The Name Game; Or, On Killing ‘The Baby Killers’

Raymond Chandler once said - and I’m paraphrasing, now - that a good title for a novel is a title of a novel that has sold a million books. By which he meant, I think, that a novel’s title is far less important than its story, and that we shouldn’t get unduly hung up on what the book is called.
  That said, I’m a sucker for a good title. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE. THE LORD OF THE FLIES. TREASURE ISLAND. THE BIG SLEEP. Terrific titles, one and all - although, it should be said, they’re all terrific novels too.
  Now that THE BABY KILLERS is going to be published, I’m wondering if ‘THE BABY KILLERS’ is a good title. In theory, at least, it’s an eye-catching attention grabber, which is one function of a novel’s title, and it’s nowhere as gratuitous as it might seem on first glance, as no actual babies are killed during the novel (it refers to the phrase ‘kill your babies’, the advice given to writers who, when redrafting a novel, need to excise those elements they might have a personal preference for, but which are not essential to the story).
  I like the title, but I’m not precious about it, and I’m thinking strongly of changing it. If a potential reader declines to go any further with the book than that title on the basis of its ugly connotations (and there are few uglier concepts than the killing of babies), then I couldn’t really argue with him or her. Yes, we’re all grown-ups here, and the world we live in can be an ugly place; but that’s not a good enough reason to add unnecessary ugliness, just for the sake of what may or may not be an attention-grabbing title.
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’m a struggling writer, and I have a baby girl called Lily. The novel features a character called Declan Burke, a struggling writer, who has a daughter called Lily. I was messing about during the week mocking up a cover for the book, and in the spirit of post-modern japery, it occurred to me to put a picture of the real Lily on the mocked-up cover. Except I didn’t even get past the idea of it; the very notion of putting a picture of my lovely little girl in close proximity to the title THE BABY KILLERS was a step too far.
  Besides, I’ve been racking my brains, and I can’t actually remember one person who’s said to me, ‘Wow, that’s a great title.’ I have had quite a few comments, on the other hand, to the effect that the title is jarring, and off-putting. Most of those quite-a-few-comments have come from women, which is perhaps unsurprising; and what’s significant there is the fact that, as we all know, women read much more fiction than men. Does it make any sense to alienate the majority of potential readers?
  This isn’t just a commercial decision that needs to be made. If it were, I’d probably allow my perverse streak to make the call, and plough ahead with THE BABY KILLERS. It’s more a question of whether or not I want as many people as possible to read my book, be they women or men. Occupying, as I do, one of the lowest rungs on the publishing ladder, I’m not actually writing for money, which is just as well, because at this point I’d be dead from starvation. No, I’m writing for the fun of it, for the joy of putting words in their best order, for the thrill of seeing people emerge hesitantly from whatever dark shadows lurk in the back of my mind and gradually come together to create something real and vibrant and true. Having achieved that, to the best of my ability, only one thing then matters - that as many people as possible read the story. And if even a non-scientific, anecdotal approach tells me that some or many women (and very probably men too) are likely to avoid the story on the basis of the title, then ‘killing the baby’ of the title becomes a no-brainer.
  As it happens, most of the people who’ve been kind enough to pen a few words in support of the novel (see left) read the novel under a different title (it was called BAD FOR GOOD back then), and they either did or didn’t like it on the basis of the story, as opposed to the title. I may well revert to BAD FOR GOOD, although I do have another title in mind too.
  In the meantime, what say you, O Three Regular Readers? Would the title THE BABY KILLERS put you off picking up a novel? Are you even worried as to what a novel is called? How important is a title, and a novel’s cover in general? I’m all ears …

When The Barbarians Come They Will Make The Laws; Or, Rome Wasn’t Sacked In One Day

It’s not often I get reviewed these days, which is hardly surprising, given that I haven’t had a book published since God was a lad. Or 2008, to be a little more accurate about it, which was when HMH published THE BIG O in the US. Even so, reviews of THE BIG O do tend to pop up on blogs and websites at irregular intervals, for which I’m very grateful indeed, the latest coming courtesy of Glenna over at Various Random Thoughts, with the gist running thusly:

“It was clever, funny, the characters smart and witty, and a plot evocative of Elmore Leonard … Intelligence, humour, and wonderful characters all made for an enjoyable and quick read.” - Various Random Thoughts

  I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  Print reviews, of course, traditionally appeared in a very narrow window around a book’s publication, but websites and blogs give people the freedom to write about whatever it is they’re reading, however belatedly. Brian Lindemuth, if I’m not mistaken, is taking that notion to another level entirely, by revisiting novels to review them years after they’ve been published, while the Patti Abbott-inspired meme-a-licious ‘Friday’s Forgotten Books’ has been excavating ignored novels for quite some time now, and is very probably the inspiration for Twitter’s ‘Friday Reads’ hash tag.
  It’s not quite the interweb’s fabled long tail, and it may well be the reverse of the long tail, without being an actual short tail, but whatever it is, long may it continue. The increasing volume of books published, combined with the limitations of print reviewing - space, for the most part - mean that most books don’t get reviewed in the traditional way, leaving the interweb to pull in the slack and go some way towards levelling the playing field for upstarts like yours truly. And that’s before we factor in the number of e-only books being published these days, which is very probably the next big growth area for on-line reviewing.
  Anyway, it was a good holiday for me in terms of being reviewed, for two - Oh yes! Two! - reviews of my books appeared. The second gives another little twist on the potential of web-based reviewing, given that Mike Dennis, bless his cotton socks, not only read my current novel-under-consideration, BAD FOR GOOD, aka THE BABY KILLERS, but blogged a review of it over at his interweb lair. The gist:

“The book is a dizzying ride through all phases of author angst, including the ending (which you won’t see coming), and Burke has deftly pushed the envelope just about as far as it can go.” - Mike Dennis

  Now, there’s a very good chance that I’m a little too close to this particular project to be objective about it, but there’s something delightfully subversive about the idea of a novel that hasn’t been published, and may well not be published, being fair game for reviewing. Maybe it’s just a mini-version of Authonomy and suchlike, where writers post excerpts for workshop purposes, and get feedback from their peers, although it’s only fair to say that BAD FOR GOOD is the finished article, for good or ill. Either way, it’s another example of the web’s capacity to bypass, undermine and / or ignore the current model of publishing, which seems to grow more moribund by the day.
  Of course, such reviews - of books that may never grace a shelf - might well be pointless, given that they have no real worth beyond my own gratification. In other words, the writer-critic-reader feedback loop being largely the preserve of dusty academia these days, the industry’s perception of reviews is that they boost sales. So what’s the point of reviewing a book that can’t be monetised?
  Well, the thing is this: once a book is written, and written as well as it can be, then you’re kind of honour bound as its writer to do something with it. The traditional thing, of course, is to send said tome to your agent, if you have one, or to a slush-pile, and I have taken the traditional steps. But, given the dynamic immediacy of the web, such steps seem almost passive these days. So why not, if there are readers out there willing to read the story, send it to them and see what they think of it? If I may quote Dostoevsky, as I do in BAD FOR GOOD: “You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics. Answer: Because it was very dull to sit with one’s hands folded, and so one began cutting capers.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND.
  Or, more bluntly, and quoting Cavafy: “When the Barbarians come they will make the laws.”
  In short, I’m happy to imagine BAD FOR GOOD as one of a horde of barbarians clamouring at the gates. There’s a very good chance, what with all those pinging arrows and barrels of boiling oil, and all my fellow barbarians a-clamouring, that BFG won’t make it over the battlements. Still, better to die in a gloriously foolhardy assault than starve silently to death beyond the walls. No?

