PETER STUART SMITH
- Guest Author -
G'day folks,
Welcome to a lengthy but very interesting interview with an author who has used several names. He is also a speaker and a best-selling author.
Welcome, Peter ...
1.
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR WRITING JOURNEY.
The short version is
that I've been a full-time author since 2003 and a part-time lecturer on cruise
ships since 2009. My professional authorship, for want of a better expression,
started when I signed a two-book contract with Macmillan back in 2003, and
since then it's been a bit confusing, because of my excellent literary agent.
He successfully 'sold' me to Transworld, Penguin, Macmillan again, and Simon
& Schuster, each time to write books in different genres, which meant a
succession of different writing names. So although I started as 'James
Barrington', I later became 'James Becker', 'Jack Steel' and 'Max Adams'. With
the advent of the electronic publishing revolution I also became an e-book
author, writing again as 'James Barrington', but then adding 'Tom Kasey',
'Peter Lee', 'Thomas Payne' and my own real name – Peter Stuart Smith – to the
list, again because I was writing in different genres, fiction and non-fiction.
It's no wonder I sometimes look confused!
2.
WHEN AND HOW DID YOU BECOME A WRITER?
I earned my first crust
from writing at the age of 17, with a probably libellous letter to a British
motoring magazine, for which I was paid the significant sum – for those days –
of £5. That initial success sparked my interest in the idea of getting paid for
writing, and after that I wrote on an irregular basis for a number of British
magazines, mainly those dealing with cars, motorcycles and guns, my three main
interests (apart from chasing women, obviously) at that time. So I suppose that
marked my initiation as a writer, though obviously I still needed a proper job
as well, so writing remained a secondary source of income for many years.
3.
WHAT TYPE OF
PREPARATION DO YOU DO FOR A MANUSCRIPT? DO YOU PLAN EVERYTHING FIRST OR JUST
SHOOT FROM THE HIP?
There's an old
expression that there are tree writers and wood writers. A tree writer sees the
next book in much the same way that someone can look at a tree and see every detail
of it, from the roots to the trunk and up to every branch and every leaf. A
wood writer is completely different. He (or she, obviously) envisages a book
like a walk through a wood, knowing where he will enter the wood, and where he
will emerge, but the bit in the middle is largely unknown territory. That's me,
really. When I start a new book I know more or less how it will begin and I
usually have good idea of what the ending will be, but the plot tends to evolve
as I write it. It works for me, but I think I'm probably in a minority, not
least because publishers and agents usually want to see a synopsis, so there
always has to be at least some pre-plotting involved. I always tell my editor
that every synopsis I write is a working version, subject to major changes and
alterations as the book is being written.
4.
WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT BEING A WRITER?
Being my own boss, I
suppose, and the ability to work absolutely anywhere, as long as I can use my
laptop, There's a tremendous sense of freedom about being able to decide where
to go and what to do every day, so if I feel I need a day at the seaside –
unlikely, but there you go – I can just switch off the computer and go. I don't
have to tell anyone or ask anybody's permission, and that's great. It also
means that when I'm lecturing on cruise ships, once I've delivered my talk, I
can write for the rest of the day if I want to. It is tremendously liberating,
and I really believe that being an author has to be one of the best jobs in the
world.
5.
WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING A WRITER?
Probably the same thing
that is its greatest benefit – the freedom of working for yourself, because
with freedom comes responsibility. As a writer, you don't clock in, or report
to a supervisor, or have a work schedule to adhere to, or any of the other
professional prompts that keep most people focussed on their career. If you
want to stay in bed all day drinking beer and eating junk food while watching
sport on TV, there's nobody around – unless your wife's at home – to tell you
that you can't. So self-discipline is enormously important. Even if you don't
feel like it, if there's a deadline looming, you have to work as hard as
possible to meet it.
6.
WHAT WERE YOU IN A PAST LIFE, BEFORE YOU BECAME A WRITER?
I had a whole raft of
strange jobs, including working in a garage, as a mortuary attendant, in a
hospital operating theatre and on a factory production line before I joined the
British Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot. That didn't last long, because I had
a medical problem – a detached retina – and that stopped me flying, but I liked
the military lifestyle and so I switched to air traffic control and spent over
20 years doing that.
7.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WRITING ACHIEVEMENT?
