And they say "Size Doesn't Matter"...

Jim’s thoughtful post about the relative sizes of our respective books is well timed, and not in the pejorative sense. A hell of a lot of the books being published are of the 70 to 80 thousand word mark, so why should I beat the hairy poo out of my head producing something nearly twice that size? Partly I suppose it’s because I tend to write crime novels where there’s more than one mystery to solve. A hell of a lot more. Its like Santa opened his sack and there’s murders for everyone! Or it could be that I'm just a verbose, rambling bastard.

It will come as no surprise that this brings it’s own difficulties: as The Nameless Horror says, there’s a line of credibility which can be difficult to cross in the UK. Mass murder in the north east of Scotland doesn’t exactly fit the real life crime statistics. Last year I think only five people were murdered, and all of those crimes were solved. (It has to be said that, where murder is concerned, Grampian Police kicks arse.) But there were nearly twenty times as many attempted murders and nearly 3,000 people went missing.

Three thousand.

Three thousand people vanished without a trace. Anyone else thinking ‘unmarked grave’?
Which eclectically and awkwardly brings us back to the subject of this post (you see, you knew there was some sort of purpose in here somewhere: stick with it and you may be disappointed yet…): the books of 2005. This year I intend to say “ta-ta” to my soul-destroying, spirit-crushing, trouser-clenching job and take on the mantle of ‘WRITE-IST’! And as I can, when I pull my finger out, produce 3,500 words a day, I have a new years resolution I want to share with you all: this year I WILL produce two full length books. One featuring DS Logan McRae (continuing the series) and another altogether darker book. The fabled ‘standalone’ which will really let me get… well… nasty. Or at least, very unpleasant.

The only trouble will be what to do with it. I’d like to be bringing out two books a year, but that all depends on HC and how they want to grow this thing (presuming they don’t just want to rip it up by the roots and sow the ground with salt).Maybe I could end up as one of those schizophrenic munchkins who churns out volume after volume under a collection of assumed names. But to be honest, I’d much rather just be me. After all, I don’t want to wind up wearing some strange weirdo’s underwear!

Bye-bye Mr Unnamed Bookie, see you soon…

Well, that’s it away now: synopsis is done (always a pain in the bum – and I can’t abide doing those detailed, blow-by-blow jobs, so I’m aiming for the marketing blurb on the back of the book style things) and the whole lot will be sitting in Phil’s inbox by the time he clambers into the office on Monday morning.

I’m one of these people who saves all their chapters as individual files. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t like working with the whole thing as one huge document. I find it a lot more cumbersome that keeping everything nice and partitioned. Phil, and HC however, hate this. They like it all to be one big file, so I have to spend ages cutting the thing together before I send it off. Another pain in the bum, but gosh-darn-it if these guys and galls ain’t worth it. So I had an IT geek moment this morning and built a word macro that would loop over how ever many chapters you stuck into the input box and build the whole thing automatically from all the little chapters. And considering there’s 45 of the wee buggers, you can see why I wanted something to do it automatically for me.

One thing you don’t get when you do everything as individual chapters is a complete and accurate word count. Yea, you can keep a note of the word count in each of the separate files, but as I pop back and forth, checking some things, changing others, my numbers soon start going adrift. So it wasn't until I ran my geek-fest macro that I actually knew how big the thing was.

150,359 words.

Holly shit. That’s HUGE! That’s bigger than an elephant! TWO ELEPHANTS! Even going along with Stephen King’s formula (second draft = first draft less 10%) that’s still going to be over 135K. Then again my contract with HC wants 150,000, so you could say I’ve done not too bad. Just 359 words to get rid of and it's done ;}#

Now just have to hope Phil doesn’t come back with startled screams of “Oh my God, we’re all ruined!”

Huzzah, hoorah, and other words beginning with ‘H’…

The first draft of book 2 is now COMPLETE! Bwahahahahahahahahaaaa… Cue dancing about the study with idiot expression and cat.

As I’m a paranoid monkey I’ve taken one copy off to Zip drive, burned another onto to CD and intend to hide it where not even Indiana Jones could find the thing. Thieving bugger that he is. Now all I need to do is write the synopsis (tomorrow) and away it goes into the ether, awaiting feedback from Mr Phil, before inflicting it on the good people at HC.

So tonight: we celebrate! Bottle of fizzy wine and a nice steak, as is dictated by tradition. The only time I’ve not done this was way back when I wrote my first book and was just too damn poor. Mind you, you couldn’t get lovely Australian fizz for the price of a packet of biscuits then either.

Everyone else: I hereby give you the rest of the weekend off. Enjoy it and I’ll see you back here Monday.


Now if only I had a name for the damn thing…

Not so much forwards as sideways…

Fiona didn’t get in till far too late last night: she’s been singing for her Burns Supper. But this means we didn’t get to bed until nearly 02:00 and up again at 06:45. So most of this morning was half-shut-knife time.

The whole final finale thing was put on hold as I worked through all the bits and bobs on my whiteboard, tying stuff up that I’d previously left to dangle. Not all of them, but enough that it shouldn’t bug the nipples off anyone reading it. You see, I decided I wanted to finish the book and have it finished. Not end up typing that final chapter and then sit back and ho back to fiddling with stuff.

Want to finish and be finished! Done! Dusted! Wrap it up and email it off to Phil, and maybe James too for when he gets back. No more fiddling for a week or two, which should give me time to give the blog a makeover and do that website before the Norwegian launch. Oh, and I have to make a coffee table at some point too, just as soon as I can borrow a router.

Life’s just packed.

Arsebiscuits.

Had to happen sooner or later I suppose. My brother today did an egosearch on Google (apparently discovering that his namesake has stabbed someone in Canada). This would have been fine if he’d stopped there, but he didn’t: he had to go and enter our father’s name in the Googly box.

“So what?” I hear you cry. Well, my father was modest and humble enough to name me after himself. The only thing differentiating us (other than like a gazillion years and the fact that I’m WAY prettier) are our middle names. You can see what’s coming, can’t you?
This evening I got a phone call that started with “Hello, Mr International author…” Fuck. I tried to blag it, but he’d fallen across this very blog, so I was screwed. Bastard. All this time (eleven months) of keeping the secret and it was all shagged over by an egosearch-inlaw. And the best bit of all: he didn’t even seem that impressed.

I have sworn him to secrecy for the next month. “The announcement will be made on the 27th of February,” I said, “PLEASE keep it under your hat till then.” Only time will tell, I suppose.

Still: I only have myself to blame. No one made me start a blog and keep incriminating evidence on it. Bad Stuart: shoulda kept your bloody mouth shut.

Tra, la, la…

Oslo a-go-go… (part 1)

Well, just got conformation from the lovely Monica Isakstuen of Tiden, that my flights are booked: Aberdeen to Heathrow, Heathrow to Oslo and back again. Only actually going to be on the ground there for 24 hours and 45 minutes, and I’ll be asleep for 8 of them (well, as it’ll be a hotel I’ll probably only be asleep for about 3 of them, but hey – who’s counting).

Just got to hope the remaining time is sufficient to eat, drink, be merry and do that scary interview thing.

I’m really looking forward to going: apart from the whole “Hey, Baby, I’m an international author. Wanna come back to my place and look at my hardback?” thing, it kicks off the whole published year for me. The first hardback version of Cold Granite that I’ll ever hold in my hand will be Norwegian. And I won’t be able to read a word of it. Except for ‘Fisk’, I know what ‘Fisk’ means.