Word Junkies; Or, The True Cost Of Writing

Like most people who are even semi-serious about the writing business, I try to write every day. That’s not always possible, what with pesky issues like the need to put food on the table and nappies on bums to deal with, and the even more pressing need of ensuring the mortgage gets paid so that your daughter doesn’t have to go live in an actual tree (right), but I generally get a couple of hours a day done, five or six days a week. Which is pretty poor going, especially as fulltime writers get to spend eight or ten hours at the desk every day, but needs must, and a couple of hours per day is usually enough to keep me ticking over and the bubble of whatever world I’m creating fully inflated.
  Taking a break of more than a day or two can be a dangerous business. It can be a good thing, in that it allows the mind to roam more freely, and you can start making connections that might not otherwise have occurred to you; it can also serve as a kind of damming process, behind which the story builds up, thus allowing you to burst back into a story bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
  The danger, of course, is that spending even four or five days away from a story affords a perspective that can very easily prick that bubble. The old doubts about your ability have time to fester; you start to wonder if the story is actually all that believable; or, worse, if there’s really any point to writing it, no matter how believable it is, or enjoyable to write.
  The week just gone by, in which I took a break of six days from working on the current story, appears to have fatally holed it beneath the waterline. I still think it’d be fun to write, and I like the characters, by which I mean I find them interesting enough to follow through to find out where the story will take them; but the whole ‘what’s-the-point?’ black dog started howling out in the darkness.
  Worse, while slumped in a turkey-and-sherry-trifle coma in front of some rubbish TV, I started crunching numbers. Now, I earn a decent if not remarkable wage as a freelance writer. The hours are long, and the work itself is interesting, and the bills get paid and nappies get put on bums. All of which, especially in the current climate, is very good indeed.
  For some reason, though, I started wondering about how much, in terms of dollars and cents, I’ve invested to date in my writing ‘career’. Any aspiring writers out there might want to look away now.
  The nuts and bolts run thusly: I’ve had two books published, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE (2004) and THE BIG O (2007). I’m hopeful, although not hugely so, that I’ll have another book published this year, BAD FOR GOOD aka THE BABY KILLERS. (I’m not counting CRIME ALWAYS PAYS for the purpose of this little exercise, by the way, as that went straight to e-format - but feel free to have a squint, if you’re so inclined).
  Now, I started writing EIGHTBALL BOOGIE some time around 2000 or 2001. So let’s say, for a round figure, and taking a huge leap and presuming that I’ll have another book published in 2011, that by the end of this year I’ll have had three books published to show for 10 years work. (I’ve written other novels, there are three or four gathering dust on the shelf, but for now let’s just stick with published books).
  The rates for freelance journalism have changed over the last decade, not always upward, so it can be hard to put an hourly figure on earnings. These days I can write a feature in two hours and earn €200 (very rare), but my hourly rate, when I’m being honest with myself and factor in the daily commute, is usually closer to €20.
  Now let’s extrapolate, and apply that hourly rate to writing fiction. At two hours per day, five days per week, 48 weeks per year, at a rate of €20 per hour, that amounts to €9,600 per year ‘spent’ on writing fiction. Multiply that by the ten years I’ve been writing seriously, we’re looking at the guts of €100,000, or €33,000 per book published. And that’s presuming that I’ll have a book published in 2011, which is a pretty big presumption; if I don’t, we’re looking at each book I’ve published costing me €50,000. Meanwhile, the largest advance I’ve ever received is €10,500, a figure that’s roughly ten times what an author scrabbling around at my level is likely to receive if he or she is lucky enough to see a book land on a shelf.
  I should say, of course, that those hours I spend writing fiction tend to be in the 6am-8am or 9pm-11pm bracket, hours when I very probably wouldn’t be working at earning anyway. Still, it’s a sobering thought, that investing all that time and effort should end up costing you somewhere in the region of seventy grand.
  If this was any other kind of business, I’d have been declared forcibly bankrupt and / or certifiably insane a long, long time ago.
  Unfortunately, it’s not any other kind of business. It’s writing. And just like the degenerate gambler and / or junkie who keeps on borrowing to feed his habit, I’ll keep on pounding the keyboard. Not in the hope that, one day, I’ll hit big and earn enough to have made all those years financially worthwhile, because junkies don’t think like that. No, I’ll keep writing for the pure and simple buzz of seeing the words appear on the page. My words, my story, my dream made real.
  I’m not a moron, all evidence to the contrary. Unlike the average junkie, I won’t be doing anything that might impact on my ability to put nappies on bums. Those writing hours I do scrape together will remain in the 6am-8am or 9pm-11pm slots, and will be just about enough, hopefully, to keep me from turning into the psychopathic bear I become when I don’t get my two-hourly fix every day. If I do get another book published this year, that will be marvellous; if not, well, you write in order to write. Everything else to do with the publishing industry, with apologies to everyone involved, is just a necessary evil.
  So, my New Year Resolutions:

1 To write and not to count the cost.
2 Give up smoking.
3 Spend more time with Lily.

  Meanwhile, a happy and prosperous New Year to all of you good folks, and here’s hoping that 2011 is a better year than the annus horribilis gone before. Upward and onward, people …

Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

Après le deluge, c’est moi. Or words to that effect. The immediate aftermath of writing a book is always a weird time, a period of twitchiness and sensory overload and an indefinable feel of gaping loss. There’s relief too, of course, but you’re still running on adrenaline in a vacuum, synapses firing like a Catherine Wheel, and yet you’ve nowhere to invest all the excess creative energy. The idea of starting something new is stomach churning, given that you feel physically drained, and that’s even presuming you’ve a new idea worth kicking around. Better writers than I have suggested in the past that this can be a good time to write short stories, and in that way siphon off the excess mental energy in brief spurts, but - as the man says - if I was able to write short stories, why would I bother writing novels in the first place?
  Anyway, the latest redraft is finished. Hallelujah, etc. For those of CAP’s three regular readers who have been paying attention, it was a redraft of the story that started out under the rather unwieldy title of THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS, then became A GONZO NOIR, moved on to BAD FOR GOOD, and is currently rejoicing in the not-likely-to-see-the-light-of-day title of THE BABY KILLERS. For those of you who have already read it in a previous draft form, the new draft contains roughly 10% new material, most of which was included to root the characters in what passes for my reality, and which - hopefully - makes the story just a smidge more bonkers than it already was. Which, given that the publishing industry grows more conservative by the day, is the literary equivalent of shooting myself in the foot. But what else can you do? Join the grey, homogenous ranks churning out grey, homogenous facsimiles of one another? Invent a particularly gruesome and / or fiendishly clever psychopathic killer? Wedge the latest dull-but-worthy Inspector Plod into a sub-genre already splitting at the seams with dull worthiness? Contrive a new variation on the superhuman sub-Bond thriller? Foist, God preserve us all, yet another tarnished knight of the private eye variety onto an unsuspecting - oh, hold on, I’ve already done that.
  No, it’s foot-shooting for me, and a permanent limp as I wander the publishing roads less travelled, and a metaphor mangled to within an inch of its life. But I digress.
  I finished the redraft on Thursday morning, and sent it off, and I’ve been mooning around ever since, or at least during those chunks of time I’d previously allotted to writing. What to do, what to do? I’ve some other novels I could be redrafting, and half-finished novels I could be finishing, and half-started novels I could be working on, but I’ve promised myself I won’t write another word of fiction until the New Year at least, as life tends to get a little frantic for a freelance journalist in the run-up to Christmas.
  Plus, knowing that the story is out there, and being read by people who have the wherewithal to put it on a shelf at some point in the future, has a paralysing effect. It’s like some kind of venom that blocks the synaptic impulse from reaching the fingertips. A very weird feeling, and hence the twitchiness.
  By the way, those few of you who have been paying attention will remember that my plan, when last outlined, involved self-publishing BAD FOR GOOD / A GONZO NOIR / THE BABY KILLERS for charidee. Well, there’s been a development since then, and a rather intriguing one, and while self-publishing remains an option, it’s not the only one. More of which anon.
  Meanwhile, I’m still waking at 5am ready to write, fully charged, utterly drained, bedevilled with ideas and frustrated for the want of a blank page to transform their glittering brilliance into toxic sludge, a process I like to describe as ‘the first draft’. It’ll pass, I know, it always does, and soon enough all that energy will subside back into the pit from whence it came, there to transmogrify itself and emerge as an entirely different beast, hopefully as a beast brandishing a pair of Gatling guns pointed squarely at my feet.
  For now it’s time to put my nose to grindstone, and put the hours into work that actually pays. Hell, maybe I’ll even be able to get back to waking at 6.30am.
  Finally, and for your delectation, I offer the new start to the book, with all brickbats and barbed-wire bouquets welcome, as always. To wit:

1.

This man at the foot of my bed is too sharply dressed to be anything but a lawyer or a pimp. He is reading, intently, which leads me to believe he is more likely a pimp, as these days lawyers are more usually to be found writing novels than reading them.
  His navy suit, a three-piece over a pink shirt with a white collar and navy tie, is the only splash of colour in a room that is otherwise entirely white. White walls, white tiles on the floor. The window blinds, bedside locker, sheets, wainscoting, the door, all white.
  As it is a manuscript of a novel the man is reading, the page facing me is white.
  His eyes flicker up to meet mine. They narrow when he realises I have come awake, and a well trimmed eyebrow arches. Brown eyes, flecked with hazel, and not without warmth. He holds my gaze for a moment or two. ‘You’re some man for one man,’ he says.
  When I do not speak, he puts the manuscript down and settles himself comfortably in the straight-backed chair, folds his arms. ‘The best we can hope for is criminal damage,’ he says, ‘and that’s claiming insanity. We’ll start out full-blown, work our way down to temporary, you could be out in five years. But that’s your best case scenario.’
  He waits. The only sound is the faint hum of the a/c.
  ‘Worst case,’ he says, and his tone has not changed, ‘they’ll pull out the big guns, offences against the State, terrorism, the works. I mean, there’s no specific law against blowing up hospitals, but let’s just say they’ve plenty of wiggle room to play with.’
  Again he waits.
  His tone still patient, reasonable, he says, ‘Between you and me, you’re public enemy number one, and right now I’m the only friend you have. So we can do this with you playing dumb if you want, some kind of silent protest, it can only help with the insanity plea. But if you want my advice, which is why I’m here, then I suggest you start talking. To me, at least. There’s only the two of us, no one’s taking notes, there’s no recorder running, it’s all off the record. I’m here, I’m listening.
  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what d’you say?’
  A man cannot live tilted away from the world. The world will not permit it. Gravity will have its way.
  He must live straight, upright, or not at all.
  I reach for the pen and pad on the bedside locker and scribble a question. The man comes to the bed, takes the pad.
  ‘What day is it?’ he says. ‘It’s Monday. Monday,’ he checks his watch, ‘four-thirteen pm.’
  I beckon for the pad, and scrawl, Tomorrow.
  A wry grin. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘It’s all about the Tuesdays, isn’t it?’
  There is nothing I can add to this. It would appear that all effort has come to naught.
  My line for today comes courtesy of Samuel Beckett: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
  I close my eyes.

© Declan Burke 2010

On Beating Publishers With A Big Stick; and Ken Bruen’s Movies

First off, let me apologise for the erratic posting that the Three Regular Readers might have noticed here at CAP for the last while. The reasons why are positive, given that I’m swamped right now (yours truly in full-on nervous breakdown mode, right) with actual paying work, which is not something I’ll be complaining about any time in the near future, particularly as Ireland might do well to simply turn itself into one vast begging cap before the IMF finally decides to do the right thing. The other reason is that I’ve been beavering away at a redraft of A GONZO NOIR, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which I should have finished in the next week or so, all things being equal and a fair wind following, etc.
  Incidentally, if there are any bloggers and / or reviewers out there who fancy receiving a Word doc copy of said tome, which may or may not be labouring under the title of THE BABY KILLERS by the time it reaches you, I’d be delighted to provide a RARC (Ridiculously Advanced Review Copy). Please drop me a line at the usual address ...
  Once the redraft is completed, I’ll be turning my attention to other matters, including beating some unfortunate print-on-demand publisher with a big stick until it uncles and agrees to a reasonable price, and sundry other issues. All going well, following wind, etc., I’m hoping a print book version of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS will see a shelf near you by April or May. I’m also planning to release it as an e-book, for all you e-reader fans out there. No, please, form an orderly queue, etc. …
  Meantime, and because I’ve been so busy, I’m way behind the curve with the trailers for the two forthcoming movies based on Ken Bruen novels, which hit the interweb last week. The first, LONDON BOULEVARD, starring Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley, will be released on November 26th, if my information is correct, although I’m giving no one any guarantees on that one. Roll it there, Collette …

