A Pinteresque Pause

Jason Pinter is running a terrific series over at his blog about the future of publishing, inviting contributions from anyone involved in the publishing industry in answer to this question: “What is one thing you would you do to change book publishing for the better?”
  Jason’s received some interesting and even provocative responses, although I have one caveat – most of the answers are critical of the publishers and the way they go about their business. Silly advances for silly books; anachronistic marketing; a failure to adapt to the latest technology; in short, most people complain that publishing companies are clinging to an outmoded business model.
  This may all be true, and the Good Lord knows that I’ve had my fair share of disappointing experiences with publishers, as most writers tend to have; but is there an element of mote-and-beam going on here? In other words, no one writer has said that the one thing they’d do to change book publishing for the better is write better books. For all the hand-wringing about publishers’ inability to incorporate the interweb into their marketing model, how many writers have incorporated the interweb into their writing? How many writers have thought to themselves, for example, about the sea-change in other forms of popular art – movies, TV and music – and audience appetite for a blend of reality and fiction?
  There’s a generation of potential readers coming through for whom the Fourth Wall doesn’t exist. Last night, for example, I watched the ‘Family Guy’ episode in which Peter ‘outs’ Luke Perry, with the character of Luke Perry voiced by Luke Perry – although Lois refers to the character as ‘Dylan’, his character in Beverly Hills 90120.
  On Wednesday I watched the documentary ‘Anvil!’, the story of how an aging metal band from Canada are still trying to make it in their fifties. As a movie, or even a mockumentary, it would have been very funny in the ‘Spinal Tap’ mode; as a documentary, a real take on the rock ‘n’ roll dream, it was simultaneously soul-destroying and inspirational.
  Next Thursday, I’ll be getting along to see ‘Notorious’, a biopic of the Notorious B.I.G., who – regardless of your opinion of gangsta rap – made art of his life, of experiences that are possibly fictionalised but certainly rooted in an authentic, relevant reality.
  I can’t remember the last time I read a book that left me hollowed out and yet bursting to make something new, the way ‘Anvil!’ did. Or, for that matter, a book that makes me laugh like ‘Family Guy’ does because – bonkers as it is, and with no respect for the boundary between truth or fiction – it taps into the experience of our utterly confused cultural narrative.
  This morning, on the web, in the space of an hour, I read a short story, took on board the responses to Jason Pinter’s question, checked last night’s football scores, watched a book trailer and two music videos, downloaded the latest Anthony and the Johnsons album, and watched an extended trailer for the ‘Notorious’ movie.
  Can, or should, that kind of disjointed cultural mish-mash influence my own writing later on, when I grab a quiet couple of hours? Not the specific elements; but the jump-around nature of it, and the blend of reality and fiction?
  Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of movies, reviewing them for a living, and read a lot of books, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief when confronted with a story I know is pure fiction, regardless of how good it is. For that matter, just look at the Oscar noms for ‘Best Picture’ – Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire are all, to a greater or lesser extent, examples of the collision between fiction and reality.
  I’m currently working on a story in which the name of one of the main characters, Billy, is a nod to Kurt Vonnegut and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, which is the last book I read, when I re-read it last May, to really suck out my guts and make me think about life, the universe and writing (I subsequently read ARMAGEDDON, but it’s not Vonnegut’s finest moment). Billy, my Billy, is actually a character from a novel I’d written about five years ago, who last May turned up in my back garden wanting to know why he’d been forgotten, and condemned to the limbo of the unpublished ghosts. The result was a book called A GONZO NOIR, which is currently under consideration with a U.S. publisher, although I’m not optimistic about its chances; nonetheless, I’ve started a new story, in which Billy returns, telling me about this guy he’s met on Crete, Sebastian, who claims to have been involved in a Nazi war crime, but who has been left in the limbo of an unfinished manuscript after the untimely death of the author, who may or may not have been writing a novel based on a true story. Can I help Sebastian finish the story and get him out of limbo?
  Whether anyone will want to read that story is a moot point. And I’m not claiming that the notion of meta-fiction is so new and fresh that, to come back to Jason Pinter’s question, it’s going to change the industry – Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Flann O’Brien, Italo Calvino and, going a long way back, Laurence Sterne, are all favourites of mine.
  I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that if there’s problems with the publishing industry, it extends to all elements of the industry, and that includes, vitally, the writers. Maybe, just maybe, a central issue for the future is that the audience, and certainly the generations coming through, won’t be content with straightforward fiction, in the way that even the best animated movies from Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney will, for adults, always be just kids’ movies.
  For what it’s worth, the latest kids’ movie from Disney is ‘Bolt’, and it’s about a dog with super-powers who realises that his super-powers only exist on TV, because he’s an actor. When Disney are throwing ‘The Truman Show’ loops at kids, you just know the conventional novel is finished.
  Roll it there, Collette ...