Even odder: I think the first interview of my career as a write-ist will be for the Norwegian press, so I won’t have a clue what’s being said about me there either! I’ll be like, “Wow, really nice to meet you, I’m so excited to be here (and other such gushy dribble).” And for all I know, the next days’ paper will be full of “Crime author is bearded git who keeps saying ‘Fisk’ the whole bloody time.”

Well, you never know, do you?

A sobering day

60 years ago today – 27 Jan 1945 – the Russian army liberated Auschwitz, revealing a horror that had been gradually building since 1933. Giving the world yet another, sickening reminder of how human beings can do just about anything to one another, just as long as they can justify it to themselves.

And that justification doesn’t come over night, it needs time to build. Lots and lots of little, incremental steps that end up with places like Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Belsen. Incremental steps that no doubt seemed like rational decisions to the people taking them. After all, who gets up in the morning and says, “Today, I think I’ll become a monster.”? Monsters take time to grow.

The gas chambers are a perfect example of this – in August 1941 Himmler went to Minsk to visit the Einsatzgruppe B headquarters and discovered, much to his surprise, that murdering women and children was making his troops depressed, irritable and upset. Leaving them psychologically damaged. Talk about your basic ‘No shit Sherlock!’ They’re killing people: not accidentally, not in battle where at least you can claim it’s kill or be killed, but in cold blood. Walking up and putting a gun against their heads: of course they’re ending up traumatised - but it's still a hell of a lot better than BEING SHOT! People aren’t supposed to do that kind of thing. And so the gas chamber is born, making it a lot more impersonal and easier for those involved to rationalise. By the spring of 1942 the chambers are in full swing and millions of people are sent to their death.

The crematoriums at Auschwitz don’t come into play until March 1943: the previous summer is so hot that the huge numbers of bodies produced by the gas chambers are rotting, the burial pits can't cope. Another little, incremental step.

And Auschwitz wasn’t a one-off by any stretch of the imagination: all over Nazi-occupied territory hundreds of thousands of people were being systematically exterminated, though only in the camps did it achieve the status of truly industrialised mass murder. Most other places it had to be done by hand (in Bogdanovka, Ukraine, for example: 41 thousand Jewish men women and children were shot between the 21st of December and New Year’s Eve). I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could actually take part – how you could do that and convince yourself you were still a human being – but then I’ve never taken those dreadful, little, incremental steps.

Mankind, of course, has learned his lesson. You only need to look at Sarajevo, and Rowanda (and the rest) to see that, don’t you? Dehumanise, demonise and dispatch. Can’t really be murder, can it – they’re different from us – and whatever’s wrong with me: that’s their fault. And it’s hardly a modern thing: history is littered with the bodies of civilians. We really are a spectacularly wonderful species.

So today serves as a sobering reminder of just what a bunch of vicious, heartless fucking bastards we can be to our fellow man / woman.

Holocaust Memorial Day

And this year’s Golden Biscuit goes to…

Like a lot of people I have been perusing the result of Byron and Dave’s challenge to an elite bunch of hypochondriacs, weirdoes and cross-dressers. Lots of interesting entries to the 'write a short story about something being discovered in the trunk of a car' competition, but my favourite of the bunch has to be David White’s Negative Lottery (winning a gold-flavour digestive biscuit and a coupon for free beans at any Happy Eater on the A90 – when purchasing a main meal, Saturdays and Sundays not included) a fine tale of a State Trooper’s brush with Lady Luck on the New Jersey Turnpike. Very, very slick.

Honourable mentions (and a copy of this week’s Farmer’s Gazette, with every instance of the word “Pig” crossed out and replaced with “Willy” in biro) go to He Who Shall Not Be Named for his story of romantic difficulties in the rough and tumble world of global domination, and Ray Banks for his uplifting tale of Christmas high jinks and feline-orientated shenanigans.

Winners can collect their prize(s) by sending a check for £50.00 (payable to CASH) to cover handling charges and postage*. No purchase necessary.

Congratulations to all the entrants for their fine work, and I’m really looking forward to reading next year’s batch!

*Proof of postage does not constitute proof of delivery, and neither does your cheque getting cashed. That’s probably just an accounting error and you should forget all about it…

Hmmm…

Bit of a mixed bag today. Wrote what could be the penultimate chapter to book 2 this morning and, to be honest, really liked where it went. Big self satisfied smile and it’s time to break for lunch. But coming back after lunch: things, they don’t go so well. Another chunk of book, but I’m not happy with the resolution. I get the feeling the thing should have finished, but there’s all these threads left to tie off.

Bumholes.

So tomorrow it’s back to the drawing board for the final chapter, and maybe some fiddling about with stuff that happens before that too. Bring it to a tighter conclusion.

Whatever happens I’m a hell of a lot closer to my 150,000 word (contractual) delivery, even though I swore it'd only be as big as CG (at nearly 25K less). I’m only 4,000 words off that right now. And given the things I need to tie up, I can see each and every one of those going.

Never, EVER thought I’d be on the writing end of a book that big.

Getting there…

Well, after a very poor start (in at the computer by half seven and barely a page of double spaced written by half ten) things have improved somewhat. Chapter and a half today and the finale is at hand! So, having wasted half the day not achieving anything, as of five minutes ago, there’s another 3,450-ish words added to the pile.

Breathes sigh of relief.

Tomorrow things should be so close to finished you could butter my muffins and call me a toast-rack.

OK, after that there’s going to be a bit of going back into the middle and making sure a couple of the subplots are satisfactorily concluded, but the beast’s back is finally broken.

Them chapters keep on comin’

Book number two now stands at 139,499 individually hand-crafted words. Today’s been a good day I think. A little short of the 3,500 target, but a lot of fun to write. As the book’s nearing its conclusion I’ve started writing shorter chapters, keeping the action moving. Which is nice, if for no other reason that I can polish off more than one chapter in a session and kid myself I’m doing great.

Another reason for the upbeatishness is I’ve had one of those marvellous back seat moments (in the terms of not having to drive, rather than making out with a cheerleader – needs must and all that). Two of the characters from the previous book just clicked back into exactly the same interpersonal relationship they did last time: bickering. I love it. No work required on my part, just sit back and let them get on with it. All I have to do is write it down.

Now I just have to decide if I’m going to kill off one of the main supporting characters from the first book, or not. Touch and go at the moment. Touch and go…

Image is everything.

So how come the picture of me on the Harrogate website has sartorial critics like Sarah opinioning that Monsieur Rickards and I are sharing a laundry basket? (Apart from anything else: my shirt fits.)

Trouble is: how does one cut a dash in the modern publishing world? Mr I Rankin Esq. Has the whole ‘black leather’ thing tied down, so the rest of us have to forge our public personas elsewhere.

Like John, I chose to go for the ‘smart, but casual’ approach (and before Sarah and Bryon start doing the finger pointing thing – this is a bearded-man thing, so get over it ;}# ) black jacket and white shirt. Now this is not just any shirt, this is ‘The Party Shirt!’ so called because I bought it for the Voyager Summer party – an annual event held by that editor of editors Jane Johnson – where the people that actually make books work (editors, publicists, designers, marketing, international sales, foreign rights – you know them what do the real work) can come and let their hair down (accompanied by close-up magicians and HEAPS of vodka, not to mention unintentionally insulting Michael Marshall by thinking he’s actually a huge, rotund bloke called Brian.) and have worn it to every HarperCollins function since. Party shirt = being write-ist. What else am I going to do in order to forge an identifiable image with the important people (the ones who buy books)?

Anyone?