Simply finding an agent
willing to take me on and a publisher who was prepared to print what I'd
written. The chances of that happening to any author were frighteningly small
back in 2003, and even smaller today. My first manuscript had already been
turned down by literally dozens of agencies when Luigi Bonomi, then working for
the London-based Sheil Land Associates, agreed to accept me as a client. I had
been sending out a standard package (letter, synopsis and first three chapters
of the novel) to every agent listed in the United Kingdom, working my way down
the alphabet from A to Z, so when Luigi got in touch I was already about
half-way through the letter S and getting very close to the end of the alphabet.
My plan, such as it was, was to go through the entire list, then re-jig the
package somehow to try to improve it, and do it all again. I firmly believe
that persistence is at least as important as talent for a writer!
8.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON AT THE MOMENT?
I've just finished
editing my next book for Transworld (The Templar Heresy by 'James Becker') and writing the second book of a 'Templar' trilogy
for Penguin USA. The first book in this series was published in July 2015 as The
Lost Treasure of the Templars, also by
'James Becker'. I'm also working on a plot for a novel in an entirely different
genre, and writing another couple of books that will both probably be published
as ebooks, one because it's a prequel to another of my novels that's already
available as an ebook (Trade Off by
'Tom Kasey'), and the other because it's a kind of cross-genre novel that would
be difficult to sell commercially. I'm also designing a website that will cover
all of my writing activity (I already have dedicated websites for 'James
Barrington' and 'James Becker'). Unrelated to writing, I'm also preparing a
series of talks for a world cruise we'll be taking in January, where I'll be
the main lecturer on board the ship.
9.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
I suppose the obvious
answer is 'paying the bills', but that's not really true. I have always
written, even in the days long before I had any manuscript I thought was good
enough to show to a literary agent. It's something I need to do, and my
computer and back-up drives are full of ideas, part-finished stuff that didn't
work for one reason or another, beginnings, endings and titles. I never travel
without a tablet PC so I can read books, because for an author reading is
crucially important, and that also lets me jot down any ideas that occur to me.
Most of my books have
been sparked either by personal experience – the non-fiction ones in particular
– or by something I've heard or read. The best example of this was probably my
novel Foxbat, about the Russian MiG-25 fighter. When
Viktor Belenko defected to Japan's Hakodate Airport in his Foxbat in 1976, the
Americans tore it to pieces to properly analyse its capabilities, and concluded
that it was a bit of a paper tiger – very fast (Mach 2.5+), but essentially old
technology. What they didn't realize for some years was that they'd completely
misinterpreted the reason for the aircraft's design and somewhat antiquated
avionics, and that it was perfect for its intended purpose. I read a number of
classified files about the Foxbat while I was in the military, and this obvious
anomaly provided the idea for the book.
10.
WHAT GENRE DO YOU WRITE?
That depends on which
author's hat I'm wearing at the time. Briefly, these are my various noms de
plume, the genres and titles of the books:
Commercially-published books
Macmillan,
writing as 'Max Adams' To Do or Die
(World War 2 military thrillers) Right and Glory
Macmillan,
writing as 'James Barrington' Overkill
(Mainstream global thrillers) Pandemic
Foxbat
Timebomb
Payback
Manhunt
Transworld,
writing as 'James Becker' The First Apostle
(Historical
mystery thrillers) The Moses Stone
The Messiah Secret
The Nosferatu Scroll
Echo of the Reich
The Lost Testament
The Templar Heresy (2016)
Penguin
UK, writing as 'James Barrington' Joint
Force Harrier
(Non-fiction military)
Penguin
USA, writing as 'James Becker' The Lost Treasure of the Templars
The Archive of the Damned (2016)
The Brotherhood of the Skull (2017)
Simon
& Schuster, writing as 'Jack Steel'
The Titanic Secret
(Conspiracy thrillers) The
Ripper Secret
Amazon eBooks
The
Endeavour Press, writing as 'James Barrington' Falklands: Voyage to war
(Non-fiction) John Browning: Man and Gunmaker
The
Endeavour Press, writing as 'Tom Kasey' Trade off
(Thrillers,
short stories, novellas) Cold kill
Sanctuary
The Dante Conspiracy
The
Endeavour Press, writing as 'Thomas Payne' Uncommon Sense
(Non-fiction)
PostScript
Editions, writing as 'Thomas Payne' The Dietaholic's Diet
(Non-fiction)
PostScript
Editions, writing as 'Peter Lee' The French Property Nightmare
(Non-fiction) MH370:
By Accident or Design
Cruise
Control
PostScript
Editions, writing as 'Peter Stuart Smith' Inspiration, Perspiration, Publication
(Non-fiction)
11.
DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS FOR NEW WRITERS?
I remember having lunch
with my agent some years ago and one of the things we talked about was the most
important quality for any writer. We ran through the usual suspects –
storytelling ability, complete command of English and so on – but the one
single quality that we both agreed was absolutely essential was persistence.
You can be the best and most talented writer in the world, but if all your work
stays locked in a desk drawer or tucked away in a forgotten folder on your
computer's hard drive, then you might just as well not have bothered to write
it. If you have a manuscript that you feel is publishable, then you have to
make sure that as many agents and publishers see it as possible, and that means
sending it out repeatedly until one of them does something about it. If they
all reject it, then maybe it really isn't good enough to make it, but
publishing is replete with tales of bestselling manuscripts that were rejected
countless times before somebody saw the essential merit in them. The one
caveat, I suppose, is that most authors are very bad judges of their own work,
so if a new writer is getting rejection slip after rejection slip, then it
might well be worth asking a book doctor or independent assessor to give an
opinion on the manuscript. That will cost money, but at least the author will
get an independent appraisal of his or her work.
The other obvious tip,
of course, is to actually write. Sitting around in a bar drinking beer and
mulling over your ideas for the next great American/British/French novel or
whatever does not actually generate any text on paper. If you're a writer, you
should be writing every day, and when you're not writing you should be reading
or thinking about what you're going to write. There's a possibly apocryphal
story about a famous author who was asked to give a lecture on creative writing
to a paying audience. He allegedly walked on stage, asked how many of the
audience wanted to become professional writers, and obviously everyone put
their hands up. 'So go home and write,' he said, and walked off. The point of
the story, I suppose, is that writing is a craft, like any other, and the only
way to become competent and proficient at it is to do it. Nobody can tell you
how to write: it's something you have to learn for yourself by repeatedly doing
it.
12.
DO YOU SUFFER FROM WRITER’S BLOCK?
Luckily, the answer is
no. I normally have at least two or three projects on the go at any one time,
and if I do reach a point in one book where for some reason I can't see what
the next step should be, then I simply put it to one side and start working on
one of the other books. Usually, when I go back to the first one, my
subconscious mind has done its stuff and worked out what should happen next
without any particular input from me. I'm not saying that that will work for
everybody, but it certainly does for me.
13.
DO YOU HAVE A PREFERRED WRITING SCHEDULE?
No. I do practice what
I preach, and that means that I write every day unless there is some valid
reason why I can't, for example when I'm driving across Europe. What I do find
is that my most productive time is often first thing in the morning, and I'm
usually sitting at the computer no later than about seven each day. How long I
spend writing depends to a large extent upon my next deadline. Where there is
considerable urgency – as there was when I wrote The Titanic Secret – which my agent was desperate to sell at
the London Book Fair, then I will write from first thing in the morning until
close to midnight. That book, as a matter of interest, took precisely 28 days
to write from start to finish and was bought as part of a two book deal at the
London Book Fair by Simon & Schuster.
14.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE WRITING PLACE?
Again, the answer is
no. I write wherever I am, which at this precise moment is at a table in the
corner of a commercial office in Sevenoaks in Kent. I've written on trains,
planes, in pubs and in hotel rooms. However, I do think being comfortable is an
important part of the process, and so the place where I write more than anywhere
else is in my study, because there I have everything around me: reference
books, a printer and a scanner, and – perhaps most important – high-speed
broadband access to the Internet.
15.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST JOY IN WRITING?
Probably not the actual
writing process or anything directly involved with it, but I do get a
considerable amount of satisfaction when somebody sends me an email or writes
me a letter to say how much they enjoyed one of my books. It's very easy to
read and like a book, and perhaps even to say to your friends that you enjoyed
it, but it's a much bigger step to put pen to paper or send an email to thank
the author, and I really appreciate that.
I remember a few months
after The
Messiah Secret was published in Britain
by Transworld that I received an unexpected package from my publishers. When I
opened it, I found a letter from a reader who'd thoroughly enjoyed the book,
and an expensive reference work which was directly relevant to the subject
matter of that novel. This man had not only taken the time to write to me, but
had also then bought a book that he thought I might be interested in reading
and sent it to me. And that, in my opinion, is quite special.
