SATURDAY,
it turned out, was much like Friday, only better. I finally made it to a panel other than my own, the “Foreign Perspective” one, chaired by Paul Johnston and attended by Robert Wilson, Mark Mills, Barbara Nadel and Craig Russell. It was terrific, and made me regret not having caught more of them, in particular the “What’s Wrong With Popular Fiction?” panel, during which I was stuck in a restaurant that serves no less than 30 kinds of vodka. How I ended up there I’ll never know.
But most of the afternoon was spent around the Old Swan bar, trying to keep track of Kevin and talking more deeply with everyone. Robert Wilson and his wife, Jane, were extremely charming, and we discussed property in Portugal as well as many other interesting things, like Jane’s advice on how to quit smoking.
Alex Barclay (who’s even better looking than her author photo) and Kevin (who is too), standing side-by-side, launched into a machine-gun sequence of hilarious jokes. I kept trying to get into the action, but my years in Hungary were starting to show: I just couldn’t keep up. So I just relaxed and enjoyed the performance.
Jeffery Deaver turned out to be incredibly nice; he got me to talk a little about my books and the Romanian Revolution, which of course made me happy. I remember chatting with Charlie Williams, though I’m not sure about our subject, and James Twining, whose books sound like something I really must check out.
At some point I looked up from my chair to find Ian Rankin standing at the bar, staring into my eyes. Not sure what attracted him, but I nodded a hello and he pointed at the full bar where he was having difficulty getting a drink. I shrugged. He nodded and tried again for a drink. It was a magic moment. George Pelecanos was also there, in a super-looking Italian suit (don’t know how he held up given the heat) and was usually surrounded by an entourage. Never got around to talking to him, which is too bad.
Another HarperCollins dinner followed, and by that point in the proceedings I was completely comfortable with everything. What that meant was that I felt free to act like a brat.
I sat across from my editor and Val McDermid, whose good humor at my antics is something to be truly admired. For some reason, my mode of humor that night was endless complaints, which hopefully didn’t alienate me too much. After a champagne toast to Val’s Old Peculier Novel-of-the-Year win (here’s her holding the win), another bottle of champagne was delivered and placed between me and Val. Being a gentleman, I proceeded to fill everyone’s glasses from it, not hearing my editor shouting at me to stop. Turns out I’d stolen Val’s bottle, which had been a gift from our editor for the win. So, red-faced, I pretended I was in the right, and proceeded to try and steal Val’s food. Of course, she’d only relinquish the asparagus, when I was really after the bangers and mash. Oh well.The food was excellent, the wine flowed and the conversation was nonstop. Like something out of A Moveable Feast, but more entertaining. I was next to Mark Mills, who turns out to be a terribly interesting person, and we swapped travel tales and then shared our remarkably similar views on religion and the lack thereof. Since he and Slavica and I kept going out for smokes, Robert Wilson had to keep moving his chair to let us out. He was a good sport about it, and slowly the musical chairs started being played, which is always the sign of a successful party.
Alex Barclay told us tales of being on French television for her book, while Mark Mills talked of being on late-night Italian television for his. I suddenly felt a little inept, since these guys were doing it for their first books, and I’m now on #4 without ever having been on TV. But on the other hand they voiced the same thing I would’ve voiced in their situations: complete terror. I think this is a general rule: Writers do big publicity because they have to; most fear and hate the idea. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
We kept getting reintroduced to Stuart MacBride, who was really nice and funny. (Coincidentally, we took the same train from Leeds to Harrogate with him, and I remember looking over at his face, which rang a bell, but not having the guts to just walk up and say, Who are you? But I knew he was a writer because he was editing on the ride—full-time, that guy.) He ended up, after the dinner, pretty much chairing our table-team for the Quiz Show, run by Val and Billingham, in an unbearably shiny gold suit.
I must admit, I wasn’t hot on the idea of taking part in a quiz on a subject (crime fiction) I’m assumed to know something about, but it was really a riot. We originally tried to overload a table with about a hundred HarperCollins people but were scolded into submission by a woman who didn’t find us funny at all. So we split into two tables.
Despite putting our heads together and cheating as much as possible (Val also scolded me when I tried to climb on the stage to better read the titles on a collection of Miss Marple hardbacks), we didn’t win. And the only real contribution I made was knowing the theme music to The Persuaders. I was very proud of myself for that.