39 Steps To … Getting Published

1. Get genius idea for a story.
2. Example: Man gets brain transplant from loopy nun and has visions of Jesus telling him the Holy Grail is in fact Barack Obama’s coffee mug.
3. Write one-page synopsis.
4. Run out of steam around the paragraph mark.
5. Pitch to drunk literary agent anyway.
6. Pitch to 17 more drunk agents.
7. Get genius idea about a serial killer who goes around bumping off literary agents.
8. Discover you are the 731,204th person to pitch that idea this month alone.
9. First literary agent calls back to say, “This famous relative you have – it’s not Brian Cowen, right?”
10. Lie like Nixon. About everything, to everyone.
11. Claim that you are, in fact, the love-child of Richard Nixon and Barbara Cartland.
12. Decide to think about actually writing the novel.
13. Although first you’ll actually read a novel, ‘just to see how they go.’
14. Apply for Arts Council grant.
15. Apply to Inland Revenue for artist’s tax-break.
16. Set up blog.
17. Type ‘Chapter 1’.
18. Establish the novel’s structure by typing ‘Chapter 2’, ‘Chapter 3’, ‘Chapter 4’, etc., until you reach ‘Chapter 32’.
19. Briefly consider the possibility of getting away with claiming that 32 blank pages ‘convey a post-modern non-narrative exploring the existential emptiness of being’.
20. Write a blog post asking readers’ advice on how to overcome writer’s block.
21. Get blocked after typing ‘How Do You Overcome Writer’s Block?’
22. Do a promotional live phone-link with the Gerry Ryan radio show in which you parade up and down Grafton Street with your knickers on your head asking illegal immigrants for a date.
23. Think some more about writing the novel.
24. Get genius idea to ‘emulate’ your heroes by copying out one chapter from each of your 32 favourite novels.
25. Realise you only have two favourite novels, both of which have ‘Pooh’ in the title.
26. Join a creative writing class.
27. Befriend one of the writers, ask if you can help by critiquing her work, then put her in a coma.
28. Inform agent that the loopy nun / brain transplant / Obama / holy grail story is ‘too mainstream’. Instead it’ll be about ‘a thirty-flirty gal who works in PR with fabulous fashion-sense and more gay friends than you could swing a cat at but who can’t get married although it’s not for the want of a wardrobe full of Jimmy Choos and sound relationship advice from all those gay friends who finally reveal how your sister, the bitch, was sleeping with that hunky bisexual cousin you had your eye on all along’.
29. Drop Oprah an email to let her know that April is good for you.
30. Choose the pseudonym ‘Cecilia Nixon-Binchy’ on the off-chance erstwhile friend emerges from coma.
31. Spend a harrowing month adapting her manuscript by changing the heroine’s name from ‘Aggie’ to ‘Abbie’ without using find-and-delete, ‘because that would be cheating’.
32. Send novel to respected Irish publisher.
33. Tell Barry Egan, exclusively, that you wrote the novel on napkins during your ten-minute lunch-break at the Centre for Helping One-Legged Blind Orphans To Hear Better.
34. Drop Salman Rushdie an email, asking if he’d be so kind as to launch your book for you with ‘a few well-chosen words’.
35. Sign contract with respected Irish publisher, revealing exclusively on TV A.M. that it’s ‘a five-book deal for seven figures’.
36. Neglect to mention that all seven figures are zeroes.
37. Refuse to emerge, blinking shyly, into the bright lights of the Late Late Show until Pat Kenny pins you in a half-nelson on the Montrose lawn.
38. Tell Ryan Tubridy ‘It’s nice that a work of art won for a change,’ when novel hits the best-seller list. Neglect to mention that it was your mother who bought all 14 copies.
39. Immediately set up a creative writing workshop – so you can ‘give something back’ to ‘those less fortunate’ – on Grand Bahama.

This feature first appeared in the Evening Herald

Green Light On The BOULEVARD

Kiera Knightley I can take or leave, but Colin Farrell (right, on the set of ‘In Bruges’) starring in the movie adaptation of Sir Kenneth of Bruen’s LONDON BOULEVARD, with William Monahan directing? Nice. Shooting starts this coming summer, apparently – scoot on over to super-scooper Gerard Brennan at CSNI for all the details.
  Meanwhile, a little birdie tells me that this year’s Irish Book Awards will have, for the very first time, a Crime Fiction gong. To wit:

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new category in the 2009 awards, the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award. Crime fiction ranks among the most vibrant genres in contemporary Irish publishing and the new award, adopted by one of our key media partners, Ireland AM, represents an exciting new addition to the Irish Book Awards.

  The shortlist will be announced in April. There is, unsurprisingly, a twist – the award will be voted upon by TV3’s Ireland AM viewers. So: who’s likely to top the Ireland AM poll of crime novels published by Irish authors in the calendar year 2008? I haven’t read it yet, but – based purely on the frequency of her google alerts – I’m putting a few bob on Tana French’s THE LIKENESS. Then again, Declan Hughes’ THE DYING BREED has just been nominated for a Best Novel Edgar, and Alex Barclay’s BLOOD RUNS COLD was recently featured as an Ireland AM Book of the Month (click here for a video interview with the ravishing Alex ...). And what about Ken Bruen? Or The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman? Or Brian McGilloway? Or ...
  I haven’t a clue who’s going to win it. Any ideas?

The Curious Case Of The Non-Meme Meme

Memes being the interweb’s version of pesky chain-letters, I’m not going to tag anyone in particular for the meme-ish notion below. But feel free to run with it, and link back here if you like. For simplicity’s sake I’ve kept it to one book per author, and the idea is that the last book on your list is the book you’d most like to die reading, if you had to die reading. To wit:

A long, long time in the future, in a galaxy far away, the doctor says, “Sorry, but you’ve only got a month to live.” What ten books would you re-read in your last month?
  My choices runneth thusly:

THE MAGUS – John Fowles
THE LONG GOODBYE – Raymond Chandler
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (and ‘Teddy’ from NINE STORIES) – JD Salinger
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
THE GREEK MYTHS – Robert Graves
PROSPERO’S CELL – Lawrence Durrell
THE DOUBLE TONGUE – William Golding
THE ODYSSEY – Homer
STARDUST – John and Mary Gribbin
PETER PAN – JM Barrie

  For anyone interested, I'd like the theme music from ‘Match of the Day’ played as they carry the coffin out. Cheers.

On The Philosophical Potency Of Narrative

Two snippets that caught my attention in the weekend newspapers, the first being a line from an Irish Times review of John Kenny’s study of John Banville (Irish Academic Press) by Anne Fogarty, professor of Joyce Studies at UCD:

“[Kenny] successfully teases out many of the paradoxical features of Banville’s fiction: its refusal of, but underlying alignment with, an Irish aesthetic, its advocacy of a post-modern playfulness with a form that yet coincides with a late modernist belief in the philosophical potency of narrative and its simultaneous pursuit of silence and an exacting eloquence.”

  Then there was this snippet from Lynne Truss’s Sunday Times review of HOW NOT TO WRITE A NOVEL by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark (Penguin), to wit:

“Writing is not like figure skating, they say. Flashy stuff doesn’t earn you points and it doesn’t make you move up in the competition.”

  I’ll very probably read both these books in the coming months. Which one do you think is likely to be the more enjoyable?