I feel pretty, oh so pretty,

I feel witty and pretty (come on, join in Byron, you know you want to) and wise… Actually, I feel lumpy and self-conscious, but that doesn't rhyme.

This morning started later than normal, due to it actually being the weekend, and lo and behold the Lord said, “Let there be snow!” and there was. But it was a bit crap. Well, not crap, but pretty short lived. It was however, cause for celebration in Casa MacBride, as I need to take more of these darn author photo things for Holland Norway and the good old UK. Now the reason snow is good for this is down to Cold Granite being set in the run-up to Christmas, so you can see the connection. Better yet: the derelict farm cottage over the road is a dead ringer for one featuring in the book’s more gruesome scenes. Result! Especially as I’d written those bits long before we bought this house. To compound the coincidence, it’s been hidden behind a wall of dense vegetation for the last God knows how many years and only just been exposed because the farmer wants to build his dream house (and you know there are going to be LOADS of posts in the future whinging on about that!), so up until about a week ago I never even realised just how similar it is to a fictional place I made up to have nasty stuff happen in/around.

Of course, the minute we actually get ready and lumber out there to take the pic – Fiona has to help on this one as I don’t got no tripod yet – the bloody snow stops. But it’s the thought that counts I suppose.

This then results in an impromptu photo session in the bathroom mirror (steady ladies!) and some messing around in photoshop. Quite pleased with the results too. Maybe someone else will be, and they’ll actually go on a book jacket. If not, it’s back to the self aggrandising photography sessions.

All together now: “I feel pretty, oh so pretty…”

The world is full of rampaging weirdoes.

OK, so far I had only suspected this, but a fifteen-minute expedition through the ‘Next Blog’ button has provided empiric evidence of this fact. Now I have been pretty conservative with my blog-based browsing to date, only following links from sites I know, then on through sites linked to by their sites… Technically this should lead to some seven degrees of separation holistic doohickie, but it doesn’t. What you get are a lot of people with fairly similar taste in things. But the ‘Next Blog’ button does away with all this connectivity nonsense. The ‘Next Blog’ button exposes the dark, word-association underbelly of the blogging community.

I thought the people I worked with were bizarre, but jeepers-criminy, they’re like the legions of the sane compared to the man who writes poetry about his underwear, or the woman who writes short stories so bad they’ll make your rectum implode. Maybe this internet thing is like a vast care in the community job, where the mentally-different are let loose to exercise their demons (and yea: I do mean exercise rather than exorcise). Good job this blog is written by and for sane people. Otherwise I think there would be cause for concern…

Now, has anyone seen my duck?

What’s in a name (part 3)

Well, it looks like the whole ‘what do we call Cold Granite in Dutch’ has finally been solved. Phil sent off a raft of options to Unieboek and the winner is: STEENKOUD (steen = stone and koud=cold, which I suppose is pretty obvious really). All the other options either being a sack of festering poo, or just not applicable in Dutch.

Now all I need is a name for book 2 and I’m laughing (rather than giggling nervously and refusing to make eye-contact).

What about: Dark Sausages?

Write, monkey boy, write!

Yesterday was not a good day for writing stuff. Sunday night was ruined by having to get up at Oh-My-God o’clock in order to catch the red-eye to Heathrow. Monday night was spoiled by having to schmooze with Big-Cheese-Client-Boy and spend the night in a hotel (where I never sleep anyway) and Tuesday night… less said the better, but trust me – not much sleep at all. If any. Now I’ll freely admit that I don’t sleep that great at the best of times, but this week has been extra special in terms of its slumberific awfulness.

Which resulted in Wednesday – my first full day back at writing on the part time conga-line – being national half shut knife day. Knackered. Now I don’t know if it was being exhausted and bleary and kinda nauseas due to lack of sleep, or just the shock of being back at the grindkeyboard, but the total sum of Wednesday’s writing was a piffling 1,000 words. 1,000. Arsebiscuits. Of course I wrote a hell of a lot more words than that, but then spent the rest of the day deleting them, or writing over the top, or going back to square one and starting again. Frustrating as hell.

But today the stygian mists of gloom have roll-ed away and lo, let there be words. By lunchtime I’d already written twice what I had yesterday and by close of business the old wordcount was sitting at a modest, but acceptable 3,500. Breathe sigh of relief. Better yet, it now means that I have writted more than 2,000 more than went into the release version of Cold Granite. Hurrah! Now I only need to produce another 5 or 6 chapters and I’m home and dry! Wheeeeeeee…

Then it’s a quick drift back through the thing, to tweak and fiddle a little, and it can go off to Phil (he’s small, but he’s feisty).

Things about me (part 2)

Ask and ye shall receive, and even if you didn’t ask for it: you’re getting it anyway.

Right, here’s the deal: I was not always thus – way back in the day, I was a sensible everyday kind of chap, but I fell in with a bad crowd. Protowriters. Two lassies from Germany, over in Aberdeen to learn Gaelic and drink proper beer for a change. They were both writing novels, so I thought, ‘what the hell, I’ll give that a go…’ This resulted in ‘212 666’ (subtitled ‘the phone number of the beast’ as it was the number of the dreaded Inland Revenue office in Aberdeen at the time), a jolly romp following two Edinburgh hit men on a tour of the north east of Scotland, clearing their order book. Pursued by both the Inland Revenue and the VAT man – who’s an altogether scarier prospect – for non declared earnings. Sent out to agents and publishers, received some nice comments, including one which said “You have a really, really twisted sense of humour…”, but no takers.

Now it was at this time that I shared office space on Marishall Street – within condom-flinging distance of the heart of Aberdeen’s red light district (more of which in book 2) – and just up the road was the SF+ bookshop. They had a competition: write a science fiction short story and maybe win £100! I had a bash and knocked up ‘Dead Men’s Shoes’ overnight, and walked away with £100 and an embarrassing article in the Press and Journal, Aberdeen’s main newspaper.
Flushed with success I decided to try an SF novel: an action adventure thing set in a near-future Glasgow. A bit heavy on the technobabble, but I was working in the IT / internet industry by then and that was how the people I dealt with day-in-day-out spoke. Once more out to the agents – this time with success. The first place I tried from the ‘Writers and Artists’ Yearbook’, who said they did SF, and they took me on board. Hurrah! Sound bells and trumpets and other noisy things… Only nothing came of it.

So off Stuart goes, still working in IT, and writes a follow-up to ‘Wonderland’ called ‘Halfhead’. Now this, thinks our bearded hero, is going to be the one that does it. This is going to be the one that actually does something… But it’s taken three years to complete (what with getting married, changing jobs two times and moving home) and there is a deadly silence from the agents. Nothing. Letters and emails are sent, letting them know the joyous news: “New Book!”

Silence. Not even the courtesy of a reply.

‘Right’, thinks Stuart, ‘sod you then!’

Back to the yearbook. This time I pick Marjacq Scripts: they boast amongst their clients Rodney Wingfield – guru superman when it comes to police procedurals. This is the man who wrote the superb ‘Touch of Frost’ books, which I cannot recommend highly enough. So away goes sample chapters and the usual whatnot. And back comes an invitation to join the ranks of Marjacq’s clients. Once more with the trumpets and other loud-ish implements. If a little muted with the cynicism born of having been there before. Mark. That was my agent’s name and he was a good one, came back with specific things I could do to polish the book (the last lot were more inclined to give vague, generic feedback that was virtually useless when it came to making alts) and off it went to various publishers.

Then the silence.

