A Busy Week: Interviews, Debates, Readings, Signings, Meetings and Tours

As per my previous post, I visited London last week for a few days. This was a spur-of-the-moment thing; I could have done the interview at the BBC World Service just as easily from Belfast, but I wanted to make the trip and do the interview in person, and meet some of the good folks who have been working on my behalf. I hadn't intended to cause a fuss, but all of a sudden meetings and dinners and office tours were being organised, and it turned into a very busy, but very worthwhile, trip.

At various dinners, office tours and visits to the pub, I met, amongst others, my editor Geoff Mulligan, my other editor Briony Everroad, Harvill Secker publishing director Liz Foley, my UK agent Caspian Dennis, my lovely and very patient publicist Kate Bland, and marketing director Roger Bratchell, as well as a host of other marketing, editorial and sales people far too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that I was met with hospitality and warmth wherever I went.

I learned more about the publishing business over these three or four days than I have done in two or three years of following all the agent and editor blogs out there. Don't get me wrong - I still believe the wealth of information out there on the Internet is a key factor in my getting as far as I have. But actually meeting the people who are working on my book, finding out how they deal with the press and the retailers, how hard they have to strive to get me out there on the shelves and into the reviews - well, I have a whole new respect for what they do, and a whole lot more gratitude.

I'm a good example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, and I have gone into publication expecting a fight. All those blogs out there tell us writers we have to be ready to push and push, and as a result, those of us lucky enough to make it over the transom might wind up on a strange combination of the offensive and the defensive. For example, and I shall confess a big lump of naivety here, after the brilliant review I received in The Observer, I felt a little let down when it wasn't immediately followed by a plethora of reviews in other publications. It wasn't until I met the good people at my publisher that I realised those reviews have to be fought tooth and nail for, that there are dozens and dozens of books duking it out for those precious column inches. Then I realised how incredibly fortunate I've been to get the reviews I've had; there are any number of authors who would gladly give a significant body part to get in depth reviews in both The Observer AND The Guardian. And I also now know how very lucky I am to have gotten so much shelf space in the chain stores, like Eason's and Waterstone's, not to mention the fabulous placement I've had in the airport branches of WH Smith's.

Another valuable lesson has been having realistic expectations in terms of sales for a debut trade paperback. I am told my sell-in is fantastic, enough to make many more established authors envious, and the sell-through is very good from early indications. But something I didn't know, and this may be UK specific and/or particular to the thriller/crime genre, but next year's mass market paperback release is where the real show is. This is where the publisher wants the sales, the hard numbers, and consequently this is where the marketing budget is focused.

Anyway, some photos:



(l-r) Geoff Mulligan (editor at large), Yours Truly, Liz Foley (HS publishing director), Caspian Dennis (my UK agent), Briony Everroad (editor)

And here is my publicist Kate Bland outside Foleys bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where she took me to sign books:



And finally, in this particulr branch of WH Smith's at Stansted Airport, I was #1! I was #15 in a couple of others, but let's just focus on this particular branch, shall we?:



One of the big surprises of the trip came when I went to the offices of the Abner Stein agency in Kensington to meet my UK co-agent Caspian Dennis. I had no earthly idea who else this agency represented, and my jaw must have made quite a noise when it hit the floor upon seeing some of the names. I won't mention them, but we're talking the biggest of the biggest of the big among contemporary authors, as in none more big, like mastadons of modern novelists. I am in quite extraordinary company there.

And finally...

There were a couple of interesting radio bits and pieces recently, and I have saved the audio for anyone interested. The first is the aforementioned BBC World Service interview, which can be listened to here at this link, complete with sound effects during the reading.

The second, and most interesting, was a debate that aired on BBC Radio Ulster just over a week ago on the Sunday Sequence programme, in which the presenter Robbie Meredith discussed the ethics and politics of The Twelve with journalists and authors Henry McDonald and Ruth Dudley Edwards. It's about ten minutes long, and well worth listening to by clicking here.

Publication Day (and a little clarification)

So I got published today. Which is nice.

To be honest, today was a little bit like birthdays are when you get past thirty. It's a day much like any other, but you know there's a milestone at the back of your mind, that today isn't really like other days. But you still have cornflakes for breakfast, and you still get annoyed cos your internet isn't fast enough, and so on. My epiphany moment was last Friday when I first saw the books on the shelf at my local Eason's, so in my mind, publication day was really last week.

Anyway, on to a small bit of housekeeping...

During yesterday evening's interview on Radio Ulster, and at my reading at Lisburn Library (which was fun, by the way), I was questioned about who the characters in THE TWELVE were based on.

The truthful answer is this: NOBODY.

THE TWELVE is a work of fiction, and no major characters are based on anyone real (see caveat below). When I said as much yesterday and today, the questioners scoffed somewhat, said that obviously, this character was based on (insert name of prominent public figure here).

