ignoring the stretch marks, bleeding gums, occasional incontinence and violent mood swings, of course.) You see, the really stressful thing about an impending publication / birth is not the sales numbers (although God knows I could do with the cash!) but the thought of releasing this fragile young creature that I have conceived, created and nurtured through a difficult childhood, into the lawless, uncertain jungle of the high-street to fend for itself amidst sharp-fanged reviewers and an apathetic media. Anyone who's seen the Discovery Channel will know that nature can be very cruel.

Having said all that, The Gilded Seal's prospects are good. In fact they're very good if you believe the early feedback I have been getting from a couple of reviewers and journalists who have been sent advance copies. Bruce my editor, says it's the best one yet and I'm just praying he's right. Anyway, ultimately the only opinion that counts is yours, so you'll have to let me know what you think when you finally get your hands on a copy.

Now I'm off to lay awake for six hours grinding my teeth until I fall asleep an hour before my alarm goes off...

Sometimes I wonder why I got into this crazy game!

Fan Club

2007-09-16T20:52:00.000Z

Now I don't normally like to blow my own trumpet (although I knew someone at school who was double jointed and used to smugly claim that he could) but in this case I couldn't resist.

Yes, it's official, I have a fan club. And no it wasn't set up by my mum. It's on the stupidly popular Facebook and was set up by my one celebrity fan, Ben Peyton. If you watch The Bill or Casualty, you'll know who I mean. Oh yes, I don't just have any old riff-raff fans you know! Nothing but the best for you.

Now for the bad news. Despite Ben's best efforts, at the last count it only had 7 members. Yes that's right, seven. And one of those is my mum! So come on people, throw me a bone here. Sign up to my fan club please, as this is now getting rather embarrassing.

You need to be registered on Facebook - once in, simply search under James Twining - Unofficial Fan Club and then follow the instructions to join. I've no idea what treats Ben has in store for you once there - you'll have to wait and see...

***

How quickly things change. Having boasted of my manly DIY prowess last week, I have suffered an debilitating reversal of fortune in the virility stakes. I have lost my mobile phone.

Actually, to be more accurate, my wife lost it. But that's hardly the point. I feel like a knight without a horse, a sharpshooter without a gun, Indiana Jones without his hat. My whole life was in that bloody thing and now it's probably half way to Nigeria with a container load of flat screen TVs and printer cartridges.

Mobile phones are unique for their size being inversely proportional to their desirability - the smaller and thinner they are, the sexier. And believe me mine was tiny, not to mention equipped with phenomenal staying power (battery life) - the sort of phone that had women blushing every time I flopped it out onto the bar.

It's replacement, in contrast, has stripped away my mojo - it's the size of a brick and equipped with with the world's smallest (black and white) screen and massive keys that seem to have been designed to help children learn to count. I've heard of retro chic, but this is ridiculous - it's a museum piece. Not to mention the embarrassment caused when I put it in my back pocket yesterday - I'm reliably informed that the tell-tale posterior bulge made it look like I'd had an unfortunate accident.

Oh joy.

Man Sized

2007-09-01T20:56:00.000Z

God I feel virile! Not in a rip her knickers off and ride her bareback sort of way (at least no more than usual). I'm talking about a much more basic, instinctive, hunter-gatherer sort of virility. The sort that drinks beer, farts a lot, finds the word "bottom" funny, watches endless repeats of Buffy (or is that just me?) and can, whatever the time, city or state of inebriation, navigate unerringly to the nearest kebab van. I'm talking about being a man.

You see my wife had this brilliant idea. "Let's stay at home this summer," She suggested. "We can spend some time in the garden and go on some nice day trips in and around London. It'll be fun." And then to clinch it. "We'll save some money."

I don't think she could have been any more wrong. Summer. What summer? It rained almost non-stop for the whole two weeks I took off. The only time we set foot in the garden was to check that next door's cat hadn't drowned in the paddling pool. And as for saving money, it would have been cheaper to fly all four of us first class to the Seychelles. You see when the weather's that bad, a shopping mall is the only place you can get out of the house and stay dry. So my wife has finally got the new sitting room furniture she'd been angling for all year. In fact, now I think about it, I wonder if that wasn't the plan all along ...

Not that the two weeks were entirely wasted. It was brilliant to spend time with the girls and I, thank God, slowly inched my way towards having the vague outline of a story and characters for Book 4 which I'm getting quite excited about. Hooray. Plus I finally got round to all those annoying little jobs I'd been putting off - repainting the front gate, varnishing the back door, repairing the guttering, rerouting a waste pipe. I bet you never knew I was so handy! I even, after one particularly violent downpour had left an inch of water lapping against my french windows, resolved to clean my drains which were quite clearly blocked.

I tackled this with my father-in-law who assured me it would be easy. That was until we popped the manhole cover. We found three feet of foul and dark water, peopled by sleek brown shapes that were nosing their way through swirling icebergs of rotten tissue paper like seals. The smell made me heave and it was all I could do not to stumble head first into the gaping opening. My instinct was to call for Dyno-ripoff but then some deeper, primitive urge took over. No. I didn't need any help. I could protect my family from the rising tide of the turd army myself.

We went out a brought a rodding set which I assembled and fed into the opening. A couple of firm thrusts and I broke through, the drain spasming as it emptied its contents with a wild, sucking noise. I glanced up at the house exultantly, a strange glow washing over me as I saw my family staring at me proudly through the glass. Was this, I wondered, what it felt like when you brought home a fresh kill to your cave or fought off a raid from a neighbouring village? Turds banished. House safe. £120 saved. Job done.

It took two days to wash the smell off me. It was worth it.

P.S. Publication date in the UK for The Gilded Seal is October 15th. Anyone fancy coming to the launch party in London? Let me know and we'll see what I can do.