And it was during this lull in communications that I wrote a supernatural action adventure thing, which, looking back on it, has its flaws, but also some really kick-ass bits. This book is sent off to Mark the agent, but he can see the flaws in it and says “It’d be really interesting to see what would happen if you were to write a straight serial killer novel.” The inference being ‘stop writing this crap and produce something that people might actually want to read, you hairy-faced bum-hole!’

So I did. But while that was going on Mark had to leave the heady world of publishing (personal reasons) and I passed through a number of hands (still at Marjacq) before falling into the sticky fingers of Phil.

Now a number of people Mark had sent Halfhead to, still had it – no response received as yet – so Phil starts to do his thing and, for once, there’s real interest coming in. It actually looks like that-book-I-thought-would-do-something, is actually going to do something! And it does, in a weird roundabout way…

Jane at HarperCollins gets Halfhead (new submission by Phil) and kinda likes it. So she asks, “What else has this bloke written?” and by a weird freak of serendipity, I’ve just that month finished the straight serial killer novel Mark wanted to see. This goes off to Jane along with the supernatural thing and before you know it, we’re involved in a whirlwind of contracts and international rights deals for Cold Granite.

And the rest, as they say, is home economics.

Harrogate, Harrogate, Harrogate…

Got the sign-up pack in through the post this weekend to the Harrogate Crime Festival, including a form that I have to fill in saying that I’m not a vegetarian and won’t require a sacrificial sheep at any event I’m involved in. Even if it is called ‘New Blood’.

Trouble is, the form also hints that it would be very nice of me to waive any fee to actually appear at the thing – in order to support the festival. Which I’d love to do, were it not for quitting my job this year in order to be a write-ist, effectively slashing my take home pay by a HUGE amount. Mortgage, remember the mortgage…

Now the fee isn’t huge – after all this is all about taking part and meeting people and publicising the book and maybe even feeling that we’re not all alone in this crazy, messed up, crime-writing world… – but it would just about cover an additional night in the hotel the event’s taking place in. Which would mean I could go to the festival party, held the night before the New Blood thing and let the old beard down with everyone else. They’re putting me up on the night of the event itself, so I’d make nearly three days of the festival, rather than one and a bit.

Ethical dilemma, here we come: do I be nice and say, “No, it’s OK, I’m gonna waive that fee, ‘cos I think it’s important to support festivals like this.” and NOT go to the party (selfless, noble, but missing a chance to get to know the people involved), or do I plead the poverty of a fledgling write-ist and ‘party on down’ (risking being viewed as a gold-digging, hairy-faced poo-head)?

What do you think? Anyone else going?

I HATE the red-eye

Nothing puts the shine on your week like starting it off at half bloody five on the Monday morning. Shower, shave (no time for anything else) and off to the airport. Bastard. Managed some editing in the lounge waiting for the flight, but no actual writing. Which is a shame as this weekend has only produced a squidge over 2,000 words. Lazy, lazy, lazy shite.

Didn’t help that both Saturday and Sunday morning were taken up with ‘items of a domestic nature’, and looking after cat – who now has a big strip shaved into her fuzzy flanks. But mostly it was pooping about doing house stuff. Arse. Not happy at all with the number of words being produced at the moment. The words themselves seem OK, at least to my unpractised eye, but there just aren’t enough of the bloody things.

However, I’m on my part time thing from Wednesday onwards (a whole twelve days at home to write in) and should be able to get a hell of a lot more done. I’d love to say that I was going to get the bloody thing finished, but seeing how well I’ve done on the old goal-achievement front this last couple of months: I’m not holding my breath.

Arse.

Things about me (part 1)

Yesterday Darren asked for a sort of potted bio, with particular regard to any previous publishing credits, and I fobbed him off with the punch line to a joke about two digestive biscuits. However, after sober reflection, I can see that this was misjudged: I should instead have gone for the punch line from the joke about two nuns on a driving holiday in America. So in order to atone for this gross lack of judgement, I have decided to capitulate and spread the dirt…

I… wait for it… have never been published anywhere else, ever before. Never. Not once. Nada. Like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is my list of publishing credits.

There was a time when I wrote book reviews for the website run by the company I worked for – even got to interview Mr Rankin and Mr Brookmyre at one point – but other than that, I am an publishing virgin.

Now I did enter a couple of short stories into the annual Scotland On Sunday competition, but never got anywhere. I also traded short stories like insults with James for a heady autumn / winter and you can still see his end of the game on his website. Mine never saw the light of day again. I never got my act together for long enough to actually find out where in the UK would actually publish short fiction. Especially slightly twisted stuff with recurring themes of cannibalism, dismemberment, betrayal and full of words like ‘shoogle’.

Actually: tell a lie, I also saw brief fame in ‘From the Sublime’ a local Aberdeen fanzine / magazine thingie. ‘Stuart and Harold’ and it’s successor, ‘The All New Stuart And Harold Show’ was a graphic novel-style journey deep into the darkest psyche of man, as expressed through the adventures of bumbling halfwit and his collection of sentient dinosaur wards (like Dick Grayson was to Bruce Wayne, only without the whole cross-dressing tights inside the pants thing). Writted and drawed by me, it actually managed to garner a sizeable fan base too, well, more than three people at least, so I choose to judge that a success. And now I come to think of it, Harrogate won’t be my fist appearance on a festival panel – Harold was guest of honour with a couple of bigwig writers from 2000AD once, I was there to make sure he didn’t eat anyone.

So that’s me: unpaid entourage to a fictional dinosaur. What a claim to fame!

Breathe a sigh of relief…

Today is a day we’ve not been dreading for about three months: the day Grendel – AKA: Little Miss, Kitty-Poo-Cat, Little Peeper, Madame La Peep, Grendel Fishcake, and occasionally: Bad Cat! [if she’s been trying to chew the appendages off Mr Froggy the wicker wastepaper basket in the study] – goes in for her ‘little op’. Anyone who has done this will know of the trauma. I think what disturbed us most was having to deny her food from 18:00 and water from 22:00. Poor wee toot. But she went into the vets this morning, and I know the boyfriend of the senior partner, so was in a perfect position to wreak terrible revenge should anything go wrong.

Thankfully it did not and Madame La Peep will be returning to the family bosom this afternoon – provided I can squink off work early to go pick her up. Not looking forward to seeing a big bald patch and stitches on my little girly, but needs must. Especially as she’s a Maine Coon cat, and therefore pedigreed. Without this little trip to the vet we won’t actually own her, as the breeder keeps the papers. The only other option was to fork out an extra £320.00 to keep her whole and get kittens. And much though we’d have loved that, we just can’t.

So this weekend will have to be spent in devotion to the little furry animal (and no, I don’t mean Fiona this time, although she does come from Fife, so I can see where the confusion arises) and if I’m lucky, a bit of writing as well. Two new chapters by Monday! That is the goal.

Just as long as I can fit it around pampering the cat.

That old Class Divide…

Because I can...

Right now I’m middle-class – at least as far as BMI is concerned. I’m not quite lower-class: I have a silver card so I can get into the business lounge at Heathrow, but I’m not quite upper-class either: my company has bought the cheapest ticket it can to get me back up to Aberdeen. So here I sit in limbo, knowing I’m not as good as those with a blue boarding pass sticking up out of their shirt pocket, but at the same time knowing I’m WAY better off than the plebs, sitting down outside Gate 8A in the airport equitant of a bus stop. Only without the smell of wee.