MYSTERY MAN Unmasked; Aka, Brennan Turns Fink

Like daffodils, snowdrops and gambolling lambs, the first sight of a Bateman review is a sure sign of spring. This year Gerard Brennan at CSNI has the honour, with the gist of his review of MYSTERY MAN running thusly:

This is probably Bateman’s most comedic novel to date, with practically a laugh a paragraph guaranteed. Some of the humour can make you feel a little guilty for laughing. To Bateman, political correctness is something that happens to other people, it would seem. It’s actually quite refreshing. The rest of the humour is of the semi-self-aware, self-deprecating variety that comes from the small revelations of the narrator’s personality. Each little nugget of information gradually builds to form one of the finest protagonists I’ve ever read. Yes, he even gives Dan Starkey a run for his money.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

In Praise Of Pre-Loved Books

I know, I know, as a writer I should be encouraging readers to avoid second-hand bookstores as if they were biblical clichés – but what can I tell you? I love second-hand bookstores. Here’s a piece of whimsy on the subject the Evening Herald was kind enough to publish …

There are a couple of drawbacks to having a book published, the main one being that most people assume that you’re earning JK Rowling-style loot, and expect you to stand every round. The truth is that most writers are as broke as Delhi orphans, and it’s wasting all their time writing that has them that way.
  Which is why, while most writers want you to buy a brand spanking new copy of their latest book, and preferably in hardback, said writers will generally be found haunting the murkier corners of your local second-hand bookshop. They’re addicted to books, after all -- the writing is just a symptom of a particularly bad affliction -- and they can’t afford to pay top dollar …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Note To Self: Insert ‘Wot’s On / Watson’ Header Here

Bastion of all things academic and intellectual, Trinity College Dublin is currently hosting an exhibition titled ‘The Body in the Library – the great detectives 1841 to 1941’. Quoth the TCD website:

The detective novel is a genre which generates great popular interest and also growing academic and critical attention. The library’s collections across the past two centuries reflect the development of this form of imaginative writing. This exhibition will illustrate the origins of the detective story in the mid-19th century, the growth in popularity of fictional heroes such as Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Hercule Poirot. There will be a focus on the first golden age of crime writing in the 1920s and 1930s.

  The exhibition opened on Thursday, and runs until June 15. There’s no details as to a specific Irish crime / mystery dimension, but hey – Trinners doing detective fiction? It’s a start.
  I’m also hearing persistent rumours that NYU is planning a symposium on Irish crime fiction later this year. I’ll keep you posted.

Self-Publish And / Or Be Damned

I tend to be defensive when it comes to the self-publishing / vanity publishing issue, given that THE BIG O was originally co-published with Hag’s Head Press, which involved my paying half the costs of putting the book on the shelf. While I appreciate that there’s a lot of dross that gets self-published, there’s also a lot of crap that not only gets past the gatekeepers of the traditional publishing model, but gets championed by said gatekeepers (see Nobody Move, below).
  Time magazine has this week waded into the fray with a fine piece on the future of publishing, the gist of which is that the means of disseminating fiction is undergoing a radical change (e-books, print on demand, etc.), and that the new forms will inevitably influence the content. To wit:

A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn’t dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it’s done. Literature interprets the world, but it’s also shaped by that world, and we’re living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won’t stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It’s about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever …
  Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theatre or the farm system in baseball. It’s the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing’s remote shores. After YouTube and Wikipedia, the idea of user-generated content just isn’t that freaky anymore …
  None of this is good or bad; it just is. The books of the future may not meet all the conventional criteria for literary value that we have today, or any of them. But if that sounds alarming or tragic, go back and sample the righteous zeal with which people despised novels when they first arose. They thought novels were vulgar and immoral. And in a way they were, and that was what was great about them: they shocked and seduced people into new ways of thinking. These books will too. Somewhere out there is the self-publishing world’s answer to [Daniel] Defoe, and he’s probably selling books out of his trunk. But he won’t be for long.

  To be honest, I’m not sure this kind of DIY ethic is going to transmogrify the industry. Pop music had its Year Zero in 1976, when the Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks et al arrived, but little really changed – Johnny Rotten recently turned up on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. And while the web makes it possible for anyone to get published and establish an audience, that still leaves the writer with the thorny question of how to get paid for the value of his or her time, let alone the value of the work. Or is ‘getting paid’ just too 20th century for words? Over to you, folks …

Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better

Some interesting news via John Connolly’s blog, folks, where he’s musing on a novel he’s currently writing: “At the same time, having finished the fairly minor edits for THE LOVERS, I’ve returned to an odd book that I’ve been humming and hawing over for quite some time … That urge to experiment, to try new things that may fail, is one that’s becoming increasingly difficult to indulge as time goes on.” ‘An odd book’? If we’re into territory even remotely approaching the ‘experiment’ of JC’s meisterwerk THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, I’ll be a very happy man indeed. As the boy Beckett may never have actually said, ‘Try again, fail again, fail better.’
  Meanwhile, I heard yesterday that John McFetridge’s SWAP will be coming to an American shelf near you in early 2010, and possibly late this year in a Canadian edition, which is superb news. I read SWAP last year in m/s, and even factoring in the provisio that El Fetch is a buddy of mine, it’s still a terrific read, and his best yet in my not-very-humble opinion. The vid below is the proposed trailer: roll it there, Collette …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE ASSOCIATE by John Grisham

Fair play to the Irish Times – at a time when newsprint all over the planet is slashing its books coverage, the Old Lady has introduced a ‘Book of the Day’ review on its op-ed pages. Yours truly had the honour on Tuesday, to wit:

Book of the Day
The Associate
By John Grisham
Century
373pp, £18.99

Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature on why large publishing firms find it impossible to escape the ‘blockbuster trap’. This is a lottery-style business model, albeit on a vast scale: you invest huge amounts of money in very few titles, and hope that some of them hit the jackpot and provide a return that will sustain the company’s entire roster. It’s a boom-or-bust philosophy that appears cavalier, but the alternative for any company not willing to play the game is that the author’s agent will simply take his client to a company who will.
  As a result, there’s a lot riding on John Grisham’s latest novel, THE ASSOCIATE, for Random House imprint Century. Grisham is a brand name and a perennial best-seller. THE ASSOCIATE, his twenty-first thriller, is perceived as something of a weather vane; if Grisham doesn’t sell, then the publishing industry is in dire straits.
  Perhaps that accounts for the novel’s conservatism. The cover proclaims Grisham as the ‘bestselling author of THE FIRM’, and the inside jacket acknowledges that THE ASSOCIATE is ‘reminiscent’ of Grisham’s breakthrough title, which took bestseller lists and Hollywood by storm. In point of fact, THE ASSOCIATE is so ‘reminiscent’ of THE FIRM that the unwary reader may suffer déjà vu.
  The protagonist, Kyle McAvoy, is a an idealistic law student, the editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a young man with a very bright future. His prospects quickly grow bleak, however, when he is blackmailed by a shadowy organisation, fronted by one Bennie Wright, into infiltrating one of Wall Street’s largest law firms and charged with winkling out the secrets of a multi-billion lawsuit. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse tale in which Kyle attempts to discover who is directing Bennie Wright before he gets caught in the act of corporate espionage and blackballed for life.
  It’s a conventional set-up by the standards of the contemporary thriller, and Grisham’s bland prose lacks the style that might compensate, while the dialogue is at times laughably preposterous (“You awake?” Joey whispered. “Yes. I assume you are too.”) There’s precious little narrative tension, either – Kyle’s predicament, and the reason he is being blackmailed, is that Bennie possesses a video-recording that suggests Kyle may or may not have been present, years previously, when two of his college roommates may or may not have had non-consensual sex with a woman who subsequently claimed she was raped.
  Grisham attempts to gloss over the fact that any half-baked law student would call the blackmailer’s bluff with the words ‘reasonable doubt’, but any reader familiar with even the most basic of legal procedures will realise that Kyle – particularly if he is as bright as Grisham claims – can walk away from the mess at any point. In order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, however, Kyle becomes the kind of genre-friendly but utterly implausible character who is noble enough to put a multi-million dollar career on the line for the sake of his former friends’ reputations.
  There are, for those new to Grisham’s oeuvre, some fascinating insights into the workings of large legal firms, which the ex-lawyer describes in intimate detail: the crushing workload, the rapacious billing practices, the sheer lunacy of the mentality that pervades the upper echelons of sprawling corporations that have, as Mark Twain once said, neither a head to think with nor an ass to kick. But even those kind of details will be already familiar to Grisham fans, and the frequent digressions contribute to a frustratingly disjointed narrative.
  THE ASSOCIATE may seem the perfect panacea for an industry currently questioning its modus operandi: its very familiarity may provide comfort in a time of doubt. In the long run, however, the championing of such staid, conservative novels can only accelerate the industry’s downward spiral of boom-or-bust. – Declan Burke

This review first appeared in the Irish Times

On Becoming A Coward

It’s been a tough few days, folks, and getting away from the hospital for a few hours to receive the best wishes of you all via a bewildering array of electronic devices, and generally mess about with the blog and whatnot, kept me sane. Thankfully Lily was never in too serious a condition, and the pneumonia was caught before it had a chance to take hold properly, but you know how it goes – the old mind runs riot with worst-case scenarios, especially in the wee dark hours. At the risk of sounding too po-faced and / or sentimental about it, I never before realised that you didn’t have to be a coward to feel fear. Well, I do now, or else I’ve become a coward. Still, Lily is back on track, and we’re hoping she’ll be out tomorrow and back home where she belongs. Here’s hoping we never have to go through that again … Anyway, she’s in terrific form again, and that’s all that matters. Thanks to you all for your thoughts and best wishes.

Old Big-Ed

If he scoops the Big One on April 29th, Declan Hughes (right) will be forever known in these here parts as Mr Ed. For lo! It has come to pass, and not a moment too soon, that the Venerable Other Declan has been nominated for an Edgar in the Best Novel category, for last year’s Ed Loy tale, THE PRICE OF BLOOD (aka THE DYING BREED). Naturally, being a work-shy slug-a-bed, I haven’t read any of the other novels nominated, but I have read THE PRICE OF BLOOD and it’ll be a fine, fine novel indeed that pips it at the post by a short head (the novel deals in part with the murky world of Irish horse-racing, see).
  Dec was kind enough to ring yours truly yesterday afternoon with the hot-off-the-presses news, to give me the scoop, but unfortunately I was here all day yesterday, and not so concerned with books and stuff. Thankfully, Lilyput is on the mend and coming back to herself again, and thanks to everyone who has been in touch offering their best wishes.
  Elsewhere in the Edgars, Siobhan Dowd’s BOG CHILD has been nominated in the Juvenile section, while Martin McDonagh has been nominated for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, for In Bruges.
  Incidentally, Dec Hughes’ fourth Ed Loy offering, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, will be released in June. Quoth Dec:

Ed Loy is hired by the beautiful Anne Fogarty to find the man who killed her father fifteen years ago: it could be a gangland IRA boss, it could be a property developer with Sinn Fein and government connections, it could be semi-reformed gangster George Halligan. Plunged into a murky world of post-peace process evasions and half-truths where no-one is who he appears to be, Loy eventually finds himself digging his own grave on a deserted farm in the dead of night, his options dwindled to nothing more than the fight for mere survival.

  I’m betting he makes it …

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

There’s been a lot of negativity and pessimism around these here parts lately – I blame John McFetridge, myself – but here’s a piece from Publishers Weekly on U.S. sales from 2008 that kind of puts all the talk of doom and gloom into perspective, the gist of it running thusly:

Despite panic among many publishers and booksellers about the state of the business, figures compiled by Nielsen BookScan show that unit sales fell only 0.2% in 2008, to 756.1 million.

  Now, I know that the business side of the industry is not my forte, and that there are tough times to come over the next few years, but a drop of 0.2% is hardly the End of Times, is it? Oh, and by the way – adult fiction actually grew in 2008, by 0.4%. Three cheers, two stools and a lusty huzzah!
  Meanwhile, those of you thinking about what kind of novel to write next might want to consider the fact that Juvenile sales were the biggest mover, by a long chalk, up 6.2%. Maybe I should start paying more attention to Ms Witch …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Geraldine McMenamin

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I can’t honestly say that I read a lot of crime novels so this is a difficult question for me to answer. I watch a bit of crime on TV but mostly I can tell where the plot is going and it gets a little predictable. The last crime novel I read was a Harlan Coben one, TELL NO ONE, but I thought it had a disappointing and not very plausible ending. I didn’t particularly intend for THE SAME CLOTH to be a crime novel, it just came out that way. I think it’s more of a ‘journey’ novel but not in the travel journey sense. Is that a genre?

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Will in THE SUBTLE KNIFE (Philip Pullman). I love the notion of being able to enter a parallel universe. The idea that one small detail can change your whole destiny absolutely fascinates me and the concept of being able to switch between one reality and another at will is, to me, a true adventure.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t think any reading is guilty but some publications are just a sheer waste of time. Irish Property supplements did take up a lot of my ‘pleasurable’ reading but unfortunately they are now rather thin in terms of content. Occasionally I read ‘Buy and Sell’ which is absolutely fascinating and sometimes hilarious when you get to the small pieces of junk that people try and sell. More of that this year no doubt!