4th book syndrome

2007-07-31T21:36:00.000Z

Fellow thriller writer (doing annoyingly well) Tom Cain has posted about the trauma of writing 'The Second Novel', especially when burdened by weight of expectation following the success of the first. He drew the comparison with rock groups, who pack their first album full of the material they have spent years developing in a friend's garage, and then find themselves short of inspiration (and time as they are now on the road) to complete the second.

This got me thinking, because although I have had Dodgy Title Syndrome and Cover Selection Syndrome (all well documented authorial afflictions), Second Novel Syndrome sort of passed me by - The Black Sun had taken shape well before I'd finished The Double Eagle. In fact I think I'd finished the first draft while I was still copy editing the first book. And the third novel, The Gilded Seal, was almost fully formed by the time I finally put pen to paper. Perhaps, I thought, I had some genetic immunity to the diseases regularly contracted by other writers. Maybe I was special.

How wrong I was. A few days ago I received a message from longstanding Tom Kirk fan and email correspondent Jason Watson:

"I know its very early (well maybe not that much) but have you had any thoughts on book 4?"

An innocent enough question, you may think. And not unreasonable given looming mid 2008 deadline, as he helpfully noted. But a question, nonetheless, that allowed me to complete a process of self-diagnosis that I had rather been shying away from. Yes, I admit it - I am suffering a severe bout of Fourth Novel Syndrome.

It's so embarrassing. I barely dare go out, knowing that everyone will be whispering "Look, do you see him? That's the writer I was telling you about. The one who doesn't really know what his next book will be." It's so unexpected too, considering that when I first went in to meet Bruce (my editor) I outlined five or six Tom Kirk plot ideas which have either been used by me, copied by other writers or simply don't work.

Of course it's not that bad - I'm a writer for God's sake, so allow me some creative licence to create a drama out of a crisis!! I do, believe it or not, have some vague elements that are swimming around in my head - Caravaggio, Rome, the Mafia, grave robbing, dysfunctional families, matricide, Geneva's airport warehouses, yachts, the Medici ... But I haven't quite been able to pull them together yet. But that's fine - I think people produce their best stuff when the pressure is on. In fact I'm quite excited.

And in any case, rather than focus on the depressing image of failed rock groups, I have turned to the movie business as a source of inspiration. Martin Scorsese for instance, who had a run that included Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York and The Departed, proves that you can actually come up with the goods again and again. Or Quentin Tarantino who directed Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill B... Okay, so that's where the analogy falls down, but you know what I mean.

So while Tom Cain scours the world for another famous celebrity that he can kill off in an accident (your words, not mine Tom!), I'm off to knock all these ideas in my head into a story. Or write that brilliant first album.

***

As an aside, the fall-out from my account of goings on at the Harrogate crime festival continues ... My publishers (in the shapely form of my publicist Kelly) have received anonymous voice mails demanding that I remove the offending post. Meanwhile I have received messages from phantom email addresses questioning my version of events and suggesting I correct them. But you will be pleased to know that having taken soundings from some of my fellow bloggers as well as people who were actually there, I have decided not to compromise by journalistic integrity by censoring myself. It happened just the way I described it and if you don't like it, then tough. (This is how Bob Woodward must have felt when he blew the lid on Watergate.)

Harrogate - A to Z

2007-07-20T20:21:00.001Z

Friday 19th July - 7:50am

D Day. Or rather DdM day. Only a few hours and a disgusting British Rail cooked breakfast now stand between me and my du Maurier panel and professional humiliation.

Actually, it's not that bad. I have somehow managed to pack four novels and 8 short stories into the last five days. And after a shaky start, I found in My Cousin Rachel a wonderfully compelling and beautifully written novel. Not to mention the coded sub-text reference to anal sex in Rebecca that I'm still debating whether I should bring up!

By the way, if you happen to be near a radio, Radio York is interviewing me at about 11:30 today. Yes I know - my life is one long sequence of glamorous media assignments ... It'll be Jay Leno next.

In case you're wondering, I'm actually writing this blog while sitting on the train in King's Cross, having successfully dodged all the kids dressed as wizards frantically looking for Platform whatever-it-is-and-three-quarters as they settle in to wait for the publication of the new Harry Potter tonight. The miracle of modern technology. I'll be posting regular updates over the next few days so check back in. It's known as live blogging, or logging, although that sounds like something you spend the night doing after a bad curry...

Friday 20th July - 8:50pm
So that's that then. Panel done. Thank God for that. And amazingly, it wasn't quite the train wreck I had predicted. At least that's what the nice ladies who came up to me later said.

I managed to cram in references to the few books I had read (and the many I had skimmed through) together with allusions to enough short stories to make it look like I knew what I was talking about! Plus to spice it up, I mentioned that DdM was bisexual, that there were some things she wasn't so brilliant at (character, clunky plot elements etc.) and slipped in my anal sex reference for good measure. You want to give good panel? Just say the word lesbian and back passage in the same sentence and you're onto a winner.

In fact the whole experience reminded me of when I went to see my tutor after getting my degree result. I was feeling rather full of myself at the time, as despite all his dire predictions, I had somehow scraped a First by learning hundreds of quotes by heart and then littering my essays with them to make it look like I was far more widely read and insightful than I in fact was.

Sensing my triumphant mood (and possibly the tactics I had adopted), he lost no time in cutting me back down to size.

"A First isn't a sign of intelligence," he said. "It's not even a sign of hard work. In fact the only thing you need to get one is to be a smart alec."

So that's me then. A smart alec. And boy was I grateful for it today!

Saturday 21st July - 9:50am
There is one achievement that crime and thrillers writers prize above all others - outlasting Alex Barclay at the bar. And last night I managed it. Long after 'la Barclay' retired, defeated, to her boudoir, I was still up and partying hard. (Needless to say Simon Kernick and Kevin Wignall were still knocking shots back by the time I finally called it a day).