  The second movie, BLITZ, starring Jason Statham, is scheduled for a 2011 release, although I can’t be any more precise than that. Collette? In your own time, ma’am …

On Writing For Fun, And Other Lunacies

Maybe it’s just me, but a chart of this writer’s writing life would probably look a lot like a seismograph during a quake hitting 7.2 on the Richter Scale, or a polygraph attached to Janet Evanovich during an interrogation during which she was asked if she really believed - like, seriously now - that four of her novels were worth an advance of fifty million dollars, or thereabouts.
(What bugs me about the Evanovich demand for $50 million advance - I’ve never read any of her novels, so I’m in no position to say if she’s worth it, although it’s fair to say that you’d need thumbscrews to truly convince me - is that if she’d only asked for $49 million, there’d still have been a spare million left over to divide up between a thousand or so other writers, giving them not necessarily a living wage but the hope that some day, they might just be able to earn a crust from this gig. And you’d have to imagine that, out of that thousand, at least one would be able to come up with something a little fresher than a tired reworking of a raddled old post-feminist parody. But I digress.)
  Anyway, that seismograph chart - the life of a struggling wannabe writer is one of rapid and violent ups and downs, and far more downs than ups. That goes with the territory, puts fire in your belly, and if nothing else, gives you an overwhelming desire to succeed even if it’s just to prove the bastards wrong.
  The last week or so has been pretty much typical. A little birdie whispers the very bad news that one of the best Irish crime writers has had his / her American contract cancelled for lack of sales. Shameful stuff, totally unexpected and utterly depressing, given that he / she is a terrific writer who is never less than entertaining and also pretty illuminating about the world we live in right now.
  That’s the biz, I suppose.
  For me personally, it’s been a decent week. I got a green-ish light on a project I’ve been working on for about two years, of which more anon. I also heard that there are two US publishers taking a good long squint at BAD FOR GOOD, and that initial reactions have been very positive. Not that that amounts to a molehill of beans, in real terms, but still, it’s good to know that someone out there is reading it, and liking it.
  I’ve also been doing quite a bit of writing, largely because I joined a ‘writing group’ last month. Four people, decent skins all, coming together to pool resources and give one another a helping hand over the various humps and hillocks that get in the way of putting words on paper. We all have our own agendas, and we’re all at different stages of the publishing game, which will be very healthy, I think. For my own part, my needs are threefold. One, that said decent skins apply shoe leather to my skinny white ass and get me writing again; two, that that process will help me rewrite a novel currently labouring under the weight of its 149,000 words into something more taut, elegant and accessible; and three, that I can get back to writing the way I used to write in the good old days before I ever got published, and start telling stories just for the fun of it.
  That might sound a little naïve, but during the last two years or so, I’ve started at least five different novels, investing anything between 10,000 and 30,000 words in each. Every time I came grinding to a halt, worn down by the constant process of second-guessing the industry, particularly the bean counters to whom most editors have to answer these days, worrying if what I was doing was commercial (very probably), or commercial enough (hard to say), or if I wouldn’t be more profitably employed shouting down a well (very probably).
  Fun. Not a word you hear very often when people talk about writing in particular and the publishing industry in general. But it’s why I started writing, way back when, those halcyon days when the process of putting words in their best order was enjoyable for its own sake. A very serious kind of fun, of course, given that writing is a serious business, whether or not the business takes you seriously. But fun.
  My little girl arrived home yesterday from crèche with a paper folder full of drawings and doodles and paintings and sparkly stuff, my favourite of which you can see above. Bright, colourful, bold, fun. Was Lily worried about what anyone thought about her picture when she was painting? Hardly, given that she’s only two years-and-a-bit old. Had she any idea that when her silly old sentimental Dad saw it, his heart would feel like it might explode? Probably not. Did she just get stuck in and splash the paint around and do the best job that fun would allow? I’d imagine so. Will anyone ever pay for it? Not that I’d ever sell it, but no.
  The ‘writing group’ met for the first time last month, and the plan is that we assemble in mid-September with 2,000 words each to show for our efforts this month. The good news there is that I’ve already racked up 15,000 words in the last three weeks, although the bad news - given that I’m supposed to be rewriting the damn thing - is that said 15,000 words are all brand new and freshly minted. Mind you, the process of writing that section has allowed me to identify not only a massive, glaring flaw in the novel, but also how to rectify it. I’d say that that 15,000 words will save me about 40,000 by the time I get into the heart of the story.
  Anyway, good news / bad news. This week it’s mostly good, and high-ho for upward and onward, at least until next week, when I’ll very probably plummet off the precipice again.
  The main thing, though, is that it’s all good, that I’ve started to rediscover that sense of fun again. Maybe, given the fact that none of my previous offerings have overly taxed the boys ‘n’ gals at Nielsen, I’ll have to send out the redrafted novel under a pseudonym, as I’ve discussed before. And maybe (very probably) it’ll never see the light of day, because I’m already a beaten docket as a published writer at the age of 41.
  And so what? What I get from writing - fun, joy, self-worth, all the good stuff you tend to forget about after too long at the coal-face - is far too precious to entrust to the publishing industry, or at least the publishing industry in its current, ultra-conservative incarnation. As the quote from Isak Dinesen I’ve tacked to my PC monitor says, “I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”

  Lately I have been mostly reading: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay; COLLUSION by Stuart Neville; FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French; RIVER OF SHADOWS by Valerio Varesi; DON’T BLINK by James Patterson; TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS by Ruth Rendell, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson, and THE DOGS OF ROME by Conor Fitzgerald.

