Reversion and racking

Well I'm starting to rack up blog posts now. I was meant to be posting something about China Mieville's response to Facebook, but other things have intervened, so maybe later…

My agent has just informed me that Macmillan have finally reverted the rights for the two Secret War novels. I feel partly relieved and crestfallen by this - relieved because finally I have control over the books again and my agent can press-on with finding a home for them, but it does feel like getting a letter of divorce after 11 months of separation. It's the conclusion to 5 years of working with Pan Macmillan, specifically Macmillan New Writing, which I have the utmost admiration for. Mike Barnard's baby was inspired and has produced some great writers under his guidance and also under the auspices of Will Atkins, who took over from Mike in 2007. It's been a wonderful exercise in finding talent, with many gems unearthed from what was once considered the "slush pile". But no longer… (yes, Mr McCrum, you read that right…).
Earlier this month, one of Macmillan New Writing's crime authors, Ryan David Jahn got their first literary award (debut Crime Dagger) and many more have been nominated from anything from the Orange Prize to the British Fantasy Society Award for best novel - not bad considering the imprint was only publishing one book a month at its height.
Despite the lack of output recently, Macmillan New Writing and its authors are still going strong and I still consider to be part of that, despite this almost final act in my involvement with the imprint and its parent, Macmillan publishing Ltd. I've learned a helluva lot, and will take all that to my next publisher, whoever that is.

To answer one pressing question, some have queried why I've decided to ask for the reversion of the book rights. Well, this is a good thing, in so far that Macmillan were no longer printing the books and weren't looking to publish the paperback of the Hoard of Mhorrer. It's a good thing because if all else fails, I can publish the Secret War novels via the e-book route that is proving to be quite profitable to some writers, and at a price that benefits myself and agent, and the also reader in terms of retailing the book and return of royalties at a minimum cost to myself. In fact, the timing couldn't be better really.

However, before that happens we'll be exhausting all possible avenues of finding a home with a major or independent publisher, which includes the e-books rights, as well as physical rights. This could take a year or so, so it does mean the Secret War books will be largely unavailable from this month until 2012, maybe longer, so my advice is to get 'em while you can via the Kindle, iBooks, and Waterstones/WHSmith.

Again, thanks to everyone who has got me to this position, including my agent, Dorothy, and my best wishes to all those at Macmillan, including Will, Sophie and Julie.
They were great times indeed, and now with The Black Hours, Purgatory (and other projects!!) I'm looking forward to another exciting era to come...

Under the Influence

Over on the Macmillan New Writers blog, I’ve been invited by Deborah Swift, author of the historical opus, The Lady’s Slipper, to answer a couple of questions regarding how I got into this whole writing malarkey and where one might go after they’ve read one of my books (to view the mini-interview or "minterview" just click here).

I’ve tried to be brief in my own inimitable way, but who am I kidding – yes I ramble a little, but it’s all done in the best possible taste!

Update:

Well, for a start I'm blogging a bit more, so that's a good thing. On the down side, day-job woes are accelerating and I've begun contemplating life without a regular income (or the alternative which is less palatable!). But you didn't come here for such mundane woes, so...

...The writing is going well, but it's a little too busy. Taking account of what is on-going, what is done, and what is to come, is making my head spin, so here's a summary of the books so far and where I am with them:

The Black Hours:
Next month I start on my "agent-edits" – 4 weeks of work to address the points raised by my literary agent on pacing and a couple of plot-gaps that need filling. It's not a massive job, but it will take time as I do this around the chaos of my working life. Once these are done, they'll be back with my agent for a second read over Christmas, so expect no more news on the Black Hours until the new year. Overall, though, my agent has enjoyed the book describing it as "imaginative and extraordinary".
So she's pleased, and so am I - it makes me feel that I've been writing in the right direction after all.

Purgatory:
In the middle of the 1st draft and it's getting there, but I've hit that mid 1st-draft wobble where I'm hoping I'm going down the right path with the right characters in what is largely a big departure from the previous books (again). I'm trusting my instincts that I am, and I'm comfortable with the characters and the situations - though I do need to build-in more dynamics and peril which I'm not feeling enough of so far. But then the 1st draft is the draft where I see if the whole damn thing works without a major re-write or the junking of the project. So far I'm certain I won't be doing that and the 2nd draft will be a tinkering-around-the-edges-only kinda thing.
So I'm pleased. Very pleased so far.
I hope Purgatory is pleased too (“he says, fearing a pitch-fork in the bottom”).