And so it went. Some people took the game a little too seriously, others (like us) not seriously enough, but in the end it was all about joking and teasing, which is how it should be. Except of course for John Rickards, who walked away with the prize.
Bastard.
Back out to the bar until late, talking and talking and drinking and smoking. It was just—and I know this sounds silly—lovely. Kinda like life, really. But more star-studded.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
FRIDAY
was my real start, as I was on the Historical Crime Fiction panel, chaired eloquently by Andrew Taylor. Sharing the table were James McGee (whose Ratcatcher I’d just read and really enjoyed), Barbara Cleverly, and Robert Ryan. Not being one for all this public stuff, I was nervous, but it’s great to start off in the green room, where you can see that everyone else is as well, and that settles your nerves. But we had nothing to fear, since Andrew directed the conversation like a pro, knowing exactly when to cut in and move things along.
As mentioned, I finally met Kevin, clad in prescription sunglasses he mysteriously wore indoors. He introduced me to, well, everyone. Turns out my Nomad-in-arms is a master of the social sphere, and there’s not a single person he doesn’t know. He also knows his drinks and introduced Slavica and me to the leisurely pleasure of Pims and lemonade. Clutching onto that magical concoction, we met Mark Billingham, Jeffery Deaver, Alex Barclay, Charlie Williams, Stuart MacBride, Robert Wilson, John Rickards, and more. So many more. Enough so that I started to get dizzy. But I also started feeling warm & fuzzy, because there wasn’t a sour apple among the bunch. Weird, that. I always expect that in a crowd of this size you’re bound to have a couple bores and sourpusses, and I kept waiting for the moment I’d have to smile and nod stiffly while slowly backing away. Never happened. Not once.
Of course, the lesson I take from this is that crime writers rock. And that’s something you can take to school.
Speaking of school, a number of people had compliments for this little place, which surprised me. Declan Hughes had high praise, but pointed out that someone needed a higher degree to understand what we talk about here. Which pleased me, because I’ve always said that if the Contemporary Nomad helps a single wayward soul stay in school, it’ll all have been worth it.I generally find that when visiting a foreign country it helps to praise the place when you’re talking with the natives. So, after telling people I was from Texas, I proceeded to inform them that they had a charming, adorable little island, and suggested I might like to buy it. Of course, because of the airplane fiasco I didn’t have the resources to do this, but I think everyone appreciated my sentiments.That evening there was a brief HarperCollins party (they’re my UK publishers) that would’ve been great if the room wasn’t a complete oven. I stayed for about a quarter hour before realizing I was wearing one of “those” shirts—you know, the light green one that turns black wherever perspiration touches it? Yeah. That one. So I quickly made it to the bar again.
I think my sharpest move at Harrogate was bringing along my girlfriend, Slavica. When I enter a room, people glance up and think, “Oh, chubby bald guy.” But then when I’m accompanied by her, my stock suddenly triples, and we find ourselves surrounded by men. It might be the only reason Kevin talked to me, come to think of it…
One great benefit of being brought in for a panel is that your publisher (in this case, HarperCollins) likes to treat you to dinner, and treat they did. As Kevin mentioned, I kept disappearing in the evenings for these dinners, which were long and engaging affairs. Friday night, I had great talks with my editor, Julia, as well as CJ Sansom (who I’d previously met at the 2004 Dagger Award ceremony, when Andrew Taylor stole the prize from us). By the end of that, Slavica and I were knackered, as they say up there, and had to hurry back to the hotel.
(Give me a few hours for the last bit, the climax, as I’ve got to go mow the lawn.)
(I’ll do this day by day since it’s turning long, so expect 3 reports for Thursday, Friday and Saturday…)
THURSDAY
started rather ominously. We arrived at Budapest’s Ferihegy Airport in the predawn Thursday morning for our 6 am Wizzair flight, sat down for a smoke, and glanced at the plane reservations, which I hadn’t done since I printed them the week before. A mistake. Turned out I’d reserved a Wednesday 6 am flight, not Thursday. We were 24 hours late for our plane.