It was in reality, a rather tame evening, as I think people were saving their energy for tonight's no-holds-barred extravaganza. But it didn't wholly pass without incident: there is a rather strange man here, a Scandi called ****** or something (name withheld to spare embarassment!), who as well as being an unreformed drunk, appears to be an unashamed letch.

Nothing unusual (or wrong) about that some of you might say, but several of us observed him 'working the room' last night, moving stealthily from girl to girl, thrusting his sweaty face into their conversations, casually stroking their bare arms or snaking his arm around their necks to draw them close.

My first instinct was to admire his persistence, as repeated (but far more polite) variations of "p**s off" from his visibly uncomfortable victims elicited nothing more than an amused shrug. Undaunted, he simply crept away to find his next target. The snatched fragment of his chat-up routine that I overheard ("I want to make sexy time" - yes, I am serious) further impressed me - many of us think it, but few of us actually say it.

But as I watched, my admiration soon gave way to a kind of horrified revulsion. Watching him at work is actually one of the more disturbing things I have ever seen; part vampire, part stalker, part night-bus flasher. You just knew that at the first sign of weakness, hesitation or drunkenness from whoever he was talking to, he would strike. Eventually my patience snapped and I (uncharacteristically for me) marched over and led him away from the two women he had just accosted.

"Why don't you leave the girls alone," I blazed as I pinned him to the wall, overcome with knightly valor. "Can't you see none of them want to even talk to you, let alone be felt up by you. Go to bed and stop making a fool of yourself."

He stared at me blankly for a few minutes, then slurred a response.

"You are not educated British gentleman. You did not go to Cambridge."

That's when I knew the guy was mental. Anyone who equates Cambridge with good manners is clearly beyond redemption.

Sunday 22 July - 10:45am
My chivalric intervention on Saturday night has been earning me doe-eyed looks and gushing write-ups from all the women molested by the "fiddler from the fjords" over the previous few nights. If only I'd realised when I was single that picking a scrap at a bar with someone smaller than yourself and too drunk to put up any resistance made you more attractive to the opposite sex. Maybe that's why everyone fights in Newcastle at the weekend. It's like some primeval mating ritual.

Not that the Scandi sex pest is the only odd person here. One person in particular has a handshake like a drowned ferret and chases authors round the hotel asking for "a leetle photo pleeese". Nothing wrong in that you might think, beyond his strange sing-song voice that is part Borat and part the weaselly guy in The Mummy who carries all the good luck charms around his neck and comes to a rather sticky end.

More disturbing is his rudeness. When Nick Stone asked him what he thought of his new book, he gave a weak smile and then made a sound like someone laughing nervously while being sick, before saying - "I no like". Unsurprisingly Nick told him to f**k off. Undaunted, the next day he came back as if nothing had happened and asked for another "leetle photo". I refused to let him take mine, saying that I was worried it would capture my soul, an explanation which, weirdly, he accepted without question. But when I went up to my room I did check under the bed to make sure he wasn't lying in wait for me.

All the Harper Collins authors went out for dinner last night - Stuart McBride, Alex Barclay, Michael Marshall and Steve Jackson - together with assorted editors and publicity folk, including my dashing editor, Bruce. We had a great meal, the highlight of which was McBride's face when I tricked the staff into believing it was his birthday and they produced a cake topped with an ICBM-sized sparkler. It's not often he's lost for words, or embarrassed, but last night was definitely one of them. (By the way, don't believe a word he says about me and the Madonna concert - he's Scottish and that ridiculous beard muffles his hearing!) We got back in time for the quiz. Our team was bobbins, although I did get the Daphne du Maurier quote!

Outlasted Barclay at the bar again - she's definitely lost her touch. Also there were regulars Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick, Kevin Wignall, Dreda Say Mitchell, Laura Wilson plus all the Harper mob of course and Fiona Cane who showed up looking as glamorous as ever. And 'new boy' Tom Cain put in a guest appearance too - I use 'new' and 'boy' in the loosest possible sense of the words! Have to say the real joy of these conferences are those late night sessions when you get to swap war stories with other writers and meet all you incredibly passionate crime readers. It makes it all worthwhile. (Special mention to Daryl and the nice Irish girl with the red hair whose name I don't know but who was part of the Mark Billingham posse!)

The highlight of the whole weekend for me though, was probably meeting Lee Child (again), and Harlan Coben for the first time. One of the nice things about the crime world is that people like them who are at the top of their game are so accessible and willing to talk and provide encouragement and advice to the rest of us. But to my annoyance, our conversation was suddenly cut short by a nasal whine.

"A leetle photo pleeese."

Sunday 22 July - 10:30pm
So there we are. Another crime writing festival pats us on the shoulder, ruffles our hair and wishes us good luck until next year. And what a good festival it was. Thank-you Daphne Wright / Natasha Cooper for asking me to take part - hopefully I didn't let you down. Thank-you also Simon Theakston for sponsoring the whole thing. He and I actually were interviewed together for Radio York on the first day during which he confirmed my suspicions that he's a thoroughly nice man! And he had the most incredible spiel about how a glass of Theakston's Old Peculiar was very much like a good crime novel. I've no idea what he said but I remember thinking it was genius at the time. In fact, I'm off for a pint of Agatha Christie right now.

Cheerio.

Dead Line

2007-07-15T14:44:00.000Z

Deadline, [ded-lahyn], noun - origin 1855-1860
1. The time by which something must be finished or submitted; the latest time for finishing something: a five o'clock deadline
2. a boundary around a military prison beyond which a prisoner could not venture without risk of being shot by the guards

Of the two dictionary definitions above, I am infinitely more familiar with the first. After all, the whole book industry seems to anchor itself around deadlines of one sort or the other, some real, others imaginary. The more tangible are often firmly inked into contracts - "Book X, a manuscript copy of which is to be submitted no later than such and such a date ..."