The Traitor of Light (Secret War Book 3):
This is where the Byzantine world of publishing interferes with the writing, and it's not ideal. With the first Secret War novels still looking for a home with a UK publisher I won't be starting on the next draft of book 3 until I know there is a publisher who wants it. If that doesn't happen by the time I've completed Purgatory I might be tempted to write Traitor anyway and go the self-publishing route with my agent's blessing (once all other routes are exhausted).
I'm confident, and so is my agent, that I won't have to do that, but it does mean Secret War book 3 will be in hiatus for at least another year, perhaps longer.
Not pleased, but this is the best practical approach and I have to deal with it how I can.

The Fortress of Black Glass (Secret War Book 4):
The fate of this book is tied up with Traitor and while I have a chapter by chapter synopsis for Fortress as well as two opening chapters, this book won't see the light of day for at least 3 years from now. Again, this could be longer depending on what happens with the wranglings around Secret War and Mhorrer. However if there is a charge for more Secret War books and I have the fortune to become a full-time author in the near future, then the schedule will be brought forward and Fortress will be complete sooner.

A World of Night:
A children's book that many people want me to finish. Okay, this is a side-project, but more and more people I know are clambering up my laptop to see it in print. Sorry, guys, but this project has been put on hold until I know what's going on with the adult books. It's a story I do want to finish, with characters I'm in love with, but at the moment it doesn't make sense to turn to this story above others. So Courage Jones and his imp-sidekick will stay shelved for the foreseeable future, unfortunately…

Untitled Black Library project:
I only have an outline for this, and my agent knows I'm interested in doing a Black Library book/series. Think the Secret War shenanigans meets Warhammer 40K - but with a twist (a skeleton in the closet for the Imperial Space Marines that's about to bite them on their armour-plated ass!).


So that's it for now. I'll continue to update on Purgatory's progress through twitter and there's still the review for Islington Crocodiles to put up on this blog. I can only apologise on the dearth of firm news and the delay of the review, but reality has conspired to make the last 12 months a little complicated and this writer a little neglectful.

Normal service may or may not resume in the future...

MFWC

Hoard of Mhorrer – Acumulacion del Mhorrer: el libro secreto 2 de la guerra

Well, it’s been a curious old week, full of day-job woes, writing highs and a well received royalty statement, but one of the biggest surprises has been the announcement that The Hoard of Mhorrer will be published by La Factoria de Ideas.

Originally conceived as part of the deal last year that has already seen The Secret War published as “La Guerra Secreta” this week (and if you are a Spanish speaker/reader just click this link to view the official site or alternately go to this great site, Axxon.com, which has a whole lotta information on the publication too), it was confirmed to me this week by Macmillan’s rights department that La Factoria de Ideas have also signed up the second in the Secret War series under their Solaris Fantasia imprint. At the time of going to press (always wanted to say that!) there is no publication date though I expect it will be within the next 12 months. I’m thoroughly excited about this. The Spanish market is one of the biggest in the world and to think that anyone from Spain, the US and the Americas could be reading one of my books brings a big ol’ grin to my face.

My added apologies to all English readers, though, as it seems our friends over in Germany and Spain will be reading paperback versions of The Hoard of Mhorrer before you do, but my agent and I are working as hard as possible to get this matter resolved.

With luck, we’ll have some good news to tell you in the coming months…

Small Press review: Silversands

Crossing the great divide from short fiction to full-length novel writing is one that some writers achieve with consummate ease, while others fall over the edge, disappearing into that stygian abyss with dismay, thinking they were only a few sentences away from perfection, when in reality they were yards away from a good plot.
Knowing this, I admit to feeling a little nervous about reading Gareth L. Powell’s debut novel, Silversands, especially in light of his first collection of fiction, The Last Reef. In my opinion, The Last Reef was the best and most exciting short story SF collection in recent years (and you can read my review of it here) and one of the few collections I still go back to even now (amongst them Hope by James Lovegrove and Barker’s Books of Blood).
So when Silversands was announced I was excited, nervous yes, but excited. I mean, what delights could the writer construct over the course of a novel? Could it match the dizzying heights and imaginations of The Last Reef?

