tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60593839024173982292016-04-12T04:45:51.565+01:00markchisnell.com blogsThoughts and musings....Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.comBlogger133125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-17356835791861444882015-03-24T15:24:00.004+00:002015-03-24T15:30:49.722+00:00Chinese Burn - the Return of Sam Blackett<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I can't promise that this will still be the opening to Chinese Burn when I finish the book, but in the meantime, it's something to be going on with...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sam Blackett looked up from the People's Pilsner that sat in front of her, beads of perspiration now rolling down the glass. Not a drop had passed her lips. It was a shame that she couldn't claim as much for the four or five that had come and gone before it. And she had started the evening with the very best of intentions... a cheap meal, then back to the hotel for an early night. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So what the hell was she now doing in the lush, white, art deco interior of the top floor restaurant of Shanghai's Peninsula Hotel? She had needed cheering up. And that would explain the first drink. The rest she could blame on Roger -- at least, she thought that his name was Roger. He'd approached her at the bar with a straight-forward, 'hello, can I buy you a drink?' After spending the last few days wandering around the city with only her own company, she had said yes without even thinking. And here they were, an eighty dollar steak and several bottles of People's Pilsner later.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He was staring out across the Huangpu River at the glowing swelter of light from the Bund. The temperature on the restaurant's terrace had dropped to no more than a couple of degrees below the sweat-sodden heat of the day. He turned back to her suddenly. "So, do you wanna go up to my room?" he said, his Midwest accent slightly burred with drink.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Not particularly," she replied, and smiled. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roger's shoulders twitched in a snort of laughter that died before it got to his throat. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Well, I guess that's straight-forward," he said, and rose unsteadily to his feet. A moment later a flicker of alarm crossed his face and he lurched towards the railing. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Whoa, steady," said Sam as she moved to grab him. They both peered down from the fourteenth floor. "Don't want to fall from here," she added, watching his face as she did so. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roger harrumphed in a dangerously non-committal way, something dark momentarily crossing his face.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Let me give you a hand, I think that last Mai-tai might have been too much," she said, a little crease between her eyebrows.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Not sure it was that one in particular..." said Roger, his words starting to openly slur. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Typical</u>, thought Sam; as soon as sex was off-the-table he let the alcohol steamroller him. The usual disappointment. He'd been such a good listener while she had explained how she came to be alone in a five star restaurant in Shanghai. An explanation that had somehow involved a fairly detailed description of the relationship-crash she had suffered in India with the man she had -- briefly, admittedly -- thought that she might spend the rest of her life with. And then the Esquire article's advice on which questions to ask had run out; or a natural need to talk had resurfaced. Either way, she had then listened to him slurp his way through half a dozen very expensive cocktails while moaning about the money problems his business was suffering back in Detroit. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roger stumbled the first couple of steps towards the terrace doors, and then lurched to a halt by the next table. She stepped beside him and took a firm grip of his forearm. It looked like she was going to his room after all. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Which floor are you on?" she asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Four, oh, three. Rooooom four oh, threeee..." he replied. "Shhorryesh..." he added. "It hit when... stood up..." he blinked, very slowly, swaying slightly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I bet it did, she thought, as she guided him unsteadily around the tables. He bumped into several of them, but there was only one other couple left in the terrace bar, and they were very self-absorbed, away in the far corner. She got Roger into the restaurant, more careful to steer him away from contact now, as all the tables had been cleared and freshly laid. She checked her watch. It was almost three am. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They made it to the elevators. Roger sank against the wall as she pressed the call button. A moment later, the elevator doors slid silently open and with a huge sigh, he pushed himself back off the wall. They stepped inside, Sam pressed the button for the fourth floor, and again in silence, they began the short descent. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sam just had time to wonder how easy it would be to find a cab to get back to her hotel at this time of night, when they stopped and the doors slid open. The notice on the wall opposite told her which way they needed to go, and she levered Roger out into the corridor. He was now struggling to stand, and she had to get his arm over her shoulders to help support him the fifty yards to his room.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She propped him back against the wall beside the door, and helped him find his keycard, tucked conveniently into the top pocket of his suit jacket. She opened the door and got him up off the wall. He lurched around the corner into the room. Sam felt that she had done her duty and, anxious not to give him the wrong message, she let him go and stayed on the threshold. He stopped a few paces into the room when he realised that she was no longer with him, and turned. He was standing there looking at her, very drunk and faintly disappointed, when the man came at him from behind the still open door. There was no time for any reaction to reach Roger's face before the assailant was on him.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-65967467429609451522015-02-27T16:10:00.002+00:002015-02-27T16:12:00.923+00:00Sorry, I’ve Got a Book to Write...<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">The monthly diary reminder just popped up to tell me that the next time I get a few spare minutes, I really should write a blog. The trouble is that I’ve just about reached a stage in the new novel (<a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/chinese_burn.htm" target="_blank">Chinese Burn</a>) where it’s got some momentum and a life of its own. I can see the end. So, much as I’d like to give you my thoughts on the first ever Jack Reacher novel (which I'm about half way through)… it’ll have to wait till I’ve finished my own.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-26719572713064125762015-01-20T16:27:00.000+00:002015-01-20T16:27:05.592+00:00Homeland – Season Four Finale<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">It’s been a couple of weeks since Season Four of Homeland finished, and I posted on Facebook at the time that I thought this </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/dec/28/homeland-recap-season-four-episode-12-finale-long-time-coming" style="text-indent: 0cm;" target="_blank">Guardian review</a><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> was generous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I posted that the final episode was botched together after they learned that they had got the money for Season 5… and perhaps I should explain that a little more with some wild and completely unsubstantiated speculation...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So let’s imagine it’s early in the first US transmission, and the writing team are meeting to agree the trajectory of the final episodes of Season Four which still have to be shot. The ratings aren’t going particularly well, and it looks like they won’t get the money for Season Five. So they say to hell with it, let’s finish it with a bang… </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-NZ">Let’s kill Saul off before he can get out of Pakistan. Then Quinn kills Haqqani with a pipe bomb attack, and goes down in a hail of bullets. Carrie watches him die helplessly, goes home to mourn him and her father both, but takes on the role of mother to her child after leaving the CIA. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Brilliant! Action packed to the finale, all tied up in a tragic-but-happy ending that makes complete sense with what’s gone before, with Carrie finally out of the self-destructive job. The End.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Then they start showing the episodes with the attack on the embassy, and suddenly there’s a huge surge in ratings. The cash tills ring and the studio execs demand more… suddenly the money is on the table for Season Five. Uh-oh, but everybody dies, or retires! Quick! Rewrite! Reshoot!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So they fudge the last episode and the final couple of minutes of the penultimate one with completely new material. Saul doesn’t die. Quinn is persuaded by Carrie not to blow up Haqqani (<i>really?</i>), and lo and behold – <i>deux ex machina grinding audibly in the background</i> – it’s all ok, the CIA have it covered after all! Dar Adal is in the car with Haqqani!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Implausible. Unlikely. Improbable… and lots of other synonyms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Then they have to shoot a new final episode, back in the US with none of the locations they have used for the rest of the season. So they come up with the ridiculous mechanic of the mother turning up. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">“Good drama tends to let characterisation guide the plot, so to have such a significant figure turn up merely to help Carrie learn a couple of life lessons was very weak indeed,” said the Guardian. No s##t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I rest my case. And on to the Game of Thrones, which I got for Christmas…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-85956413150617982072014-12-12T16:45:00.001+00:002014-12-12T16:45:03.553+00:00Never Go Back<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">One of those questions that you get asked pretty regularly as a writer is... what do you read? The short answer is not as much as I’d like these days, while the slightly longer answer is the same stuff that I write. I’ve always been a big thriller reader, ever since I discovered that there were James Bond books as well as movies...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I’ve just finished Never Go Back, the latest but one of the Jack Reacher series from Lee Child, one of the top thriller writers of this generation. There are now 19 of these books, one a year from when he started. While Child maintains a very even level of quality in the books that I have read, I have to say that this wasn’t the strongest ending I’ve ever seen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">In fact, it was pretty feeble – I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it led me to start thinking… what is it about writers that people keep going back to them even when they have just delivered a bad book? Not that Never Go Back is a bad book, it’s just a poor ending – but I’m already cue-ing up the new one, regardless of my disappointment. Never Go Back is prophetic, I will, even if I shouldn't...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It’s simply not true to say that you are only as good as your last book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I think the willingness to stay with an author has something to do with the amount of time we invest in a book. If a movie’s rubbish, it’s a couple of hours you aren’t going to get back. If a book’s rubbish, or has a disappointing ending, it’s the best part of a day that we’ve wasted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Now – if we take into account that the vast majority of readers only read a couple of books a year – we start to see why they are so conservative. If you were only going to have two cups of coffee in 2015, you’d make damn sure that they were good ones.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It’s not surprising that breaking down this conservativeness in book selection is nigh on impossible. The only chink is to appeal to the much smaller proportion of people who read a lot – they are the only ones who will take a risk on the new. And to do that, I’m starting to think that you really have to write for a niche. And then market hard to that niche. Everyone else just wants to read the same stuff as everyone else. Bad endings or not.</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-70273197559247467102014-11-11T16:10:00.004+00:002014-11-11T16:10:58.464+00:00Back on the Blog<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I just checked the date of the last post on this blog and it’s the 28th March 2014. It’s just over six months ago, and it happens to be the day when my wife and I moved with our eight month old son to our new house.