My line manager, however, is sat opposite me in the business lounge, reading a ‘Daily Telegraph’. The boarding pass sticking out of his pocket is Blue. Of course. But here I am, clinging onto my middle-class slice of business lounge access with a tenacity born of… well, sheer bloody mindedness I suppose. His pass is Blue, mine a kind of dysentery brown. He’s drinking fresh orange and soda, I’m on the sauce. Red wine in a glass the size of an eggcup with a brandy chaser. All free from the business lounge bar. God alone knows why the wine glasses only come in ‘tiny’, you can pour yourself eight fingers of Gin in a pint glass, and top it off with vodka and whisky, if you like. But not the wine. Mind you, I suppose I could always decant my wine into another glass, something bigger and more tumbler-ish, but that would be letting the side down. Damn my middle-class mentality. If I was upper-class – my blood as blue as my boarding pass – I could probably get away with such behaviour and be seen as roguish. But I’m not, so I’d probably get sent down, with time on for bad behaviour.

Is it too late to announce a revolution?

The flight back isn’t too bad I suppose. No delay leaving Heathrow, and it’s getting to the point where I’m not flying home in the dark. At least not all the way. Instead the BD 676 races the sunset north, loosing long before we’re anywhere near Edinburgh. The dappled autumnal tones slipping into colder blues and violet.

This would all be well and good if the woman in the seat in front of me didn’t insist on reclining the bloody thing. It’s claustrophobic enough sitting back here in cattle class, without Madame Stinky-Pants making what little space I have even smaller. And she doesn’t even sit back! Instead she spends most of the flight hunched forward over her free copy of the Evening Herald while I sit sideways on, trying not to breathe too deeply, ‘cos there’s no room.

But help is at hand: a nice, smiley French lady working the back end of a drinks trolley. My request for a large gin and tonic is met with a blank stare. I repeat my, not unreasonable request, and the gallic smile grows wider. And returns with a tin of orange juice and a tin of tonic. Close, but no cigar. It takes three trips back to the trolley, a consultation with the spiky-haired bloke working the other end, and a bit more smiling to come up with the requisite two plastic bottles of gin and two tins of tonic. I’m still squashed into a space the size of a Corby trouser press, but now I’ve got GIN!

Monkeys!

All aboard the mooch-wagon…

I’ve never been comfortable with freeloading. Just isn’t in my nature – with the exception of airport business lounges of course, there I’m out for all I can get: free drinks, sweets, crisps, bits of cheese sweating away in individual plastic wrappers, you name it – I want it. But nowhere else. When the company ‘does things’ which is bloody rare, I am the model of restraint. None of this getting squiffy on the company dollar and photocopying the arse for me.

Which makes this whole being published thing a bit odd. I don’t like to freeload, but people like to treat, it shows they care and are generous and nice. And if I make too big a fuss about not mooching, then do I just end up insulting them, by refusing their hospitality? HC have been extraordinarily generous to me: parties with proper champagne (none of your cheap Australian fizzy here [which I can imbibe to a band playing]), meals out at swanky restaurants. I mean REALLY swanky. And even gone so far as to put me up in a hotel that must cost for a night what I earn in a week. Then there’s Phil, Agent, Friend, Short Person: he lives in Guildford, so we occasionally meet up for a drinkie and a chat. And he may be little, but he’s tenacious: sometimes we have to arm-wrestle for who can pick up the tab. I have to let him win every now and again so he feels special.

Still, if one is ever to truly achieve greatness I suppose one must learn to accept mooching as a part of life. Mochity mooch, mooch, mooch…

An confession of sorts…

Well I suppose I should come clean – yesterday’s travelogue-style posting isn’t typical of my normal writing. Much, much calmer and more verbose than any of the books I’ve produced, and with a lot less swearing too. James can vouch for this: he’s read most, if not all of them. But it was fun and very claming. Never written first person, present tense before. After a crappy night’s sleep and a crappy drive to the airport it was perfect therapy to yet another flight down to Guildford. And believe it or not: I actually like Guildford, in a strange, masochistic way. But I enjoyed the travel-writing style posting, even if no one else did (given the complete dearth of comments – except for James’s sarcastic ‘you really should be a writer you know...’), and as it’s my blog I can do what I bloody well like. So there.

I had been planning to keep a diary of sorts for any publicity things I ended up doing. Kind of a ‘join me on tour’ thing, only with a much less cheesy title. Stick it up as part of the old soon-to-be-started website. And let’s face it: I’m going to have to get my finger out on that one if it’s going to be ready for the Norwegian launch at the start of March.

There are two things that have been keeping me away from doing the site. One is the fact that any time spent websiting is time that should be spent getting book 2 (whatever the damn thing is going to end up being called) finished ahead of the deadline, so I can con HarperCollins into thinking I’m reliable and can be trusted to turn out two books a year. Mmmmm, standalone…

Reason number the second is that I’ve been waiting for Aberdeen to do its usual WEATHER FROM HELL thing. OK, and I also didn’t have a digital camera, or an internet connection, but mostly I blame the weather. For the site I have decided upon a Cold Granite virtual tour of Aberdeen, featuring photos of the real-life locations mentioned in the book. And as very little of the book is actually madey-up, at least as far as places are concerned, that means pretty much everywhere mentioned in the book. And if possible I want to photograph them in the pissing rain and falling snow. ONLY ABERDEEN ISN’T PLAYING! OK, it’s windier than a nun after a cauliflower curry, but the really dreadful weather we had so much of over the last two years hasn’t arrived yet. That said, come February we’re all going to be skiing to work and need rescuing by dipsomaniac St. Bernards.

Of course, posting snapshots of places in the book has the drawback that people can then look at the picture, read the description, and then say, “What a load of old shite: looks nothing like he said…” on the other hand I think it’d be nice to do an Aberdeen show and tell. For those people unlucky enough never to have graced its silvery streets.

Other than that, I was also going to do the usual bio – not looking forward to doing that, bigging myself up was never my scene man – dates for things, reports from things, reviews, and what the hell I was actually thinking of when I wrote the damn thing. All linked into the blog, which would be getting a major stylesheet overhaul as well so they at least look like they’re part of the same thing. Or vaguely related.

So, anything else you want from a write-ist’s website? No naked picture though, I’m shy…

Guildford a go-go... again…

The alarm goes off at six thirty, but I’m already awake, staring at the darkened ceiling and wondering why I went daft on the red wine last night. I knew I’d have to get up long before the crack of dawn to catch the flight to Heathrow. It’s a bit like eating a PotNoodle when you’re other half’s away somewhere and you’re left to fend for yourself: a bit of the old self flagellation, a brief slice of self-inflicted suffering that’s regretted pretty much on mouthful one. After all, you could be eating steak and chips, couldn’t you?

Outside it’s blowing a gale: long, cold shoves of wind that rattle the trees and make the telephone lines howl and writhe. The drive in to town isn’t much better either, Fiona’s scabrous, filthy old Renault Clio lurching about on the tarmac as we struggle along behind a tractor the size of our house. The alarming wobble calms to a gentle rock as we become embroiled in the traffic jam that leads from Swailend all the way into Dyce. A mile-long ribbon of bleary red tail lights, inching forward, stopping, then inching forward again. Like penitent monks, Pot Noodling themselves on the way to the holy land.