From the blurb:
“In an age where interstellar travel is dangerous and unpredictable, and no-one knows exactly where they’ll end up, Avril Bradley is a Communications officer onboard a ship sent to re-contact as many of these lost souls as possible. But a mysterious explosion strands her in a world of political intrigue, espionage and subterfuge; a world of retired cops, digital ghosts and corporate assassins who fight for possession of computer data that had lain undisturbed for almost a century. . .”


Silversands’ universe requires little introduction; the science fiction tropes within the story are familiar without being unoriginal. There is no plodding back-story to labour over and it keeps that sense of wonder that all good science fiction has. This has its own advantages as we get into the plot from the off and the story rattles along at a good pace. Powell's writing skills are explicit and direct, creating mood and character through economical prose and without exposition. Each scene is lovingly created and you can tell the writer is enjoying his craft here.
The world building is gritty, frontier SF at its best, with the feel of a society not far away from implosion which adds it’s own sense of tension, while the action is also typically dazzling and dynamic – it has its pulpy moments but nothing that the great SF writers such as Harrison or Asimov would be worried about. It’s utterly compelling, and there’s a feeling of crescendo, of sub-plots merging for a big bang somewhere down the line…

…Which is perhaps were I have one quibble: while the book is indeed compelling and fantastically written, it just feels a little unfinished. There were too many lose-ends, like a fine rug with frayed edges, which is okay if you're writing a short story - where the requirement for a satisfactory ending is negated for an "experience" or snapshot of story-telling - but as a novel the ending comes too soon and too many questions are left unanswered to make it wholly satisfying especially for a novel with less than 100 pages. You just wish there was more.
If I’m honest this isn’t a criticism, after all how can you damn fine writing by complaining you wanted more? It’s like telling the best chef in the land you thought the meal was a poor one because you could have eaten more of it.

Culinary euphemisms aside, this is a thoroughly accomplished piece of writing; not one I’d class as a ‘novel’ (novella, probably, and something that could form the back bone of a collection someway down the line), but I’m glad it’s been published and published lovingly (beautifully bound with a great cover) by Pendragon Press. I’m not sure I’ll return to it as much as the well-thumbed Last Reef, but Silversands sits proudly on my bookshelf with other acclaimed genre authors (Dick, Bradbury, Baxter, Banks etc)…
…And you know, Gareth L. Powell doesn’t look out of place amongst them.

Favourite book is where I am

Buses. That's me. Like buses, this blog is. And so I've decided to post two blog entries, post-dating one for next Monday because I like to be difficult. Monday's blog entry will be the awaited review of Gareth L Powell's Silversands, with Paul Meloy's Islington Crocodiles to be posted before the end of the month.

The reason for this slack-arsed and very irregular blogging is in the writing. It's been a busy ol' summer, you see. After 6 weeks of intensive editing, The Black Hours was finally put to bed, or rather printed and posted to my agent. I'm quite pleased with it, more pleased than during the earlier drafts which my editor at Pan Macmillan had read; hopefully my agent will be just as pleased and the next editor to come my way will embrace with gusto (and maybe a nice fat contract!).

The filthier shade of publishing aside, the work on The Black Hours and then the almost instantaneous decision to leap into writing PURGATORY, has left me with little-to-bugger-all time to spend on blogging, and not just blogging but visiting other people's blogs. I really have been quite the hermit recently, physically as well as mentally. Last Tuesday's get together with writing pal David Budd was just one of very few evening's out and made me realise that I've been neglecting myself socially both in the pub and on the internet. Another casualty of this has been this weekend's Fantasy Con which I had plans to attend but other matters have intervened, and as a result I won't be going to Nottingham. It's all rather annoying, and partially down to the more and more precarious day-job; a day-job that I would love to shed like a caterpillar emerging from a very damp chrysalis. I don't think many of the impacting issues are going to be resolved anytime soon, so blogging will remain something I nurse over the increasingly cold months until - hopefully - I can get the time to do this more regularly again. We'll see…

On a big positive note though, the new book, PURGATORY, is writing well (40,000 words and counting) and should be done by next summer. By then I'll hopefully have a steer as to what's happening with the Secret War books. With the Spanish translation out this month (La Guerra de Secreta - Solaris Fantasia/La Factoria de Ideas) and the press release intimating the rights to Horde of Mhorrer are being discussed, the Secret War books certainly have a future. The first draft of The Traitor of Light is complete and there is a detailed chapter synopsis for Fortress of Black Glass, so it's all there waiting to be written, it's just a question as to when. As always, any big news will be published here and on the website so watch this space.