Most satisfying writing moment?
Definitely when I finished THE SAME CLOTH. I had no idea how I was going to tie all the subplots in together and the narrative is quite complex so I was very pleased when it all worked out to a plausible finale.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I am trying to be diplomatic here so it would have to be THE BIG O.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’m not trying to be diplomatic here so I will say mine. Most people who have read THE SAME CLOTH say ‘that would make a great movie’ without any prompting and it does rely largely on a visual element. I think the fact that I have worked in property for a number of years and have been able to accurately enmesh houses into people’s lives has somehow struck a chord that would work very well on film.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is isolation. You have to motivate yourself constantly to keep going and this is okay when you get some sort of recognition but very difficult when you don’t. I have found it, so far, to be a very tough business to crack. I know that it can be a different experience for everyone but this has been mine to date. The best thing is the sense of achievement you get when you write something that you truly believe is good and flows well, although, in truth, this is short-lived satisfaction. Looking back on my work, particularly writing that I did some time ago, I always want to adjust/edit/improve it. To me, a piece is never finished, perfection is elusive, flawlessness is indefinable and writing so subjective that ultimately faultlessness is intangible. I am not sure if there is much of a ‘choice’ element when it comes to writing. If you are a writer then you need to write. It’s a creative part of you that will not go away. There is something indescribable that happens to you when that creative element of your personality is expressed. It’s a release, a freeing, an intellectual deliverance that is completely personal, your own and unshareable. That’s the good bit!

The pitch for your next book is …?
It is a mystery again, this time told with two voices, which I think will give me more scope than THE SAME CLOTH, which is told in the first person, present tense. The subject matter concerns a rich property fund manager and his dodgy past. I think it will be topical!

Who are you reading right now?
REDEMPTION FALLS by Joseph O’Connor and THE BIG O. I usually read two books at the same time and then read nothing but newspapers in-between!

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write for sure. I have probably covered this answer in the ‘best thing’ about writing above.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Succinct, gripping, reflective.

THE SAME CLOTH is Geraldine McMenamin’s debut novel.

Sah-mokin’; And, Twenty Major

It’s all me-me-me around here these days, so thank Criminy for the Sunday Indo, which yesterday published a piece about the veritable tsunami of sah-mokin’ Irish crime novels heading your way in 2009. By my conservative estimate, there’s at least 15 of same in the pipeline, to wit:

The current generation of Irish crime writers had something of an annus mirabilis in 2008, when John Connolly [right], Tana French, Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes and Ruth Dudley Edwards were all nominated for prestigious crime writing prizes in the U.S. and the U.K. Connolly, Dudley Edwards and French all took home awards, with French a multiple-award winner, a decent haul for a relatively small group of writers, and particularly as Irish crime fiction has yet to be taken as seriously at home as it is abroad.
  The bumper crop of crime novels by Irish writers due in 2009 can only cement the burgeoning reputation of Irish crime writing. First among equals will be the annual offering from John Connolly …

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  Disgracefully, I failed to mention the inimitable Twenty Major (“a crude comic genius,” according to the Sunday Times), whose sophomore effort, ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER, is due next month. Quoth the blurb elves:

It’s just days after the Folkapalooza concert and having saved the world, Twenty Major is looking forward to some R&R but little does he know that his murky past is about to catch up with him … Notorious Dublin gangster Tony Furriskey is calling in his marker. Some time ago he helped Twenty and Jimmy the Bollix out of a hole and the time has come for them to repay the favour…or end up swimming with the Dublin Bay prawns. Tony’s youngest daughter, is about to marry a man he thoroughly disproves of and it’s down to Twenty and Jimmy to make sure the wedding doesn’t happen. They must follow the young man and his pals to Barcelona where the stag weekend is taking place, infiltrate the stag party and make sure, one way or another, that the wedding doesn’t happen. But will Twenty’s Barcelona past catch up with him? Which one of the group finds true love at last? And can they put down the cheap mojitos long enough stop the wedding? In the city of Gaudi and Picasso, Twenty, Jimmy, Stinking Pete and Dirty Dave are more gaudy and pickarse-o as they try and enjoy the Mediterranean sun while getting the job done.

  The editors of Crime Always Pays would have it be known that they make no claims as to the good taste, or otherwise, contained therein …

Crime Always Pays? Oooh, The Irony

Had some bad news on Friday, folks – a rather fine publishing emporium in the USA was taking a long and serious look at the prospect of bringing THE BIG O’s sequel, aka CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, to a shelf near you, but they eventually decided nay, nay and thrice nay. It’s a shame because the people involved are good people, and smart too, and it would have been good to work with them. But, and for the kind of reasons you never stop to think of when you start out writing a book, it would appear that Operation Grand Vizier has, temporarily at least, run into the sand. Boo, etc.
  But lo! I’m not taking this lying down. I wallowed all weekend, and that’s as self-indulgent as it’ll get. In five years time, and as a direct consequence of the last six months, I’ll be a better writer and a wiser human being. Every writer has his or her war stories about rejections and setbacks, and at the end of the day, guv, what’s life but stories for the grandkids?
  Besides, it’s only a book. As I said earlier today, I could be sitting in Gaza City right now, or southern Israel, with a baby in a cot and half-expecting a rocket through the window.
  If the worst thing that happens me in 2009 is a book rejection, it’ll have been a tolerable year. Meanwhile, anyone who needs a laugh should check out the classic Brian-Stewie walkie-talkie riff. Roll it there, Collette, over …

UPDATE: My brother-in-law arrived last night, with the Tom and Jerry-style photograph below (no photo-shopping involved, honest), which was taken by his lovely wife, my equally lovely sister, and which just about captured the mood perfectly. I calls it ‘No Guts, No Glory’. Peace, out.