16.
WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR AND WHY?
This is a very
difficult question to answer, because I have a number of favourite authors in a
number of different genres, some of them perhaps surprising. For example, I
believe that one of the greatest comic books ever written was Puckoon by Spike Milligan, though the very old
novel Cold Comfort Farm by Stella
Gibbons takes some beating. Arthur C Clarke wrote some of the best science
fiction novels ever, and it's surprising how much of his speculative fiction is
now our daily fact. In the same genre, the Cities in Flight novels by James Blish are excellent. As far
as thriller writers are concerned, I do enjoy the 'Reacher' series by Lee Child, and books by Stephen
Leather, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci and many other authors writing
currently. In the non-fiction field, I'm particularly fond of Bill Bryson's
output, because he manages to be both educational and entertaining, and that's
a difficult trick for anyone to pull off.
But if I was forced to
pick just one author and just one book to take to a desert island or somewhere,
it would absolutely have to be The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien. It is certainly the greatest work of fantasy ever
written, a story that's simply astonishing in its breadth, its characterisation
and plotting. Tolkien was an extraordinary man who not only wrote an epic that
is utterly compelling to read, but in the process he even invented a new
language – Elvish – that works and is coherent, and he even wrote poetry in it.
By any standards, that is an amazing achievement.
17.
WHAT’S THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT YOU EVER RECEIVED FROM A READER?
Oddly enough, I've had
quite a lot, and probably the most gratifying weren't in response to one of my
commercially published books, but instead to a fairly short e-book that I wrote
after the loss of the Malaysian Airlines' Boeing 777: MH370: By Accident or
Design. As I said above, my background is
in aviation, and I was directly involved in investigating the loss of two
military jet aircraft during my career. What irritated me from the start about
this particular incident was the rubbish being talked by so many of the alleged
experts who were wheeled out by various television stations to explain what
might've happened. Some of the statements were breathtakingly ignorant, like
the man on Sky television in the UK who stated that primary radar was not an
accurate means of identifying the position of an aircraft. I have no clue which
planet he came from, but it clearly wasn't from anywhere near here.
You will no doubt be
aware that a number of different theories were offered to the reading public
after this disappearance by several authors, some plausible and others wacky in
the extreme, but in almost every case the writers of these books seem to have been
fixated on one particular explanation, and to have then concentrated only on
the facts which supported that preconceived notion. When I wrote my book, I
tried to do it from the opposite perspective, and do it in the way that
aircraft accidents and incidents are investigated in the military: you start
with the undisputed facts and then try to produce an explanation which covers
those facts. And this explanation should be as simple as possible.
One recent
'explanation' was extensively covered in the international press, and what I
found quite amusing about it was that the author specifically quoted Occam's
razor in his introduction and said he would be following it. This is an old
adage that simply states that you should always choose the simplest explanation
for any event until that is proven to be incorrect. He then came up with an
extraordinarily complicated series of events, several which defied commonsense,
and which had to be carefully massaged in order to fit the known facts.
Completely the opposite, in fact, of what he was claiming to do.
What has pleased me is
that almost all the feedback I've had about this book has been complimentary
and many readers have stressed the fact that, once they'd read my explanation
of the known events and what might be conjectured from those, they understood
far better what could – and could not – have happened to the aircraft. And I've
also had significant professional feedback as well, including several responses
from eminent scientists and in one case an underwater acoustics expert, all of
which have broadly speaking agreed with what I've said.
18.
WHAT WAS THE WORST COMMENT FROM A READER?
That's easy to answer,
and quite short. I was given a one star review on Amazon by one reader because
he objected to the title of one of my books. He hadn't actually bothered
reading it, or finding out anything about it, but apparently felt justified in
what he had done. The expression 'mindless little git' springs inescapably to
mind.
19.
WRITERS ARE SOMETIMES INFLUENCED BY THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THEIR
OWN LIVES. ARE YOU?
Not really, because the
things I'm writing about are more global than local in scope. However, the
series of mainstream thrillers I wrote for Macmillan would definitely
influenced by my military background. Obviously I was unable to include
specific and classified military information, because I have signed the
Official Secrets Act on a number of occasions and if I revealed some of the
things that I was privy to during my career I could end up in jail. I'm quite
keen to avoid that. But what I tried to do was to bring a feeling of
authenticity to those books, and particularly to any scenes involving aviation
or weapons, and to get both the terminology and the technical aspects correct.