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It wasn’t far. The new house is in the same village as the old house. It’s probably no more than a hundred metres as the crow flies. That didn’t make it any less stressful. It was pouring with rain. The sellers were late moving out. The boy was tired and grumpy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Then we got the keys, walked inside, and had one of those <i>oh my god </i>moments. We had a lot of work to do. In comparison to replacing the leaking conservatory and the ancient boiler, fixing dodgy taps and dripping cisterns, changing carpets, painting outside and inside… In comparison to this, blogging didn’t seem that important. Nor did writing books. Or even reading them. Even my beloved twitter account lay dormant for a long, long while…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Sometimes life just gets in the way, but I’m pleased to say that this particular slice of life is now over. The house is cosy and functional and ready for the winter storms that already seem to be whistling around my new office in the attic. I got the new novel out again today, dusted it off, and started writing. I’m half-way through reading a cracking Jack Reacher and I might even have restarted twittering... and next month, I’m going to blog about writing again.</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-62223954050039383972014-03-28T12:00:00.000+00:002014-03-28T12:00:00.549+00:00Last Lines…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zntGUzZnnbs/UwtuiT6AYfI/AAAAAAAAAS8/2vmhZoYmPgc/s1600/Mark+Chisnell+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zntGUzZnnbs/UwtuiT6AYfI/AAAAAAAAAS8/2vmhZoYmPgc/s1600/Mark+Chisnell+(2).jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I blogged about </span><a href="http://markchisnell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/first-impressions.html" style="text-indent: 0cm;" target="_blank">opening lines</a><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> of novels a while back, but the endings are just as interesting, if not more so. The Huffington Post recently gathered together some of their favourites, and it’s an </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/last-line-book_n_4733190.html?utm_hp_ref=books" style="text-indent: 0cm;" target="_blank">article worth a look</a><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">. There are some fantastic last lines, I think my favourites from this list would have to be either from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Or from George Orwell’s Big Brother; "He loved Big Brother". The latter is so wonderfully bleak – something that contemporary film studios could learn from – whatever happened to the brutal, unhappy endings?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Another that pushes those two close is this one; “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky – seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.” Where else could that come from but The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">What about you, any favourite last lines?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">This is also a good moment to fess up to a guilty secret. I lifted the last line of my first novel, The Defector, from my favourite book. It fitted perfectly - ‘Sometimes you just know these things’ - and it seemed like a suitable tribute to pay to a book that kinda changed the <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/bio.htm" target="_blank">path of my life</a>. So can anyone out there guess which book it comes from, and does anyone have a copy on their real or virtual shelf?</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-30593644590357980002014-02-28T11:24:00.000+00:002014-02-28T11:31:26.637+00:00Cool Gus and the Existential Crisis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ie7zjSypQj0/Uw9eRtfP5AI/AAAAAAAAATM/mBdPbM36Y0w/s1600/PowderBurnFinal(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ie7zjSypQj0/Uw9eRtfP5AI/AAAAAAAAATM/mBdPbM36Y0w/s1600/PowderBurnFinal(1).jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">They say that <a href="http://markchisnell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-best-excuse.html" target="_blank">having children changes your life</a> and they are right – but the bald statement does nothing to prepare you for the moment when that gurgling, crying bundle is in your arms for the first time. It would take a book to communicate just what that means and how your life changes over the ensuing weeks and months, and I’m sure there are lots of good ones... but don’t hold your breath waiting for mine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Some of the consequences of Aiden’s arrival became clear very quickly; the regular trips to the gym, the surfing and paddle-boarding, movie nights and bike rides all went immediately. Eating out with my wonderful wife survived a bit longer, at least until regular child bedtimes became a necessity. Reading and watching tv struggle on in the gaps in the household routine, at least when I don’t just keel over with the sheer overwhelming exhaustion of it all. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Babies absorb the time and energy of their parents like black holes absorb light. Get over it. All of the above were luxuries and I know that one day those things will be back in my life. Meanwhile, I have the joy of the smiles, laughter and astonishing growth and development of my little boy to weigh against what’s gone. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Other consequences have been slower to emerge. For a while now I’ve pursued a career as a novelist around the edges of a career as a journalist and non-fiction writer. Followers of this blog will have watched my thrillers transition from big trade publishing houses to independent- or self-publication. I’ve charted the process of commissioning <a href="http://markchisnell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/covers-and-blurbs.html" target="_blank">covers and editors</a>, of formatting, finding translators, <a href="http://markchisnell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/powder-burn-independently-publishing.html" target="_blank">booking adverts</a> and writing blurbs. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It’s been a blast and before Aiden, I had time to do all this and to write the books. But suddenly time has become a lot more precious and I now find myself making choices that I don’t want to make. Should I reformat the backlist to include links to the newly published book, or write another 500 words on the work-in-progress? Should I book an advert and run a price promotion, or write another 500 words on the work-in-progress? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I’ve been choosing the former (and the short-term gain) far too often. The consequence has been that the <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/chinese_burn.htm" target="_blank">work-in-progress</a> just isn’t progressing. I’m a lot less philosophical about that than I am about the surfing and movies; writing fiction isn’t so much a luxury as a fundamental part of who I think I am… cue a minor existential crisis.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">All this was in my mind when I was flicking through my blogroll over the Xmas holidays, and I found <a href="http://coolgus.com/bobmayer.html" target="_blank">Bob Mayer</a> talking about expanding his <a href="http://coolgus.com/" target="_blank">Cool Gus</a> publishing list in 2014. I’ve been a regular follower of the work of Bob and his partner <a href="http://coolgus.com/jentalty.html" target="_blank">Jen Talty</a> for a couple of years now, and I very much like what they do, how they operate and their strategic view of the fast-changing publishing world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So I emailed them the same day, we chatted a bit on email and then on Skype, and to cut a long story short, I’m very pleased to say that Cool Gus will be taking over the publication of all my novels, old and new, starting right now. Jen is already working on new covers (the first of which you can see here, a stunning new cover for Powder Burn), and you will soon start to see the changes roll out on Amazon, in the iBookstore and on the Nook. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div>There will be so many advantages to this that I barely know where to start - editorial support and help, new energy and ideas for marketing, great production facilities... and of course - a<span style="text-indent: 0cm;">lthough we still have a lot of work to do to get the new editions out - it will soon leave me much more time to write new fiction. I can’t wait to get back to it... :-)</span>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-54030453276275428182014-01-31T11:58:00.003+00:002014-01-31T11:58:35.394+00:00Traveller Tim<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PyWbXKBUWF8/UuuPhzaNziI/AAAAAAAAASs/TnRQWNN-xiM/s1600/traveller+tim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PyWbXKBUWF8/UuuPhzaNziI/AAAAAAAAASs/TnRQWNN-xiM/s1600/traveller+tim.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I never had any intention of being a teacher. My father was a maths teacher and so was my wife. I’ve seen more than enough of the modern British state education system to know that I wanted no part of it – too much red tape, and not enough time with the kids – but state schools aren’t the only place you can teach. I was a sailing instructor on Sydney Harbour for a while, but that hardly counts. And I did a fair bit of coaching when I was a professional sailor. Again, it doesn’t really count. I certainly never had any intention of teaching writing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So it was a bit of a surprise when Sandy, the owner of <a href="http://seaskyart.co.uk/" target="_blank">Sea Sky Art</a>, the local art gallery, suggested that I might like to run some creative writing classes in her studio – just a short course of five weeks. It ended up being three short courses of five weeks each, held during last winter and spring, and it also ended up being a lot of fun. This week I held in my hands the first fruits of those labours. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I joined Roy Young and his wife Carol in a local pub for a quick drink and was handed a pristine copy of The Adventures of Traveller Tim – a children’s book. Roy was working on the manuscript last winter and we spent a lot of time workshop-ing the opening chapter. Just over a year later he’s finished the book, had it edited, and then published via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace programs. He’s understandably proud of it, and so am I. It’s now on the TBR pile on the bedside table. Just where your copy should be </span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span><span lang="EN-NZ">.</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-31879977792657453142013-11-29T12:00:00.000+00:002013-11-29T12:00:00.896+00:00The Fickle Finger of Fate<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KAZBm3qpFXA/UoqAijWxRII/AAAAAAAAASc/Vwp_sN7e7tw/s1600/The+Defector+-+Italian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KAZBm3qpFXA/UoqAijWxRII/AAAAAAAAASc/Vwp_sN7e7tw/s320/The+Defector+-+Italian.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">Every now and again I get an email from Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) team. Usually these are bringing my attention to some discrepancy or other in one of the 11 books I have published with KDP, often requiring swift remedial action. A recent one required me to check the HTML coding that I had used on my book description pages, and to do it in less than 24 hours. They were about to change the way the website presented the HTML, and if I didn’t get it sorted… well, quite frankly, my book pages would look crap… or words to that effect.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So when I see these emails pop into my inbox I open them with some trepidation. Whatever I was expecting from the one that arrived a couple of days before the end of October, it wasn’t this…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">“<b><i>We are considering including your book: Il disertore in an upcoming promotion in the Amazon.it Kindle Book Store</i></b>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Promotion? In the Amazon.it store? I read on with a churning stomach. I’ve written previously on the <a href="http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/der-uberlaufer-adventure-in-translation.html" target="_blank">joys of Indie-pub translation</a>, and the Italian edition of The Defector is one of the results of that part of my not-so-master-plan. The lovely Ina Uzzanu approached me after I blogged on the topic and offered to translate one of my books. We talked, chose The Defector, did a royalty-based deal, and it’s been selling steadily in quantities that often have it hovering around the top 1,000 books – but this was an opportunity to hit a whole new level.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Il disertore was to be part of the ‘Offer of the Month’ promotion along with a number of other thrillers. A swift reply was required, and I said yes without any further thought. The fickle finger of fate had chosen me – I had no idea why, but I wasn’t about to blink. I went for the maximum discount for maximum sales and chart exposure, got the thumbs up from the KDP team and sat back to wait.