So, not the best way to start a trip to Harrogate, but with remarkable speed and a now-crippled credit card, we got hold of another couple tickets and took a Malev 6 am to Gatwick. Then by train to Kings Cross, then to Leeds, then to Harrogate and its supremely under-marked streets, trying to find our hotel. As others have mentioned—it was probably the most frequent topic of conversation—it was warm and muggy there, and it seems the town hasn’t yet learned the benefits of artificially chilled air. But that aside, Harrogate’s really very lovely, known mostly for its antiques, none of which we bothered with.
It’s also a small town, so that first evening, too tired to make the opening festivities, we wandered until we found an open fish restaurant, and stumbled into my US editor, Kelley Ragland, and her husband and son. A nice way to start things, we sat around and drank beer while the child dozed and we all faded slowly into unconsciousness.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
I’ll do a more informative post tomorrow, once I’ve rested, but I’ve just returned from a lovely little island up north where the Harrogate festival treated me extremely well. (I just saw there were questions on this here on the blog—I went from Harrogate to London for a couple days to stay with friends, one of them Nomad Robin, and my internet wasn’t really happening—I’ve only now returned to civilization.)
Among the many highlights was hanging out, for the first time in the flesh, with fellow Nomad Kevin, who actually does look like his author photo, if you close one eye, stand on one leg, and hum loud enough so your skull vibrates. That aside, he was just as great as I imagined him to be (whew!) and his energy made me feel like a pensioner. Which is a good thing.
I also met new friends, among them my UK editor Julia Wisdom, who is all I’ve heard about and much, much more, as well as reuniting far too briefly with my US editor, Kelley Ragland, whose company I always enjoy—this time, though, I got to meet her riotous husband and rockin cool son, who smartly eschews writers and sets Spiderman central in his pantheon of heroes.
Among the rest of the writers, I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with so many that I can’t figure out the whole list right now. If I mention one, another will be dropped, so I’ll just wait on that. (Though it was particularly enjoyable dining with Val McDermid and getting into trouble for stealing her champagne…)
Since I’m someone who goes into public gatherings with grave reservations and horrible trepidation, I found myself completely surprised by Harrogate. It truly was a simple series of wonderful meetings, one after the other.
And since I was one of the only Americans (with family in Texas, no less) in attendance, among people with sharp political opinions, that’s no small thing.
It’s been said before, and now I see how true it is: Crime novelists really are the best people around, and I look forward to breaking bread and fighting over bottles with them again soon.
More tomorrow.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
Over the last couple weeks, as I’ve been letting the first draft of my series finale rest on the dining table, I’ve been working on and off on the book to follow, the first of an espionage trilogy. By last weekend, I was the proud owner of the first 100 pages of that book, but by Monday I’d decided it was crap and started again at page 1.
Since then, I’ve worked my way up to page 40 (no great feat, as half of it is rehashed from the first version) but I’ve again been stopped by some measure of frustration.
When I look over what I’ve written, I can see it’s not bad. It’s got some nice moments, and overall the writing’s just fine. It clicks along at a speedy pace, and probably makes for a fun read. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that, while it’s probably good enough to be published, it’s nothing special. In many ways, it’s been written before, and a reader won’t be finding anything all that fresh in it.
So I’m taking a break, filling the hours with reading, and trying to reassemble my thoughts on the project.
With my first five books, I lucked out. I stumbled upon a milieu—Cold War Eastern Europe—that was not very well represented in mainstream fiction. It was a place and time that I was familiar with because of my personal interests. So I started with a world that in itself was fresh, and a world that allowed me to explore my thematic and formal interests with some level of success. I’ve been pleased with the results—luckily, so have my publishers.
But now that I’m starting anew, I’m tramping a well-heeled path—that is, contemporary espionage—already traversed by many major, and very fine, writers. I only decided on this path because I believed I could infuse it with a perspective entirely my own. That is, I could make the genre my own. What I don’t want to do is copy those who’ve come before, no matter how wonderful their models are.
Part of my fretting is based on a belief that’s grown stronger over the years—that most books just shouldn’t be published. We all know the book market is a flooded place, where there’s not enough shelf space to give new writers a fighting chance. It seems the first way to remedy this situation is to cut away the bulk of books which, while they’re good enough to wile away a few hours, don’t stick with you a week down the road.
Of course there’s no way to manipulate the market like this, and my outlook is incredibly naive, but I still believe that the publication of a novel should be an “event”. Not just a marketing event, but something that happens because it should. Because the book says something new or says something old in a new and provocative way.