The problem is that deadlines like this never travel alone. They gather up into their skirts a dark host of shadow deadlines who hang tenaciously from the original like ivy from a tree. Dates by which titles have to be agreed, cover designs approved, editorial comments addressed, copy and proof editing completed. Each as real as they one sealed with a handshake and a cheque, but never actually agreed upon or even discussed until they are almost upon you and it is too late to do anything but meet them with clenched teeth and a mumbled curse.

And yet it is the second, more unfamiliar definition detailed above, with its hint of possible death and disaster, that resonates more with me at the moment. Perhaps this will explain why:

HARROGATE CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL
DAPHNE DU MAURIER CENTENARY PANEL - 20 July (6pm)
CHAIR: Margaret Kinsman
PANEL: Kate Saunders, Philip Gooden, Laura Wilson, James Twining

The problem? Just the small matter of me having barely read a single book of hers yet, whilst my fellow panelists seem to have been swotting up for months! (See Mild and Bitter). I've basically got five days to consume and digest the collected life and works of Daphne du Maurier before offering myself up to a sharp-toothed pack of DdM anoraks and assorted crime officianados and hoping they're on a diet and let me off with a gentle mauling. If ever a deadline carried with it the promise of utter humiliation and disaster in front of a gathered host of critics, book lovers and fellow writers, then this, surely, must be it.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the issue has been compounded by the fact that what I've read so far hasn't exactly, how should I put this, moved me. In other words, I've not got much to say and what I do have to say isn't that complementary, although I'm reserving final judgement until I've got a few more miles under the hood.

As the thought of the next five days looms over me, I find myself longing for the warm comfort of the prison camp and the original dead-line as described in the second definition above. At least there I could choose to make a run for it and get shot into the bargain!

PS - if you fancy coming and throwing a few rotten eggs, there are still some tickets available! Click here.

If the shoe fits...

2007-07-02T20:57:00.000Z

Writing is certainly not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit. You don't believe me? Just click through to Amazon and read some of the customer reviews posted against your favourite books and writers, including yours truly. It can make for some pretty brutal reading.

Never believe a writer who tells you they don't read reviews. It's a lie. They all do, me included. After all, it would be incredibly arrogant not to care what your readership had to say. If you're prepared to take their money, you should certainly be prepared to listen to what they like and don't like about your work.

And much as you'd like to, you can't just dismiss bad reviews because you don't like them. Not unless you're willing to dismiss the good ones too, which most writers aren't - I post mine up on my website! The problem is how random these more negative reviews can be, with one person criticising the very thing that someone else has identified as your greatest strength. The answer, according to my agent J-Lo, is to "date" reviews, not marry them. In other words, you don't have to take everything to heart. Personally I look for two things before I start listening - either patterns, where the same point is raised by lots of different people again and again, or resonance, where a point chimes with something you instinctively feel is right.

It's certainly much easier to dismiss a review if it is plain wrong or obviously vindictive. For example, the one word review that one Amazon reader left for me ("Dire") was so bad it was funny. The reviews that really annoy me are the ones where people seem to be judging my books against literary or other inappropriate criteria, rather than against other thrillers and the basic features and conventions of that genre. It's a bit like going to a Linkin Park concert and complaining that it's too loud, or moaning that a Ferrari doesn't have enough luggage space. That's the whole point! That's part of what makes it what it is.

I have to say that our good friends the Americans are the hardest to please. Everyone says the US is a tough market, but I didn't know how tough until the first few customer reviews began to be posted on Amazon.com. Not only are they much more vocal in voicing their opinions, but they never seem to occupy the middle ground. They either love it or hate it. The only problem is that they email me when they love it, and post it on the internet when they hate it for the whole world to see!

Perhaps it is an unfortunate by-product of today's Big Brother / Pop Idol world that people seem so ready to criticise, often quite vindictively and at great length, as if trying to out-Cowell Simon Cowell. Praise is certainly the much scarcer commodity. If you click through on the names of some of these e-critics, you can see who else has felt the sharp lash of their keyboard - often they have come off no better. Is there a small army of bitter readers out there - failed writers perhaps - who spend their time knifing unsuspecting authors from a distance, safely concealed behind their anonymous usernames?

With my first book especially, I used to take any feedback very personally. At one stage I was logging in on an almost daily basis to see what comments had been posted, with a good one seeing me in high spirits and a bad one confining me to a black mood for the rest of the day. I used to coral friends and families to post favourable reviews to repair the irreparable damage that I assumed was being done to my career and reputation by these swivel-chair critics. I even at one stage formed a variety of Amazon identities to post up some of the positive messages that had been emailed to me to try and tip the odds in my favour.

It’s a losing battle. And, I came to realise, a pointless one. You can’t (nor should you seek to) control the Internet and the power of free speech it confers onto all users. More to the point, perhaps, people don’t make purchase decisions on the back of Amazon reviews but on word of mouth and newspaper reviews and price promotions and in-store positioning. Good sales are often a far better guide to reader satisfaction than a self-selecting group of Amazon reviewers. In fact I sometimes wonder if there’s a direct correlation between high sales and negative feedback – it’s much more fun to bash a successful book!

As Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all!

Top shelf shuffle

2007-06-11T20:44:00.000Z

I'm not sure whether it's just me, but since I've been writing I seem to have developed this masochistic streak. It manifests itself most acutely in my inability to walk past a bookshop without popping in to see if they have my books in stock.

It's a thankless task. If they don't have them, it depresses me. If they do (which to be fair to Harper Collins is increasingly the case) they are more often than not at the back of the shop and displayed spine on, which triggers a renewed bout of angst and soul-searching.