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">On the 1st November Il disertore appeared for sale at 99c on the Offer of the Month page and I stopped breathing.... how would I do against some impressive opposition in the promotion?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.it/b/ref=br_lf_m_2398806031_grlink_3?ie=UTF8&node=2398806031&plgroup=3">http://www.amazon.it/b/ref=br_lf_m_2398806031_grlink_3?ie=UTF8&node=2398806031&plgroup=3</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">I’m writing this just short of three weeks later, after Il disertore has been in the promotion for 19 days, and in the Top 100 on the Amazon.it chart for two weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.it/Il-disertore-Mark-Chisnell-ebook/dp/B00AOCH6R4/">http://www.amazon.it/Il-disertore-Mark-Chisnell-ebook/dp/B00AOCH6R4/</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a success, although I guess the real test will be to see how well the book does once the promotion is over – but with 15 reviews and 4.3 stars I’m hoping it will hang around in the charts for a little bit longer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">The next question is... how do I get into the same promotion at Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk and lordy help us... the motherlode at Amazon.com??<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">If I ever find out, I’ll let you know...</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-86768306162338434422013-10-25T12:00:00.000+01:002013-10-25T12:00:02.034+01:00The Non-Promo Launch<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 24px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xd0dH4_lwPw/Ul1Jbp9YHUI/AAAAAAAAASA/UYzrK1fvrP0/s1600/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xd0dH4_lwPw/Ul1Jbp9YHUI/AAAAAAAAASA/UYzrK1fvrP0/s200/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US">It was back in April that I wrote a <a href="http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/powder-burn-promoting-indie-novel-in.html" target="_blank">blog post for Author’s Electric</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/powder-burn-promoting-indie-novel-in.html" target="_blank"> on the process of promotion</a> that I undertook ahead of the publication of my <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/powder_burn.htm" target="_blank">new thriller Powder Burn</a>. By September I had a short story on the blocks and ready to go; called The Sniper, it’s a prequel about the antagonist in my <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/defector.htm" target="_blank">Janac’s Games thrillers</a>. I had a cover, blurb, and an edited and formatted manuscript. What I did not have was time to do any promotion. Since I could not see how things were going to improve any time soon, I was left with a choice of holding back the book indefinitely, or going ahead and publishing with essentially no promotion or marketing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">I chose the latter for three reasons:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">1. I’m impatient.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">2. I thought it would be interesting to see what happens when you just push a book out on the major ebook websites without any marketing support.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">3. My eventual plan for the book is to drop the price to zero and run it as a loss-leader for the Janac’s Games series, and so I knew I would have a second chance at the marketing when the price goes to zero.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">So by way of an experiment, I hit publish on the 25th September, sent out a few tweets announcing the book’s arrival, posted links to the various sales pages on Facebook and that was about it. I sat back and waited to see what happened. And now I can report the results of the experiment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">Nada. Nothing. Zippo. Zero and Zilch. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">I think I have sold about ten copies in total across Amazon, and I doubt it's done much better at B&N, iBooks and all the rest, although I won't know for a while as their sales reporting is much slower. And this is for a series book whose other members have been downloaded or sold in the hundreds of thousands. It appears from this one example that I either play the promotion game, or remain unread. So I will be working much harder at the marketing when the price goes to zero in a few weeks time...</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Connect with Mark Chisnell online at</span></b><span lang="EN-US">:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US">Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/markchisnell">http://twitter.com/markchisnell</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US">Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.chisnell.writer">https://www.facebook.com/mark.chisnell.writer</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US">Goodreads: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/markchisnell">http://www.goodreads.com/markchisnell</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-51671680514894175032013-09-27T12:00:00.000+01:002013-09-27T12:00:00.416+01:00A Midlist Career or Immortality?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_sWXGjvW7WI/UjcdTWDvN2I/AAAAAAAAARc/94JaPRBD6fM/s1600/Aiden+aged+one+week+by+Tina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_sWXGjvW7WI/UjcdTWDvN2I/AAAAAAAAARc/94JaPRBD6fM/s200/Aiden+aged+one+week+by+Tina.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">My wife, Tina has just started a <a href="http://www.tinachisnell.com/showcase/Location" target="_blank">portrait photography</a> business</span><span lang="EN-NZ"> and while she was working to get it all set up I posed her a question – would you rather: take pictures that live on forever, but never make a living as a photographer; or, leave nothing artistic behind you, but live a good life, working daily as a photographer? At the time I couched it in these terms – who would you rather be; Vivian Maier or Jasmine Star?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">If you’re not a photography fan-boy or –girl, then Vivian Maier is the American nanny whose street photography was only discovered by accident years after her death, and then published to great critical acclaim. <a href="http://www.jasmine-star.com/" target="_blank">Jasmine Star</a> is the marketing wunderkind who single-handedly made wedding photography fashionable (along with a great deal of money) by a spectacularly effective talent for social media. I don’t think anyone expects her wedding pictures to be in the NY Met in fifty years time. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tina –<span lang="EN-NZ"> who is very practical – answered Jasmine Star without missing a beat. And then told me that the question would make a good topic for a blog... so here I am. </span>In fact, I was reminded of the conversation and the prospects for a blog earlier this month when I read a post from one of my favourite writers on the business of writing – <a href="http://kriswrites.com/2013/08/28/the-business-rusch-a-career-versus-publication/" target="_blank">Kathryn Rusch</a>. She was concerned with the distinction between the one-book-writer and the career-writer. The one-book-writer doesn’t care if they never make any money, or never get to leave the day job. They simply want the satisfaction of seeing their words in print, their name on the bookshelves, and preferably lauded in the review columns of the national press. The career-writer cares little for good reviews except where they help bring in the readers (1,500 5* reviews on Amazon for instance) and pay the bills. The career-writer is just that – in it for the career, making it work as a day job.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">In her article, Rusch wanted to make the distinction between the career-writer and the one-book writer because the choice leads to fundamentally different decisions about the many opportunities and challenges that now confront the writer. She points out many of the ways in some detail, but essentially the career-writer will likely embrace the entrepreneurial possibilities of the eBook revolution and self-publishing. The one-book-writer will turn up their nose and keep submitting to agents and publishers. It’s all about validation for the one-book-writer, it’s all about being able to keeping the cheques coming in for the career-writer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">If you’ve read many of my posts here on Author’s Electric you won’t be long in realising that my wife and I are temperamentally suited as life-partners – I’m very much a career-writer. I’m all about novel-writing as a business, about paying the bills, about giving up the day job (which happens to be journalism and non-fiction writing). I’d pick Jasmine Star every time and I’ve fully embraced the entrepreneurial spirit of the eBook revolution. I’d always pick the freedom to do what I love every day for the rest of my life over success beyond the grave... but that’s me, what about you? Think carefully, because it’s an important choice to make before you go any further with your writing....</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-35491872717471381432013-08-30T12:00:00.000+01:002013-08-30T12:00:00.853+01:00Violence for Writers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 24px;">If nothing else it’s an eye-catchingly counter-intuitive title... and after all that baby-talk last month, I probably needed something gritty and thriller-ish to get back on message. It’s always a popular question when I tell people that I write thrillers; how do you know about the fighting and violence? I’ve had a stock reply for many years; <i>the mostly middle-class reading audience only experiences violence through books, films and video games anyway, so as long as a story sticks to the conventions of the genre, no one is going to have much of a problem</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">Most people seemed happy with the answer, but I was never entirely happy with that as the end of the research process. So I used to email questions to a friend who’s an ex-Royal Marine – <i>what kind of weapons and strategy would you use to attack the bridge of a container ship?</i> It turns out that that’s just the kind of simple question that gets you flagged on NSA and GCHQ watchlists...<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">Still, my friend’s answers were always helpful. I hope they gave the action-set pieces in my books a reasonable amount of authenticity – and the replies often came with entertaining holiday snaps of my friend; the one of him driving around Baghdad in a beaten-up sedan with an inflatable shark on the roof, and a semi-automatic dangling out of the window was particularly memorable...<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-US">I’m always on the look-out for ways to improve my writing though, and as the research is the best part of the job, I don’t need much of an incentive to read a book that might help. So when I saw this recommendation from <a href="http://barryeisler.blogspot.co.uk/">Barry Eisler</a> – a thriller-writer whose work I admire for its authenticity – I went straight out and bought it; ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Violence-Writers-Guide-Second-ebook/dp/B00CWGH46I/" target="_blank">Violence: A Writer's Guide</a>’ by Rory Miller.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;">Rory Miller is the author of several books on the impact and reality of violence, and speaks from lots of personal experience as a prisoner officer and martial artist – <a href="http://chirontraining.com/Site/Home.html" target="_blank">this is his blog</a><span lang="EN-NZ">. I wouldn’t be writing about the book if I wasn’t about to endorse and pass on the recommendation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NCHLSuN47t0/UhOZtF-5xlI/AAAAAAAAARA/urO1OubjHQs/s1600/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NCHLSuN47t0/UhOZtF-5xlI/AAAAAAAAARA/urO1OubjHQs/s200/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Miller starts his book by taking apart many of the assumptions that we writers, readers and movie-watches make about violence. We’ve all seen and know about the magazines that never run out - magically refilling with bullets every time the hero gets into trouble - but even movies heralded for their realism get it wrong somewhere. <i>Everyone</i>, says Miller, <i>dies screaming for their mother</i>. No exceptions. Well, maybe just Tom Hanks at the end of Saving Private Ryan (unlike the rest of the cast).</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 24px;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Did you know that ‘<i>a man with a knife could consistently close a distance of seven yards and stab or slash faster than an officer could draw his firearm. This means that within seven yards, a knife is an immediate deadly threat.</i>’ No, neither did I, but I have a feeling that it’s going to have an impact on an action-set piece that I write one day. I was finishing up my latest story (a short called The Sniper) when I came across Miller’s book, and so I went back through it to test its assumptions against my new knowledge. I didn’t do too badly, it’s a Vietnam War story and I had researched that conflict quite heavily before I started writing. Nevertheless, I still added and changed a few details, but I’m going to leave you to find them...