Git Along, Lil’ Dogie: Lawks, ’Tis The Friday Round-Up

It’s Friday, so we’ll have an end-of-week round-up thingy. Any objections? No? Then read on …
  I met the radiant Arlene Hunt (right) for a cwaffee during the week, to have a chat about this project here, during which Arlene came up with an idea for a terrific chapter. During the course of the chat, we talked about ‘Kennedy’ moments in Irish crime, such as the murder of investigative reporter Veronica Guerin in 1996, and the murder of Lord Mountbatten in 1979.
  Another of those moments that had seismic consequences for Ireland, the Omagh bombing, gets the Ruth Dudley-Edwards treatment in AFTERMATH, due this April from Harvill Secker. To wit:

The Omagh bomb was the worst massacre in Northern Ireland’s modern history - yet from it came a most extraordinary tale of human resilience, as families of murdered people channelled their grief into action. As the bombers congratulated themselves on escaping justice, the families determined on a civil case against them and their organisation. No one had ever done this before: many are likely to do it in the future. It was a very domestic atrocity. In Omagh, on Saturday, 15 August, 1998, a 500lb bomb placed by the Real IRA, murdered twenty-nine shoppers - five men, fourteen women and nine children, of whom two were Spanish and one English: the dead included Protestants, Catholics and a Mormon. Although the police believed they knew the identities of the killers, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. Taking as their motto ‘For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing’, families of ten of the dead decided to go after these men through the civil courts, where the burden of proof is lower. These were ordinary people who knew little of the world - they included a factory worker, a mechanic and a cleaner; they had no money, no lawyers, and there was no legal precedent for such an action. This is the story of how - with the help of a small group of London sympathisers that included a viscount and two ex-terrorists - these Omagh families surmounted all the obstacles to launch a civil case against RIRA and five named individuals, developed with reference to recent European legislation by one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. Along the way the families became formidable campaigners who won the backing of Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush as well as of Bob Geldof and Bono. How these relatives turned themselves into the scourge of RIRA is not just an astonishing story in itself. It is also a universal story of David challenging Goliath, as well as an inspiration to ordinary people anywhere devastated by terrorism. RIRA today: ETA tomorrow: the Mafia, perhaps, the day after.

  If there’s any justice, it’ll be a smash best-seller.
  Meanwhile, the boys from Norn Iron are coming on strong. Here’s Stuart Neville on ‘How I got Published’, while Sam Millar (right) has just declared himself open for business over at his shiny new interweb lair, MillarCrime. Drop on over and tell him a joke.
  Elsewhere, a Gallic-shaped birdie tells me that Tana French is working away on her third novel, which currently rejoices in the working title FAITHFUL PLACE, and which will continue the trend of IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS in that it features a character from the latter novel as its main protagonist. “Frank Mackey, Cassie Maddox’s old boss from THE LIKENESS, is the narrator this time,” says Tana. “He’s spent his whole adult life thinking that his first love Rosie dumped him and ran off to England, and he hasn’t spoken to his family since that night. Then Rosie’s suitcase shows up, hidden in the wall of a house on their old road ...”
  If we’re all very good, Tana will have it ready for us by the end of the year. Unfortunately, I’m not being at all good over at John McFetridge’s place, although I am becoming cooler by the day, and through no great effort of my own. Fetch’s metafiction Baltimore Bouchercon crime spree continues apace … while Peter Rozovsky, in a Tana French-like twist, has leaped from a minor character in McFetridge’s story to become the author of a parallel tale of murder and mayhem in ‘The Baltimore Drive-By’. I can’t keep up …
  Finally, can it be true that J.D. Salinger (right) has turned 90?

The Simple Art Of Murder One, Deceased

Bad news and good news, folks. Twenty Major gets in touch to let us know that Murder One, helmed by the legendary Maxim Jabukowski (right), is closing down, which is little short of a disaster, in terms of what it suggests for the immediate future of publishing, and particularly crime writing. Like, if London can’t even sustain one outlet offering the simple art of specialized books, what chance does anyone who isn’t a chainstore-friendly marquee name have of making any kind of splash?
  Hmmmm, he murmured, clenching his mental buttocks, it’s going to be a tough couple of years.
  On the plus side, Ken Bruen has blurbed Adrian McKinty’s forthcoming opus according to the 11th Commandment, or ‘Thou shalt not damn with faint praise’. To wit:

“Adrian McKinty has been blowing us out of the mystery water for quite some time now. THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD—superb, DEAD I WELL MAY BE, phew-oh, but he has totally taken over the whole field with FIFTY GRAND. Think Don Winslow’s masterly POWER OF THE DOG combined with José Latour and the sheer narrative drive of Joe Lansdale and you'll have some idea of this amazing novel. It has riveting mystery, politics of just about every shade, thrills on almost every page and the most compelling heroine in a Havana female detective named Mercado. I've rarely read a novel that had it all—human and drug trafficking, Hollywood excesses, illegals, ferocious vengeance—but what I found most compulsive was the wondrous compassion of the book. It moved me in ways I never anticipated. This is going to be the BIG BOOK of 2009.”—Ken Bruen, author of THE GUARDS

  Lovely, lovely, lovely. As I’ve said elsewhere in these pages, and on numerous occasions, McKinty’s a superb writer, in the top rank of his generation. I read FIFTY GRAND last April and thought it was his best novel since DEAD I WELL MAY BE, which was so good that I did what I almost never do and pulled the old Holden Caulfield bit and contacted McKinty and told him it was brilliant. Which it is.
  Anyway, if FIFTY GRAND doesn’t go gangbusters for McKinty this year, I’m buying a fedora so I can throw my hat at it. Because if writers like Adrian McKinty can’t make the whole writing thing work, even in the kind of climate that has Murder One closing down, then there’s something seriously and perversely wrong with the industry, and I don’t have a whole lot of interest in making it according to its warped values. Peace, out.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Russel D. McLean

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I don’t know if I’d like to have written it, because then I’d never have had the pleasure of discovering one of the most damned amazing books I ever read, but perhaps James Ellroy’s LA CONFIDENTIAL. When I read, I read for voice ... and Ellroy has voice.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I’d have to say Parker from Richard Stark’s novels. He’s my total antithesis - cool, in control and utterly ruthless. And yet ... as cruel as he is, there’s something to admire in him for all that.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Since I don’t really “get” the fantasy - as in more high fantasy - genre (although I love urban fantasy, SF and horror works) I think that makes my guiltiest pleasure Scott Lynch’s League of Gentlemen Bastard series (LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA and RED SEAS UNDER RED SKIES). The books were forced on me by a fantasy specialist I used to work alongside and while I was extremely dubious, I figured I’d read them as a favour more than anything. Damned if they didn’t defy every expectation that I have with the genre. So yeah, they probably count as a guilty pleasure - or at least something I wouldn’t normally admit to reading.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting that first book deal. I had to take the cool at work on the shop floor and tried my best to remain calm. Actually grabbed one of my colleagues for support. Then when I hung up on my agent I walked calmly into the back-shop and gave out an almighty holler as I danced a dance of joy. A beautiful moment. Although maybe not for anyone observing.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Oh, but youse guys are putting out some of the best writers of the moment. I have to pick just one? Oh ... let’s say McKinty’s THE DEAD YARD, which just ... wow, it blew me away. I love the way McKinty can tell a powerful, action packed story and still imbue it with smarts, subtlety and some genuinely hard questions/themes. This is what a crime novel should be like.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’d dearly love to see a well done adaptation of John Connolly’s Parker novels up there on the screen. But they’d have to be done with a great deal of thought and deliberation; the books are a lot more subtle than a mere surface skim might imply. But if we’re talking novels set in Ireland, then let’s see McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD, perhaps. Again, you’d need a damn fine script and director, but do it right and you’d have that rare thing: a thinking man’s action movie.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing is realising that all your scribbling is about to be up for scrutiny. Best thing is knowing that all your scribbling is up for scrutiny. I reckon you only realise the difference when you get there.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A missing girl. A shady ex-investigator. Dundonian PI J McNee is heading for dark places when he goes in search of a LOST SISTER.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m near finished Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE. Really ups the stakes from THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and Lisbeth Salander is an absolutely fascinating character.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Moments like this would make me sway from agnosticism to full on atheism just so I could tell the Big Man to get lost and leave me my free will intact. But regardless ... I’d probably say, as long as I had some other creative outlet (maybe I’d go try and follow up those old dreams of being an actor) I might read. Because a writer is nothing if he doesn’t read, doesn’t understand how a reader’s mind works.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Ray Banks called me, “tight, sleek and controlled” and who am I to argue with that?