No they weren't.

I did base some of the characters on archetypes. There are certain kinds of people that exist in Northern Ireland, and I did use those broad groups as the basis for some characters.

For instance, there's a lawyer who makes his money defending people he knows to be guilty, but publicly describes himself as a "human rights lawyer". There are many lawyers here who do just that. The character is based on them collectively, and not any one individual. Just because a reader makes a comparison between the portrayed archetype and someone they know who fits that archetype, doesn't mean the character is based on them.

Another example is a British politician. On the page, he performs two roles: one, to frame the events of the book in a wider political context, and two, to provide some comic relief from the relentless darkness throughout the rest of the book. He regards his administrative role in Northern Ireland as a poison chalice, the job that no one else wants. He is an archetype, and one every citizen of Northern Ireland will recognise in every Secretary of State we've ever had. But he is not based on any of them (he's not even the Secretary, but rather his assistant), even though people are jumping to conclusions.

Likewise, there's a character who is based on the archetypal rural gangster. There are many such people who make their money in similar ways and live in similar places. The character portrayed is an archetype. Again, just because there's someone you're aware of that fits that mould, it doesn't mean the character is based on them. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people who could match that archetype. The character in the book is not based on a single one of them.

So there.

I guess the lesson in all this is that readers will bring their own preconceptions to a piece of fiction; they'll see the things that they want to see in it. For instance, I am constantly surprised that some readers are quite adamant that Gerry Fegan's spectres are merely psychological manifestations of his own guilt, while others are positive they are supernatural. Even when the book shows their true nature in the closing pages, some readers will stick to their orginal assumption - in other words, they find what they want to see reflected in this mirror, regardless of what's really there.

About that caveat...

I did base a couple of minor characters on real people. They are blink-and-you'll-miss-them roles modelled on people I actually know, but as it turned out, the people in question didn't think it was the jolly jape I thought it was. In fact, they were pretty offended. There's a lesson there too, kids...

Amazon Sales Rank: A Fickle Mistress

I did not heed the advice I'd read so many times: do not pay attention to Amazon sales ranks because you'll only drive yourself crazy.

Well, I paid attention, and now I'm driving myself crazy.

It's not that long ago that I was in the millions, occasionally making jumps into the hundreds of thousands, then a couple of weeks ago I seemed to settle in and around the 150k mark. Then all of a sudden I'm leaping up to 30k, 20k, 10k, then I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might make it into four figures some time before publication - then last weekend came around, and I'm up into three figures, peaking at a majestic 802. This also meant I was charting in the crime/thriller/mystery categories, and got to #49 in the upcoming releases section (thanks to Josie for pointing that out).

I found out afterwards that the weekend's spike was due to being named as one of the best 50 summer reads in a feature in The Independent last Saturday. The 'Customers also bought' bar is almost entirely made up of other titles that were in that list, and I am now 'frequently bought with' a certain Stieg Larsson. That's not bad company, really.

But now I am checking my ranking almost as often as I check my email, even though everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) says not to, it's not a valid number. But here I am, checking again, and I am dismayed to find I have plummeted to the 3-4000 badlands. Still, that's probably not bad a week before publication for a debut novel.

But still...

The Dream We All Dream Of: My book is here!

Today I had planned to post a link to a wonderful review on a dear friend's blog, but that has been postponed for one day due to...

A FINISHED COPY OF THE TWELVE!

I was out on an errand this morning, and came home to find a padded envelope stuffed into my letterbox. It had a Harvill Secker address label attached. It was quite bulky. It was approximately the size and shape of a trade paperback book. I tore it open, and this was inside:



Isn't it pretty? And just in case that angle doesn't suit you, here's another:



The design of the whole book is wonderful, including the dual texture laminate (my name and the title are glossy, while the rest is matte) and the colour inside covers. At the front are a few of the great quotes I've been blessed with:



And in the back, there's my ugly mug, floating menacing in space over my bio. One omission is that they neglected to credit the photo to my business partner, Greg Haire. Anyway, it looks like this:



So this is it. The summit to which we all aspire. My own published novel, in my hands. And how does that feel?

Strange. And cool. But mostly strange.

I hope another recently published author, Cindy Pon, might chip in on the following point. I'm curious to know if her experience is similar to mine. Anyway, the point is: Holding the book in my hand wasn't the earth-shattering, life-altering, choirs-of-angels-sing-while-the-world-is-bathed-in-white-light moment I thought it might have been two years ago. Don't get me wrong, it's a truly wonderful feeling, but ever since bagging my agent, the journey to this stage has been a long series of victories, and the occasional defeat. There wasn't one definable moment where I crossed the threshold between hope and actuality. Rather it has been a steady climb to this place where I can call myself an honest-to-God published author.

It's still bloody good, though.

The Difficult Second Album

I've been threatening to blog about this for a while now, so here it is: I have the Second Book Blues.