Laugh? I Nearly Emigrated

Colin Bateman (right) was kind enough to give me a very generous plug last week, in a piece he wrote for the Guardian’s Book Blog, in which he claimed that comic crime fiction is a ‘new and challenging’ way of dealing with what can often be moribund clichés in the crime writing genre. Peter Rozovsky picked up the ball and ran with it over at Detectives Beyond Borders, where the conversation became a debate about the use and abuse of gratuitous violence in crime novels, and particularly against women.
  There’s no doubt that employing comedy in crime fiction is a high-wire act. Crime is a very serious business, in more ways than one; violence, rape, torture and murder are not matters to be taken lightly. My big problem, as a writer, is that I love the crime novel form, and that I find it very difficult to write without trying to be funny. I have tried to write stories that are serious in tone, but I get bored very quickly, and find myself repressing the instinct to poke fun at the foibles of the characters, their ambitions and hubris. That puts me in an awkward position, not least because a good friend of mine died violently many years ago, and it goes against the grain to underplay the consequences of violence of any kind.
  My first novel, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, was an attempt to write an homage-of-sorts to the novels of Raymond Chandler - in other words, the novel was serious in its intent, but its protagonist, Harry Rigby, was prone to comic quips and asides to the reader. As best as I can remember without rereading it, the story contains two murders, both of which, I hope, receive their full due in terms of their consequences. The story also contains occasional outbreaks of non-lethal violence, most of which is perpetrated against Rigby, and again, I tried to do justice to the reality of my own experience of physical violence - that it is brutal and nasty, and as psychologically unsettling as it is physically debilitating. That said, Rigby at one point ships a bullet in his gut and - after a brief period of recuperation - goes merrily on his way. Plausible? Definitely not, according to a number of reviewers. By the same token, none of the violence is gratuitous, nor is it excessively detailed or gruesome.
  By the time I came to write my second novel, THE BIG O, I was a little worn out by the forensically detailed emphasis on violence and murder in the novels I was reading, and particularly burnt out by those authors who were gleefully celebrating the extent to which their novels were plumbing the depths of human depravity. The form I decided on was a homage-of-sorts to Elmore Leonard, with a nod to Barry Gifford, but I also set myself the challenge of writing a crime novel that contained no murders at all, and the bare minimum of violence. Apart from self-inflicted harm, the novel contains two actual episodes of violence: a dog has its eye removed with a fork, and a man - one of the bad guys - gets shot in the knee. By the standards of the kill-count in the crime novel today, that’s positively quaint.
  The comedy aspect was a bit more challenging. Many reviewers commented on the number of coincidences in the novel: some were willing to play along with the conceit, others found it a bit wearying. My intent, for what it’s worth, was to write a comic crime novel according to the classical definition of comedy - i.e., in classical Greek drama, tragedy is considered to be undeveloped comedy. In the context of the novel, a group of characters scheme and plot towards the finale, growing increasingly desperate to achieve their aims even as fate - in the form of those coincidences - becomes a noose around their necks. I suppose the general idea was that of ‘Men plan and gods laugh’ - either way, the concept was one of poking fun at the illusion of human control over our actions and their consequences in what is essentially a blind and pitiless universe.
  My third novel, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which is currently out under consideration, is an attempt to get at a different kind of comedy. Again, it’s a crime narrative, in which a hospital porter deranged by logic decides to blow up the hospital where he works, in order to illustrate how all civilisations (in this case, Western civilisation) are undone from within rather than destroyed by external forces. The humour is decidedly darker than previously; the protagonist, Karlsson, allows for no limits on his imagination when it comes to inventing ingenious ways to persecute his superiors. But the form, too, is an attempt to move away from the traditional crime novel narrative. It’s a meta-fiction, in which failed writer Declan Burke finds his own person, and that of his family, under attack by his deranged creation, Karlsson. The idea is to fold back the violence writers propagate onto the writer himself, and to have Declan Burke live with the consequences of his wilful depravity. Whether the conceit works is up to others to decide, but for now I’m happy that the story is at least an attempt to come to terms with the responsibility a crime writer bears in terms of the ways in which he or she employs violence in their novels.
  Anyway, that’s my two cents on the comic crime novel. I should point out, by the way, that my own experience of writing and publishing comic crime novels has been that while readers tend to like them as a change of pace from more serious fare, they’re not generally taken all that seriously by the industry’s mainstream, either by publishers or readers. That may well be because of the way I’ve written those particular novels, or because people don’t as a rule take comedy seriously. I’d imagine it’s very probably a combination of both. Bateman, whose debut novel DIVORCING JACK poked fun at warring paramilitaries and won the Betty Trask prize, and whose THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL recently won The Last Laugh award at CrimeFest, is one of the few exceptions. And that’s a shame, I think. Writers of serious crime novels who overdose on gratuitous violence and torture porn are no more realistic in terms of the truth of crime than comedy writers who exaggerate the tropes and blend genres. The funniest novel I’ve read so far this year has been Anthony Zuiker’s DARK ORIGINS, a laughably bad tale of an anally-obsessed serial killer mastermind, at the conclusion of which I had the overwhelming desire to take a shower. At the very least the comedy writers, bless their cotton socks, are serious about making you laugh.

Stop, You’re Killing Me

The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman had a nice piece over on the Guardian Book Blog today (Thursday, 3rd), in which he waxed lyrical about the comic crime novel. The gist runneth thusly:

“ … humour in crime fiction is nowadays a rare bird. I was struck by something my friend, thriller writer John Connolly – 7m sales and counting – said at a writing workshop, that comic crime fiction, with rare exceptions, is never going to sell and will forever be frozen out of the major prizes. The Last Laugh Award that my latest book – The Day of the Jack Russell – has picked up is a fantastic honour, but to put it in perspective, it was announced at Bristol’s international convention on crime fiction at the same time as those other biggies, the e-Dunnit Award for best ebook first published in the UK and The Sounds of Crime Award for best abridged and unabridged audiobooks. All three were vastly overshadowed by the concurrent announcement of this year’s Crime Writers’ Association Dagger awards shortlist, which is not noticeably troubled by anything likely to put a smile on your face. John Connolly has a point …
  “Which means, bizarrely, that if you want to find something new and challenging, comic crime fiction is now the place to go. British authors like Robert Lewis, Charlie Williams, Malcolm Pryce, Chris Ewan, Declan Burke and Len Tyler are at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works. They may not yet be hogging the bestseller lists but at least they’re adding some wit and balls to a moribund genre. What they’d all probably say, if I could be bothered asking them, is that people who read their books love them, it’s getting them to pick them up in the first place that is the difficulty.”

  Now, yours truly is a native-born and horny-handed son of the soil of Eireann, as some of you know and some of you even care. But I’m more than willing to overlook the fact that I’m now - according to Bateman, at least - a subject of Queen Elizabeth II, bless her cotton socks, on the basis that he reckons I’m (a) comic, (b) challenging, (c) loved and (d) young. Said last - young! - being by far the most important attribute, obviously. Take that, mid-life crisis!
  Bateman, by the way, will be appearing at the Gutter Bookshop next Wednesday, June 9th, where he’ll be waffling at some length about the paperback release of the award-winning THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL. Click on the pic top right for all the details …
  Elsewhere, Joe Long, a good friend of this blog, and of Irish crime writing in general, forwards me on an article from the Irish Echo celebrating the rise and rise of Irish crime writing. Quoth Joe:

“John Connolly is the pied piper,” said Joe Long, a graduate student at New York University. Ten years ago, he met Connolly at a reading in New York and they became firm friends. Soon, Long, who has lived all of his 58 years in Manhattan, was hooked on Irish crime fiction. “There’re all great,” he said. “It’s not just good crime writing; it’s good Irish writing.”