But it also gives rise to that most common of authorial afflictions - the top shelf shuffle.
I'm talking here, of course, about the practice of slipping unnoticed into a bookshop, casually locating your books, and then subtly redeploying them (apart from the one copy you leave behind, face out) at other, more prominent locations. In the chart, for example, or on the Summer Read or Special Offer tables at the front of the store. Anything to get it out in front of the paying public. Ask any writer you know - they're all at it, and they often rope their family and friends in too. My wife, for example, once peeled "three for two" labels off someone else's books and then stuck them on mine so she could upgrade me to a special promotion. What a trooper!

It is, of course, a Sisyphean endeavour. No sooner have you carefully (and surreptitiously) moved the books to a new location, then the staff, fired by some strange missionary zeal, scoop them up and cart them back to the familiar obscurity of the general fiction shelf. You'd think eventually they'd just give up, but no - they seem to fight for every inch of those little front tables as if their lives depended on it.

They must get p***ed off by writers coming in and screwing up their displays. In fact I'd be surprised if my local store hadn't performed an exorcism on its crime and thriller section, given the poltergeist-like activity that leads to my books spontaneously materialising twenty feet away from where they are meant to be. Maybe they view it as a game, but to most writers it is a war. A war of attrition where neither side is prepared to give up.

Of course deep down, all writers know that all this skulduggery makes no difference to their sales. We do it, because we are all victims of the random vicissitudes of the publishing world, where neither successes nor failures can be predicted and careers are made or broken on the back of distribution agreements and marketing spend.

Moving the books to the front tables or turning them so that they are face out, is a way of taking a stand. For a few precious minutes, we actually believe we've done something that might help influence our fate. Right up until the shop assistants gather us up and the dance begins again!

Summer Dreams

2007-06-01T09:55:00.000Z

Just back from a mini-break in (of all places) Marbella. I say mini-break because, according to the wife, it doesn't become a holiday until you are away for more than 5 nights - I wish I'd understood this subtlety when I booked it, as apparently this means we still need to go away again on a "proper" family vacation! More money...

Anyway, technically speaking we weren't in Marbella, but down the road in Puerto Banus where a friend of ours lives. Strange place. The harbour is encrusted with million dollar yachts and the quayside embroidered with Bentleys and air-conditioned designer stores. And yet walk a few streets in, and you find strip bars and souvenir shops jostling for position with "genuine" Irish pubs serving all-day breakfasts. As the sun sets, the streets swarm with baying packs of pink-skinned adolescents playing drinking games and urinating in doorways. Later, as the moon rises, the girls swoop down, skirts hitched and tops pulled down low; teeth bared, they sniff out their prey according to their key fobs - the more expensive your motor, the better your chances.

There's money here, but all of it's new and in your face - the biggest decision one of my friend's neighbors faced every day was whether to drive his black Hummer, yellow Lamborghini Gallardo or red Ferrari 360. The men wear diamond encrusted gold Bulgari watches and Hackett polo shirts, their prison tattoos lost in the matted hair of their tanned forearms. The women are teak coloured with Barbie blonde hair, three grand handbags flung casually over their shoulders, their boobs as plastic as the food in the photos that adorn the menus of the harbour-front restaurants.

Given this, I had slightly mixed feelings about the local taste in books, as the local English language bookshop had copies of The Black Sun in their Bestseller section. Given my previous rant about not being stocked abroad (see Batteries not Included), I could hardly complain, although I did slightly question if this was what Bruce (my editor) had in mind when he referred to my "target demographic". Perhaps there was another factor at play - after all, over 80% of the global supply of 500 Euro notes are apparently to be found along the coast of Southern Spain. Why? Money laundering; lots of it. Maybe I have a growing fan base amidst the Costa de Crime’s criminal fraternity!

Anyway, the best part of the holiday / mini-break was that for the first time ever, I saw someone reading The Black Sun! Friends have told me they've seen people reading my books before, but I've never actually seen anyone myself. The fact that they were on a beach, sipping a Mojito, made it even better. You see I always read thrillers when away, and I took the decision to start writing whilst on a beach in Bora Bora on honeymoon. So seeing someone lying on a sun lounger, engrossed, gave me a real sense of having closed the circle; of achievement.

However, having learnt my lesson from the time when I accosted someone at Gatwick who was leafing through The Double Eagle and excitedly announcing that I was the author (he immediately returned it to the shelf and backed away fearfully), this time I didn't say anything and just walked on with a smile. Besides, it was getting late, and I wanted to get to O'Grady's for a “full English” before they stopped serving!

Growing Pains

2007-05-17T22:10:00.000Z

I have to admit, I haven't quite cracked this whole blogging lark. It's not that I don't have lots of things to say - who doesn't like the sounds of their own voice! - it's just that I never seem to find the time. The only consolation is I'm not the only one who struggles with this. Apparently Lindsay Lohan is also an absentee blogger. (Actually, you're right, that's no consolation at all)

Anyway in my case, it's not just the blog. I've been meaning to send out a newsletter for months, but can't seem to get round to that either. Normally I'd say you find the time for the things you want to do, but in this case ...

Maybe this is fallout from the mad rush to hand in The Gilded Seal on time. It took such a push to get it over the line that part of me is happy to tread water for a little while. Is that so wrong? Probably. A writer's work is never done.

It's not that I've been completely idle. I went to a launch party for Paul Strathern's excellent book, Napoleon in Egypt. I saw Arsenal thrash Fulham. I even went to the Society of Bookmen dinner (don't ask me what it is, but apparently it's a big deal to be asked!) at the Savoy Club, courtsey of my agent, J-Lo. And last weekend I went to Paris with the family, where all my grand plans for an activity filled weekend were derailed by Amelia insisting on riding the donkeys in the Ranelagh Gardens again and again.