Where The Twelve/The Ghosts of Belfast was written incredibly quickly, Book Two is proving a struggle. Seriously, it's like pulling teeth trying to write this thing. And why is that?

There are lots of reasons. Some are practicalities, such as the story being much more complex and less linear, with a larger cast of characters. Another is the problem of having less available time in which to write (and that situation is only getting worse).

But I think the greater obstacles are psychological. For one, there is now a deadline, a date on the calendar for which I am contractually obliged to have this book written for. A while ago, it seemed a lifetime away. Now it feels like it's right around the corner, a problem that's exacerbated by the first book's publication and the attendant hoopla standing between me and there. This means a new ingredient that has never been in the writing process for me before: pressure.

Another aspect to this is the knowledge that this book will be published. The first book was written purely on hope, with nothing to lose but time. It didn't matter if it was any good or not at the time it was being written, so out it came, unhindered. Not so book two. Every single word I write, I know seasoned publishing professionals are going to scrutinise. My agent, my UK and US publishers. This leads to deepening of the already niggling insecurities. What if they find out the first book was a fluke? What if they discover I'm a fraud, that I was never any good in the first place? So now I'm constantly second-guessing myself as I write. And what does that make? More pressure.

Then on top of all that, there's the anxiety of Book One's looming publication. I've had more than one sleepless night about that already. What if it doesn't sell? What if it gets panned? What will my friends and family think if it all fizzles out, dies a death just as it enters the world? And yet more pressure.

I take comfort from knowing that I am not alone in this. A couple of the seasoned professionals mentioned above have told me it's not uncommon to have a hard time with book two. As one told me, I had all my life to write Book One. Now I've got to write Book Two in just a few months. That makes me feel a little better.

And before anyone else raises the point, I know this sounds like whining. I know many writers would give just about anything to have the opportunities I've had. I don't take any of them for granted. But still, it's tough.

A Nice Surprise: The CCV Catalogue

The postman delivered another nice package today, courtesy of my editor at Harvill Secker, Geoff Mulligan. It was the June 2009 CCV catalogue. CCV (Cape Chatto Vintage) is the division of Random House that encompasses Harvill Secker amongst others, including the Vintage mass-market paperback imprint, where I will eventually end up. Anyway, I was shocked and delighted to find that THE TWELVE is featured on the back cover, presumably as a preview for the July catalogue. Needless to say, I am chuffed!

In other news:

Two blogging friends have recently had short stories published online, and I read both stories one day apart, which given the nature of the pieces, may have left me traumatised. These authors are sick puppies, and neither story is for those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned...

Gerard Brennan's Hard Rock, in which sex, drugs and rock'n'roll lead to worse than rehab, is in Issue 29 of ThugLit. Start running a bath now. You'll need it when you're done reading.

Chris F Holm's flash fiction horror piece The Well just appeared at Flashes in the Dark. The claustrophobic among you should proceed with caution.

Spanish Book Deal!

Judith Weber, the foreign rights specialist at Sobel Weber, let me know this evening that Ediciones Urano, the Barcelona-based publisher, has acquired world Spanish language rights to THE TWELVE/THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST in another two-book deal. I'm currently having a Stella Artois to celebrate, but it should really have been a San Miguel. Incidentally, I've been to Barcelona twice, and it's one of my favourite places on earth. This might be a good excuse for a return visit!

In other events, an article and a short story by yours truly have just appeared in the winter edition of Ulla's Nib, the magazine published by Belfast's Creative Writers' Network. The story is a reprint of THE LAST DANCE, the short that first inspired my agent to contact me, but the article (a piece on writing in the Internet age) is brand spanky new. I'll post a link to the online edition when it's available.

Two-Book Deal with Rivages, France

I got yet another pleasant surprise today when Judith Weber, the foreign rights specialist at Sobel Weber Associates, got in touch to tell me she had just secured a two-book deal with the French publisher, Rivages. Rivages is France's leading publisher of noir fiction, including a few names you might have heard of, like James Ellroy and Ed McBain. Of course, I'm delighted.

A Cover, and an Announcement

Here's the jacket design for my debut novel. I just got this yesterday, and I must say I'm delighted. The eagle-eyed among you may notice something amiss, though. Have you spotted it yet?

Yes, the title for the UK edition has been changed to THE TWELVE. The title for the American edition will still be THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, but it was felt that that title would regionalise the book within a UK market when my publisher Harvill Secker is thinking Big Bestselling Thriller. And I'm happy for my publisher to think Big Bestselling Thriller, thus the change. Outside of the UK market, specifically the USA, the original title will have more resonance, so my American friends get to keep the ghosts.

