Monday 24th NovemberNot much to report from last week, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Total word count for The Beholder is now up to 103,500 words and I’m very close to finishing the first draft. The climactic finale has been written and I’ve got just a scene and a half to go in which I’ll tie up a few loose ends. I was hoping to have completed these scenes on Friday but another bout of illness struck me down and kept me away from the P.C. (that’s twice in the last few weeks – sickly child or what?). If you tune in next week I promise it will be done!
Cheers,
SteveWhat’s Steve been listening to this week?
Use Your Illusion II – by Guns N Roses
Oomalama – by Eugenius
This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours - by The Manic Street Preachers
Monday 17th NovemberAs some of you may have noticed, the layout of the site has undergone some minor changes (although I don’t think my web designer, Christine, would thank me for calling them minor!). From now on, when you click through to the publicity page for JFA you’ll find a list of all the interviews and photos opps I’ve carried out thus far (whereas previously they were all on this page, meaning that you had to scroll down them to find specific items). All you have to do now is simply select an item and click through to read it – what could be easier?
I was interviewed by BFK Books last week. BFK Books (also known as the Book Fiends Kingdom) are a charitable organisation dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the care of adults with autism, a condition that impairs a person’s ability to understand and interpret the world around them. To this end, they publish book reviews and interviews with authors for the public’s reading pleasure, then ask that people make a £2 donation via the ‘Just Giving’ link on their website. (For those of you that recognise most of this paragraph from last week’s blog, bear with me, there’ll be some fresh stuff along in a minute). To read the interview, please click here.
Total word count for The Beholder passed 98,000 words last week, and while I’m beginning to wonder if this book will ever come to an end, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty much the first thing I do when I start work on a new book is to come up with a scene-by-scene plan, as this gives me a route map to follow once I begin the actual writing. The plan acts as a guide and nothing more – some scenes will get deleted, some get merged with others, completely new scenes are added, and the order changes more often than the dancers at a high rent strip club. Once this is done (and it can take a while as I tend to procrastinate like crazy at this stage) I then print out all the scenes and pin them to a corkboard, ticking them off as I complete each one to give a visible reminder of progress. Did I mention the light at the end of the tunnel? Here’s what my board currently looks like:
On the gig front, last week I saw the Automatic at the Norwich Waterfront. As expected they didn’t hit the heights of Funeral For A Friend (who I’d seen the week before), but they were good nevertheless, and the tracks off their second album (which is generally a bit harder edged than its poppier predecessor) went down a storm. As things stand, my next gig won’t be until 2009, so it looks like I’ll be going into live music hibernation for the winter!Cheers,
SteveWhat’s Steve been listening to this week?
Is This It – by The Strokes
This Is A Fix – by The Automatic
Enema Of The State - by Blink 182
Monday 10th NovemberJustice For All attracted another glowing review on line this week, on www.bfkbooks.com. BFK Books (also known as the Book Fiends Kingdom) are a charitable organisation dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the care of adults with autism, a condition that impairs a person’s ability to understand and interpret the world around them. To this end, they publish book reviews and interviews with authors for the public’s reading pleasure, then ask that people make a £2 donation via the ‘Just Giving’ link on their website. I will shortly be completing an interview for the site, and should you wish to add your support to this worthy cause, please click here.
For those of you that have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that I was interviewed by Radio Manx back in August. Radio Manx serve the Isle of Mann, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve managed to secure an audio copy of the interview for your listening pleasure. Click here if you want to hear what I sound like!
At the risk of sounding repetitive, work on The Beholder continued apace last week, with the total word count sailing through the 90,000 barrier. I’ve now made it to the grand finale of the book, where I get to kill people off and tie up all the loose ends, and I figure that it will take another 10,000 or so words to accomplish this, so my target is to finish the first draft of the novel by the end of November.
On the music front, I saw Funeral For A Friend (FFAF) at the Waterfront Dance Club last week, and this was hands down the best gig I’ve been to in Norwich all year. Support came from Attack Attack (Wales answer to Fall Out Boy), In Case of Fire (who sound like The Mars Volta with added melody and a lot less Spanish), and Canadian punk-metallers Cancer Bats, who were all uniformly excellent. This was the first time that I’ve seen Funeral in an intimate venue (having caught them on the main stage at Reading two or three times) and it was a rare treat, as their melodic hard rock filled the space and pummelled the senses. Next up for me is The Automatic on Monday night, and if they’re halfway as good as Funeral I’ll be happy!
Cheers,
SteveWhat’s Steve been listening to this week?
Tales Don’t Tell Themselves – by Funeral For A Friend
Attack Attack! – by Attack Attack!
Memory and Humanity - by Funeral For A Friend
Monday 3rd NovemberLast week, both an interview with yours truly and a review of Justice For All were published on www.sonsofspade.tk. The Sons of Spade website (for the uninitiated, Sam Spade was the lead character in Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and is widely recognised as the father of all hard-boiled detectives) is run by a Dutch writer, Jochem Steen, and is a great source of information about what’s fresh in the crime writing genre. I’m pleased to report that the review for Justice For All was superb, at one point it says that I manage to ‘successfully marry the twists and turns of Harlan Coben with the feeling of authenticity and mood of Michael Connelly’ – high praise indeed! And then it goes on to call my lead character, Zac Hunter, ‘the ultimate detective!’ So my thanks go to Jochem for being so gracious with his praise. To read both the review and the interview, click here.
In further publicity related news, I’m pleased to report that I had another good book signing at the Norwich Branch of ASDA last Saturday. As well as signing some books and making a few new friends, I also got to meet some of the team from Radio Norwich, who grabbed some snaps of the event to post on their website. Once again, my heartfelt thanks go to ASDA store manager Ian Grieve and the rest of his team for going out of their way to support a local author.
On the writing front, I managed to add another 6,000 words or so to the third novel in the Zac Hunter series, The Beholder, which given that I only worked four of the five days was pretty pleasing – and no, I haven’t been slacking off, as the other day was spent making a few tweaks to the novel’s plot. In each of the books I’ve written thus far this has always become necessary at some point, as minor plot changes that occur during the writing process end up having a cumulative effect that forces me to step back and look at the story as a whole. Taking a day off from writing is never a decision I take lightly though – even though I know that reviewing the plot in this manner is a valuable exercise, it still feels like I’m being lazy (I only ever feel like I’m working when I’m writing – all the other parts of being an author such as plotting, research, publicity, etc, just don’t count for some reason!)
Cheers,
SteveWhat’s Steve been listening to this week?
Only For the Night – by Kings of Leon
Make This Your Own – by The Cooper Temple Clause
Zeitgeist - by Smashing Pumpkins