Actually, now I think about it, I've got this all wrong. I was far less busy when I was writing! So there's no excuse for not keeping the blog up to date.

***

PS - Before I forget, anyone who happens to be in the Chorleywood area this Sunday 20th May at 7:30pm, (If you don't know where it is, then there's no point in me explaining) I'm talking about art crime at the Memorial Hall as part of the Book Festival. See you there.

Commercial break?

2007-04-24T21:40:00.000Z

Can anyone explain the newspaper book-pages to me? I just can't figure them out. While page after page is devoted to non-fiction and supposedly "literary" novels, the best that more "commercial" works can hope for is a dismissive mention on a roundup page or, more often than not, being ignored altogether. This despite the fact that commercial fiction in general (and crime and thrillers in particular), accounts for the vast majority of UK book sales - just take a look at the Sunday Times bestseller lists and compare the numbers.

This isn't sour grapes - well not entirely! But I can't think of another industry in the world where the buying preferences and needs of such a large segment of the population are so completely underserved by the media. Just think for a second of the wall-to-wall coverage (good and bad) that overtly "commercial" rock bands and Hollywood films get, compared to the silent treatment afforded to, for example, Martina Cole's latest offering, despite her routinely selling 1m copies plus. Can you imagine the pages of Empire being devoted exclusively to documentaries and those beautifully shot European films where people smoke and argue a lot but basically nothing happens for 90 minutes? And yet that's exactly what it sometimes seems the newspaper Arts and Culture pages offer up on a weekly basis.

On one level, this does appear to be symptomatic of a certain form of the intellectual snobbery that afflicts the book industry in particular: the argument seems to go that anything mass-market must be by definition badly written, low-brow and derivative, otherwise people wouldn't be flocking to buy it in such numbers. Not only is this pretty insulting to the millions of us who buy these types of books (let alone the writers!), it also ignores the fact that there are plenty of so called "literary" books that are badly written, leaden-footed and, let's face it, just plain boring. It also fails to account for the quality of writers such as Le Carré or Thomas Harris (pre Hannibal Rising!) or the iconic cultural impact of James Bond which few "literary" books could ever hope to replicate.

But if it is intellectual snobbery, then what drives it? Are the editors of the book-pages frustrated writers content to snipe from the sidelines, or published authors who have seen their worthy 300 page dissection of an adulterous couple's inner monologue crash and burn, and therefore instinctively resent others succeeding? I doubt it.

Do they see perhaps themselves as the guardians of good taste, as a sort of filter protecting us from being corrupted by mass consumerism? It's true that the barriers to entry for writing a book are quite low (an idea and a laptop) and a lot more books are published than films released or albums made. But then getting published isn't exactly easy, as agents and publishers do act as a pretty effective screen. Besides, who made book-page editors judge and jury, able to decide on our account what we should be reading and what is and isn't worthy of commentary and review?

Maybe I'm wrong, but somewhere along the line the media (possibly aided and abetted by people within the publishing industry?) seems to have decided that that books aren't part of the entertainment industry, that they operate at a far higher plane than the rather unsavory commercial world that the other creative arts occupy. (Maybe it's something to do with writing - people get quite sniffy about plays too). And yet, depressingly unromantic though it may be to admit it, aren't books competing for people's attention, time and money as much as CDs, DVD and the latest Playstation game?

Believe me I'm not suggesting that all "commercial" books are well written or deserving of our attention, nor that all "literary" books are boring and don't sell - the truth is there are good and bad examples in both genres and as a French Literature graduate and avid thriller reader, I’ve seen my fair share of both! Nor am I saying that the newspaper book pages should simply follow the money and switch their entire focus to commercial fiction - there is a vital role to be played in helping shape opinion and guide us, given the sheer volume of books that hit the shelves.

I guess my fundamental point is that while some readers will only read "literary" fiction and others only "commercial", the majority of people are caught somewhere between the two and are open to a whole range of books, depending on their mood or the time of day or where in the world they happen to be. The type of book you take to read by the pool, for example, might be very different from the one you take on the Tube to work, or curl up with on a cold December afternoon. That has nothing to do about a book being "literary" or "commercial" and much more whether it is a good read, which is surely the ultimate yardstick by which all books should be measured.

Couldn't the book pages do a much better job of reflecting this diversity?

Mild and Bitter

2007-04-23T20:46:00.000Z

Safely back from Austria (definition of a good break = only 2 nappies changed in four days!) and straight into the bear pit that is the London Book Fair. Luckily I checked my invite before setting out because I was all set on grabbing my passport and making the trek over to Docklands where it was last time round.

This year the festivities were in the far more civilised (relatively) surroundings of Earl's Court. My invite was courtesy of the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate where I am on a panel discussing Daphné du Maurier - yes, in case you're wondering, I'm s***ing myself at the thought of being grilled by an audience of DdM anoraks!

I swung by the HarperCollins stand on my way in and had the good fortune to find J-Lo (my agent) locked in conversation with Amanda Ridout, the MD of Harper's General Books Group and VERY IMPORTANT. The good news is they promised me that they had big plans for promoting The Gilded Seal. The bad news is that we agreed to dicuss it further over lunch - based on their reputations, it could get ugly.

That brief diversion meant that I timed my entry into the Harrogate event perfectly, arriving just in time to hear the final speech being applauded and to be immediately collared by Laura Wilson who:

a) is scarily sharp
b) is on the same panel as me at Harrogate; and
c) managed to freak me out even more than I already am, by listing all the du Maurier biographies, novels and short stories she has already read. Immediately made a mental note to order entire collected works from Amazon as soon as I got home that night.

Then bumped into the loveley Natasha Cooper / Daphne Wright (I can't keep track of all her psedonyms) who always makes such an effort to help me by introducing me to journalists, other writers etc. She's not quite my fairy godmother, but she's not far off!

