December 07, 2012

The Next Big Thing ... at last

I've been a bad boy, twice over.

I agreed to participate in a blog post round-robin, where as a poster you answer a number of questions about your writing and then 'tag' five other writers, who would also answer the questions and tag 5 more posters each ...

Well, first up I couldn't find 5 other crime writers to tag - mainly because the ones I asked were already linked up to someone else in the same project, or were too busy promoting their own books, rightly.

Secondly, I've just come to France from the UK and spent a few days reacclimatising - for which, read 'working in the house' - and forgot to post the blog on the 5th December.

So here it is, late and tag-less:

1. What is your latest work on sale?
My latest book available is called The Private Lie, and is available from Amazon Createspace as a paperback or in Kindle format.

2. What is it about?
My private eye, Sam Dyke, tries to find a missing girl and gets caught up in the machinations of two thuggish Liverpudlian gangsters.

3. What are you working on now?
The third book in the Sam Dyke Investigations series is finished except for a couple of minor changes. It's called The Hard Swim.

4. What is it about?
Sam Dyke helps a girl who is being pursued by rogue government thugs. They're trying to get hold of a diary in her possession which the main bad guy believes holds information about the sinking of a ship transporting nearly 700 Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1942. The story begins in Edinburgh Zoo and finishes in a small French village.

5. Fans of which authors should like your books as well?
I started in the Private Eye/Hard-Boiled genre, so I would think readers of Chandler, Hammett, Robert Crais and Robert Parker might find something to like. In this book, though, I move more into the thriller/suspense genre as well, so readers of Lee Child and Harlan Coben might be amused too.

6. What's the best thing about being a writer?
Being able to make stuff up and then make it seem real. Exercising a creative muscle is about the best exercise you can get.

7. What's the worst?
It takes a long time to get to an ending - for me, it takes a lot of preparation and thinking and planning; then the writing itself is often quite long-winded, taking several months. Perhaps I'll get quicker.

8. Which authors should we be reading we might not have heard of?
My new favourite is an Australian writer called Peter Temple. I haven't even read any of his 'Jack Irish' police novels yet, but his standalone thrillers like The Broken Shore and In the Evil Day are terrific - subtle, pacy, psychologically compelling and exciting. Also, if you haven't come across him there's a writer from the 60s who was operating up until relatively recently called Lionel Davidson, who wrote great thrillers set in a variety of locations.

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