And just to close this blog entry, Aliya Whiteley and Frances Garrood have posted a list of ten favourite books they would recommend for this Autumn/Winter (maybe a stocking present or two) so here's a list of mine, in no particular order:

The Book Thief - Marcus Zuzak (because it made me cry)

The Last Reef - Gareth L Powell (because it was awesome)

Weaveworld - Clive Barker (because it took me to another brilliantly realised world and held me there for the longest time in my life)

The Kraken Awakes - John Wyndham (because it's Wyndham - and you know it will be good)

Candide - Voltaire (because he is timeless - and bloody funny too)

Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury (because his science doesn't have to be confounding, but his philosophy is profound).

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville (because he has returned the weirdness of fiction back to the bookshelves with steam and plenty of grease).

The Last Amazon - Steven Pressfield (again because it made me cry, but also cheer)

Mort - Terry Pratchett (because I almost weed myself laughing)

The Death of Grass - John Christopher (because I almost weed myself with dread)

Receding Words

Things are biting. We're not talking nibbles here, the same way perhaps a gold-fish will chew the end of your finger if you leave it in the fish-tank long enough. Nor are we talking nipping either, like a cat might, or when a new mother tells you about the time when their eight month-old child develops teeth and decides using them is the best way to breast feed. No, we're talking grizzly bite-sized chunks. Raw, gnashing, chomping, "I'm-gonna-fucking-eat-you-all-up-if-you-let-me" biting.

It's not hard to see that we are in a recession. In every way, in every facet of our lives we are seeing a degradation in quality. From the dwindling high-street stores, to another drop in house prices, to the way other things of importance just inflate (like food and fuel) it’s starting to take its toll. Authors have been feeling this pinch for longer than most as the book-world has been in a recession for some time, before the banks went crazy and decided to sell houses to people who didn't have an effing clue or without the means to ever pay them back. Books have been in trouble for a while before that, sure, it's just that most other things are catching them up on the dodo scale.

My own circumstances are tied up in what's going on around like 99.9% of us. My day-job is at the mercy of a group of people who think they're surgeons, but are in fact local butchers on speed, with all the aptitude of a nutter wielding a scalpel shouting "slice, slice, SLICE!" In the publishing world, my books are at the mercy of the bean counters who are shouting "Sell now! Sell now! SELL NOW!" In both cases I'm at the mercy of really panicky, impatient people. A shame really, as in both areas of work, patience is more than a virtue. In my day-job, the cogs are so huge that if you stare at just one part of the machinery it doesn't seem to be moving, yet step back and you know the machinery is moving actually better than most machines in other countries and it actually has a purpose. In the writing, again patience is something bookselling needs: patience to get the best book from the author to the publisher; patience to get the book selling from someone quite unknown. Patience, patience, PATIENCE!

In the bitey world, there's no room for patience. From anyone really. We need time to breath, to escape the teeth if only for a short while, and not have to look over our shoulders for that dark, looming shape that wants to sink they're teeth into our butt. Unfortunately, in both parts of my working life, there's no bus ride out of "bitey-world", but I'm learning to navigate the path ahead, to give that grizzly the slip, even if it isn't something I would wish, nor - as in my writing - my readership would wish.

The on-going situation with the Secret War books may well be something that will fall foul of the recession. Like it or not, getting a series published in the middle by another publisher is a tall order at the best of times. During a recession, it's something only a genius can achieve, and while I have one on my side now (see the news in the last blog entry) I'm making preparations for a suspension of work on the next Secret War novel to concentrate on one of the many other projects I wanted to pursue later. The decision is a prudent one given the state of play and while it's partly driven by financial considerations (I'm loathed to say) I want to give the next Secret War novel a chance and the current situation doesn't do that. The new project, a book called "Purgatory", comes at the right time. It plugs into what's happening in my working life and my private life, and has the advantage that it's a shorter book than the next Secret War novel and is a big enough departure to come back refreshed and try another side of my writing I haven't explored. Unlike The Black Hours (which I'll be completing at the end of the month) "Purgatory" will not be discussed in any detail on this blog - this project is being kept largely under wraps due to the plot and the genre. The idea is quite original, so I've been advised to keep it to myself until it's all done, otherwise I may find those gnashing teeth getting a bit close for comfort.