</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-29251782825387136722013-07-23T19:37:00.000+01:002013-07-23T19:37:01.093+01:00The Best Excuse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h73ZMyhpinc/UewqQzWV5II/AAAAAAAAAQw/RVydZ5vxmaE/s1600/Tina+and+Aiden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h73ZMyhpinc/UewqQzWV5II/AAAAAAAAAQw/RVydZ5vxmaE/s320/Tina+and+Aiden.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>I had intended to write a blog this month about Rory A Miller's excellent book, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Violence-Writers-Guide-Rory-Miller/dp/1481921460/" target="_blank">'Violence: A Writer's Guide'</a>. I particularly wanted to look at its impact on my new 'Janac's Games' short story, 'The Sniper'... but all my good intentions went out of the window at 8.58 on the morning of 16th July, when my wife Tina and I welcomed our baby boy Aiden to the world, a month ahead of schedule.<br /><br />To say that we weren't quite ready would be a small understatement, and in the last week we've been scrambling to finish preparing for Aiden's arrival (Buggy - tick; Cot - tick; Prepare Nursery - definitely not yet ticked; Nappies - fast running out) all the while learning how to look after our little one in his first few days in the world.<br /><br />So instead of a short treatise on writing, research and violence, you'll have to settle for this rather gorgeous picture of my lovely wife and baby son. And I promise I'll be back with something more writerly next month...Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-42852370462489421692013-06-30T00:01:00.000+01:002013-06-30T00:01:00.107+01:00The New Gatekeepers<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">In October last year I wrote a post called ‘Gatekeepers and Validators’ which was subsequently chosen for '<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sparks-Year-E-Publishing-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00ATPCAMW/" target="_blank">Sparks, A Year In E-Publishing - An Authors Electric Anthology2011-2012</a>’</span><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">. The gist of it was that there had been a power-shift in publishing. Twenty years ago, just a couple of handfuls of people in London and New York decided what the English-speaking public got to read. They were the editors, marketers and accountants of the ‘Big Six’ publishing houses, and the book buyers for the centralised bookselling chains.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5A-X6AIv_yw/UbXuCzj_N3I/AAAAAAAAAQU/kJPN09LQXMQ/s1600/Paid+TD+B%2526N.com+%252361+Overall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5A-X6AIv_yw/UbXuCzj_N3I/AAAAAAAAAQU/kJPN09LQXMQ/s320/Paid+TD+B%2526N.com+%252361+Overall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">If these people didn’t like a book, then there was precious little chance that anybody would ever read it. They controlled the gates to the front tables of Waterstones, WH Smiths, Borders, and Barnes and Noble. Without their approval and validation - and without a place on those tables - the number of books that an author would likely sell would be counted in dozens, rather than tens of thousands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">This situation has changed completely; Borders has gone, Barnes and Noble looks sickly, Random House and Penguin have merged and any writer that can’t get their work accepted by the big London and New York publishers can go to a fabulous range of new independent houses. Or they can simply do it themselves, via the direct sales channel to the reader that’s now been opened by Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple and other online sellers, using a myriad of ePublishing and Print on Demand services.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The central argument of that previous blog is summed up by this passage; ‘</span>The gatekeepers are gone and the doors have been blown wide open - the slush-pile has moved from the in-tray of editors and agents, got itself a cover and a blurb and is now available online for the princely sum of 99p a pop. Or it’s free. Unfortunately, even if the notion of validation by the traditional gatekeepers was just smart business by big corporations, it still leaves us with the original problem. How do we decide what’s worth reading?’<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">My answer - just over six months ago - was simple; ‘The new validators are the people who should have had the job in the first place – the readers. Perhaps that’s why we are all fast ceasing to care about books getting the imprimatur of a publisher’s imprint. An endorsement of quality no longer needs to come from an editor in New York or London; it can come from five stars on Amazon. It can come when a complete stranger living several thousand miles away takes the trouble to write and post a four paragraph analysis and review of your book on B&N.com.’ </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">If a week is a long time in politics, then six months is an eon in the current publishing industry. I think that my earlier conclusion is now starting to appear a little naive... some new gatekeepers are emerging. </span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="text-indent: 0cm;">I mentioned on the comments to another <a href="http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/powder-burn-promoting-indie-novel-in.html" target="_blank">previous post</a> for Author's Electric that I might try advertising on <a href="http://home.bookbub.com/home/" target="_blank">Bookbub</a>, as I had heard good things about it. </span><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I continued to hear good things about it, and ran a 99c sale promotion for <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Defector-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/" target="_blank">The Defector</a> with Bookbub at the beginning of May - as I mentioned on the blog at the time. The results on Amazon.com were good, hitting the top #400 on the paid chart. Much more interesting though was the result on B&N.com – a sales channel I’ve never got anywhere near cracking. Bookbub got The Defector into the top #100 overall, and eventually the book topped out at #58 - even briefly outselling '50 Shades...'</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUDw_0-ZkHE/UbXt7ChUjLI/AAAAAAAAAQM/Cyf5pJr7nzM/s1600/Paid+TD+B%2526N.com+%252358+Overall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUDw_0-ZkHE/UbXt7ChUjLI/AAAAAAAAAQM/Cyf5pJr7nzM/s320/Paid+TD+B%2526N.com+%252358+Overall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">How do they do it? Bookbub is a very simple idea, whose commercial beauty comes from its huge scale. If you go to the website you will be given the chance to sign up for a daily email that will provide five or six suggestions for discounted books. It’s possible to tailor the email to specific genres. An author can sign up to be one of the promotional books in this email for any given genre.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So far, so what, I hear you say... There are probably dozens of websites doing this sort of thing. What makes Bookbub special? Two things; firstly, I mentioned the scale: 1 million subscribers. And the second is that they put some real editorial effort into the books that they promote. If they don’t think it’ll sell, they won’t run the advert.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It's spectacularly effective, but Bookbub aren’t the only game in town. The top end of the ‘Free’ Charts on Amazon are usually dominated by whatever books <a href="http://www.pixelofink.com/" target="_blank">Pixel of Ink</a> and <a href="http://ereadernewstoday.com/" target="_blank">Ereader NewsToday</a> happen to be promoting that day. Both of these websites are also picky about the books they list, and are also effective at pushing a book up the paid list. BookBub is just the first that I’ve seen that has some leverage at B&N. I suspect that this will soon extend - or maybe it already does - to the iBookstore and Kobo.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">A handful of websites are now sufficiently powerful that they can push a book into the sales charts. So maybe these are the new gatekeepers? Fortunately, happy readers are still the only thing that will keep it there...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-11856162631128404132013-05-31T00:01:00.000+01:002013-06-29T17:06:52.987+01:00The Hero's Journey<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I’ve been a fan of the thriller in all its forms since my Dad took me to see </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">Diamonds are Forever</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> at the local Odeon cinema. I subsequently inhaled the collected works of Ian Fleming, Alistair MacLean, John le Carre and many others as I was growing up. And more often than not, I would see the movies as well as reading the book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I suspect that this is the reason that I tend to lean on films just as heavily as books when it comes to inspiration for my writing – flick through the reviews on my <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wrecking-Crew-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NEVYVI/" target="_blank">Amazon pages</a> and you’ll find ‘filmic’ and ‘visual’ more often than ‘literary’. I’m fine with that, and I wanted to make the link even more explicit in this blog by talking about a fantastic tool for screenwriting that I use when plotting my books.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">If you haven’t come across it before, then the Hero's Journey is probably the single most useful aid a writer can have when it comes to plot. Whenever I’m stuck, unsure about what might happen, or where the story should go next, I flick through the stages of the Hero's Journey and then go for a walk or do some washing up (my wife is a big fan of writer’s block). I can pretty much guarantee that the plotting problem will have been solved by the time I’m done with the exercise or the chore.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The Hero's Journey stems from the work of the American mythologist, <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell" target="_blank">Joseph Campbell</a></b> whose essential notion was that many of the world’s great stories and myths share important patterns and structures. He pared these down into what he called a ‘monomyth’ and in 1949 published the idea in a book called <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936/" target="_blank">The Hero with a Thousand Faces</a></i></b>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The elevator pitch for the Hero's Journey is that an ordinary person ventures from ordinary life into a more dangerous world, where many threats and obstacles are overcome before a decisive victory is won. The ordinary person returns home a hero, changed in ways that benefit the society she originally left.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The book was already an influential work when a gentleman by the name of George Lucas used it to inject plot and structure into a sci-fi movie called <i>Star Wars</i> – and from then on the Hero's Journey has never looked back as an inspiration for Hollywood screenwriters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Its place in the pantheon was probably sealed by Christopher Vogler who, while working for Disney, wrote a seven page memo called ‘A Practical Guide to the Hero with a Thousand Faces’. It distilled Campbell’s work into a twelve-stage structure. The memo was such hot property that Vogler subsequently turned it into a book – <b><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer's_Journey:_Mythic_Structure_for_Writers" target="_blank">The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers</a></i></b> and more recently <b><a href="http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm#Hero" target="_blank">a website</a></b>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">If you want to see how deeply the Hero's Journey is embedded in our modern movie culture, then check out this fantastic video in which Vogler explains the ‘monomyth’ with the help of some of the many films that have been <b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB_Q1gFsvIw" target="_blank">inspired by it</a></b>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">And next time you watch a film - or read a thriller, mystery or action adventure story (especially one of mine) - see how many elements of the Hero's Journey that you can spot. An easy one to start on is the Christopher Nolan reboot, Batman Begins... watch out for that Call to Adventure!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Would you like to sign up for new-book alerts?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/email.htm">http://www.markchisnell.com/email.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><br />Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-29861921279487565522013-05-17T11:55:00.002+01:002013-05-17T11:59:42.878+01:00About Covers and a Small Success...<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IU7QvfXImCI/UZYLZrUzPrI/AAAAAAAAAPo/7NlEex5ome4/s1600/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IU7QvfXImCI/UZYLZrUzPrI/AAAAAAAAAPo/7NlEex5ome4/s320/The+Sniper+-+ENG+-+Small.