Anyway, title aside, what do you think of my cover? :)

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

The Ghosts of Belfast to be Published in the USA by Soho Press

I'm delighted to report that THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST will be published in the USA by Soho Press, the independent New York house. Laura Hruska acquired it as part of a two-book deal from my ever-excellent agent Nat Sobel, and the book has found a wonderful home. Soho Press publish a range of literary and crime fiction, often set in foreign locales, and quite a few UK authors pitch their American tents there.

I'm particularly excited to receive this news among the doom and gloom currently shrouding the publishing industry. This report at TheBookseller.com was especially discouraging. It's good to know there are still publishers like Soho Press, and indeed Harvill Secker in the UK, who are willing to take a chance on a new author even in these uncertain times.

I'm told I'll have a cover design for the UK edition very soon, and when it appears I'll share it here along with some breaking news...

The Ultimate Me-Me: the Author Questionnaire

Some of you may already be familiar with the Author Questionnaire - a kind of form you have to fill in for your publisher's publicity department, telling them all about you and your book. I'd heard of them, and was quite looking forward to getting mine, but now it's here and I'm a little perturbed.

It's a bit like an exam paper or a job application. It starts with the easy stuff, like your name, date of birth, that sort of thing. Then you fill in some blurb for the book. Then it gets harder.

The first question I'm struggling with is 'Other Comparable Books'. I've got a couple, but it seems awfully vain. Another is who you think the book will appeal to. Tough one, again. I know you're supposed to know this stuff if you're writing commercial fiction, but it's pretty hard to translate that vague picture I have in my head to a description of a real demographic.

Then there's the book's key selling points. That's like the bit in a job application where you list your key skills. This will take some thought. It's all starting to get a little exciting, though...

On Snobbery

There has been a debate raging over at a well known agent's blog. If you're aware of the agent, then you're probably aware of the debate, and you're probably as bemused as I am. The discussion branched from a post about an American university press, and its view of literary agents.

One particular commenter has been arguing that literary agents by and large have a negative effect on the publishing industry, that they are motivated by greed to the exclusion of literary merit, and that university presses should be kept free of their influence. I was tempted to weigh in to the debate, but I am wary of entering into discussion with someone whose mental health I have cause to doubt.

The individual in question is deeply arrogant. And like most deeply arrogant people, he is also a fool. He has a greatly inflated sense of his ability as a writer, but a seemingly low level of self-awareness. What's more, he seems unable to absorb or comprehend the points others make to him.

Now, the Internet is not short on people who are unable to distinguish opinion from fact. One need only read a few posts on the average web forum to find many who are unable to conceive of a world beyond their own experience, despite the vast ocean of information available to them. They can usually be identified by the belief that the phrases "Period", "End of story", or "Nuff said" render all counter arguments invalid. Or they may use that invincible trump card against anyone who has been a member of a community for five minutes less than them, and call them "n00b" (note the use of zeroes, there).

The only thing more insufferable than that kind of wilfully obtuse belligerence is when it is coupled with intellectual superciliousness (that's right, I'm bringing out the big words). And if that superciliousness can't even be backed up by some sign of real intelligence, then is there any point even trying to discuss anything with such a person?

Anyway, I digress. The point of my rant is not to decry the commenter in question, but rather to argue against the basics of his position. I'll take a bit of a liberty and sum up his argument: literary merit and commercial appeal are mutually exclusive. If a piece of work can appeal to a broad audience, it is inherently lacking in quality. True quality will always have limited appeal because it can only be appreciated by those few with the cerebral capacity to do so. Okay, I'm putting words in the guy's mouth here, but it's my blog, and I can do what I want.

That position is so easy to disprove, I almost feel bad doing it. While there are many, many bestselling books that we as readers of discriminating taste know to be of questionable quality, there are also many well-crafted, smart, surprising books that have flown off the shelves and made their authors household names. James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy spring immediately to mind from my own bookshelf, and I believe the likes of Ian McEwan and Richard Russo do pretty well for themselves. That's four without even trying. There are also plenty more overtly commercial writers whose work easily stands up to any tyre kicking: John Connolly's prose and vivid description are as good as any in the Literary genre, John Le Carre's characterisation is melded to wonderfully dense plotting that exercises the brain as well as the pulse, and Thomas Harris (when he could be arsed) created some of the most haunting gothic horror of the late twentieth century.

When it comes right down to it, when we look at the cold and hard realities of fiction, Literary is just another genre, alongside crime, horror and romance. The halls of academia may have historically favoured one of those genres above all others, but academia has never been even-handed when addressing the arts. When I studied music at grammar school, the exam boards would only give a begrudging nod to The Beatles, and when I went to college to enrol in one of the UK's first popular music degrees, jazz was the favoured genre, not your plebeian pop or rock. Does that render Led Zeppelin invalid? Was Joni Mitchell's career intellectually inferior because she sold too many records? When the Sex Pistols fired a warning shot across the music industry's bow, was it an uncouth racket for the great unwashed, or was it a visceral explosion of heart and anger captured in twelve songs?