Lazy authors
particularly irritate me, and I well remember reading one modern thriller – so
as not to embarrass the writer I will not mention his name or the title of the
novel – where he managed to squeeze two people, the pilot and the navigator,
into a single seat, single-engine Harrier. And another author managed to not
only fit a second jet engine in the same aircraft, but even fit it with
afterburners and give it a supersonic capability. Roughly 2 minutes research on
the Internet would have revealed the aircraft's capabilities and specifications,
but both men were apparently too idle to take this time.
And my other two pet
bugbears involve revolvers. I have lost count of the number of writers who
apparently managed to fit revolvers with both silencers and safety catches.
Despite one scene in a James Bond film, no revolver has a safety catch, and
while you can certainly fit a suppressor – that's the correct word – to a
revolver if you want to, it won't have any effect on the noise it makes when
you fire it, because most of the sound is generated at the exit from the
cylinder, not from the end of the barrel. It's not difficult to get this kind
of thing right, so why don't writers do it?
20.
OTHER THAN WRITING, WHAT ELSE DO YOU LOVE?
Reading, obviously,
because all writers need to read widely, and not just in their chosen field. I
normally have three or four books on the go at the same time, typically one
non-fiction research book, and the rest novels of various sorts. I always have
a book with me, either physically as a paperback or electronically on my tablet
PC or my phone.
I do enjoy cruising,
and being invited to take a particular cruise as a guest speaker is obviously
an important bonus for me. I do several cruises a year. I also enjoy travel,
particularly driving, and while I don't mind flying – as a former pilot it
shouldn't bother me – I do get irritated by the amount of hanging around that
has become an inescapable part of modern air travel. It's not just the waiting;
it's also the general lack of comfortable facilities, or even enough seats, at
most airports. Given a choice between flying or driving, I would personally
always prefer to be in a car, unless the distances involved make this
completely impractical.
21.
DID YOU HAVE YOUR BOOK / BOOKS PROFESSIONALLY EDITED BEFORE
PUBLICATION?
For my commercially
published books, the publishing houses do all the editing needed, so the
finished product is a kind of composite of my original manuscript and the
editor's ideas and opinions. For my e-books, I'm both the writer and the
editor, so any and all mistakes are mine and mine alone. Having said that, one
of the characteristics that marks most of the self-published books that I've
read is that they could do with a bit of editing. Sometimes with a lot of
editing. Far too many self-published authors apparently don't even take the
time to run a spellchecker on their manuscript before they upload it, or
perhaps they do but assume for some reason that the spellchecker is wrong and
their spellings are right, which is only very rarely the case. The other
obvious giveaway for these books are the grammatical errors that abound, and in
particular the misuse of the apostrophe, which I do find rather niggling.
The thing that most
e-book authors don't seem to realize is that the tool of their trade is the
English language – or whatever language they are using to write their books –
and a professional writer will know how to use that tool. Spelling mistakes and
grammatical errors seem to leap out of the page and will immediately identify a
book that has been self-published by an amateur author who does not know what
he or she is doing. When that happens in a book I'm reading, I usually delete
it immediately, unless the story is particularly interesting.
22.
DESCRIBE YOUR PERFECT DAY.
Most of my days are
pretty good, actually. But I suppose a really good day would be any one when
nothing goes wrong and ideally one that involves a certain amount of good news,
like a new publishing contract!
23.
IF YOU WERE STUCK ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH ONE PERSON, WHO WOULD
IT BE? WHY?
My wife, oddly enough.
We're a team, and that's all there is to it.
24.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO SPEAK TO WORLD
LEADERS?
One of the most
irritating and insidious trends in modern political life is the apparent
inability for any country to produce a politician who is actually prepared to
speak the truth and to do what is necessary to resolve particular situations.
I'm not familiar enough with American politics to have an informed opinion, but
in Britain there is an ongoing problem with illegal immigrants trying to get
into the country from France. There is no doubting the scale of the problem and
politicians have been banging on for weeks about how there is a need for
greater security, higher fences to prevent these people getting access to the
Channel Tunnel and so on. All of which makes sense, obviously, but completely
fails to address the single central matter which is driving this: the fact that
Britain is a soft touch when it comes to illegal immigration.