Also in attendance was the mild mannered Simon Theakstone (he of bitter brewing fame - see how I cleverly worked in the title?) who greeted me with the rather wonderful line: "Ah! It's so rare to meet a young man drinking beer out of a glass", nodding sagely, as if I had passed some sort of unspoken test. It reminded me of that classic scene in From Russia With Love where Bond identifies the enemy agent by the way he orders red wine with fish.

There's a lesson there for all of us. Drinking out of a bottle may well reveal you as a Smersh spy.

Batteries not included

2007-04-11T21:43:00.000Z

There's no instruction manual on how to be a writer. No simple "how to" guide that you can turn to for help and guidance. Or if there is, no-one gave it to me.

I'm not talking about the writing part of being writer - the "doing", if you like. That's the easy part! Well maybe not easy, but at least once you've armed yourself with an idea, a computer and (most elusive of all) some spare time, you can turn to all sorts of creative writing courses or self-help books if you need guidance with annoying little details like plot, scene setting, characterisation or dialogue. In other words, the help is out there if you need it.

What I'm talking about is how to navigate the far more treacherous and uncharted waters of "being" a writer. The tips and tricks and dos and don'ts essential to literary survival. When you first get going, for example, no-one tells you about copy editing, or six monthlies, or (the lack of!) marketing budgets, or in-store promotions, or being ranged, or how titles and covers have to get the thumbs up from the big buyers, even though these are all critical parts of the business. Instead, you're meant to pick all this up either through some alchemistic process of osmosis from other writers (who are mostly equally in the dark) or through a 'bright lights and thumbscrews' interrogation of your agent and publisher who, Wizard of Oz like, often seem strangely reluctant to lift the curtain on their Emerald Cities.

This is relevant because I am writing to you from Kitzbuhel in Austria (what do you call a blog written while away? A flog (foreign blog) or a hog (holiday blog? Anyway...) where I have just fallen into one of these big heffalump traps that you're somehow meant to intuitively know about, but that you only really find out about once you've fallen a** over t** straight into it.

There should be a top ten of these. In fact, I think I'm going to give it some thought and come with a list. I'm not sure where this one would rank (quite high I expect) but I'll call it the Foreign Bookshop Humiliation:

1. Go into Alpine bookshop where you are available both in an exported English edition and a local translation
2. Ask, in a confident manner, if they do indeed have copy/ies of your book
3. Experience the singular embarrassment of having the shopkeeper repeat your name five times, clearly never having heard it before, and then adopting the same blank, slightly despairing gaze they would if you had just asked for a copy of Adolf Hitler's collected love poems
4. On the way out see three (yes three) copies of Alex Barclay's (admittedly excellent) Darkhouse, despite having the same publisher and the same editor
5. Visit every other bookshop in town, including the one you saw at the motorway service station on the way in. Eventually find a copy being used to help prop up the latest Kathy Reichs (like she needs my help!)
6. Buy it, in the hope they'll reorder and that your Tyrolean sales will show a small spike

Oh yes, I've been there! And in retrospect, I think there are three main strategies for avoiding this type of scenario:

a) Before travelling, ring ahead a place a huge order for your own books with every bookshop in town so that when you get there the shelves are groaning, even if they all get returned a few weeks later
b) Get whatever distribution deal Alex Barclay has
c) Relax. Enjoy your holiday.

The preferred approach is of course either a) or b), maybe even both in combination. Going on holiday and not checking out every bookshop you come across, so that you can bitch and moan about how your book isn't on show but everyone else's is, is just not an option for any self-respecting insecure writer. Maybe that's why there's no instruction manual - the only way to be happy is to stress about absolutely everything!

PS - The irony is that while away, I heard from J-Lo (my agent) that I'd got into the German bestseller list! Who needs the Tyrol when the Fatherland beckons ....

Slings and arrows

2007-04-02T18:48:00.000Z

Writing can be a tough business.

No, don't worry, I'm not looking for (or expecting) any sympathy, especially not from you lot! But it does seem to be one of those professions where, perhaps a bit like acting or even running your own business, you have to endure these huge swings from real high to terrible low and (hopefully) back again. The clichéd expression typically deployed to describe this type of experience is that it is a "rollercoaster" but I'm not sure how appropriate that is - for a start it implies that it is in some way exciting and enjoyable when often the reverse is true! I see it more as an extended game of snakes and ladders.

Every so often something good happens which seems to propel you forward a few squares. Every so often you suffer a reverse which sends you back the other way. And of course luck, or the dice to stretch the analogy, plays a huge part in all of this. The important thing, perhaps, is not to get too distracted by these fluctuations in fortune and just focus on generally moving in the right direction and avoiding that really annoying snake that takes you all the way back down to the begining (which for some reason I always seem to land on more often than the ladder which takes me all the way to the top!)

Anyway, I mention all this because I landed on a small ladder yesterday which I wanted to celebrate for once (my normal insecure predisposition is to dwell on the setbacks). As part of an an interview with Lee Child, The Sunday Telegraph, no less, identified its six top thriller writers and I (to my surprise and pleasure) was one of them alongside James Patterson, Tess Gerritsen, Joseph Kanon, Mo Hayder, and John Twelve Hawkes. Now I have to admit that this article was published on April Fool's Day, but I think they were deadly serious. [in fact you can click here to read it if you don't believe me]

Anyway, it's made my week, which only got better when I received through the post a traditional red scarf from the city of Pamplona in Spain worn during the annual Sanfermines festival (you know the one where tourists get gored to death by bulls and everyone else cheers).

It was sent to me by Carmen Jane de Carlos, who is officially my first fan in Spain! The biggest high, or ladder, or whatever you want to call it, of being a writer is hearing from readers from around the world who have enjoyed my books. But it's even better when they send gifts!