According to the woman on the other end of the phone at half six this morning, the first flight out was cancelled, so everyone from that one is now going to be stuck on the same one as me: this means more people on the flight and less chance of getting a good seat. But then, there’s nothing I like better than sitting crammed between a huge sweaty business man with halitosis and a BO-riddled, acne-quilted toss-pot with what sounds like a hefty dose of TB. Must get there early or even the nasty seats will be gone and I’ll be forced to fly down to London in the toilets – I’m too big to fit in an overhead locker. We’re not quite late for the plane, even though the traffic is appalling and I manage to get that holy of holies: a window seat with no one sitting next to me. The flight’s a lot emptier than I would have thought, maybe everyone else woke up this morning, took one look out the window and said, “Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m back off to bed.” If only I was that wise…

There’s something about flying from Aberdeen to Heathrow that just screams DELAY. So we sit in our little seats, trying not to sniff the smells emanating from our fellow passengers, looking out the tiny portholes at the wind-battered runway. Who would have thought thin air could be so destructive? According to the bastard on the radio this morning, lorries have been blown off bridges in Scotland: it’s been that bad. Hundred mile an hour gusts of wind. And the man sitting two rows forward seems to be suffering from the same condition if the ‘unusual’ odours emanating from his seat are anything to go by.

Strangely enough, when we do finally get into the air, the plane clambers its way into the sky over Middlefield, Kingswells, then Westhill, I’ve lived in all three places, but can’t find any of my former homes as we climb. Which I find faintly depressing. I’d like to have said, “hey, me: I can see your house from up here!” Instead Westhill disappears behind scuttling clouds and I contemplate another breakfast in economy class. Today’s offering is masquerading under the pseudonym ‘ham and cheese panini’, but looks more like a slice of toasted mattress filled with phlegm. But probably doesn’t taste as nice. I eat it anyway, having missed breakfast at home in the rush to get into that funky, early morning traffic jam. Another Pot Noodle for the soul.

More lumpy air. The landscape below is painted with a soft golden light, shadows flickering across amber fields and snow-dusted mountains, while the plane bounces around like a politician’s spotty arse in a brothel. And that’s when I realise that there’s a dead Daddy-Long-Legs in my window, trapped forever between the outer glass and the inner plastic. How the hell did it get in there? It’s not like you can open the damn things to let in a bit of air. But I keep my secret, desiccated insect to myself: no one else has one and I don’t want to start a riot.

It’s not until I get off the plane in Heathrow that I see someone else has made a better showing of the flight than I have: a pair of upended airline-sized bottles of red wine, suckled dry of their contents. Now that’s the way to travel: drunk.

Maybe on the way back.

What’s in a name? (part the second)

Yup, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the writing, troubled only with the lack of a new name for Book 2, we’re back to square one with the first book as well. It seems that ‘Cold Granite’ just doesn’t work in Dutch. Doesn’t mean the same thing, doesn’t conjure up the same images, basically: it don’t work as a title. So we need to come up with something else.

Now if you’ve been here before, you’ll know by now that I HATE coming up with names for books after I’ve started writing them. Don’t seem right somehow, naming a thing that’s already full of other things. Worse yet: this one's already got a name! But if the nice people at Uniboek say Cold Granite don’t work, then I gotta believe them: their Dutch is much, much better than mine after all.

So back to the drawing board I must go (well, whiteboard to be technically accurate – not an easy task, as the thing’s covered with a sprawling mind map listing all the thousands of things I need to bring to some sort of conclusion in the next 5 to 8 chapters). New name for number 2, new name for number 1.

The only trouble is, the names I’m coming up with (assisted by Fiona and the cat) probably still aren’t going to work in Dutch. So much of a book’s title is down to the picture it creates, a double meaning here, an allusion there. Translate that into another language and you’re going to be pretty damn lucky if it doesn’t suddenly mean something else entirely.

Ah well, such is life…

Publication, thy name is Norway…

Got the cover through for the Norwegian publication of CG last night, or ‘Kald Granitt’ as it’s going to be. (see, it might not work in Dutch, but see: it works in Norwegian – possibly because there’s a lot of shared heritage between Aberdeen and our neighbours across the North Sea) One thing that always makes me smile is seeing the different covers as they come in. The way other people have seen the story – UK: sinister red doors, US: composite shot of Aberdeen harbour with figure in foreground, Norway: car park . When I finally get round to finalising the web-space thing I’ll post them all up here.

God, I bet you just can’t wait!

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A sobering reminder from the back-blogs…

I can’t call it a moment of epiphany, as it’s something I suppose I’ve known all along, but Sarah’s comment on my last post has got me thinking: we don’t really know one another, do we? To put it in more bold terms: I don’t know YOU, and you don’t really know ME. (though if you’ve been reading this blog for any sort of time, you’ll know a hell of a lot more about me than I know about you). In fact, the only person who posts on this blog that I’ve actually met is James. And I count him to be my best friend (spouses excepted), having known him for years.

And yet, the whole ‘blog thing’ encourages a familiarity that maybe isn’t always welcome to all parties. We blog. We share snippets and facets of our lives, and yet: we’ve never met. The only connection we share is via a modem. Are we friends? Can we take the piss out of each other and know we’ll still get invited back for Christmas dinner next year?

Perhaps I’ve been guilty of over-familiarity with this thing. Maybe it’s time to stand back a bit and think of the blog in a different light. After all, what do we really know about one another?

Me: I like black and white films*; I like stories where everything isn’t spelled out to you; I like Australian wine; I like cooking; I like childish, jelly-based sweets; I like writing stuff, even if some people think it is a bit gruesome; I love my cat and my wife, and mushroom soup; I like dancing in the kitchen, just as long as I know no one’s watching; I like a good book that I don’t have to wade through; I like drawing stuff…

Now it’s your turn.

*Though this does go from ‘Arsenic And Old Lace’ to ‘Man Bites Dog’

My God, an actual link!

Yup, for a change I have actually included a bloggy-book-style-linky-thing. I was off perusing BookAngst 101 today (and noting that it STILL hasn’t been updated since last Thursday – lazy old person pretending to be Max) and thence via the ‘Best Of Blog’ icon to a little site called, ‘I love A Good Mystery’ where old Skinny-Malinky Rickards’s “WINTER’S EDGE” (sic) receives high praise indeed.

You know, I have never in my life before had occasion to use a (sic) thing. Plenty of sick, but not one (sic). Until now, that is…

Sorry, this post would be longer, but the cat is trying to steal the ice-cubes out of my Gin!

Next day delivery my arse! (part the second)

As those of you with nothing better to do with your free time than read this rubbish will know: I’m not a happy bunny on the digital camera front. I had thought three days was a pretty shocking time to take to get one wee parcel from daaaaarn saaaaarth up to Aberdeen, but I was obviously not reckoning on the lethargic power of DHL (and thanks to Darren for his suggestion as to what the letters stand for, but I think it now has to be D*****g H****k-L******as.)

Now ‘Next Day Delivery’ takes five days if you have the good audacity to live north of the border. Not quite a WHOLE BLOODY WEEK, but it’s close enough for my biscuits. The thing got into the Aberdeen depot at 10:55… And that wasn’t enough time to get it out on the afternoon van. Eh? There’s another six hours between five to eleven and the close of business. I could WALK across Aberdeen, and back, in that time.

Said it before, say it again: Bastards!

So, allegedly, I’ll be getting my grubby paws on my camera tomorrow. Following which I intend to bombard Fiona (not groovy wife Fiona, but groovy HC publicist Fiona) with loads and loads of self-taken author photos. She hates it when I do that ;}#

But sooner or later (and lets face it, it’s going to have to be sooner now) I’m going to have to bite the bullet and make a special trip down to jolly old London in order to have me picture taken, Guvnor. This was supposed to happen last year at some point, not for HC, but for those lovely people at Forum – who’re going to be publishing Cold Granite in Sweden sometime later this year – but he (Jerry Bauer) lives in Italy, so we were off to a bit of a difficult one to start with. I’m sure it’ll all happen at some point. Until then it’s lots of my cheesy / hairy face with the one arm disappearing off out of shot.