I have no problem with
any race of people and I think that in general terms immigration is beneficial
to most countries. I also have a considerable amount of sympathy with the
plight of many of these putative immigrants, some of whom are no doubt fleeing
from horrendous regimes in their own countries. I would also be pleased to
welcome any of these people to Britain as long as they were prepared to speak
English, to adhere to British rules and customs, and to work for a living.
But what I definitely
have a problem with is the way that the British government is prepared to
provide housing and support, and hand over significant sums of money to illegal
immigrants who have not the slightest intention of working, and who just want
to milk the system for all it is worth. We now have in Britain the ridiculous
situation that an illegal immigrant who has never contributed a penny in
British taxes is actually able to receive more money and benefits than a
pensioner who was worked for over 40 years in the country. By any standards and
by any criteria, this is wholly unfair. British citizens who have contributed
thousands, even tens of thousands, of pounds to the British Exchequer are actively
being discriminated against in favour of illegal immigrants.
On a personal note, I
had the temerity to emigrate from England in 1993, and within a few weeks of
leaving the country I received an official letter from the British government
stating but I was no longer eligible to use the National Health Service system,
despite the fact that I had paid into it with my National Insurance
contributions throughout my working life, and the fact that I was continuing to
pay British income tax. That's what I mean by 'discriminated against'.
I would like to see a
British politician with – not to put too fine a point on it – the balls to
actually stand up and say in Parliament and in public what the vast majority of
the British population already acknowledged to be the truth. To stop talking
around the problems and actually get to the root cause. To make major changes
to the Social Security system in the United Kingdom that will at last favour
those people who have contributed towards it, and make absolutely sure that any
immigrant who arrives in Britain is required to work for a living, or be
repatriated.
And is there any chance
of this actually happening? Of course not. It's not politically correct, so
there's not the slightest possibility of changes being made.
25.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?
To keep writing, and
keep working. It's what I do.
26.
WHAT FIVE BOOKS WOULD YOU TAKE TO HEAVEN?
The slight problem here
is that I'm an atheist and I'm perfectly satisfied that God, the devil, heaven
and hell are all figments of the human imagination, so as heaven does not
exist, by definition, then I cannot go there, with or without books. If you
substitute 'desert island' for the celestial sphere, then I guess my five books
would probably be:
The Lord of the Rings (J
R R Tolkien), A Complete History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson), Encyclopaedia Britannica (preferably an electronic version because of the weight), My Family
and Other Animals (Gerald Durrell) and an
omnibus edition of the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But it would
be far easier to just take along my tablet PC, which has got all these, and
hundreds more, books on it.
27.
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN ANY OF YOUR CHARACTERS?
No, but a number of
people that I've met in the past may see certain similarities between
themselves and the characters who populate my novels.
28.
DOES THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY FRUSTRATE YOU?
Terminally. That's one
reason why I'm now spending quite a large proportion of my time writing
e-books. Amazon has got all the publishing houses running scared, and they're
taking it out on their authors. The industry is full of stories of perfectly
good and competent writers, whose books are selling well, not having their
contracts renewed, or they are having their advances cut – in some cases,
slashed. There are also a number of writers who've made a conscious decision
not to go the commercial publishing route because of the obvious uncertainty
they would experience if they did so, and are writing precisely what they like
without any editorial interference, publishing it through Amazon and then
promoting it themselves. And this can be enormously successful: the success of
E L James is a testament to this.
On the other hand, is
difficult not to feel some sympathy for the publishing houses. They genuinely
do not know what to do about Amazon and the e-book phenomenon, and the most
obvious indicator of this is the way that they price the electronic versions of
books written by their authors. In some cases, the e-book versions actually
cost more than the paperbacks, which makes no sense whatsoever because the cost
of supplying an e-book is essentially zero, whereas paperbacks have to be
printed, stored and distributed, all of which costs a significant amount of
money.
My personal prediction
is that until publishing houses start offering e-books at a price most people
feel is reasonable – less than the cost of a cup of coffee, for example – they
will continue to suffer. The reading public is far from stupid, and most people
are well aware that the gross profit margin for an electronic book is
essentially 100%, and I'm quite sure a lot of them will simply refuse to pay
this on principle. Certainly, I wouldn't dream of shelling out the better part
of £10 to electronically download a novel that I can buy as a paperback for
about half this.