  For more, clickety-click here. But be warned, it mentions me a bit …
  Actually, I’m having a pretty good week, I have to say. I got a nice email from someone running an on-line book club asking if I’d be interested in BAD FOR GOOD being their July pick, this despite the fact that BAD FOR GOOD has yet to be published. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty flattered …
  Speaking of which: we (aka Team Laughably Impossible Dream, aka the group of crack optimists doing their damnedest to inflict the demented wibblings of yours truly on an unsuspecting public) got a little nibble on said BAD FOR GOOD this week, and from a rather impressive source. Protocol demands that I gloss over the details; suffice to say that the house publishes two of the finest crime writers of all time. Again, I’m pretty flattered. And not only that, but it transpires that there are two other houses displaying ‘serious’ interest. All of which amounts to a hill of beans, of course, but hey - only one of those beans needs to be magic, right?
  On top of all that, it looks like it’s going to be a sunny Bank Holiday, for once. I’m off to the Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan on Saturday June 6th, there to hook up - all going well and Sat Nav permitting - with Brian McGilloway and Ed O’Loughlin, the idea being to (a) promote the bejasus out of two of the finest contemporary Irish authors, (b) chat about THE INFORMER and THE ASSASSIN, the ur-noir novels of Liam O’Flaherty and (c) wonder aloud to no great practical purpose about whether contemporary Irish novels are engaging with the political realities of Ireland today in the way O’Flaherty rather bravely engaged with his. If you’re in the general vicinity of Monaghan, we’ll be yakking it up in the Butty Barn at 2.45pm: do drop by for a heckle or two.
  For the full Flat Lake Festival line-up - which includes Anne Enright, Alexei Sayle, The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, Eoin McNamee, Dermot Healy, Shane McGowan, Eugene McCabe, greasy-pig wrassling and generalised debauchery - clickety-click here …

On Choosing Your Favourite Child

Craig Sisterson over at Kiwi Crime was kind enough to point his 9mm at me (oo-er, missus), said 9mm being a quick-fire interview consisting of nine questions, one of which runneth thusly:

CS: Of your books, which is your favourite, and why?

DB: “Now that’s a tough bloody question. It’s like asking which of your kids you love most. And the honest answer is that I love them all equally, and I’m including those that haven’t been published when I say ‘all’. EIGHTBALL was magic because it was my first, and I’ll never replicate that shining, incandescent moment when I first held the book - an actual book, written by me - in my hands. It happened on a street in Galway, and I believe I kind of blanked out for a few seconds. I’d waited a long, long time to see that book … THE BIG O I love because it was a co-published deal with Hag’s Head, I and my wife put our mortgage money where my mouth was by paying 50% of the costs, and it ended up a modest success, from a co-published little effort (880 copies in Ireland) that ended up getting a pretty decent deal in the States, and allowed me go to the States for a road-trip to promote it. BAD FOR GOOD (which is currently out under consideration) I love because it’s radically different to the previous books, and I’m still not sure where the voice came from, or where the notion of having a hospital porter blow up his hospital came from. But even the books that will never see the light of day, I love them too, because they’re me at my most me. Which is the main reason why I write, I think.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Actually, it was only after I’d seen the piece published that the sheer audacity of that question struck me. Not that I might have a favourite among my books, but the fact that there books out there that are ‘my books’, and enough of them published - the bare minimum, as it happens - to allow me choose a favourite. Some days you forget how far you’ve come relative to where you began … If you had told me 20 years ago that I’d have one book published, let alone two, I’d probably have had you consigned to a home for the terminally bewildered.
  It’s far too easy to get caught up in the bullshit that goes with writing - sales figures, publishing deals, not getting publishing deals, the near misses with commissioning editors who love your stuff but can’t get it past the bean-counters … All of which can be very frustrating, it’s true. Once in a while, though, it does no harm to lean back and glance up at the shelf where I’ve stacked the Irish crime fiction titles, and see ‘my books’ nestling in there (alphabetically, natch) amongst novels from proper good writers such as Colin Bateman, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles and John Connolly. I’ll probably never shed the notion that offerings are interlopers on that shelf, but hey, at least they’re there …

Show Me The Money; Or, Putting The ‘Fun’ Into Crowdfunding

As all three regular readers of this blog will know, I’ve been banging on about a writers’ co-op recently, this despite (or because of) the fact I don’t have two brass farthings to rub together. You’ll also know that I’ve written a novel called A GONZO NOIR (aka BAD FOR GOOD), the gist of which runneth thusly:

A GONZO NOIR is a story about how a struggling writer – one Declan Burke, coincidentally enough – is approached by a character called Karlsson, the latter being a character from an m/s Burke wrote some years ago, but which got shelved for its lack of commercial appeal, principally because Karlsson is a hospital porter and something of a psychopath, given to alleviating the pain of old patients in a terminal fashion. Trapped in the half-life limbo peopled by fictional characters who never see publication, Karlsson has a suggestion for Burke: make him a nicer psychopath to give the novel more commercial appeal, and give the story more oomph. To this end, Karlsson will collaborate on a rewrite of the m/s, which will involve him blowing up the hospital where he works. If Burke doesn’t play ball, then Karlsson will turn his psychopathic tendencies on Burke’s wife and baby daughter …

  The novel has been out under consideration with a number of publishers for some months now, and – ooh, the irony – it appears that, despite the largely positive reaction from commissioning editors, the story lacks for mass commercial appeal.
  As a result, I’m thinking strongly of self-publishing the novel, albeit self-publishing with a twist, as a kind of dry run for the co-op idea mentioned elsewhere on this blog. But before I get into the hard sell, let me offer you first a sample of the reactions I received when I sent the m/s to a number of writers in the hope of a blurb or two:

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” – John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of THE SEA

“A GONZO NOIR is unlike anything else you’ll read this year … Laugh-out-loud funny … This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone … a feat of extraordinary alchemy.” – Ken Bruen, author of AMERICAN SKIN

“Burke has written a deep, lyrical and moving crime novel … an intoxicating and exciting novel of which the master himself, Flann O’Brien, would be proud.” – Adrian McKinty, author FIFTY GRAND

