God Bless Jeff Abbott (and some other folks)

A few weeks back, I was exchanging emails discussing book trailers with Jeff Abbott, the international best selling author of FEAR, PANIC, COLLISION and TRUST ME. Seeing as Jeff turned out to be an exceedingly nice chap, and of course he knows a thing or two about thrillers, I asked if he wouldn't mind having a look at my humble offering. To my delight, Jeff agreed, and today he came back with this:

"An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction."

I am, of course, thrilled. Many, many thanks to Jeff for his kind words.

I was further cheered today to receive a sampling of responses that Random House have received from the advance copies of THE TWELVE that were send out a while back. Here are a few snippets:

"What an amazing book! I genuinely felt this book pulling me back like a magnet every time I tried to put it down because I just HAD to know how it was going to pan out."

"The book was superb ... absolutely riveting from 1st page to last."

"A welcome relief from the usual psychopath type novels that have very little plot which seem to flood the market at the moment."

"The Twelve is an excellent example of a work of fiction revealing the truth behind a society in a way that another type of writing might be too fearful to try."

"An absolutely brilliant read it had me hooked from beginning to end"

"Utterly and frighteningly believable."

So, not a bad day, then. Check back soon for my special 200th post.

UPDATE

While I was rattling off quotes, it was very remiss of me to fail to link to this very lovely review by Josephine Damian. Many thanks, Josephine.

It's been a while...

I'm just surfacing to say hello after an extremely hectic period. Copy-edits on THE TWELVE are done and dusted and the book is off to the setters. Proofs will shortly be forthcoming, and I'm more than a little excited.

There were a few big events while I was away that I should have linked to, but didn't because of a lack of time:

One was the relaunch of Book Roast, a blog that highlights authors and their work. Check it out.

A less cheery event was writer and blogger Travis Erwin losing his home to fire. He and his family escaped unharmed, but without a roof over their heads. An appeal was quickly set up to help him recover from this disaster, and you can still contribute at the special website.

Fellow Norn Noir proponent Gerard Brennan has been posting a series of short pieces that have recently been published in the Andersonstown News. They are anecdotes about a west Belfast shebeen (an unlicensed drinking club, for my American friends) called the Sweetie Bottle that was run by Gerard's grandfather. Check Gerard's blog for some old-style Belfast yarn-spinning.

Just today, my editor at Harvill Secker, Geoff Mulligan, sent a couple of very nice quotes from authors Ruth Dudley Edwards and Sean O'Callaghan. I put them up on my website along with some recent quotes from the Irish Times and Sunday Independent. Have a shufty.

So, it's on with writing Book Two. I'll blog in detail about this at a later time, but the Difficult Second Album is proving -- well -- difficult. It's getting there, though, and now that all the editing stuff is done I'm starting to gather some pace. One of my baddies is an especially nasty piece of work, and I'm enjoying finding out about him as I go. For one thing, he can't read - but it would be a terrible mistake to think that makes him stupid. A very terrible mistake.

God Bless John Connolly

I met John Connolly, the hugely successful author of the Charlie Parker series as well as such stand-alones as THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, at the Dun Laoghaire crime writers' weekend last month. I was a bit cheeky and asked Mr. Connolly if he wouldn't mind giving THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST a quick once-over, and I was surprised when he graciously consented. My editor at Harvill Secker, Geoff Mulligan, promptly whisked a manuscript off, and a few weeks later I was shocked and delighted to receive this quote from John:

"Ghosts of Belfast is not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but is also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times. It grips from the first page to the last, and heralds the arrival of a major new voice in Irish writing. I don't know how Stuart Neville is going to improve upon such an exceptional first novel, but I can't wait to find out..."

I am flabbergasted.