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I’ve got an unhealthy – or maybe it’s perfectly natural, given my career choices – fascination with book cover design. The topic comes up here pretty regularly, usually when I’ve just been working on one for the new book. </span><br /><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></span><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">And guess what... designer Stewart Williams has just finished the cover of The Sniper, the new Janac’s Games book that will be out at the end of July.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">What do you think?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">It had to match the existing covers for <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Defector-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/" target="_blank">The Defector</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wrecking-Crew-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NEVYVI/" target="_blank">The Wrecking Crew</a>, so the biggest problem was finding the right images to work with – and that proved tougher than I would have thought. We got there in the end though, after hours on photo stock libraries...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Meanwhile, I thought I’d enter the cover of Powder Burn to Joel Friedlander’s May book cover design competition – at the very least I thought it would interesting to get his feedback, as I’m a fan of his blog. </span><br /><span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-875XNZxfGSg/UZYMSfbQCAI/AAAAAAAAAP0/uwpL4P-dIQM/s1600/Paid+TD+B&N.com+%2361+Overall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-875XNZxfGSg/UZYMSfbQCAI/AAAAAAAAAP0/uwpL4P-dIQM/s320/Paid+TD+B&N.com+%2361+Overall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ"><span lang="EN-NZ">If you want to check out the winners for April, and have a look at some cool and some not-so-cool covers, <a href="http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2013/05/e-book-cover-design-awards-april-2013/" target="_blank">click right here</a>. We'll see how Powder Burn does next month...</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"></div><br /> <span lang="EN-NZ">The importance of a good cover cannot be underestimated. I was recently part of a promotion run by <a href="http://www.bookbub.com/home/overview.php">Bookbub.com</a> (it's well-worth signing-up to get their alerts), and it boosted The Defector into the Top 100 on <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-defector-mark-chisnell/1018688969?ean=2940000704707&itm=52">B&N.com</a>. </span><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">Most of those sales decisions are being made based on the cover and blurb – so I’m sticking to the same template for The Sniper. </span><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">Now I just have to finish it!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Would you like to sign up for new-book alerts?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/email.htm">http://www.markchisnell.com/email.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-18497453524179533512013-04-11T10:16:00.000+01:002013-04-11T10:16:09.469+01:00April Review Round-Up<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FzP62-AKwf0/UWZ--65eiCI/AAAAAAAAAOg/BDaENr1RDeA/s1600/Powder+Burn_Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FzP62-AKwf0/UWZ--65eiCI/AAAAAAAAAOg/BDaENr1RDeA/s200/Powder+Burn_Small.jpg" width="132" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I don’t think I managed quite so much reading this month, what with </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Powder-Burn-Sam-Blackett-ebook/dp/B00C4HXZO0/" target="_blank">Powder Burn</a></i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> coming out and starting work on the new </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">Janac’s Games</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> short story - called </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">The Sniper</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">I’ve just seen that the new B&N publishing system, called Nook Press, allows interaction with Beta readers, so this book might go out on Nook first, and then Amazon. Meanwhile, I did manage to read a couple of thrillers this month, both top notch books from top notch writers...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Echo-Harry-Bosch-ebook/dp/B008HIO15M/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365671295&sr=1-1&keywords=the+black+echo" target="_blank">The Black Echo by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #1)</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I picked this one up because it was a group read on Goodreads, and I’m very glad I did. The Harry Bosch books have been a huge hit and it’s easy to see why from this opening tale - Connelly nails his central character from the very beginning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Harry Bosch is a Vietnam vet, a tunnel fighter, one of the handful of Americans that struggled to battle the North Vietnamese in the dimension that they totally dominated – underground. Harry’s also a nascent media star for breaking a couple of big cases and, thanks to consultancy work on translating those case histories into movies, he’s the owner of a (small) house overlooking the Hollywood studios. It’s a great backstory and Harry never fails to engage and hold the reader’s attention.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The terrific central characterisation of Harry is backed up by a fine portrayal of FBI Agent Wish as Harry’s sidekick/lover/and sometime antagonist. This is combined with a really solid plot -- I didn’t see the twist coming at all, although the hints were there – the central bank ‘caper’ has just the right amount of twists and complexity for a highly entertaining read.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">If I had a reservation about the book it would be some pretty clunky dialogue. It’s a nit-picking point, but Connelly hasn’t (rather than ‘has not’) shortened any of the words in the speech. It makes lots of the characters sound pompous and formal. It might have been the way to do it in 1992 when the book was written, but it’s a definite negative now. I also had trouble with some of the minor characterisations, the IAD chief, Irving was a bit of a cliché for instance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Overall, these are minor quibbles, and I had no problem giving the book four stars.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Fail-Jack-Reacher-ebook/dp/B0031RSBF0/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1365671572&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Without Fail by Lee Child</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I’m a huge fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, and I think I might have mentioned previously on this blog that they were the inspiration for some aspects of Powder Burn and my new ‘Burn’ series. So I needed no encouragement to pick this one up when it was also chosen as a Goodreads group read. And as usual, I wasn’t disappointed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Jack Reacher appeals to the angry and vengeful core in all of us – there are no judges or juries in Reacher’s world, just violent retribution dispatched swiftly, without compunction or mercy and, in this case, unusually cold-bloodedly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The book was written right after the 9/11 tragedy and I think its influence can be seen in the way that in Without Fail it is acceptable for Reacher to assassinate the bad guys. In many of the other Jack Reacher books that I’ve read, Reacher’s own life is at stake from quite early in the story, and so the ruthless killing of the bad guys is softened morally by his need to survive. This is not the case in Without Fail where he could and should have left them to the Secret Service or the FBI – both agencies are intrinsic to the story – but instead goes after them with intent to kill. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Child does a good job of making this aspect as believable as possible, and as the issue only comes up at the very end, it doesn’t spoil what is otherwise a fine story. The rest of the book has the usual impeccable mix of tight plotting, tighter writing and great minor characters, and once again I had no problem awarding four stars.</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-73376199273088633322013-03-27T16:05:00.000+00:002013-03-27T16:05:00.439+00:00Powder Burn - Independently Publishing a Novel in 2013<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jqa66WkUKVs/UT9PWLKiPgI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/-D3IMk8pSF8/s1600/PowderBurnCoverEnglish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jqa66WkUKVs/UT9PWLKiPgI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/-D3IMk8pSF8/s320/PowderBurnCoverEnglish.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">It was back in September 2009 that I self- or independently-published my first novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Defector-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1" target="_blank">The Defector</a>. It had been previously published by Random House in the UK and HarperCollins in Australia and New Zealand. I knew I had a clean manuscript, so it was just a matter of wrestling with the conversion from Word Perfect 5.1 to MS Word. When I’d figured that out, I read the Smashwords Style Guide to format the MS Word document. And then I loaded it onto the Smashwords website. I added a cover that had been designed by a friend and I was done. Ta-daa. Novel, meet world. World, meet novel. I sat back and waited to see what would happen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Three and a half years later, publishing a novel independently is a rather different process. Some of the differences stem from the fact that the latest novels are new books that have never been published before. Others stem from the fact that the world has moved on. The process of publication for my latest book, <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/powder_burn.htm" target="_blank">Powder Burn</a> went like this...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The book was read and analysed by my favourite structural editor a while back. I don’t know if that’s the correct name for it (or even if there is a correct name) but by structural editor I mean someone who goes through the book looking for weaknesses in the plot, lack of consistency in the characters, bad pacing – all that good <i>story</i> stuff. The structural editor does not care so much about grammar, never mind punctuation, their job is to analyse the structure of the story. I have to be really happy with the book before I get this edit done – I usually, foolishly, believe the book is finished - but they always spot something, often quite a big thing for the final rewrite.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I finished that rewrite over the New Year and as I think I mentioned previously, this was the last of eight drafts. In early January I was able to create some roughly formatted and unedited copies of the final draft. I asked for ‘Beta’ readers on my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.chisnell.writer" target="_blank">Facebook page</a>, volunteers to read the book who would give me feedback. And I asked some trusted friends to do the same thing. In all, about twelve people read it over the next few weeks, and they all had at least one important contribution to the finished book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">While that process was going on, I searched for a cover designer. I’ve previously written about using <a href="http://99designs.com/">99designs.com</a> for my covers, and although I’ve been happy with this I had been looking at other options and I really liked the work of <a href="http://www.stewartwilliamsdesign.com/" target="_blank">Stewart Williams</a>. I thought he was the right guy for the cover I had in mind. I’d noticed the new set of Thomas and Mercer (an Amazon imprint) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Casino-Royale-James-Bond-ebook/dp/B008L40NT0/ref=zg_bs_157322011_13" target="_blank">covers for Ian Fleming’s 007 books</a>, and really liked them. They use a white background and stand out against the almost uniformly dark covers that are currently fashionable. John Locke was doing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Callies-Dance-Donovan-Creed-ebook/dp/B008BM7NL8/" target="_blank">something vaguely similar</a> and I figured that these are two pretty savvy operators - perhaps white backgrounds and graphics was a bandwagon I should jump on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Stewart liked those other covers too and was happy to work along those lines. We quickly struck a deal and he started work. It took three or four weeks to get the cover right, and during this time I was working on the changes to the manuscript suggested by my Beta readers. By the beginning of March, I had a cover and I had a story I was happy with – it was time for the manuscript to go to the copy editor. I use a guy in the States, <a href="http://www.hockseditingservices.com/" target="_blank">Neal Hock</a> and I had already scheduled the copy edit with him. Neal usually takes a week to ten days to complete the copy edit, and when the manuscript comes back I mostly just had to go through it clicking ‘Accept Changes’.