To cut oneself off from whole sections of a bookstore or library, purely out of intellectual vanity, is an absurd thing to do. To argue that quality and entertainment can't appear in the same sentence is nonsense.

But here's where I'm going to get a little controversial: we who find our home in the more commercial areas of fiction are often just as guilty of snobbery as the ivory tower dwelling hoity-toits we so love to have a pop at. Particularly among crime writers, there can occasionally be a certain amount of reverse snobbery in evidence. I am guilty of this, too. If you dig back you'll find a post from my now famous (at least in my house) Dinologue period where I rattle off a list of literary tropes that turn me off. God save us from middle-class navel gazing, was the gist of it. And I'll stand by that post, but I'll fully admit it was fuelled as much by a sort of literary class resentment as it was by a desire to talk up my own chosen genre.

And even more questionable is how quick we are to look down our noses at those we consider to have sold out, or are beneath our Ellroy and Leonard-honed sensibilities. Several big name authors have been dismissed while I've been in conversation with other crime writers, and I have joined in the booing and hissing. Our tower may not be ivory, but we're still not above feeling a little superiority to others.

Perhaps there's only one conclusion to be drawn from all this: we shouldn't take ourselves so bloody seriously.

Gregory Mcdonald

The author Gregory Mcdonald died this week. Mcdonald wrote one of my favourite ever books, FLETCH, a lesson in economy, characterisation and tight plotting. While the first Fletch movie was enjoyable enough, I never felt it or Chevy Chase did the source material justice.

Fletch is one of the few books which I can distinctly remember buying and reading for the first time. I was in my mid teens, and I bought it from a charity shop in Ballycastle, along the Antrim coast from the seaside village of Cushendun, where I was staying with my best mate and his family. They have a beautiful cottage at the mouth of the river, overlooking the sea. On a clear day you can see the Mull of Kintyre across the water. I started reading the book in the kitchen, and I can remember pausing occasionally to show my friend the funniest passages. Twenty years on, we still sometimes repeat the phrase "Fuck Frank" for no apparent reason.

My copy of Fletch cost 40p (the price sticker is still on the cover), and that was excellent value for money considering I have read it at least once every couple of years in the two decades I have owned it. It stands alongside William Goldman's Marathon Man, Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mario Puzo's The Godfather as being among a handful of books I have read over and over, and will probably continue to read time and time again for as long as I have the ability to do so.

It's disheartening to read in some of the online obituaries that, despite his massive success, Mcdonald still had to fight to get published, and that his experience of having his books turned into movies was often negative. But he knew how to tell a good story in 200 pages, and that's an achievement in itself.

My First Foreign Sale - to Japan!

Today I received word from Judith Weber (my agent Nat's business partner and wife, who handles the agency's foreign rights) that THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST has sold to Random House Kodansha in Japan.

This is a wonderful surprise, of course. Japan has long been on my list of places I hope to visit one day, and I have always been fascinated by its mix of ancient and ultra-modern culture. You never know, I might fulfil that ambition yet. :)

I'm also curious as to how some of the book's more colourful language and colloquialisms will translate...

THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST to be published by Harvill Secker!

Some of you have known about this for a while, but I've kept a lid on it - until now. My ever excellent agent Nat Sobel tells me it's okay to let the cat out of the bag, so here goes:

THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST will be published in the UK and Commonwealth by Harvill Secker, an imprint of Random House, late 2009, as part of a two-book deal. The nitty gritty contract stuff is still being sorted, but that's the gist of it. :)

Needless to say, I'm thrilled and excited. Harvill Secker is a prestigious imprint with a reputation for literary fiction, and international thrillers. Some of the stable's best known European crime writers are Jo Nesbo (The Redbreast has been a huge success in Europe) and Henning Mankell, and many others. My editor is Geoff Mulligan, who as it happens originally hails from Belfast.

More to follow.

Book Roast!

Some friends of mine have embarked on a new project. Book Roast is a new venue for the promotion of authors and their work, run by people who are passionate about reading and writing. And culinary puns.

Opportunity Knocks: How Nat Sobel Became my Agent

As promised, here's the story of how I managed to get one of the most respected literary agents in the business without sending a query. I didn't realise how long this would be when I started writing it an hour ago, but I've wanted to post about the experience for so long, you're getting a great big burp of it in one go.

Exactly a year ago I was writing the third act of THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST's first draft, then titled FOLLOWERS. If you use the menu on the left, you can even read my journal of the process, along with some other nonsense. At around the same time, I sold my first short story, and my beloved Northern Ireland formed a proper government. In the blog, I wondered if it would stick - it did.

I finished that draft the following June, and did a couple of quick revisions before sending it off to my kind beta readers (waves at Bets and McK).