Russel McLean’s debut novel is THE GOOD SON. He can be found at These Aye Mean Streets

Two Tales Of, Erm, Two Cities

A couple of early looks at two of the CAP Towers’ most anticipated reads of 2009, folks. Up first is The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman’s MYSTERY MAN, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

He’s the Man With No Name and the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookshop in Belfast. But when a detective agency next door goes bust, the agency’s clients start calling into his shop asking him to solve their cases. It’s not as if there’s any danger involved. It’s an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she’s not – because she can see the bigger picture. And when they break into the shuttered shop next door on a dare, they have their answer. Suddenly they’re catapulted along a murder trail which leads them from small-time publishing to modern dance to Nazi concentration camps and serial killers …

  Nice. “I enjoyed writing MYSTERY MAN so much,” says the Batemeister, “that I’m already half way through the follow up – THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL.” He says it somewhere over here, where there’s also the first two chapters of the novel available for your perusal.
  Meanwhile, Gene Kerrigan is back, back, BACK! Huzzah, etc. DARK TIMES IN THE CITY goes deep into the bowels of the coke-fuelled beast that is post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, to wit:

Danny Callaghan is having a quiet drink in a Dublin pub when two men with guns walk in. They’re here to take care of a minor problem – petty criminal Walter Bennett. On impulse, Callaghan intervenes to save Walter’s life. Soon, his own survival is in question. With a troubled past and an uncertain future, Danny finds himself drawn into a vicious scheme of revenge. DARK TIMES IN THE CITY depicts an edgy city where affluence and cocaine fuel a ruthless gang culture, and a man’s fleeting impulse may cost the lives of those who matter most to him. Kerrigan’s new novel is his finest yet; gripping from start to finish, powerful, original and impossible to put down.

  So there you have it. Two very fine writers operating at opposite ends of the spectrum, North and South, and two of the very few bright spots on the horizon of the recession-darkened cesspit that is Ireland 2009. Go chaps!

“This Business Was Never Meant To Sustain Limousines”

Two interesting pieces for your perusal today, folks, which appear to send mixed messages but actually dovetail depressingly well. First, the Wall Street Journal on why publishers can’t afford to break out of the ‘blockbuster trap’:

When a publisher spends an inordinate amount on an acquisition, it will do everything in its power to make that project a market success. Most importantly, this means supporting the book with higher-than-average marketing, advertising and distribution support … With such high stakes and money tied up in a few big projects in the pipeline, the need to score big with a next project becomes more pressing, and the process repeats itself. The result is a spiral of ever-increasing bets on the most promising concepts, creating a “blockbuster trap.”

  And then there’s the New York Times on ‘the new austerity rippling through the industry’. To wit:

Amid a relentless string of layoffs and pay-freeze announcements, book publishers are clamping down on some of the business’s most glittery and cozy traditions. Austerity measures are rippling throughout the industry as it confronts the worst retailing landscape in memory. “This business was never meant to sustain limousines,” said Amanda Urban, a literary agent who represents Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, among other authors …
  For authors it means the prospect of smaller advances and fewer books being acquired.

The Embiggened O # 4,067: Whatever Happened To Hot-Shot Hamish?

It’s self-aggrandizing Sunday, folks, and there’s a rather nice review of our humble tome THE BIG O over at Crime Scene Scotland. Be warned, however – this one is compromised to hell and back, in a handbasket, as Donna Moore would have it, given that I met the very personable author and CSS supremo Russel McLean at the Baltimore Bouchercon, and I’m hoping to feature him in the Q&A section of CAP in the very near future, and that the reviewer, Tony Black, featured heavily on these very pages last year, on the occasion of the arrival of his debut novel, PAYING FOR IT.
  With that in mind, read on, or don’t. The gist of the review runneth thusly:

“THE BIG O is one big-old crazy caper with an eerie hint of Elmore Leonard and a brash, bold, ball-bustin’ tempo … As a stylist, Burke is as kick-ass Irish as the great Ken Bruen … The really big appeal of THE BIG O, however, is that there is simply nothing like it – nothing close – on the bookshelves today.” – Crime Scene Scotland

  For more in a similar vein, clickety-click here …

Now That’s What I Call An Irish Crime Writer # 1: The ROCK

Being part the first of what will probably be a very short series on my new heroes for 2009, to wit:

O’Connor, Roger, for many years a prominent character in Irish affairs, son of Roger Conner, the descendant of an opulent London merchant, was born at Connerville, in the County of Cork, in 1762. Possessed of ample means, and having received a good education, he was called to the English Bar in 1784. He more than once suffered imprisonment for being involved in the revolutionary designs of the United Irishmen, and was consigned to Fort George in Scotland, with his brother Arthur, Thomas A. Emmet, Neilson, and others. He was subsequently engaged in several not very creditable transactions. He was proved to have wasted his brother Arthur’s property, which he held in trust, to the extent of £10,000. His residence, Dangan Castle, once the home of the Wellesley family, was burnt down shortly after he had effected an insurance for £5,000, Twice married, he eloped with a married lady. In 1817 he was tried at Trim for complicity in the robbery of the Galway coach and murder of the guard, and was acquitted, although there were grounds for believing that he had planned the affair to secure certain letters, the possession of which was of importance to him. An agent to whom he had paid £700 was robbed of the money before he was clear of O’Connor’s land, by persons who were never discovered. Roger O’Connor has been described as “a hale, hearty, joyous, good-humoured, kindly- looking, broad-faced, honest-minded seeming person - a man in the full vigour of life … His conversational powers were of a high order; his manner was fascinating; his tone of voice sweet and persuasive; his style impressive, full of energy, and apparent candour; his language eloquent, and always appropriate.” In 1822 he published, in London, in two bulky volumes, Chronicles of Eri, being the History of the Gael, Sciot Iber, or Irish People; translated from the Original Manuscripts in the Phoenician Dialect of the Scythian Language. The work is dedicated to his friend Sir Francis Burdett, and is illustrated with numerous maps and plates. A portrait of the author faces the title-page, with the words: “O’Connor Cier-rige, head of his race, and O’Connor, chief of the prostrated people of this nation. Soumis, pas vaincus.” The book is an extraordinary production; as far as the annals are concerned, a piece of gross literary forgery. Roger O’Connor openly advocated the most extreme free-thinking opinions in religion. He died at Kilcrea, County of Cork, 27th January 1834, aged 71, and was buried in the vault of the MacCarthys at Kilcrea.

  Apparently O’Connor adopted the acronym ROCK, for ‘Roger O’Connor, King’. Oh, and the ‘certain letters’ he was alleged to have robbed the Galway mail to secure were love letters that would have incriminated his good friend, Sir Francis Burdett.
  They just don’t make ’em like that anymore, do they?

DARK TIMES IN THE CITY: 2009’s TBR Pile Starts Here

Depressing news at the start of the year, folks – I’m sure you’ve already caught the news that Donald Westlake (right, with Benny Blanco standing) has died. I’m probably only one of thousands of would-be scribblers who were influenced by THE HUNTER, and Point Blank, with Lee Marvin as Parker, remains one of my favourite movies. Peter Rozovsky has penned a rather nice tribute – or tributes – to Westlake’s career right around here.
  But, in the spirit of unbridled optimism currently funnelling through CAP Towers, I’m going to look ahead to the year coming, and the rather splendid array of Irish crime fiction novels on their way down the pike. To wit:

TAFKAC Bateman, MYSTERY MAN
John Connolly, THE LOVERS
Alan Glynn, WINTERLAND
Declan Hughes, ALL THE DEAD VOICES
Gene Kerrigan, DARK TIMES IN THE CITY
Brian McGilloway, BLEED A RIVER DEEP
Adrian McKinty, FIFTY GRAND
Stuart Neville, THE TWELVE

  On top of that little lot, there’s Ken Bruen’s collaboration with Reed Farrel Coleman, TOWER, to look forward to, and a veritable dawn chorus of little birdies assures me that Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay and Tana French are currently wearing their fingers down to the third knuckle as they craft their latest offerings. And, if all the planets align, and Pluto flies up Uranus, etc., there might even be a follow-up to THE BIG O for your perusal.
  I’m sure there’ll be more novels to come, although the bad news for Benny Blanco fans is that Benny is back in John Banville mode. Which means we should see a new Banville novel sometime around September, 2012. Hurrah!
  Over to you, folks – who have I forgotten / left out / maliciously deleted from the list because he or she is so good he or she shames us all?

New Year Revolutions

Happy New Year, folks. I hope 2009 is everything you – yes, YOU – want it to be.
  As for myself, a year half as good as 2008 would be a very good year indeed. The main reason for that, of course, was the arrival of the Princess Lilyput (right, in full-on Eskimo mode), who put this writing malarkey, and the whole business of living, into perspective. Cyril Connolly once said that the pram in the hall is the enemy of creativity, although the flip side of that equation is that creativity is the enemy of the pram in the hall. And I might be a sap, but I like that there’s a pram in my hall.
  Last year was a terrific year, no doubt. As most of you already know, our humble tome THE BIG O was published in the States, which was the realisation of a life-long dream. It took a hell of a lot of hard work to get to that point, and it was hugely gratifying to see it pay off, even if it then sank like a book-shaped stone. But there’s no shame in that. There’s a lot of books published every year, and very few of them manage to top the New York Times’ best-seller list. THE BIG O gave us a fun ride on the rollercoaster, and I met some brilliant people as a result. And while I could sit here and grouse about the bewildering variety of circumstances that conspired to hole THE BIG O below the waterline, the fact remains that I’d be grousing about a book of mine that went out into the big, bad world and was taken seriously by a large number of people whose opinions and work I’ve respected for some time now. Back when I was a kid with vague ambitions to be a writer, I was totally ignorant of the issues that actually matter to the industry. All I wanted was the respect of my peers. So that, too, was hugely gratifying.
  Looking forward to 2009, I have a follow-up to THE BIG O already in the can, which may or may not see the light of day some time this year. I’m also working on a book of crime fiction essays written by Irish crime writers, which is in prospect a terrific read, and something I’m hoping will reach a shelf near you late in 2009. And, naturally, I’m tap-tap-tapping away on a new book, which I’m hoping to get finished at some stage this year.
  All of that, though, will take place, or not, against the backdrop of potentially the worst recession for generations, which means that my real work – i.e., paying work – will take precedence over writing, blogging and generalised faffing about. And everything this year, given the ridiculous amount of work I put into generalised faffing about last year, will take a back seat to my one and only New Year’s Resolution, which is to spend more time with Lily and Aileen.
  For the first time in many years I did no work at all over the Christmas period. And what I realised was that, as much as I love to read and write, and the two are inseparable, I don’t need them in the same way, or as fundamentally, as I need my little girl. The world of books is a seductive one, and it’s one of my deepest hopes that Lily grows up to love books and appreciate their wonder, but I have no intention of sacrificing the most valuable years of our lives to closeting myself away at a desk while she starts to crawl, and walk, and says her first words, downstairs.
  The writing and publishing of books can, has, and possibly will make me happy. But what I realised over the holidays is that I’m already happy, and I’m happy because of the pram in the hall, and happy in a place where even books don’t reach.
  I’m sure every writer reading this will be thinking I’m a sap, that the hard facts are that we’ll all need to work twice as hard this year than we did last year, because the economy is screwed and fewer and fewer writers are going to make it for the foreseeable future. But the truth is that I am a sap, and that I don’t care: 2009 is the Year of Lily. Peace, out.