“Stop waiting for Godot – he’s here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing themselves and turns it on its ear, and then some. He gives it body and soul … an Irish soul.” – Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award-winning author of EMPTY EVER AFTER

“A GONZO NOIR is shockingly original and completely entertaining. Post-modern crime fiction at its very best.” – John McFetridge, author of EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

“A harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel … Burke has outdone himself this time; it’s a hell of a read.” – Scott Philips, author of THE ICE HARVEST

  Okay, now for the hard sell.
  Generally speaking, self-publishing involves a writer investing his or her own hard-earned money in having a book published, and then hoping that enough readers will buy the book to make it worth his or her while. Generally speaking, I tend to go about things backasswards, so I’m going to invert the conventional model and ask the readers to put their money where my mouth is. It’s a variation on crowdfunding, in which a reader pledges a certain amount of money to see the book published, and in return receives a copy of the book when it sees the light of day.
  Now, I know we’re living through straitened times, and that no one has money to toss around willy-nilly. That said, and these straitened times notwithstanding, people are still spending money and reading books; the crucial issue these days, at least in my own experience, is value for money.
  So: how much am I asking readers to pledge? Well, I reckon that €7 lies somewhere between what you might pay for a conventionally published book brand new off the shelves, and what you might pay for a decent book in a second-hand store. €7 converts (as of today’s conversion rates, February 17th) to roughly $9.60 (US), $10.60 (Aus), $10 (Can), and £6 (UK).
  The cost of self-publishing, going the print-on-demand (POD) route, is roughly €1,500. At €7 per book, that means I need to sell 214 books to break even, which seems to me eminently do-able. Of course, if everyone who pledges is receive a copy, then I need to build in post-and-packing at €5 per book, which bumps up the cost-per-book to me to €12. Were I to ask for a pledge of €12 per book, that would mean I’d need to sell 125 copies to break even. Sticking with the original pledge of €7, however, which I’d prefer to do, means I need to sell 367 books to break even, which still seems do-able to me. In total, then, I need to raise €2,570 to print, publish and post 367 books; if such can be done, I will receive a profit of almost exactly nil, but I’ll have a new book on the shelf, and – hopefully, if a tad optimistically – 367 readers given good value for their €7 investment.
  How to raise that amount in a fashion that is clear, transparent, and leaves the reader reassured that he or she isn’t going to be bilked for their €7? Well, there’s a site called Kickstarter, which offers a platform for the raising of capital for such projects as this. The basic idea is that I set up a project with a total amount that needs to be raised (€2,570). I let people know where and how they can pledge their €7, and hopefully 367 people buy into the idea. If the amount is raised within a specific time period (three months, say), then your pledge is accepted and transferred to my bank account, and shortly afterwards you receive your copy of A GONZO NOIR; if the total amount isn’t reached in a specified period, all pledges are cancelled and it costs nobody anything, except possibly yours truly’s pride. For more information on the Kickstarter project, clickety-click here.
  So there you have it. Any takers?

Publishing: If It Was A Dog, You’d Shoot It

I’ve been feeling a bit off about the whole writing bit lately, which is maybe a consequence of finishing a draft of a novel before I went on holiday. I’d planned to Kindle said novel, THE BIG EMPTY, and wanted to give it one last quick polish before I released it into the wild. Except 20 or 30 pages in I was thinking, ‘Actually, this isn’t as bad as I remember’ (it’s about five years since I wrote it). By the end I was fairly consumed by the story, and decided it needed a serious bit of work, but that it was worth it. Right now it’s out there in the tender care of some people I respect, and an opinion or two has started to waft back through the ether … mostly positive, happily enough.
  So maybe that’s why I’m feeling a bit drained and take-it-or-leave-it right now. And maybe the ennui has to do with the fact that there’s a couple of novels out there doing the rounds, THE BIG EMPTY and BAD FOR GOOD. Trying to maintain positive karma on behalf of both of them could wind up sucking me dry, and ruining the engine entirely, so maybe my subconscious has decided to temporarily promote the ‘don’t-really-give-a-shite’ defence.
  There are other reasons, though. The naked greed and gross stupidity of the industry in which I want to thrive is one of them. Another is the ongoing and relentless confirmation that the writing industry is not the meritocracy I’d always presumed it to be. Another is the daily confirmation of the fact that quite a lot of writers today aren’t writers at all, but simply businessmen (and women) with typewriters, who are far better at the business side of things than they are at the typing.
  Incidentally, today was the day I realised that the very fine website Crime Spot positions this blog in the category ‘The Business of Writing’, as opposed to the category ‘The Art of Writing’. It’s not that I think that my writing is art; it’s that I never thought of getting into writing for the sake of business. And I know that a goodly chunk of the output here is about promoting other writers … but is that necessarily ‘Business’ as opposed to ‘Art’?
  Anyway, by a pure fluke, I subsequently came across the Taint website, which was rating Irish blogs. And lo! Crime Always Pays comes in 43rd in the Top 100 Irish Blogs, which cheered me up no end. But lo-lo! It comes in 21st when the blogs are rated by ‘In-Bound Links’. I don’t really know what ‘In-Bound Links’ means, although I’m guessing it has to do with other websites et al linking to CAP …? Either way, I’m presuming it’s good.
  Cheered immeasurably by the news, I promptly went and ‘valued’ Crime Always Pays, and discovered that the blog is worth anywhere between $40k and $132k, depending on which website you believe.
  Bugger that ‘Art’ malarkey, we’re back in ‘Business’. Right?
  Erm, not really, although if anyone wants to make me an offer, I’m listening … Seriously, the best news I heard all day came via Ray Banks on Twitter, which directed me (eventually) to the video below. It’s a mission statement of sorts on behalf of publishing newbies Tyrus Books, which appears to take its philosophy from Ty Cobb, which is all sorts of alright with me. If we had even a tiny amount more people like this in the publishing industry, people, the world would be a hell of a better place. Or, for that matter, people like Stona Fitch, who was kind enough to send me a copy of his rather excellent novel SENSELESS recently. Roll it there, Collette …

Great Scott; and, A Cannes-Do Attitude

I’ve mentioned before in these pages that I’m a fan of Scott Phillips (right), and that THE ICE HARVEST was one of the finest books I read last year, of any type or stripe. Anyway, Scott was one of the writers I picked (on) to send a manuscript of The Novel Formerly Known As A GONZO NOIR (we’re calling it BAD FOR GOOD from here on in), and he got back to me yesterday with this:

“BAD FOR GOOD is a harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel about an evil hospital orderly and his even more evil twin orderly. Burke has outdone himself this time; it’s a hell of a read.” – Scott Phillips, author of THE ICE HARVEST