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The final stage is the formatting and as I said, I used to do this myself. I’m still comfortable preparing the manuscript for Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing, but I decided to get some help with an ePub edition to load to the new Kobo direct publishing option, Writing Life. I used the same person that had previously done my CreateSpace PDFs, Heather at the CyberWitch Press – unfortunately, she’s closed to new clients, otherwise I’d recommend her, she’s wonderful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Once I have the final files ready - Heather is working on them as this is published - it’s just a matter of loading them onto Smashwords, Kindle and Kobo and pressing go at the right time. For the Kindle that will be 3rd April. Of course, that’s when the real work begins. Back in 2009 I just sat and waited to see what happened next, this time I’ll be a little more proactive, but I’ll tell you about that next month.</span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-312527504888315162013-03-19T00:01:00.000+00:002013-03-19T00:01:00.145+00:00The NFL - America’s Favourite Socialist Sport<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">It was a phrase that I’d heard in television interviews a few times, but only recently did I hear it for real - </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">Obama’s turning this country socialist</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">. I’m a Brit and (on this occasion at least) I was far too polite to argue with my American friend - hey, it’s not my country... But afterwards, it struck me that what I should have said (don’t you </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">always </i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">think of the right response too late?) was that in one very high-profile arena, the USA has been running a socialist system for years. And as far as I’m aware, President Obama has nothing to do with the operation of the NFL, America’s favourite spectator sport.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">In Europe, the top professional sport is football (or soccer) and it’s run on ruthless market principles. Television revenue for the top leagues is divided <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/oct/12/football-broadcasting-deal-liverpool" target="_blank">according to performance</a>. And if a club has a bad enough season then relegation looms – the club drops down to a lower league and the money from spectators, television and all the other sports franchise income sources goes south with it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The following season the relegated club has to compete to try to return to the old league, and do it with less of everything – money, good players and crowds. It’s a punishing regime, and teams can get into a spiral of failure and drop like a stone through successive leagues in successive seasons, some go bankrupt and disappear altogether. Like any rigorous capitalist system failure is brutally punished and success is hugely rewarded. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">In contrast, the NFL rewards failure and punishes success in an effort to keep the teams evenly balanced. All revenue is shared <a href="http://basketball.about.com/od/nba-vs-nbapa/ss/Revenue-Sharing-And-North-Americas-Major-Pro-Sports-Leagues_2.htm" target="_blank">more or less equally</a> whether you have a good, bad or indifferent season. And there is just the one league with a (more or less) fixed set of teams – no relegation. Occasionally new franchises start and old ones fold or move, but most of the time if a team does badly they stay right where they are in the NFL. There is no punishment from the league itself for failure to perform... in fact, quite the opposite. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">During the NFL’s off-season, the latest draft of players coming out of the college system are farmed out to the clubs – and the worse performing teams get the first pick of players. If they pick right, they get the best new players to kick-start the process of improvement. The NFL is run on a system designed to maintain equality, and to give every opportunity for improvement to those performing badly. Now, if that’s not a system run on socialist principles then I don’t know what is...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Of course, the NFL isn’t a country, it’s a sports league competing against other sports leagues - not to mention movies, computer games and even books - for the attention and cash of US citizens. And the competition for that attention is run on a ruthlessly capitalist system. Sports that don’t get enough attention suffer quickly and cruelly. The NFL is the most successful sport in America, so it’s interesting to note that in order to achieve success in a wider capitalist system, the NFL has adopted socialist principles for its internal functioning. I can’t help thinking that there might be other areas where this same approach could be applied. Like education. Or medicine. </span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-60679457527062532012013-03-11T17:03:00.000+00:002013-03-11T17:03:24.303+00:00A Thriller Reading Round-Up...<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XI_XvdpSmLw/UT4M7IkUAMI/AAAAAAAAAOA/Iu_mXm8B3jU/s1600/PowderBurnCoverEnglish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XI_XvdpSmLw/UT4M7IkUAMI/AAAAAAAAAOA/Iu_mXm8B3jU/s320/PowderBurnCoverEnglish.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">It’s been a busy month. I’m in the final stages of production for my new thriller, </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;"><a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/powder_burn.htm" target="_blank">Powder Burn</a></i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">, and I’ve been reading quite a bit of non-fiction as research for a new </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Defector-Janacs-Games-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/" target="_blank">Janac’s Games</a></i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> short story called </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">The Sniper</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">. It’ll be the next book after </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">Powder Burn</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;">, and the first of several about Janac’s time in Vietnam. The idea is to track how he made it through the war, and developed contacts in that part of the world to build his drug empire. I thought I’d call them the </span><i style="text-indent: 0cm;">Origins</i><span style="text-indent: 0cm;"> books to separate them from the main novels.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">So, I’ve been reading various accounts of the Vietnam War, and remembering the nature of that horrific conflict. Long before there were suicide bombers in Iraq, there were sappers in Vietnam. I grew up in a world saturated with Second World War stories and movies, and I can still remember reading a newspaper headline announcing that American casualties had reached 50,000 in Vietnam. I was very young and I didn’t even know that there had been a war going on - how could that be possible? Wars were something that happened in the distant past, not now, and certainly not with America involved.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I remember it so vividly for two reasons; firstly it was a massive wake-up call to a child - I was new to this world and I needed to pay attention. I’ve been a huge follower of current affairs ever since. And secondly, as I learned more and more about Vietnam I began to slide from a belief in a black and white world of good and evil to one filled with shades of grey. Michael Herr’s book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dispatches-Picador-Michael-Herr/dp/0330255738/" target="_blank">Dispatches</a></i> was central to that coming of age. I still live in that world today, as anyone who has read the <i>Janac’s Games</i> books will know. It feels appropriate to be returning to the Vietnam War to tell more of his story.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">All of which is a long way of saying that I won’t be reviewing the non-fiction. I had a go at one in the last blog round up, but I think I’d rather stick to reviewing what I know about - thrillers. And last month I read a couple of highly contrasting, but linked, books.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Detachment-John-Rain-Thrillers-ebook/dp/B005CDHZS0/" target="_blank">The Detachment by Barry Eisler</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I first became aware of Barry Eisler after the controversy surrounding his decision to turn down a serious amount of money from a traditional publisher, in favour of bringing the books out himself. Subsequently, he accepted a deal with one of Amazon’s publishing imprints, and hasn’t looked back. Meanwhile, I became a fan of his blog; his writing on book marketing, the publishing industry and politics is always engaging, entertaining and usually right on the money.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I’m not sure why it has taken me this long to try one of his thrillers – I think it was the lack of availability as a reasonably priced e-book, something that Eisler is planning to fix. But having finally got to it, I’m happy to report that Eisler deserved every penny of whatever money Amazon threw at him – The Detachment is an excellent book by a man as fascinated with the shades of grey as I am.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Eisler has been writing about the assassin John Rain for a while, and this is the latest of those books. I guess it’s not an ideal place to start as I came into it with none of Rain’s backstory – but it didn’t matter. The book works perfectly well as a stand-alone thriller, while the writer still encouraged me to go back and read the earlier ones by making some adroit references to Rain’s previous adventures. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Barry Eisler’s bio says he worked for the CIA in a covert position, and it shows. Or, at least it shows as far as I – a civilian – can tell. The book has an incredibly authentic feel, that’s the first thing. The second is that it rips along at pace, with a rock solid and all-to believable underlying conspiracy at the centre of the plot. John Rain, the conflicted killer is a terrific central protagonist, and the other characters that make up The Detachment are all well drawn and keep you guessing. My pulse was racing in the final set-piece shoot up – only the denouement of Argo has matched that recently. I hope we see more of Rain, and the other characters in The Detachment, but I will most certainly be reading more Eisler either way – ‘nuff said about this one. Five stars.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><b><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lethal-People-Donovan-Creed-ebook/dp/B009LI4S5K/" target="_blank">Lethal People – by John Locke</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">Ironically, John Locke also came to my attention as a result of an ebook publishing controversy – he was one of the first really successful independents. He wrote a book called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months-ebook/dp/B0056BMK6K/" target="_blank">How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5Months</a>!</i> and I have a copy - I know, I know, <i>sucker</i>. I even read it, and I thought there was one interesting marketing idea and I went so far as to try it. It didn’t work. It turns out the book was probably b******s. Allegedly, Locke was successful because he had the cash from his other businesses to pay for 300 book reviews on Amazon, enough to get him off the launch pad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I didn’t want to like this book, and to start with I didn’t – particularly coming to it off the back of the hyper-real Eisler book. The central character Donnie Creed is an assassin just like John Rain, but that’s where the comparison ends - there is nothing real about him. He has himself tortured to build up his resistance to pain, sleeps in other people’s attics to build up his skills at undetected intrusion, and otherwise lives in a prison cell so he’s used to it when he inevitably goes to jail. Right. Of course he does. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-NZ">And then, with the help of a Goodreads friend, I got it. It’s not meant to be real or anything like it - this is black comedy, satire. And as such, it’s not bad at all – so long as you can get past the grim violence. The writing is uneven and could use a decent editor and personally, I didn’t find it laugh out loud funny. Nevertheless, Locke has created a very engaging character in Donnie Creed, and his first person narrative voice does keep you turning the pages. I doubt I’ll buy another one, as it’s not really my cup of tea, but I can see why Locke has sold a lot of books. Three stars.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-20055467355931705882013-03-05T13:05:00.003+00:002013-03-05T13:05:52.718+00:00About... Mark Chisnell<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cvZBFSKgOdI/UTXtfgTipmI/AAAAAAAAANw/_kH8YoW4TMo/s1600/Mark_Chisnell_Author_Image_Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cvZBFSKgOdI/UTXtfgTipmI/AAAAAAAAANw/_kH8YoW4TMo/s200/Mark_Chisnell_Author_Image_Small.