And if you’re all really unlucky I might even blight your day by posting some here.

Or maybe just pictures of the cat.

What’s in a name?

Well, quite a lot actually. Cold Granite didn’t start life as ‘Cold Granite’, but something else. I changed it ‘cos I didn’t like the first title and needed something to call the damn thing. But I kinda liked ‘Cold Granite’ as a working title and so it stuck. Good thing too, as HC think it’s the dogs danglies – for this particular book anyway. And then along comes book two. Now normally I start with a title in mind, and this then helps shape the story – lends flavour to my thinks, but the only working title I have for book 2 is ‘Shore Lane’. Appropriate, because Shore Lane is the heart of Aberdeen’s red light district. Bad, because I really don’t like it, and the nice people from HarperCollins go quiet and change the subject whenever they hear it, so I’m assuming they’re not too keen either. And even if I did like it, that naughty Mr Rankin has put the doodads on using it with his latest offering: Fleshmarket Close. Just round the corner from where I spent my first year in Edinburgh, for all you trivia fans out there. Can’t use ‘Shore Lane’ on the heels of ‘Fleshmarket Close’: just end up looking like a Johnny Come Lately. So back to the drawing board for a new name. And I HATE naming things after I’m nearly finished. My head is by now so full of all the different little things that happen I end up with naming paralysis.

Arsebiscuits – that’s what I say. (not a proposed title, I might add, just an expression of bearded frustration [which is like normal frustration, only hairier]).

The name for book 3 is already decided – before starting writing: see? – and everyone’s happy with it. So Book 1: title good, Book 2: title poo, Book 3: title good. And I have, for some unfathomable reason, decided that all these books must adhere to a two word title. Something something. Just like that. I’m flexible as far as syllables are concerned, but not that much.

So, herein lies the challenge: anyone want to suggest titles for a book they’ve never read, with no idea of what it’s about, who’s in it, or what happens? Oh, and the only prize would be to swank about, pointing at the thing on the bookshelves and telling your mates, “I came up with that, I did.” While they look at you with disgust and reply, “Don’t be daft.” Your only reward will be the ridicule of your own friends: ‘cos you’re not getting any of my money, you dirty spongers.

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Oh, and in case you’re ever tempted to try it: eating warm chicken salad with a plastic fork has little to recommend it.

Next day delivery my arse!

OK, so usually the unrepentant rant is the province of Monsieur Rickards, but this time I feel inclined to throw protocol to the wind and ask: what the hairy sphincters does DHL think it’s playing at?

Over the New Year festivities I ordered myself a nice digital camera, something swanky where you can decide what the hell the thing should be focussing on yourself – rather than letting some small, inebriated microchip decide that the thing you really want sharp as a tack is the bit of wood twenty feet away, rather than your smiling wife in the foreground – and this process was relatively painless, pricey, but relatively painless. Then, a couple of weeks later (last week) I received an email saying my camera had been posted, and I could look forward to years of digital fun… Tomorrow! Ok, it didn’t say ‘tomorrow’, but it was sent on the Thursday and gave me a parcel reference number and told me to click on DHL’s ‘Next Day Delivery’ link, so I kinda assumed…

Oh foolishness, thy name is ‘MacBride’.

All Day I clicked on the page, only to be told that it had left the Hatfield Terminal at 00:09. All day… Now it takes 9 hours to drive from Aberdeen to Portsmouth – I know ‘cause I’ve done it – but when I called up DHL to ask when I could expect my parcel I was met with disinterested mumbling. Then a demand for the postcode of the delivery address. “Aberdeen?” said the incredulous south-east Londoner on the other end of the phone, “Be Monday before we get it up there!”

So, to recap, it takes 9 hours for an Aberdonian to drive to Portsmouth, but it takes about eighty four for DHL to get to Aberdeen from Hatfield.

Bastards.

What we’re a third world country up here? It takes eight times as long to get to here as it does from?

This is one of the reasons I decided to set my book in Aberdeen, rather than the usual suspects of Edinburgh, Glasgow, or some made-up place in the States. It’s the third biggest city in the whole of Scotland! Hello! Oil capital of Europe! Not some seedy backwater – you parcel not-delivering toss-pots.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!! Death and uncomfortable underwear to them all!

Will the real lawyers please stand up…

I don’t know if it's the same in the states, but over here all lawyers kind of get lumped into the same festering bucket as Politicians. Now I can understand why the latter group are stuffed in there, upside down, in a mixture of Libfraumilch and raw sewage – anyone who goes to college to study politics in order to get a job where they can compromise their principles in order to gain power over the commoners (that’s you and me), should NEVER be allowed to get their slimy paws on any sort of public office – but is it fair to force the lawyers in there too?

Most people who’ve had any dealings with one would probably say yes.

Which is odd, because as David V**** points out (prompted by James's rant on the subject), some are actually there to do useful things: like prosecute criminals. Or defend innocent people against prosecution. BUT (and you knew this was coming) this isn’t really the people we’re thinking of when we talk of LAWYERS (boooooooo, hisssssssssssss). No, we’re thinking of the people that charge you £200 an hour to sign a bit of paper they’ve had a minion photocopy. Who, when asked for advice, give you three completely contradictory statements to choose from and refuse to be tied down to which is actually correct. Who charge you a percentage of the value of your house when it comes time to sell it, and then another percentage of the new one when it’s time to buy that. The ones who’re never off the telly, telling us that if we’ve stubbed our toe on the cat, we can sue someone for it! Who stalk the dark, mist-shrouded streets, looking for babies to eat and virgins to deflower.

So, I hereby announce an amnesty on useful lawyers. You may now clamber out of the bucket of poo. Which will free up some space for estate agents.

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That planning thing…

Yesterday James threatened to do something on the topic of planning. Well, it’s past ten in the evening (over here where GMT was invented, thank you very much) and there’s still no sign of any post on his blog, so I shall take up the baton in order to steal his thunder and washing.

Planning the old novel / book thing – and please bear in mind that this is just what I do, and OK: I’ve got a lovely beard (is like a little bird, whrrroooo, whrrrooo), but it may not work for the smooth chinned. For Cold Granite I took a very precise approach to planning. I sat down and held various conversations with the voices in my head and ended up with a lot of little strips of paper that all had ‘something happening’ on them. Then I kinda shuffled them all into some sort of chronological order, taped them all together and thus produced the perfect plot plan. Of course, when I started writing I completely ignored the whole thing after little-bit-of-paper -number-four and started making stuff up. And OK, it kind of followed the sort of, vague pattern those little sticky strips had formed, but only at a distance and not paying that much attention. Stopping to play with a dead squirrel on the way.

But for book 2 I took a much more decisive and draconian approach: Project Plan. Yup, I defined my plot and timelines in terms of a GANTT chart (and the Mysterious D will know what I’m talking about here sad IT project management types that we are). Now technically this is the perfect plot planning medium: you define a number of events and string them together with dependencies. Like ‘Mr Frobisher gets stabbed’ followed by ‘Mr Frobisher gets a post mortem, but it doesn’t fit’ followed by ‘Mr Frobisher gets exhumed with a weasel…’ You can basically define all your separate plotlines as little chains of events and then line them all up and say, “But I want Nurse Emanuel’s surgical evacuation to happen between the stabbing of Mr Frobisher and the surprise discovery of a sharpened hamster in the vestry.” and the faithful old GANTT chart will slide everything out into the right place. Very useful.