  Which is all kinds of nice. But then, after meeting him at the Baltimore Bouchercon, Scott Phillips was all kinds of nice too. I picked up a copy of his COTTONWOOD in a second-hand bookshop last week, it being impossible to get first-hand here in Ireland, and I’ve tucked it away with two or three others for my holiday reading next month. Because you know how it is – with space and time so short, you don’t want to bring any dud books on holidays, you want to know the books you have with you will deliver …
  Anyway, the story with TNFKAAGN / BFG is that it went out to some publishers late last week, so if you have any spare chickens lying around, and a predilection for the occasional outbreak of voodoo, this would be a good time to start sacrificing livestock and rattling dem bones and whatnot …
  In other news, I received a rather intriguing text message last Sunday morning, which ran in its entirety thusly: “Hi Declan. In Cannes reading books and scripts. Loving THE BIG O. Who has the film rights? You?”
  Now that’s what I call a Cannes-do attitude. And then I awoke from a feverish dream and … Actually, no. I really did get that message. All the way from Cannes. I know the guy – obviously, or he wouldn’t have my phone number – but he really is a commissioning editor with a film production company. Which is nice.
  Incidentally, I’m sure other writers get the kind of vibe that runs along the lines of, “Hey, I read your book, it was really cinematic.” Like the biggest compliment you can pay a book is that it reads like a movie. I usually say, “I know, I wrote it that way.” And they go, “Really?” And you think, God, why wasn’t I born with a sick compulsion to stack supermarket shelves instead?

A GONZO NOIR: Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

All three regular readers of Crime Always Pays may or may not remember A GONZO NOIR, a novel I posted to the web last summer, just for the hell of it. The latest update is that the novel – now in a more conventional manuscript format – is on the verge of going out to publishers for the ritualised mass rejection, before I publish it via Lulu just in time for the Christmas rush. Bon voyage, my pretty, and may you find a fair wind at your back as you round the Cape of Good Hope …
  It’s always a strange time when a book goes off to the meat market. My experience of writing the books is that they generally kick off in a euphoric mood, convinced as you are that it’s the best thing you’ve ever written, and possibly the most interesting combination of words every committed to paper, parchment or papyrus. Roughly halfway in, there’s a point where you sit back and wonder whether it’s actually the most contemptible piece of effluent ever concocted, but by then you’ve invested too much time to flush it, and so you soldier on. By the time it’s finished, the relief is such that it gives you a second wind for a redraft, and off you go again, to ever diminishing returns.
  Anyway, at some point it has to go off to the publishers. Naturally, this is the moment when you’re seized with panic, because it’s so stupid / clichéd / useless that the unfortunate person who has to read it may well decide it’s actually worth their while taking out a hit on your life, on the off-chance they might have to read another one of your books, which you were cunning enough to submit under a pseudonym …
  Oddly enough, I feel okay about A GONZO NOIR. Odder still, I feel okay about it even though I’ve sent it out to nine or ten people, terrific writers all, asking for a blurb. ‘Isn’t that a bit previous?’ says you. ‘Aren’t you supposed to wait until you know the book is being published before you start tarting yourself out for blurbs?’ Well, yes, it is – but I thought it might be an interesting experiment to compare the reactions from the writers with the reactions from the publishers. I also thought it might be interesting to blog about the result, on an ongoing basis, just for the hell of it.
  One of the reasons it might be interesting is that A GONZO NOIR is radically different to the kinds of stories I’ve had published before (a private eye novel; a crime caper), and I’ve said as much to the potential blurbees, and given them the get-out clause of backing out of their generous offer to read the m/s if it’s not their kind of thing.
  So, while I’d be hopeful of getting some positive feedback, there’s a good chance I’ll be getting some negative vibes too – and not just from the publishers. Anyway, it could be fun to blog about, especially on those quiet days when Declan Hughes hasn’t been nominated for another award.
  I don’t think it’d be fair to mention the potential blurbees’ names, by the way, because, well, because it somehow feels like it’d be bad manners. But I’ll blog about their reactions, and name names, when the results start coming in. I should say in advance that I know some of them personally, and that I’d made no secret of the fact that I think they’re terrific writers – but then, I only know them because they’re terrific writers, so maybe that’s a moot point. Anyway, we’ll address the log-rolling issue if and when it comes up.
  Incidentally, if you’re reading this and you happen to be one of the generous souls who blurbed THE BIG O, and you’re wondering why I’m not asking you again, it’s because you’ve already done more than enough to aid my bid for world domination, and I don’t want to become a pest.
  I have a good feeling, folks. While I was printing out the m/s on Monday afternoon, to get it copied and bound for sending out to the potential blurbees, I got an email, from someone who shall remain anonymous for now, but who was nearly finished reading AGN, which featured the words ‘brilliant, brilliant stuff’. A coincidence, certainly, but a very timely one.
  Anyway, once it was all printed out, I started reading it. And I’m about two-thirds through at this point, and still enjoying it. Which is very odd. I don’t think it’s ‘brilliant brilliant stuff’, or anything like, but I’m glad I wrote it, and no matter what happens with it viz-a-viz publishing, I’m as proud of it as I am of THE BIG O or EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. A small thing, as the man says, but mine own …
  Oh, a small thing – I’m thinking of changing the title to BAD FOR GOOD. It’s ripped off from an excellently cheesy Jim Steinman number, and I think it sums up a lot of what I find attractive about crime fiction, and it certainly makes sense to me in terms of the main character. Anyway, BAD FOR GOOD – yay or nay?
  Finally, in a strange week of oddities, there’s this – or these, I should say. As all three regular readers may remember, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt last year declined to publish CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the sequel to THE BIG O. Boo, etc. Now this and this have popped up, which suggests that (a) my Jedi mind-trick is coming on a treat; (b) there’s a Declan Burke out there about to usurp my thunder; (c) I’ve stepped through some kind of rip in the space-time fabric and come out as a Declan Burke who’s getting published; (d) someone’s screwing with me. If anyone can enlighten me, I’d love to hear about it … especially if it’s another Declan Burke.
  Knowing my luck, he’ll be the unholy offspring of Declan Hughes and James Lee Burke, and I’ll forever be known as ‘the other Declan Burke, y’know, the guy with the blog …’.
  Until then, I leave you with the immortal words of Jim Steinman. “If there’s something I want / Then it’s something I need / I wasn’t built for comfort / I was built for speed / And I know that I’m gonna be like this forever / I’m never gonna be what I should / And you think that I’ll be bad for just a little while / But I know that I’ll be bad for good / (whooo-hoo-hooooooo) / I know that I’ll be bad for good …”
  Roll it there, Collette …