While they were hacking it to pieces, the novel's protagonist Gerry Fegan kept nagging me, wanting to come out and play again. Just for a little while. As with the novel, I woke from a dream one night with the story in my head. I grabbed the PDA by my bed, started tapping away with my stylus, and knocked out a short story over the next couple of days. I called it THE LAST DANCE, and posted it over at Elektra's Crapometer (which seems sadly neglected these days). It got a mixed reception, from the negative, to "meh", to glowing praise.

I got the notes back from the critiques. A couple more revisions took until the end of August, then the dreaded synopsis needed doing. I never queried very widely on this novel - I'd say half a dozen at most. I'm not sure why. Largely, I think it was because I knew this book needed not just an agent, but exactly the right agent. You see, it's a dark, dark novel with about as troubled a protagonist as you're likely to come across. It's violent, visceral and foul-mouthed. Clearly, this wasn't going to be every agent's cup of tea, and I needed someone who knew how to sell a dark thriller.

We're often told to look up the agents who rep our influences, so because James Ellroy is one of my favourite writers, and one I know I've been shaped by, I found my way to the Sobel Weber Associates website. But I looked at that client list, and thought, woah, way out of my league.

So, still wondering who to turn to, I started other projects (I've got a hard drive full of first chapters here), including submitting a couple of the short stories I had knocking around my computer. One of those was THE LAST DANCE, which I submitted to Thuglit. Lo and behold, on my birthday (was that a portent?) I got an email from Lady Detroit telling me I'd be in the next issue. Cool. So, the story appeared at the end of February. I updated my website, got a few shout outs from other writers, felt pleased with myself, and got back to a particularly busy time at work.

On March 10th, as was normal at the time, I was working late at my office. I casually checked my personal email, and there was a message from a Nat Sobel. The name was familiar, but it didn't click just yet. I read the message, and I remember certain words popping out: "I read your story … literary agent … Followers … interested in reading the work … James Ellroy … Joseph Wambaugh."

*Nat, if you're reading this, I'd ask you to skip the next few paragraphs as I fear it might diminish the cool and professional demeanour I've presented you with so far*

I've quipped to various friends that I fell off my chair, but it's not far from the truth. I had to read the email several times to get it to sink in. I spent about an hour pacing, re-reading it, hyper-ventilating, and Googling Nat Sobel. Turns out his favourite way of finding new writers is through short story publications. He found Richard Russo and FX Toole that way. Hmm, thinks I. So much for query letters and slush piles.

So, I sent off a partial, fully expecting Nat to reject it. To my shock and delight, he expressed some reservations, but requested the full (and in record time). I duly sent it off, again fully expecting Nat to realise it was all a terrible mistake, and reply with a thanks, but no thanks. Instead, and again to my amazement, he came back in less than 48 hours and said, given some substantial revision, he would like to represent me.

At this point, I felt a mixture of excitement and terror I've never experienced before. On the one hand, here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to snag one of the industry's best agents, and on the other, a chance to blow that opportunity. I don't mind admitting, I was scared. Thankfully, I had some great friends to turn to for support and encouragement (including talking me down from a fit of madness that almost saw me stripping out the novel's central premise), and I can't thank them enough.

So, this is the reason I dropped off the radar around mid March. The revision took the guts of two months, and throughout the process Nat was available for advice, and the occasional stern warning that the results better be good. Working under Nat's guidance has been one of the greatest learning experiences of my life, and as the local saying goes, he is a gentleman and a scholar. What's more, even as I worked on it, I could see how much better, bigger, and deeper Nat's input was making the book.

Three critiques from my blogging friends and another bit of polishing later, the manuscript was turned over to Nat. Cue exactly one sleepless night. Less than 48 hours later, I have one of the most respected publishing professionals in the world representing my book. How does that feel? Strange, and scary, but terrific.

Now things are moving fast. I already have a holding page up at www.theghostsofbelfast.com, and more revisions and general business to do, so it'll be a hectic few weeks. Once again, I want to thank all my blogging friends for your encouragement and support, not just in recent weeks, but throughout my brief writing career. I would never have gotten this far without you. And thanks to everyone who has stopped by to congratulate me, I'll be visiting you all in the coming days.

There'll be a few more blog posts in the near future, if I have time, where I will pontificate on the importance of short stories, my view on finding an agent that "fits", and how absolutely essential getting good critique is. Thanks for reading. :)

The Conduit Lectures: How to Fix the Publishing Industry, Part 2

Welcome to the second instalment of The Conduit Lectures, a series of blogs where I embarrass myself by blathering about things I have no business blathering about (whilst at the same time watching the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix, which just got off to a dramatic start).

By popular demand, this rant will feature another sequence of dinosaur dialogue – or Dinologue, as it shall henceforth be known – but I will not bow to pressure to rename the series The Conduit Chronicles. So there. I will reiterate, these pieces are purely opinion and speculation on my part, and I’d welcome the comments of those more knowledgeable than myself.