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">I've been thinking that it was about time to update the 'Bio' section on my website, which was a bit rambling and off the point. So I did, and then I thought I should post it as a blog, just in case there's anyone out there who's wondering why I'm doing this...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I grew up in a small town on the east coast of England, a town dominated by the rise of the oil industry and the decline of shipbuilding and fishing. I messed around in boats and read everything written by Alistair MacLean, Ian Fleming and many more like them – but the sea was a non-negotiable part of everyone’s life in that little town, and a future as some sort of marine engineer seemed inevitable. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And then I found a copy of Robert Pirsig’s <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i>in a hill cabin in England’s Lake District. A mix of a hang-over and too much snow restricted any other activity – well, it was New Year – and so I read it over a couple of days. <br /><br />The cover said it would change the way I thought and felt about the world, and the funny thing was... it did. Pirsig’s exploration of quality and values inspired me to drop my plans for engineering, and take philosophy along with physics at college. I also learned that books work - they’re important and they <i>can</i> change your life. I wanted to write one. I wanted to write lots.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Those were the days before 19-year olds got seven figure advances for Young Adult novels, and I (rather sweetly in retrospect) believed that I needed to know about the world before I could write about it - at least that was my excuse for buying a one-way ticket and, with US$400 in my pocket, climbing on the plane to Los Angeles. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">By the time I got home three years later, I’d had a couple of travel stories published in the New Zealand Herald and the South China Morning Post. And I’d hitch-hiked to Mt Everest base-camp in Tibet. In Adidas trainers. It was either my greatest achievement, or the stupidest. A year later a fully-equipped British summit attempt was airlifted out from the same spot - cue icy chills down the spine when I read that news story.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’d also got involved in the 1987 America’s Cup, a professional sailboat race. Before I knew it, I was being asked to fly around the world to glamorous places - Honolulu, San Francisco, Sardinia and the Caribbean - and being paid to race sailboats. It was an impossibly long way from the life I’d grown up to in that fishing and oil town – and far too good to turn down. The writing would have to wait.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It didn’t have to wait long. I quickly started to write about the sport I was so immersed in, publishing hundreds of thousands of words in books and articles on sailing, and winning a couple of awards along the way. And I started to think about a novel - I had an idea from all those philosophy lectures I had endured, a game of the Prisoner's Dilemma played for life and death. The Defector and then the rest of the <i>Janac’s Games</i> series grew out of that idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My goal for that first book and all my novels since was to keep the reader turning the pages, but to leave them with something to think about afterwards. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>What will you do...?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Defector was first published in the UK by Random House (as <i>The Delivery</i>), and got rave reviews in the trade literature. It was followed up by <i>The Wrecking Crew</i>, the second in what would become the <i>Janac’s Games</i> series. Initially, this second book was rejected by London publishers and it seemed that my fiction career was over – but I kept working at it, and a few years later HarperCollins in Australia and New Zealand published them both to coincide with what would be the last big contest in my sailing career, the 2003 America’s Cup in Auckland.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I realised that I had been given a second chance at my life’s dream of writing novels, but that this time I must fully focus on it. It was time to close the door on my sports career – I didn’t have the time or energy for both. What followed was a transitional decade, but I was still lucky enough to get involved in some very cool projects. I went to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia on a beautiful sailing boat. I got to write for some of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers, including Esquire and the Guardian, and I worked in television for a while, commentating and script-writing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There was also a revolution in publishing going on. The Kindle and other eBook readers transformed the business opportunities for writers, and I was quick to take advantage of them to get control of the way my novels were published. The <i>Janac’s Games</i> books found success in the eBook formats, and were followed up by <i>The Fulcrum Files</i> – historical fiction of which I’m very proud - and then the first of the <i>Burn</i>series, <i>Powder Burn</i> featuring Sam Blackett, my favourite character to date. There will be more, lots more. Just like I hoped all those years ago.</div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-60151255067721583662013-02-14T00:01:00.000+00:002013-02-14T00:01:00.047+00:00The Next Big Thing<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;">A February first – a blog hop. It’s called The Next Big Thing (as you probably guessed) and if you haven’t come across one before (and I hadn’t) then the idea is straightforward - and not dissimilar to a chain letter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">I was tagged by the wonderful Nina Sankovitch, who’s a friend of one of my oldest university buddies, but also - and more importantly in this context - the reader of hundreds of books that she reviews on her website, <a href="http://www.readallday.org/blog/" target="_blank">Read All Day</a>. Nina’s also a writer and </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">her 2010 book, </span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span><i style="line-height: 150%;">Tolstoy and The Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading </i><span style="line-height: 150%;">was published by HarperCollins. It tells the story of her lifetime of reading, and of one magical year when she read a book a day to rediscover how to live after the death of her oldest sister. Read about Nina's </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;">next big thing </span><a href="http://www.readallday.org/blog/the-next-big-thing/" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;" target="_blank">right here</a><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;">. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;">It’s a delight to be tagged by Nina.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">So much for the preliminaries, onto The Next Big Thing, which in my case, is the soon-to-be-released (April 3rd) novel, <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/powder_burn.htm" target="_blank">Powder Burn</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What is the working title of your book?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">Doh – just gave that away, <i>Powder Burn</i>! It’s the first of a new series of <i>Burn</i> books featuring Sam Blackett, a Vermont backcountry girl and wannabe investigative journalist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Where did the idea come from for the book?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">I’d always wanted to write a book with a kick-ass female hero, and when I saw <i>Kill Bill</i> I realised it was time to get on with it. I started well, but then life intervened - that was about ten years ago. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What genre does your book fall under?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">It’s a suspense thriller. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Which actors would you choose to play the hero in a movie rendition?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">A kick ass female hero? I guess Angelina Jolie virtually made that role her own for a while, but right now I’d take Jennifer Lawrence. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If Dragon Tattoo’s Mikael Blomkvist and the Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen could have a love-child, she’d probably be a lot like Sam Blackett.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">It will be self-published. I’ve had some great agents in the past, but as something of a control freak, I get along a lot better now that it’s all my fault when it goes belly up. Or not.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">About six months – and then another ten years for the next six drafts. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">I guess you can probably tell from the one line synopsis that I’m hoping fans of The Hunger Games and the Millennium Trilogy will like the books – although those books set a very high bar for comparisons.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Who or What inspired you to write this book?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-NZ">I took four sources of inspiration for this book, the movie <i>Kill Bill </i>got me going, so that’s one. I love the way Lee Child’s Jack Reacher moves around the USA and happens into an adventure wherever he lands up. I see the <i>Burn </i>series with Sam Blackett in the same light, she’s travelling, researching and looking for stories, and some of them are going to land her in a world of trouble. Thirdly, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (Dragon Tattoo etc) had a strength, independence and crusade-for-truth aspect to the investigations of Lisbeth Salander and </span>Mikael Blomkvist that I wanted to capture<span lang="EN-NZ">. And finally, I think the first book in Suzanne Collins trilogy, The Hunger Games is possibly the best genre book I’ve ever read. The writing is so smooth, the action, characterisation, plotting and theme are all just so perfectly realised. I think it’s a model for how good genre books can be, and the one I look up to every day I sit down at the computer.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-NZ">The movie rights of an earlier draft of the novel were optioned by Working Title Films - Les Misérables, Love Actually, Billy Elliot etc. – but now they’re available again, if anyone’s interested... </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;">And now I get the huge pleasure of passing the torch to four of my favourite writers. Here they are (in alphabetical order) - go check 'em out!</span><br /><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"> <div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://www.rachel-abbott.com/index.html" target="_blank">Rachel Abbott</a> </span></b>has spent the majority of her working life running an interactive media company, designing and building software and websites, mainly for education. Her company was sold in 2000, and although she continued working for another 5 years, she also fulfilled a lifelong ambition of buying a property in Italy, and then found the time to fulfil her second ambition of writing a novel.</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">The book proved very successful, and by February 2012 it had reached #1 in the Amazon charts (all genres). It remained there for four weeks. It also hit the top spot on the Waterstones ebook charts, and remained there throughout August, September and most of October 2012. Rachel now has a publishing deal in the US and Canada, and the foreign rights in Only the Innocent have been sold in several countries, including France, Germany, Brazil and Russia. An audio version of the book is also in development.</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><a href="http://www.debbiebennett.co.uk/" target="_blank">Debbie Bennett</a></b> has worked in law enforcement for over 25 years, in a variety of different roles (on the front-line and back in the office), which may be why the darker side of life tends to emerge in her writing. In 2005, she was long-listed for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award, which gave her the push to independently-publish the psychological thriller Hamelin’s Child, closely followed by a young adult fantasy novel and a collection of previously-print-published short stories. </div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">The sequel to Hamelin's Child was published in January 2013. At present Debbie plays with police computers during the day. The rest of the time she’s working on a couple of other novels and several short stories. </div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /><b><a href="http://ruthharrisblog.