As for the Secret War… Well it hasn't been chewed up and spat out quite yet. It's a series I will complete - I've done too much work for it not to be; I just need the time and space to do it, something which that grizzly of recession isn't allowing me to do. But I am flexible, and I now have a spirit-guide to advise me on what to do next so yeah, things are biting, and it's hard not to let your head drop, but you keep on going and ignore that sharp, hollow crack of snapping jaws and teeth behind you, and remind yourself that you're in control.

At least for a little while...

Announcement: MFW Curran signs for Dorian Literary Agency

Just a quick blog entry to announce that I have formally joined Dorian Literary Agency who will represent my current works as well as the back-catalogue once the rights revert from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. I'm really pleased about this development and see it as an important move in light of the current economic problems facing publishing today with regards to mid-list culls, digital rights and other rights issues. It pays to have a second pair of eyes - and experienced eyes at that - when it comes to an increasingly Byzantine industry and it means I can concentrate on what I do best: writing the books.

On a personal note, there is a feeling of coming full circle. Way back in 1993, Dorian Literary Agency was the first agency I sent my first story to (a young adult novel called The Forever Chain), and Dorothy Lumley's reply at the time - while being a rejection - was very constructive, especially compared to some of the other agencies who fired back those universally-hated stock rejection letters that told you nothing.
It was this care and effort Dorothy gave in those early rejection letters that drew me towards Dorian Literary Agency again years later when it was time to look for a literary agent after leaving Macmillan - a lesson other literary agencies could learn from. Dorothy was my first choice, so I am very lucky and understandably over the moon that she has chosen to represent me, and I look forward to working with her on the new books including the Secret War series.

Please note: contact details for UK and overseas publishers will be incorporated on the MFW Curran website in the coming months. Before then, should you wish to contact me regarding any publishing matters, please do so at mfwcurran@talktalk.net and I will forward your e-mail to my agent.

Best wishes

MFW Curran

Changing (indie)tact

Just a short post announcing I will be ditching my usual stance of not reviewing books on M&M and will be - on occasion - publishing reviews on small press titles and self-published e-books from here on.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be reviewing Gareth L. Powell’s debut novel, Silversands, Paul Meloy’s collection, Islington Crocodiles, and Neil George Ayre’s e-book, The New Goodbye, right here on Muskets and Monsters, with more to come.

Why? 

Well, as readers, more and more of us are looking for alternatives to what's on offer in the local Blackstones or Waterwells. Over the past 12 months or so my reading habits have altered, leaning more and more towards small press publications, books that are deemed not commercial enough to find a home in mainstream publishing and your local WH Smiths.  Some of these independently produced books leave many mainstream offerings choking dust in terms of originality, ambition and writing prowess, and it’s a crying shame they don’t find a greater audience, such as GL Powell’s anthology The Last Reef (which might be out of print, but you can now get it on the Kindle – and I do advise you to get it, I really do – it’s bloody good stuff).

So it’s all about spreading the word – bad stuff as well as the good – to help mine that narrow, elusive seam of story-telling-gold amongst the dross, a seam that you can find hidden beneath commercialism in that often marginalised world of the independent small presses. 

Keep digging and it’s worth the effort, I can tell you…

A problem with endings

Just a quick sign-posting to a new blog entry of mine over on the Macmillan New Writing blog on the matter of ending stories and the problems therein…

…Now I must get back to the writing where an ending is in sight (75,000 words and counting folks…)

Siege Mentality

And so the age of austerity is upon us, and while I'd love to add "so the media and politicians would have us believe", I genuinely believe that this is where things are going to get hard; the last ten years have been quite easy for most of us, so the next few years will probably be tough in comparison. Since the world's finances hit that ice-burg in 2008, we've been thinking that the ship isn't actually going to go down and if it does, well whadayouknow..? At the end of 2009 it bobbed right up again, like those plastic air-tight boats you played with in the bath as a child that would not sink permanently no matter how long you held them under the water. No such luck it seems, as the good ship SS World Banking is going down for one last time and there are plenty of countries in the water hoping for a life-boat to pick them up, like Germany who will soon be swamped by survivors from the EU. (The UK has its own boat built for one, but there's now two people inside trying to row it. It's also holed in many places and taking on water. Mmmm.)