But now that I’m a full-time writer, producing a book a year, it’s clear how easy it could be to slip into a rut, producing and publishing books that will appeal to readers long enough to get them through to the final page, and distract them long enough to get the next advance. I mean, now that I pay the rent with my writing, it’s very important to be able to afford rent. So I can see how I could easily slip down that slippery slope.
Happily, though, I’m ahead of the game. I’ve got plenty of time to work out how this next series will be told, and I have every confidence I’ll find the answer soon, if only because I’m insistent on finding the answer.
But when I reach the peaks of my frustration, I glance back at those 100 draft pages, and the devil on my shoulder nudges me and says, “Go ahead. Add a couple explosions, corner Osama bin Laden in the climax, and collect your damned check. Take a freakin vacation on the coast, you idiot!”
Maybe one day I’ll take his advice, but I’m still too young and dumb to listen.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
I sometimes pop over to my sister’s MySpace space, but since I don’t really go for all that invite-friends version of blogging, my visits are rare. Today I did, though, and saw that she’s followed up on her more recently stated ambition to become a photographer by posting images over at a place called DeviantArt in a second she’s called Covert Infusion (gallery).
And I’m impressed. Not in the way Angels & Demons impressed me. No, I’m really impressed. And proud of my lil’ sister. She’s clearly got an eye, and passion, and I’m excited to see where she takes this.
Check out her gallery and feel free to leave a comment. Tasteful comments only, Kevin.
(Originally posted at the Contemporary Nomad)
…so you don’t have to.
a fellow Nomad
I’m not going to argue that A&D is a great work by any stretch of the imagination. It’s got plenty of clunky dialogue, bad guys who enthusiastically wear the words “BAD GUY” on their foreheads, and, as John pointed out, the story is dangerously close to that breakthrough Langdon book.(For example, in both books Langdon is introduced waking to an urgent phone call that begins the chase. In both, the original corpse is the father of the female lead, and in both we find out it’s not really her biological father, just the man who assumes that parental role. In both books we keep cutting to an absurdly devout killer who has peculiar methods of sexual gratification. (There are more, but that’s enough for now.))
However, I will argue that A&D is some pretty damned good entertainment, and (here’s where I’ll have to relinquish my Contemporary Nomad secret decoder ring) the writing is actually decent, overall. It doesn’t have the agonizing hackneyed superlatives of DVC (or at least far fewer), and much less of that cheap hiding-information-to-surprise-you-later trick, which drove me crazy in DVC.
I’m not sure what happened between these two books. Looking at Wikipedia, I learn that the books preceding DVC never had more than a 10,000 hardback printing. My own first novel was 13,000 (and of course ended up remaindered, and the following ones plummeted in number).
My vague theory is that, after A&D, faced with another small print run after working so long and hard on his admittedly extensive research* and working to get the language into good shape, Brown got frustrated and turned to hackneyed phrases and adverbs in order to excite the lowest common denominator in DVC, which apparently worked. Or maybe it wasn’t a self-conscious ploy at all, and he just got tired of editing out the bad stuff.
But there’s a similarity between the two books that, as a writer, I find illuminating. My question’s always been: Why is his style is so accessible to the masses? Some things are obvious, like the hackneyed bits, but I noticed one quality that may be as important as everything else: Brown never gives us a chance—or never forces us—to fill in any blanks.
Yes, he gives us puzzles to work on and all that, but we’re never forced to fill in the mental, or emotional, life of Langdon or anyone else. We’re walked through every turn and conflict in Langdon’s head. No character ever does something that requires the reader to wonder about a character’s emotional state, or puzzle over the whys.
I notice this quality because I don’t work this way at all. My preference as a reader is for characters who act, and from those actions I’m forced to find the emotional glue that ties the actions together. What I want is for the writer to have enough faith in me to let me make the connections myself. Not only does it give me the illusion of wisdom, but I think it forces me to gather and utilize my own understanding of human nature.
That might sound a little high-fallutin’ but it’s not. Narrative art can provoke us to ask ourselves questions that only we can answer. I don’t mean good authors teach us anything. They put us in a position to teach ourselves. They help us stretch ourselves a little bit. And you don’t have to be Flaubert to pull it off.