Of course I then completely ignored all that, did a mind map on a big sheet of A4 and started writing. And within six sentences had invented a whole new crime to solve and a character who’d need some sort of resolution before the end. NONE OF WHICH was supposed to be there in the first place.

So as far as I can see, for me at least, planning is more about letting the voices in my head know the sort of thing I want to happen. Then they can get on with the important work of making up the lies while I drink endless cups of tea and wonder if Sooty could beat Basil Brush in a fist fight.

PLANNING: can’t beat it.

I have no words…

This is due to the fact that rather than spend a productive evening writing I spent an indulgent evening spodding about on the internet. Yes, there – waiting for me on the doormat when I got home from work yesterday – was a little cardboard box from my ISP. The long awaited broadband modem and micro switches. And much to my surprise, I installed the software, plugged the thing in and Robert was brother to my mother (or father, which doesn’t rhyme as well)… Actually that’s not true: neither of mine parents have a sibling called Robert, but it sounds daft if you say, “I plugged it in and Ian’s my uncle.” Just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

But points to IFB for their stuff. Most impressed I was. I used to work there (4 years at the old internet service provision lark I was, man and boy, toughest game in the world…) so it’s nice to see the high standards I set are still being adhered to.

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Actually it was kinda fun working for an ISP, we used to ‘do things’ that I probably shouldn’t mention. But oh, my, we did laugh…

However, all this internet folderol is going to take some serious management to make sure it don’t spiral out of control and eat into my precious, precious writing time. As I’ve never had access to the internet at home as I never really saw the point. I work on the damn thing every day, and have done for 10 years, so never got into the habit of browsing for fun. Maybe I’m due a technical second childhood?

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, BEEP!

Stuart MacBrides’s Diary

• Units Of Alcohol: 0 (V Good)
• Cigarettes: 0 (Doesn’t really count as I don’t smoke anyway)
• Calories Consumed: Dunno (but it was all low carb stuff, so acceptable under the bizarre/idiotic/fad diet we’re on at the moment)
• Stupid Early-Morning Exercises: Two days on a trot (like getting up at 06:45 wasn’t punishment enough!)
• Number Of F5s Used To See If Anyone Has Posted Comment On Blog: 5-ish
• Words Written: 0 (V Bad)
  

Well, so much for the old ‘I’m going to write in the evenings when I get in from work’ resolution. Christmas is still making its presence felt – last night was spent dismantling the Lounge Tree, the Study Tree (which is technically a Birthday Tree {topped by The Birthday Fish, and not a fairy, which makes all the difference} but has been moonlighting as a bog-standard Christmas one this festive season) and all the other bits and pieces for another 11 months. And this year we weren’t the best organised, so the Library Tree never saw the fairy-light of day. Didn’t even make it out of the box. Getting all this done, and making the tea, took all bleedin’ evening. So no writing. Not helped by having to get back into the swing of rising with the alarm clock.

Must try harder tonight, or I’ll end up an insomniac-late-night-writing fool!

An Domestic Interlude…

Probably a mistake, but here we go. right now a feature of Fiona (She Who Must Be Indulged) and my bedroom life – steady there with the heavy breathing – involves a nightly chapter of Tim Moore’s excellent Continental Drifter (though Amazon seems to want to call it The Grand Tour for some bizarre reason). A tale of confusion and penny-pinching following the trail of Thomas Coryate – the first grand tourist who walked to Venice and back in 1608. With Moore dressed in a purple velvet suit, and driving an incontinent and leprous Rolls Royce. Which probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But I digress.

This partaking of Mr Moore in the bedroom takes the form of Fiona reading aloud in the style of Jackanory, only without all the different voices. If you’ve never tried it before I can WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend getting your spouse to read to you. Very soothing. And you don’t have to wonder what all the bloody sniggering is about while you’re trying to fight your way through Crime And Bloody Punishment. (OK, the ‘Bloody’ is mine, but come on: you ever tried to read it?)

This is only our second Tom Moore, but previous recitations by the Fiona have included all of James Herriot The Irish RM (closest I could get) and a number of other light reading style thingies.

Fiona does all the reading as I suck hamsters at it. Which bodes less than well for my ‘career as a successful and charismatic writer person’ pretensions. Odd, because when I was a thesp, I would memorise vast soliloquies and deliver them to a sea of wet seats. But ask me to read aloud from a page and it all comes out wrong. I blame my English Teacher at Westhill Academy, who was nice enough in her way, but made me read the part of Macbeth, when I was a shy and tiny teenager, all the way through to the bitter end.

My plan then is to learn bits of Cold Granite like a play and pretend to read it at the time. Cunning no?

52 days of secrecy to go…

Yup, the time of the big reveal comes closer (Can’t really say ‘looms’, can I? I mean it’s AGES to go yet!). Fiona decreed last year, when I told we were going to be keeping this whole ‘getting-a-book-published’ thing a secret , that she would not be able to survive any further than February 2005. Well, to be honest, she started off at September 2004 and I negotiated it up from there. So it had been decided that we’re going to have a little get-together on my birthday and make the announcement.

Now, the thing is that I don’t want to tell people until the day of the party. Just put out a cryptic invite saying: ‘Come along for a BIG announcement (and bring some champagne)’ but Fiona thinks this may convey the impression that she’s pregnant and that prospective grandparents may have their expectations cruelly dashed when it turns out to be nothing more than a publishing deal with major UK, German, American, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and Italian publishing houses. Parents can be funny that way I suppose.

And if we’re lucky I’ll have finished book 2 by then too…

Well, looks like Phil was wrong…

Christmas has come and gone, but there’s still no sign of book 2 being finished. *sigh* I suppose in hindsight it was a bit rose-tinted to think I could actually get through the final 7 or 8 chapters and deal with the whole Christmas shopping / decorations / family visits / stuff at the same time.

Still looking on the bright side I now have in excess of 119,000 hand-crafted words with only another 8,500-ish to go before it’s the same size as Cold Granite. But then I can’t see this one wrapping up properly in a mere 3 chapters. Too many things to bring to a conclusion (and in one case a devious, hanging inconclusion). So I’m thinking there’s still another 8 chapters to go. So that’s about another 28,000 words and brings the thing in scarily close to the contracted value of 150,000. Which I always thought was WAY too long…

Hmmm… Maybe I’ve been subconsciously aiming for the contract value? If nothing else it should give Jane and Sarah something to get their editing teeth into.

The dreaded Hairy Poohead and the clashing publication dates…

Well, I should have put two and two together sooner, but alas: I’m just not that bright. I saw on Sarah’s blog that Harry Potter And The Gauntlet Of Puberty is hitting bookshops and supermarkets all over the world on 16th Jul 2005. Now this in itself is not a terrible thing as such. After all, Rowling’s turned herself into the richest woman in the galaxy with her tales of magic and thingies – more power to her elbow (though given the state of HP&TOOTP maybe it’s her editors that need a bit more of the old oomph). The reason this is cause for consternation in the MacBride household is that Cold Granite comes out in the US on dates as yet unspecified in – wait for it – June.

Damn.

Given the tales told of the last time another HP book came out (authors’ new books piled on the floor under table to make way for Hogwarts theme nights and other such degrading shenanigans) I can’t help worrying that my humble offering is going to disappear, in a blitz of HP promotion.

Once more: Damn.