Now that's about as far as I'll go on commentating on world politics and fiscal studies as that's not my forte and it's not the point of this blog. How this all relates to writing is pretty simple. For me, and for many others, we are entering a siege mentality with regards to non-essentials; non-essentials by definition being "Food, heating, housing, clothing and travel." Entertainment and all things cultural are no longer essential, even to a writer if the writer knows that buying a book is the difference between your child having a healthy diet or you reading the next Jim Crace novel. So it remains for the masses to live of the cultural fat they have accumulated over the past ten years of good living. My own personal stock, or fat, is considerable being someone who loves buying books and films but with very little time to spend reading or watching them. I'd say I have around 50 novels that I have yet to read and that again in terms of movies. We're talking about 2 years worth of reading and watching, and that doesn't include my iPhone e-reader where about 10,000 classics are readily available at no cost.

And that's the point: "no cost". Because I, and many others, will be looking at the bank balance before each speculative buy, and cost is paramount, more so than it has been before for the cultured public, because austerity affects everyone. Like it or not, due to VAT increases in the pipeline most of us will be buying less but spending almost as much on things that keep us alive rather than amused. Bookshops are hugely at risk even though – and all readers and writers hope – that books continue to be exempt from VAT. True enough, but the government taketh away in other places we can’t escape from so watch that bank balance dwindle all the same. Some bookshops are bailing out the water before it’s too late: Waterstones, for example, is re-branding but I suspect this won’t be enough to entice readers to buy from their shops. There will be plenty of people visiting, but only to browse and consider a book. Buying will ultimately go down to cost and where they can find cheapest price, which these days is Amazon. And that's even if someone can really afford to pay five quid for an eight quid book.
As entertainment goes, buying books is cheaper than going to the cinema (which I can't see surviving much longer with the admission prices they currently charge during an austerity age) or video games (which families will have to cut back on as they are more expensive than hard-drugs). DVDs aren't that expensive, not counting Blu-rays which will need to adapt their prices for the public for them to adopt a young, but not so ground-breaking, technology, but DVDs will struggle beyond budget releases. Which leaves books and telly as the chips of the entertainment budget.
But even chips are expensive.


The fact is, publishing and writers will have to adapt to this new age as sales dip further. It occurs to me that if someone sells a book at £8 and someone else sells a book for £1 and both have good reviews, the £1 book will sell like hot-cakes and the £8 book might sell okay. Costs aside, if you sell 20,000 £1 books you get £20,000. If you sell the not-so-sellable £8 book to 1,000 readers you get £8,000, because there are more people out there who can afford to buy something for a £1 than £8. Throw in the costs of printing and that's not such a good model to follow, I agree, but it does work when it comes to e-books which have no printing costs.

It’s clear to a lot of industry commentators that publishers aren't adapting well enough or quick enough to the technology or the age of austerity. They have an opportunity to sell vast numbers of books electronically but have been rubbing their hands together with glee selling e-books at the same prices of hardbacks, not realising (and really, why haven’t they?) that people aren't going to buy an e-book for £16, or those that do aren’t sufficient enough to make it viable. It’s almost as if publishers are trying to price e-books out of the market on purpose – which the more paranoid commentator might agree with.
Like it or not, e-books are here to stay - and more than that; in an age of austerity and despite the cost of the e-readers, they may take over the conventional book if it comes down to cost of each title.
Amazon is in some respects correct in that publishers are asking too much for their e-books - they can see the sense of selling them cheaper than the paperback, even if their reasoning is more mercenary than seeing the value to consumers. Writers too can see the value of pricing their e-books lower than a paperback and vastly lower than a hardback because they will sell more units, in most cases enough to equal the income from overpriced e-books and enough to make it viable.

Now the bad news for publishers, is that writers can do this without their help.

While they will still need an editor and a copy editor, a writer has more opportunity to self-publish e-books now than ever before. With a little bit of app-know-how, they can create apps for platforms like the iPhone or go via an e-book publisher who will give the writer no less than 70% of the profits of each sale on average. Compared to what major and conventional publishers are offering writers, well, it doesn't compare - and it's ludicrous. Writers can add up - we're not stupid. We can see where we are losing money, just as we can see where we might gain it.

So it maybe the nature of austerity and the prominence of e-books that will be the undoing of the conventional publisher as writers quickly realise they can earn more by refusing to give publishers electronic rights to their books; they'll make more doing it themselves and the conventional publisher will miss out. Unless conventional publishers change how they deal with their writers and how they deal with electronic publishing they will not survive such austere times because their readers, and their writers are moving on.

