Catch a(n Amazon) Rising Star and Put it in You Pocket...

Now that Declan Burke has put the Crime Always Pays blog out to stud, someone has to come up with cheesy puns for blog titles. It might as well be me.

Anyway, it's been a while - just over three weeks, in fact - and a busy three weeks it has been. Most of my time has been taken up by finishing the sequel to THE TWELVE (a.k.a. THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), and giving it a very quick spit and polish before sending it to my agent, and a couple of critique angels. Now I am filled with dread, wondering what my agent Nat is going to think of it. Nat Sobel does not mince words, so I am bracing myself.

There has also been a rather splendid development, which I would like to illustrate with the following image:


THE TWELVE has been selected by Amazon UK's reading panel as one its eight Rising Stars for autumn 2009. Once every six months or so, Amazon chooses eight debut novels as part of the Rising Stars initiative to highlight new authors. I am delighted to be one of them. And there's more - at the end of the promotion, whichever book has the most good reviews will be deemed the winner! So, if you've read THE TWELVE, please do me a solid, and click here right now to see my Amazon page and submit your review. And as an extra favour, you could spread the word and encourage other people you know have read it to do the same. My book is the first to be featured, and the page includes a brief Q&A with yours truly.

In other news

More press reviews of THE TWELVE have been coming in, including the Sunday Tribune who said it was "A stunning first novel", while London Lite said it was "an unqualified triumph."

It may have escaped your attention, but the USA publication of THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST is fast creeping up. I've temporarily taken down the dedicated website for it with a view to revamping it in the coming days. I will have much more to say about that in the coming weeks, including getting all gushy and excited about the accompanying American tour where I will cross the entire continent just a few days, and meet lots of people I've been dying to meet for ages, including a certain Betsy Dornbusch, and hopefully Aerin Bender-Stone. Which is nice.

I'll make another blog post next week in which I will officially reveal a very poorly kept secret about an event in Belfast this coming November...

A Quick Review Roundup

You know what the hardest thing about daily blogging is? Remembering to bloody do it. Anyway...

Early reviews for THE TWELVE are starting to creep in. Here are a few highlights:

Just today, Gerard Brennan posted his thoughts over at Crime Scene NI. Gerard mentions, as a few people have, the genre hopping aspects of the book. Yes, it's a thriller first and foremost, but there are paranormal and horror elements in there too. The review also touches on the book's politics, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

And yesterday, of course, I linked to my friend Betsy Dornbusch's review. Then there's the inimitable Josephine Damian's take on things, which I've just realised I hadn't linked to from this blog until now. I linked it from Facebook and so on, but neglected to do it here. That was very remiss of me, so apologies to Josie, particularly in light of her kind words.

There have also been five star reviews cropping up at Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones.com (be sure to click on "Read all customer reviews"), and Play.com, arising from the proof copies sent out by he excellent marketing and publicity folks at CCV/Random House.

I said I'd come back to Gerard's points on politics: Over recent days I've been doing little bits and pieces of publicity work, answering questions, writing small pieces for websites and newspapers. People have started to raise the issue of THE TWELVE's politics. I'm told on the grapevine that some press reviews are going to highlight that aspect.

I never intended THE TWELVE to be a polemic. But there's no getting away from that side of the story; everything about Northern Ireland is political, whether we like it or not. So, at some point in the coming days I'm going to tackle this issue directly. It's not going to be easy, seeing as controversy is intrinsic to politics in this part of the world. But I want to air the topic and perhaps give a better picture of the novel's background. Until then, however, I think Betsy Dornbusch's line is my favourite: "THE TWELVE is the conscience of Northern Ireland."

I wouldn't put it quite so emphatically or dramatically, but the novel is, right down at its core, about guilt. More to follow...

The Best Thing About Being A Writer Is...

On Wednesday, Betsy Dornbusch (aka Sex Scenes at Starbucks) made her 1000th blog post. I'm very flattered that it featured a review of THE TWELVE (which incidentally got its first Amazon review today - five stars, thanks for asking). I was going to use a link to Betsy's piece yesterday to fulfil my once-a-day obligation, but that was waylaid by the arrival of the actual finished book in the mail.

In yesterday's post I may have given the impression that finally reaching the milestone of clutching my own published novel in my sweaty hands was somehow anticlimactic. That wasn't what I meant to say; it was such a big moment for me that I took the book straight to my mum's house where she and my sister and I all sat around and adored it. Since yesterday, the book has rarely been more than two feet away from me as I carry it from room to room. In fact, I think the only room it hasn't entered is the bathroom.

What I meant to put across is that this wonderful event has been preceded by a string of wonderful events. There was the thrill of finishing the novel's first draft, then the thrill of finding my beta readers actually liked it, then the thrill of realising I could make it better, then the thrill of my beta readers liking it even more, then the huge thrill of being approached by a top agent, then the even more huge thrill of said agent offering representation, then... you see where I'm going with this? Everything that happened between first deciding to write this novel and finally holding it in my hands has been a series of intensifying wonderments. It was not a stark transition, a flip, between being an aspiring writer with an idea, and a published writer with a physical book. It was a two year marathon, with the occasional stumble along the way.

It doesn't make this singular event in my life any less of a landmark - it's just that it's in the context of a string of landmarks that got me here.

Which brings me back to the start of this post, and indeed its title. I thought a little bit about what the best thing about being a published writer is. Fame and fortune are, alas, still distant dreams, so they're out to start with. The sense of achievement is one highlight, certainly, and that comes at all stages, from having a particularly good writing session to signing the contract. Receiving compliments from readers is wonderful, and my vanity will most likely ensure I never tire of it. The sheer joy of bringing the strands of a plot together to form something you hadn't anticipated is another great part of it.

The biggest thing, though, is very personal. And it's going to sound mawkish and sentimental. The best thing about being a writer is all the friends I've made, from the earliest days of sending stuff out for critique, up to being published and the other writers I've met as a result, some of them big names, who have turned out to be very nice people. I suppose I use the term 'friend' loosely, in that some are really no more than friendly acquaintances, and some are people I've only exchanged emails or blog comments with. But as a whole, the number and variety of people I've come to know over the last two years in the greatest reward for the work I've put into this.

I won't go into naming names - you all know who you are. But I will single out Betsy as being my earliest and best writer friend, because she symbolises the whole experience for me.

You may now all call be a great big wuss.

Thirty Days and Counting...

So, it is now exactly thirty days until THE TWELVE is officially released in the UK. To celebrate that fact, I am going to set myself a rather rash challenge: one blog post per day between now and then. Seeing as I'm hardly a prolific blogger at the best of times, that might be a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to give it a go.

Some of the posts will be purely self-promotional, while others will be more philosophical. Some might just be news items about me, or even other bloggers. But I will do my very best to blog once a day until July 2nd.

To kick off, here's some rather splendid news: a fantastic story titled LIVING ON THE BLOOD OF OTHERS by a certain Betsy Dornbusch has just been published in the latest issue of ThugLit!