Are we sitting comfortably? Then, let’s begin…

Books, books everywhere and not a word to read

There have been various posts on various blogs in recent days discussing the pros and cons of chain stores versus independents and large versus small publishers. In my part of the world, the independent book store is extinct. My local supermarket has a small book section that sells current bestsellers, but other than that I have to travel to an out-of-town shopping centre to be able browse books on a shelf. And this is where I start to get annoyed…

Girls and Boys

It’s clear that gender plays a significant role in our tastes in all forms of entertainment, from movies to music to books. I conform to many of the conventions; I have all the Star Wars DVDs, I have a penchant for questionable classic rock, and I’d rather eat my own hair than watch Dirty Dancing. But I also have The Devil Wears Prada alongside my Die Hard box set, and Joni Mitchell and Suzanne Vega CDs sit next to my AC/DC and Van Halen collections. While my tastes are influenced by my having dangly parts, they are neither defined nor limited by them.

Why, then, do I feel so disadvantaged when I go to my nearest book chain? In my local branch of Eason’s I see yard after yard of pastel shades, funky typefaces, and cute girly caricatures (often involving handbags or stilettos). There are occasional patches of books with moody covers with abstract photography of barren cityscapes which usually denote the sixth in a series of murder mysteries starring some hard-bitten cop or another. Such novels are no more to my taste than the pastel shades are.

The question I find myself asking is: where are the books for me? I am an adult male with (I’d like to think) a reasonable level of intelligence and life experience. Why does somebody, somewhere, think that means I only want to read techno-thrillers or worthy literary fiction? I want books that entertain me while making me think. I want challenging characters in challenging situations. I want my imagination to be fired by being plunged into places I’ve never been, by experiences I’ve never had, by people I’ve never met.

What don’t I want to read about?

Here’s a list:

1. Doomsday weapons falling into the hands of terrorists/despots/mad industrialists.
2. Rugged mercenaries called Blaze McTesticle pursuing said Doomsday weapon.
3. Former-cops-turned-private-eyes with tragic pasts who…
4. Get called back into service by the organisation that fired them, or…
5. Get a message from an ex-wife/girlfriend/partner/boss/mentor they haven’t heard from in years who subsequently dies in suspicious circumstances leading to…
6. An investigation that leads the protagonist into dangerous territory, or…
7. A race against time to save some loved-one or other.
8. Middle-class, soul-searching, chin-stroking, navel-gazing explorations of the human condition with a male character aged between thirty-five and fifty who is…
9. A doctor…
10. A professor…
11. A teacher…
12. A novelist…
13. A journalist…
14. Especially not a journalist, who…
15. Has a mid-life crisis…
16. An affair…
17. A divorce…
18. A reconciliation with his estranged father, or…
19. Attends a funeral which forces him to examine the futility of his own existence.
20. Or even worse, a young academic who does any of the above while embarking on a torrid relationship with a kooky girl with unusually coloured hair.

Me man. Me no read.

As I understand it, the majority of fiction bought today is by and for women. Men buy comparatively few books. And why is this? Is it because men spend their leisure time on other things? Playing computer games? Watching sports? Watching television? Drinking beer and scratching their arses?

Actually, I spend a fair amount of time doing that last bit, but that’s not the point…

Is it simply that men generally don’t like to read? Or is there another possibility? Is it feasible that maybe, just maybe, men buy fewer books because the publishing industry isn’t producing enough of the kind of books they want to read?

So, where are the dinosaurs?

It’s Jurassic Analogy time. In this episode, we discover how T.Rex and Raptor view the male of the species…

EXTERIOR. DAY. NEAR A CLIFF FACE.

RAPTOR: What the hell is that thing?
T.REX: That? Oh, that's a caveman.
RAPTOR: Caveman? But we're separated by millions of years of evol--
T.REX: Shut up.
RAPTOR: But we couldn't possibly be in the same--
T.REX: Look, shut up! You're ruining the analogy.
RAPTOR: Jeez, sorry! So it's a caveman.
T.REX: Yeah, a caveman.
RAPTOR: So, what are they like?
T.REX: Well, you've basically got two types.
RAPTOR: And what are they?
T.REX: First, you've got the manly caveman. He likes hitting stuff with his club, running around a lot, scratching his ass. That kind of thing.
RAPTOR: He doesn't like anything too smart, then.
T.REX: Yep, that about sums him up.
RAPTOR: And what's the other type?
T.REX: The artsy-fartsy caveman. He's your intellectual type. Gazes at the moon and does cave-drawings. Y'know, artsy-fartsy stuff.
RAPTOR: What does he draw?
T.REX: Pictures about the futility of existence.
RAPTOR: Huh. Sounds boring. So, there's nothing in between? There are no other types? Just those two?
T.REX: Yep, just those two. They taste good, though.
RAPTOR: I don't know. I'm still not convinced by this analogy thing. I can't get past the millions of years of separation. I can't suspend my disbelief.
T.REX: Can't suspend your disbelief? Dude, dinosaurs can't talk.
RAPTOR: Oh…

Join me next time when I explore the topic of genre, and how while pigeonholing books may be a necessary evil, it's just that: evil.