And on a related note,
an author who decides to go it alone and publish direct on Amazon can receive a
70% royalty on every book. The electronic version of his commercially published
novel, on the other hand, is unlikely to generate more than about a 25%
royalty, unless he has an exceptionally generous publishing contract. So the
attractions of the do-it-yourself route are really quite significant.
29.
DID YOU EVER THINK OF QUITTING?
No. Writing is what I
do.
30.
WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE MANUSCRIPT TO WRITE? WHY?
Probably The Nosferatu Scroll, and for a number of different reasons.
This started out as a 'brilliant idea' from my editor at Transworld, passed on
to me, albeit with a certain amount of trepidation, by my agent. 'Your editor,'
he began, 'has had a brilliant idea. She wants you to write a book about
vampires in Venice.'
I could see why he was
concerned. All of my books for Transworld up to that time had had a firm basis
in reality. The stories I had created had evolved because of some historically
accurate events that had occurred in the distant past, and the problem with
this idea was that vampires were and are a myth. We kicked this around for some
time, and I finally said to my editor that there really were only two choices.
Either I had to acquire yet another writing name and produce a straight vampire
thriller – which I was reluctant to do because that particular genre holds very
little appeal for me – or I had to write a book in which the principal bad guy
displayed some kind of vampire tendencies, but at no point would it be
confirmed whether or not he genuinely was a member of the undead.
Writing it was a kind
of delicate balancing act, but this turned out to be great fun because the area
around Venice and the Venetian lagoon is one of my all-time favourite
locations, and in reality there are an awful lot of very strange places out
there. In the end, we left it grey, and allow the reader to make up his or her
own mind about the true nature of the villain of the piece.
31.
HOW
WOULD YOU DEFINE ‘SUCCESS’ AS A WRITER?
Getting published. It's that simple, and do
note that I didn't say 'commercially published', because although that would
have been the only acceptable criterion 20 years ago it is no longer the case
today. Anybody who has a book available to sell on Amazon is an author. No ifs,
no buts. The only additional qualification, I suppose, is that he or she should
have sold at least one book, but that's not particularly difficult to achieve.
32.
WHAT SHOULD READERS WALK AWAY
FROM YOUR BOOKS KNOWING? HOW SHOULD THEY FEEL?
That's an impossible question to answer,
because I write in so many different genres. Somebody who reads Trade Off, for example, which is a chase thriller
with a science-fiction twist will probably experience entirely different
feelings to somebody who reads Pandemic,
a mainstream thriller involving biological warfare.
What I do try and provide in almost all of my
books is a fairly comprehensive author's note that will explain to the reader
which bits of the story are firmly based on fact, and which parts are entirely
the product of my own imagination. Interestingly, it is often the information I
provide in the author's note that readers tend to comment on, and I think this
is one aspect of the books which is usually quite well received.
33.
HOW MUCH THOUGHT GOES INTO
DESIGNING A BOOK COVER?
That's a good question that has more than one
answer. For my electronic books, I commission the cover myself, because I have
no graphic design skills whatsoever, and I provide a fairly detailed set of
instructions so that the designer knows exactly what I want, including colours,
fonts and images. For the commercially-published books, the design is done by
the publishing house, or more often is contracted out to a specialist company,
and in every case it is squarely aimed – at least in Britain – at the most
important single person in the entire publishing industry from the point of
view of getting sales.
And that person is not, as you might reasonably
expect, the author or the editor or anybody else directly involved in producing
the book. The most important person in publishing is the fiction buyer at Asda,
the biggest of the British supermarket chains. If the buyer doesn't like the
cover, Asda won't buy it, and if Asda don't buy it, the book will never make it
into the bestseller charts.
34.
WHAT’S YOUR ULTIMATE DREAM?
Oddly enough, I don't really have one. I'm
quite happy as I am!
35.
WRITING IS ONE THING. WHAT ABOUT MARKETING YOU, YOUR
BOOKS AND YOUR BRAND? ANY THOUGHTS?