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ruth Harris</a> </b>is a 1,000,000 copy New York Times and Amazon bestselling author and a Romantic Times award winner. Ruth’s highly praised fiction has "been called brilliant," "steamy," "stylishly written," "richly plotted," "first-class entertainment" and "a sure thing" and been translated into 19 languages, sold in 30 countries, and honoured by the Literary Guild and the Book Of The Month Club. In their e-book editions, Ruth's novels have risen to #1 on the Movers And Shakers List and been featured on Ereader News Today, Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily.</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">With her husband, Michael, Ruth indulges her wild side and writes bestselling thrillers with vivid characters, international backgrounds and compelling plots. Their thrillers have made numerous appearances in the top 3 of Kindle’s Movers & Shakers list. Publisher’s Weekly called Ruth's and Michael's thrillers "Slick and sexy with all the sure elements of a big seller written by pros who know how to tell a story.”</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><a href="http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/" target="_blank">Scott Nicholson</a> </b>has written 15 thrillers, 60 short stories, four comics series, and six screenplays. He lives in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, where he tends an organic garden, successfully eludes stalkers, and generally lives the dream. Entering the digital era with a vengeance, Nicholson is releasing original titles and collections while conspiring to release interactive books in the near future, building audio files, video, and collaborative fiction projects. </div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">Nicholson won the grand prize in the international Writers of the Future contest in 1999. That same year, he was first runner-up for the Darrell Award. He studied Creative Writing at Appalachian State University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He has been an officer of Mystery Writers of America and Horror Writers Association and is a member of International Thriller Writers and inaugural member of the Killer Thriller Band. </div></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-36214594392904963542013-02-11T00:00:00.000+00:002013-02-11T00:00:00.662+00:00A Couple More Book Reviews<br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">It's winter, it's cold outside all the time, and dark for most of it - what better way to pass an evening than to do some reading? Here's a couple I got through in January...</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/KILLING-PLATO-Shepherd-thriller-ebook/dp/B006KIEADO/" target="_blank">Killing Plato by Jake Needham</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">I was introduced to Jake Needham through the first of his Inspector Samuel Tay books, The Ambassador’s Wife, which I really enjoyed. I thought I should give his Jack Shepherd series a try, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a character-focused rather than an action-packed thriller, and Jake Needham does grumpy, out-of-sorts-with-the-world characters really well, and comes up with some strong storylines to push them through. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Jack Shepherd is a former big-shot Washington lawyer, now living in Thailand and teaching at a University. Unfortunately, the strength of his US and White House connections see him targeted by the world’s best-known and wealthiest fugitive, and the result sucks Shepherd into a grim and tragic plot that threatens to lose him everything. It’s well-paced and well-written, and as I’ve set a couple of my books in that part of the world, I appreciated seeing someone else doing it. Recommended.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mom-Snipers-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B004G6014E/" target="_blank">Dear Mom: A Sniper's Vietnam by Joseph T. Ward</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">I picked this book up to research the war in Vietnam, as I have a story planned that features a US Marine Corps Sniper from that tragic conflict. I'm not going to pull any punches on the writing - this is not great literature, but that's not its purpose or point. I suspect that it does exactly what it set out to do, which is show the reader the mechanics of a very particular form of warfare - humans hunting humans with long-range weapons. If you want to know how the US Marines went about training and using snipers in Vietnam, then this is your book. If you want psychological insight into the cost of engaging in hunting and killing your fellow man - even while harbouring reservations about the politics of the war - then it's not your book, Ward doesn't really go there. But perhaps that's why he was so successful at this most rarefied of jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-11304501565498802162013-01-30T12:46:00.000+00:002013-01-30T12:46:17.166+00:00Bye Prince Harry, Hello Captain Wales...<br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Stumbling across Monday night’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qkxnv/Prince_Harry_in_Afghanistan/" target="_blank">BBC 3 documentary</a>on Prince Harry in Afghanistan, my first reaction would have been to surf-onwards to the next channel. Fortunately, the missus had the remote at the time and she stuck around for a look. I was glad she did, because as a die-hard republican this made an incredibly strong case for bringing an end to Britain’s hereditary selection of a head of state.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">This was not a great documentary. Richard Bacon was fawning and shallow, and there were many interesting issues raised and then passed over. For instance, should royal family members be allowed to serve in combat zones? On the one hand, training someone to fly/co-pilot a £45M Apache attack helicopter is expensive, and a pointless waste if you don’t let them do it for real when the need is there. On the other, their very presence may make the environment more dangerous to those around them – if identified, Harry would be the highest value target in the conflict. And should we really be allowing one of pop culture’s most famous figures to be an ambassador for killing people, just like it was on a video game?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">It was a shame not to see this issue properly discussed and explored, but the programme remained compelling for all that. It was clear that Harry is very good at his job – no one gives that much expensive kit to someone in a war zone if they’re not capable of doing the job. It also seemed that this ability, and the training and work he’s done to achieve it, has given him a sense of worth that he otherwise lacks. Being born into the job of head of state doesn’t mean that the occupant will necessarily value it, or get self-worth from it – contrast this with how he/she might feel about it if they were elected or appointed to that role by the citizenry. Who would you rather have doing the job?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">If that wasn’t enough, then after an hour of watching Harry explain just how much he despised the media, and hated the almost total lack of privacy in his life, it was hard not to feel sympathetic. This is a young man whose life has been so distorted by being born into the royal family that the only place he can find a sense of peace is on the frontline of a war zone. Think about that. It’s time to stop doing this to people. It’s cruel and unnecessary. If the Government messed with the lives of the rest of us like this - forcing roles and responsibilities on them - there would have been a revolution a long-time ago. No, there was no doubt in my mind as the credits rolled – it’s time to call time on the royals. Bye, Prince Harry, Hello Captain Wales...<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6059383902417398229.post-35616818309020722872013-01-25T15:27:00.000+00:002013-01-26T17:41:39.216+00:00Holiday Reading - Review Round-up...<br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The holidays are behind us, and I hope you all got as much reading done as I did... In fact, I got rather more done than I expected. For various reasons that are too complicated to go into here, I ended up in a hotel room in Houston on my own for a week...</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">What? You say it's not too complicated? </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Well, ok... my lovely new wife was so sick that she couldn't come on what was supposed to be a combined business trip and holiday. The holiday was hers and the business trip mine - so while she could and did cancel and claim on the insurance, I couldn't. I had to go - and the result was that we spent our first married New Year thousands of miles apart. So I did a lot of reading and writing, even finishing the final draft of my latest novel <a href="http://www.markchisnell.com/powder_burn.htm" target="_blank">Powder Burn</a> - but more on that in the future, this post is about my holiday reading...</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><b><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00684EBC0/" target="_blank">Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbott</a></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Rachel Abbott’s Only the Innocent was one of the big independently-published hits of 2012, and I was intrigued to finally read it. The cover and blurb promise an edgy thriller, and there’s no doubt that all those elements are there – sex, abuse, murder. Nevertheless, the book still has a lot in common with a ‘cozy’ mystery, as the detective work revolves around the drawing room of an old manor house - but no, it wasn’t Colonel Mustard with the knife in the kitchen, the end was much darker than that. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Only the Innocent leaves you with a central moral dilemma – something I’m fond of in my own writing - and this lifts it above the run-of-the mill mystery or thriller. Punish the guilty, or protect the innocent? I can’t tell you which the book goes for without dropping some massive spoilers, so you’ll have to read this one, and I can strongly recommend a four star ride.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">I held back a star because the central protagonist’s necessarily meek and frightened character became a little wearying. There’s one fabulous moment where Abbott shows the reader what Laura was like before her marriage – unfortunately, it just made me want to read about that Laura, rather than the one we see in the book. But that aside, it’s a well structured, well-written mystery and well worth your time and money.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><b><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0098QJQR0/" target="_blank">Jet by Russell Blake</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Russell Blake is a force-of-nature, I don’t know where he’s holed up, but wherever it is there can’t be a lot of distractions. I think he’s now published 18 books in as many months. The latest includes the Jet series, and he launched the first four of these in the back half of 2012. These are thrillers in the Lee Child / Jack Reacher mould, only more so. They’re short, sharp and straight-forward – don’t expect much sophistication in the plotting; there’s lots of action, very little sitting around and pondering, and about as much navel-gazing as you’d get from Daniel Craig as 007, i.e. an occasional grim look in the mirror.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">And while it’s nuts and bolts stuff, Tab A always fits squarely and neatly into Hole A, and it all comes together like the solid piece of craftsmanship that it is, and the writing occasionally elevates to several notches higher. I wouldn’t call it art, but there’s some excellent descriptive stuff in here. I don’t know that I’ll be rushing back to Jet 2 in the short-term, but I’ll get there next time I’m looking for an easy, super-entertaining read.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><b><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004VTHSA6/" target="_blank"> The Penal Colony by Richard Herley</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">This is a book I noticed flying high in the Kindle store and with almost 400 reviews averaging close to 5 stars, I thought it was worth a closer look – I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a great read, the tale of an innocent man dispatched to a brutal jail for the rest of his life – Shawshank Redemption territory. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">In my view, it’s a match for that movie. It has all the action required of the genre, but pushes home a few hard points about leadership, the nature of punishment, violence and man’s essential self. It’s not necessary to agree with what Herley seems to have to say about these things – it’s more than enough that he gets you thinking about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">This really was my kind of book, and in a sense it brought together the thought-provoking element of Only the Innocent, with the faster, cleaner, pacier writing style of Jet - and produced a book as good as either one on their own terms, and better than both judged on my own personal scale. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Richard Herley seems to be one of those writers that publishing forgot, and more power to the eBook revolution in bringing his work back to the surface and into the light it so richly deserves. I will be reading more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Mark Chisnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10248299206033458004noreply@blogger.com0