DISCLAIMER: The above text is the rambling nonsense of someone with no connection to the publishing industry other than being at its two extremes. All opinions expressed are more than likely the reflection of a bitter and cantankerous mind and no warranty as to their validity is given or implied. All comments are welcome, particularly from those who actually know what they're talking about. Just remember I don't.

The Conduit Lectures: How to Fix the Publishing Industry, Part 1

To celebrate the occasion of my 100th blog entry, I hereby introduce the inaugural edition of a new series I shall call The Conduit Lectures. In this series I will write at length, quite probably in rambling and nonsensical circles, on topics I know absolutely nothing about. At this stage I can't be sure how many of these diatribes there'll be, or how often they'll appear, but I can promise they will have no basis in reality, have few researched and verifiable facts, and be entirely subjective.

So, here we go…

How to Fix the Publishing Industry

That's a tough topic, and one I am in no way qualified to pontificate on. But I'm going to do it anyway. Of course, before we can fix anything, we need to establish:

What's wrong with the publishing industry?

In a nutshell, the publishing industry in Europe and the USA is failing to serve the two elements at the opposite ends of its spectrum, the two elements without which it could not exist. Those two elements are authors and readers.

Authors are struggling to get their work published, and even when they do, they seldom profit from it in any significant way.

Readers are struggling to find good books by new authors with fresh voices, and are instead falling back on established names and reliable genres.

The existing structures and business practices of the industry are failing to bridge the gap between those two elements.

At least the dinosaurs had an excuse...

A big hunk of rock from space did them in. If their woes were more like those of the publishing industry, the movie script of their decline might have been something like this:

EXTERIOR. DAY. OPEN SAVANNAH WITH PREHISTORIC SOUND EFFECTS.

T.REX: So, where's all the food?
RAPTOR: Dunno. There was plenty here yesterday.
T.REX: But I'm hungry.
RAPTOR: Me too.
T.REX: So, what are we going to do?
RAPTOR: There's a herd of herbivores way over yonder.
T.REX: What? I'm not going over there.
RAPTOR: Why not? We might be able to catch one and, y'know, eat it.
T.REX: But that isn't how it works. They're supposed to wander too close to us and we grab 'em.
RAPTOR: So, why don't we change the way it works?
T.REX: 'Cause we always do it this way.
RAPTOR: Oh. Well if you're not changing it, neither am I.
T.REX: Fine.
RAPTOR: Fine.
T.REX: I'm hungry.
RAPTOR: Me too.

While most industries, whether they be service or manufacturing based, have moved with the new dynamics of our world the publishing industry has for the most part remained mired in antiquated practices. Check just about any publishing professional's blog; when they're pressed about the industry's inefficiencies, they'll usually respond with something along the lines of, "Well, that's just how it works."

The Glacier

In most instances, a book will take from one to two years from the deal being struck to when it finally appears on shelves. Add to that the time it took to write it in the first place, plus if it's a first novel, the time it takes to find representation, and then the time it takes to polish and edit it before it goes out to editors. That might be three to four years between a writer first sitting down at a keyboard and the fruits of his or her labour appearing at a retailer near you.

They make movies in less time.

Of course, there are many things that need to occur in that chain of events, such as the actual writing, the drawing up of contracts, the copy editing, the marketing, all that stuff. But what I wonder is this: how much of that three to four year period is lost to simple inefficiency? I'm not offering an answer, or speculating. I simply don't know.

So, the author may knock out a polished draft in as little as six months to a year, and a reader will spend ten minutes browsing paperbacks on a stand before purchasing that author's creation. It's that enormous gap in between that concerns me, and quite frankly, I wonder why it doesn't seem to concern the industry.

How can any industry expect to thrive if it cannot react rapidly to changes in the market? Like a massive cruise liner sailing the literary oceans, the industry's turning circle is so large that changes in direction are achingly slow to the point of being imperceptible. Given this Ent-like pace, the industry naturally wants to avoid undue risks. It plays the long game, like a thrifty bank manager's retirement fund. Steady as you go.

It plays it safe.

In part 2 I shall explore one of the symptoms of this malaise, and how it results in my not being able to find a single book I want to buy when I visit my local store.

DISCLAIMER: The above text is the rambling nonsense of someone with no connection to the publishing industry other than being at its two extremes. All opinions expressed are more than likely the reflection of a bitter and cantankerous mind and no warranty as to their validity is given or implied. All comments are welcome, particularly from those who actually know what they're talking about. Just remember I don't.