Brown doesn’t do this, and we’ve seen the career result. Perhaps he’s got it right in a way I’ve got it wrong.
Has anyone else read Angels & Demons? I’m not quite finished with it yet, but will be soon. One other good lesson I learned was that, even with a book chock full of twists 500 pages is far more than enough, which helps reinforces the idea that my publishers were right all along.
Pop in and tell me if I’ve really been shooting too much smack, or if it really is a decent book. And please, help me get my decoder ring back.
—————
*And yes, in A&D the research often reads like encyclopedia or guidebook excerpts, but unlike in DVC these passages are mercifully in Langdon’s head, not being spoken aloud. Thus the dialogue is not so bad.
As if I wasn’t busy enough, I’ve decided to start playing around in the world of images through another blog called Moving Studies. Not the best title in the world, but it’ll do for now. As I mention on the site,
Moving Studies is where I’m going to try to delve more deeply into a subject I’ve been interested in all my life—filmmaking. Or, at least, videomaking.
Every few weeks, I’ll post a new short video, in which I’ll attempt some kind of “study”.
…While the subjects themselves probably won’t be phenomenal (garden, dog, streets, etc), hopefully the results will be at least interesting, particularly as time, with my skills, progresses.
If this inspires a single person to dust off the camera and get to it themselves, it will have been worth it.
Central Square
Title SequencePropaganda MinistryInternet Archive
Drop by
the 1000-pager debacle
The Vienna Assignment36 Yalta Boulevard
Falling Sickness, First Chapter
There are some things you know, but forget. Truths that don’t stay in your head because you’re distracted by daily affairs, by the manic effort of living your life. Then, unexpectedly, the knowledge returns and changes you. It makes murder possible.
Standing on the terrace of the Grand Hotel Duchi D’Aosta, I looked down at tourists and pigeons vying for space on the damp marble floor of the Piazza Unità d’Italia, Trieste’s central square. On that cold terrace, a basic truth came back to me: Old men die every day.
They submit in overstuffed chairs across from blaring televisions, slip in the bathtub, sink deep into hospital beds. They tumble down the stairwells of barren apartment blocks and face heart failure in swimming pools and restaurants and crowded busses. Some, already sleeping on the street, go quietly, while others take care of it themselves, because that’s the only power left to them. Their wives are dead and their friends as well; their children have fled from the stink of mortality. Sleeping pills, razors, high terraces and bridges. Usually, old men go alone.
Before that week, I’d never been to Italy, though when I was still young I dreamed of it, and of a famous bridge in Venice that spelled out a metaphor I could understand. No longer. Metaphors help you boil the complications and ambiguities of your too-long life into a picture book. They help you lie to yourself.
My wife, Lena—she was the one who traveled, and for a long time I didn’t know why. Only later, at sixty-four years, among whining Vespas, garlic-scented streets and bombastic Italians, did I finally understand. I understood her, and I understood everything, for just a moment. To the right, beyond the square, the Adriatic glimmered.
The pedestrians below didn’t notice me. Bald on top, white along the sides, my one striking feature was that I had bright eyes that should’ve been on a younger man. Not tall—neither in height nor stature. That was me. A normal man in all ways, with the icy Adriatic wind flapping my loose gray blazer. I kept my still-warm Walther PP concealed behind the flap of my jacket so the tourists below wouldn’t be frightened.
I wasn’t thinking of the man I’d shot, who made quiet noises in the room behind me. No, I’d thought about him far too much over the last week. I was thinking, instead, about the greatness of life. All the sensations and people and moments that, if you don’t hold onto them, disappear forever. And once they’re gone, they might as well never have existed. That’s the second reason I’m telling this story. The first reason will explain itself.
I returned to the room. It was one of those Italian coastal hotels that never live up to the price, though it was the most expensive in town. The old man groaned on the blood-wet bed, clutching his knee. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore, because he knew it made no difference.
I settled into a chair and watched as the tremors began. He let go of his knee and seized up. His right leg shot out, then the injured one, and that movement made him scream. I didn’t react. This man, descending into epileptic spasms, had an unbelievable resilience. He’d survived so much over the last century; he’d been near death so many times, beaten down but always rising again, despite being crippled by the falling sickness. I even felt, briefly, a measure of respect. In comparison, my own life had been soft and simple. But old men die every day—yes, women too—and this day was no exception.