Anybody who tells you that marketing books is
easy has no clue what they're talking about. There is absolutely no certain
route to ensuring that your books achieve sales on Amazon or any of the other
electronic marketplaces. I'm assuming here that those books are self-published
rather than commercially-published, because in this case the marketing will
obviously be done by the publishing house. In my opinion, the influence of
Twitter, Facebook and the other social media sites is minimal at best. You can
tweet about your book once every hour for an entire month and at the end of
that time there's not the slightest guarantee that anyone will have even read
any one of the tweets, far less ordered the book.
I think it's vital that any independent author
needs to achieve as many honest reviews as possible, and as quickly as possible
after publication. Some e-book promotion sites insist on a book achieving a
certain number of reviews before they will even consider listing it, so if you
later decide you want to go this route, getting reviews is crucial. You can of
course buy reviews, but this generally doesn't work because at the lower end of
the scale the reviewer won't actually bother reading the book, so the review
will obviously be generic and non-specific, not to mention completely
unconvincing, while reviewers who do it for a living are really expensive. And
these are still paid reviews, which are always considered unreliable. What you
can do is offer to provide a free copy of the book in return for an unbiased
review, and most people accept that this technique is entirely legitimate. It's
just a way of getting your book out there and into the hands of people who
might actually enjoy reading it.
The second thing that every author needs –
which I'm ashamed to say I'm still working on – is a good email list made up of
people who have actively opted in to receive information. These can become your
dedicated readers, and if they like the kind of things that you write, you will
normally find that they will buy new books from you soon after publication.
And, hopefully, they will also give you some decent reviews.
36.
ARE YOUR BOOKS SELF-PUBLISHED?
As listed in the answer to an earlier question,
some of them are and some of them aren't.
37.
DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN FIVE WORDS.
Relaxed, laid-back, optimistic, honest, loyal.
38.
WHAT PISSES YOU OFF MOST?
When you meet somebody new and the conversation
turns, as it inevitably does, to what each member of the group does for a
living, there's usually a bit of a pause after one person – usually me –
confesses to being an author. This is often followed by one of two responses. The
commonest is when another member of the group says something like 'I thought
I'd take up writing after I've retired from accountancy/bus driving/building
houses' or whatever. This makes as much sense as an author announcing that
after he's given up writing he'll take up brain surgery. Or flying fighter
aircraft. Or developing a cure for cancer. Writing is something you do if
you're an author. You don't do an entirely different job for your entire
working life and then on the spur of the moment suddenly decide to write for a
living. It doesn't work that way. You have to learn your craft, and as any
author will tell you this doesn't take minutes. It takes years.
The second response – and I promise you this
really did happen to me – is that one member of the group will look at you in a
calculating manner and then proceed to explain in some detail that he has this
wonderful idea for a book. He doesn't yet have a title, hasn't completely
worked out the plot, and isn't entirely certain about the characters. But if
you take the idea and just develop it into a full-length novel, he will be only
too pleased to share the proceeds with you on a 50-50 basis. I'm not kidding. I
really did get an offer very much like this.
As far as I know, there's only one 'author' who
works this way. I won't embarrass her by giving her name, though most people
will recognize it because it's also the name of a country in the Middle East.
She apparently works on almost precisely this basis. She comes up with a vague
idea for 'her' new novel, gives the tiny scrap of paper on which she's worked
it out to her chosen ghostwriter, and then waits six months for the ghostwriter
to do her stuff. Then the ghostwriter is dismissed and this alleged celebrity's
new book is published with her name on the front cover. She reads 'her' book
for the first time after publication.
39.
WHAT IS THE TITLE OF THE LAST
BOOK YOU READ? GOOD ONE?
The Closers by Michael Connelly. A good Harry Bosch
novel.
40.
WHAT
WOULD BE THE VERY LAST SENTENCE YOU’D WRITE?
Usually, it's not actually a sentence, just the
word 'ends' when I finally reach the end of the latest manuscript. As far as
the last sentence of my life is concerned, I genuinely have no idea, but if I
was dying of something painful it might very probably be something along the
lines of 'Give me the bloody morphine, and give it to me now.'
41.
WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU HAPPIER THAN YOU ARE NOW? CARE TO
SHARE?
God, this is dull and boring. I'm really quite
happy. Okay, maybe a faster computer, though I genuinely don't need one. I'm
even quite happy with my cars and where I live and all that kind of thing.
42. ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?
Not that I can think of. Nice talking to you.
Clancy's comment: Wow, thank you, Peter, James, Jack, Max. Very interesting. Your books certainly sound exciting. Keep going.
I'm ...
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