Thanks Carmen - next time a bull chases me at least I'll be dressed for the occasion.

Book 3 - Revealed

2007-03-27T08:31:00.000Z

Finally, a bit of news about the third Tom Kirk Novel to share with you.

You'll be pleased to know it has a title! Months of heated negotations with Bruce, my editor, (that's not his real name but it seems more appropriate for a thriller editor than his actual one!) have led us to The Gilded Seal. My original suggestion was The Napoleon Seal, but Harper Collins were worried that this would make it seem too historical?? Not sure I totally agree, but then this is not exactly a million miles away.

This whole title choosing business is bloody tricky. The Double Eagle was easy, but for The Black Sun, I had to submit about forty different alternatives in the end as Harper's sales and marketing gurus couldn't agree about what worked. A good title is, apparently, half the battle. The irony was that The Black Sun was initially rejected, so I simply resubmitted it as a new idea and second time round they loved it. Go figure! Anyway, I'm happy with The Gilded Seal, Bruce is happy, J-Lo (my agent) is happy and most importantly, my mother likes it!

The other half of the battle (beyond the title) is of course the jacket design. And here it is:

The image is a bit blurred here, but I've seen the proper printouts and it looks fantastic. As to what the book's about, well as the cover suggests, it involves Napoleon, the Louvre and the world's most famous painting. I could tell you more, but don't want to give too much away, so here's what the blurb from the back says:

"Seville. Holy Week. As hooded penitents march their shimmering floats through the cobbled streets, a man runs for his life, determined to keep a secret that has lain hidden for 200 years. When the end finally comes it is slow and agonizing, his attackers crucifying him to a door.

Determined to avenge his friend’s death, former art thief Tom Kirk abandons his enquiry into the theft of a priceless Da Vinci and begins his own investigation into the gruesome murder. The evidence points to Milo, an old rival with a sadistic streak whom Tom discovers is about to commit the most audacious heist in history.

Meanwhile in New York , the stakes have never been higher for Special Agent Jennifer Browne, as her supposedly low-key forgery case threatens to explode into a scandal that strikes at the heart of the global auction business. With the bodies piling up around her and an unscrupulous tabloid reporter dogging her every move, she follows a lead to Paris, where a chance meeting brings her face to face with Tom.

Realising that both cases are connected, Tom and Jennifer find themselves swept into a conspiracy that dates back to Napoleon and survives in a series of coded messages concealed by the Emperor himself. Messages leading to a secret so shattering that some are prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure the truth is never revealed. A secret that lies deep inside the Paris catacombs and amidst the pulsating streets of Havana.

A secret that brings death in its wake."

What do you think? I can't wait to see it on the shelves (not until October I'm afraid) and hearing from you.

Mind you, at the moment publication seems a distant prospect - I'm immersed in full (painful) editing mode. Which reminds me, I need to get on and do some work. The final version needs to be handed in by the end of the month or I'll have Bruce all over me - and believe me, that's the one place you don't want him!

Plastic Fantastic

2007-03-03T21:02:00.000Z

I remember reading an interview with JK Rowling a few years ago where she was talking about the merchandising deal she had struck with Warner Bros. Basically, she had insisted of final approval of any Harry Potter products released alongside the movies. To her growing unease, as the release date of the first film loomed, a succession of increasingly tacky items had been sent for her blessing. Eventually, and some might say not unreasonably, she drew the line at a Harry Potter loo seat.

I mention all this not because Paramount are about to flood the market with Double Eagle chocolate coins, but because I received the item pictured on the left through the post the other day.

In case you're wondering, it's a plastic bag advertising the German edition of The Double Eagle which is due to be published by Luebbe this month. God knows what it says though. Hopefully something along the lines of good book, buy it or I'll have to have words. I'm just grateful they didn't opt for the Tom Kirk toilet paper instead!

Black Sun - the movie!!

2007-02-18T21:08:00.000Z

Well not quite yet. But I have tried to justify the cost of the Mac I bought a few months ago by making a "trailer". Enjoy!

Shark Finn Soup

2007-02-09T22:46:00.000Z

Doesn't junk mail make you feel inadequate? Constant offers to grow your penis "so she'll be begging for more" and loud emails mocking you for not having jumped on yesterday's soaring boiler-room stock, leave you with a crushing sense of being either under-equipped or under-funded. Or both.

But not all unsolicited mail is unwelcome. Take this, that I received a few weeks ago:

"Dear James. My name is X and I'm 16 years old girls from Finland. Just wanted to write and let you know what a fan of yours that I am. I really enjoy your work and you really inspirate me as a writer. I just read one of your novel and I love it! I could not stop reading it. You're really are my model! I would like to be like you someday, absolutely fabulous author. I was wondering if you could send me an autographed photo? My address is below."

How good is that? On so many levels? Go on, read it again. God knows I did. She wants an autographed photo. Of me. I "inspirate" her as a writer. I am her "model." I am an "absolutely fabulous author." Result.

I played it cool, of course, waiting a few days before answering to give the impression that I was inundated with emails from similarly smitten readers. But rest assured that I wasted no time in telling as many of my mates as possible, heavily emphasising the words "16 years old Finnish girl", of course. And one of them came up with a worryingly (given he has just got married) brilliant suggestion: "Why not Google her? She could be hot!" Genius.

So I did. And guess what? I got two hits, each on other authors' message boards. A coincidence, I assumed, until I clicked on the first one, posted to a female writer, and began to read the message that my Scandinavian admirer had left her: "Dear X. My name is X and I'm 16 years old girls from Finland ..." I think you know the rest.

Needless to say, I have spared my friends this hubristic revelation. No point in shattering their illusions as well as mine. The lesson seems to be that when something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is.

Now where did I file that email guaranteeing to add 3 inches to my ...