Yes, for consumers it is a siege mentality, and it is for writers too, but we already know that. Publishers need to realise this and adapt to the new mentality or they will not survive the campaign...

Not hanging, but passing through: Traitor and the Literary Project

I've been on holiday from blog-land recently, managing only a few random Tweets from the iPhone, so just a couple of things until I jet off again to concentrate on writing the new book, agenty-things and family commitments.

The first bit is that the Traitor of Light continues to delight as I write it. This book has been such a joy so far that the pessimist in me has been looking for problems to occur. So far - and that's 39,000 words so far - there hasn't been any. I'm actually looking forward to the 2nd draft this time; usually the 2nd draft is the one were I dump 70% of the first draft in a fit of despair, yet I think more than half of what has gone down on the screen will be saved and the rest will be research heaven as I flesh out the Aztec setting. It's all good, as they say…


Second bit of news is the seven interviews with the various Macmillan New Writers are up on the Literary Project blog, which does exactly what it says. Created and maintained by Gemma Noon, the Literary Project is a collection of interviews with publishers, agents and authors - a reference work - for writers and readers alike. As a project on the whole, it is ambitious and it's a useful tool for new writers and even older ones, to dip into. On an individual basis it's damned interesting looking at some of the answers by well-known authors and lesser ones. (In some cases the more enlightened responses herald from those with the least experience, so go figure.)

On a mercenary level, I'm happy to be included here amongst the pantheon of well respected authors and their editors, and a big thanks to Gemma for running the week-long Macmillan New Writers interviews which will culminate with mine on Saturday and Eliza Graham on Sunday.
Already we've had Ciara Hegarty, Alis Hawkins, Aliya Whiteley, Tim Stretton and today, Dee Swift - which is just a selection of the crop of talent at Mac New Writing. A month doesn't go by without yet another of these authors being nominated for one award or another (recently we've had Len Tyler jetting off to the US for the Edgars) and when this happens I'm happily reminded of the naysayers of the literati who said this imprint couldn't work.
My arse, it couldn't.

The Traitor of Light update No.1: "The sound of blood dripping…

… Is also the sound of me tapping away in a dark corner of Sheffield."

Yes, the time has come again when I put fingers to keyboard (which doesn't really have the same ring as "put pen to paper", but cest la vie) and I become a recluse, socially, mentally, physically and electronically. Last week I commenced work on the third Secret War novel, after two false starts with my previous publisher last year.

As of this blog entry I've written 15,000 words on The Traitor of Light - good words, words that I'm happy with and words I won't have to change much come the 2nd draft, which is unusual for me. The first chapters of a new book are always the hardest, but surprisingly in light of the content and circumstances (being a parent gets no easier even after 12 months) these have been relatively easy chapters to write.

And they shouldn’t be because I’ve set myself a monumental task: how do you make a main character that eats human hearts for a living, sympathetic?

It's a challenge that's compounded by another factor: there is not one recognisable character from the first two books in the first 45,000 words of Traitor of Light. We're introduced to several completely new characters in a completely new setting, and only five chapters in will you, as readers, suddenly make the connection between this book and the other two books in the Secret War series.

But from that point on it will be like staring down the steep drop of the rollercoaster - and if I do my job well enough, you'll be screaming all the way.

The Traitor of Light will be a challenge. It was meant to be, as I've said before. It isn't a safe book and I could fuck this up easily if I'm not careful. But so far I have been careful. Careful to build sympathetic characters out of monsters; careful to shed blood, but not too much; careful to keep you guessing until the reveal in Chapter 5 (and what a reveal it is!). This first part of the book - the part set during the fall of the Aztec Empire - is going to be the hardest thing I've ever written.
Yet at the moment, it doesn't feel that way…

…I hope that's a good sign.

Awards and reviews

A little bit of news before the weekend...

First off, Muskets and Monsters has been nominated for the Author Blog Awards. Hoorah! This blog has never been nominated for anything before, but I do feel a bit of fraud having not blogged so regularly over the past 12 months. You can read more about the Author Blog Awards here and while I don't expect to win (the internet is quite crammed with author-blogging goodness these days) I am chuffed that someone would nominate me.

Double chuffed-ness comes from a new review for The Secret War from the pages of Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society. It's always great to read a positive review that says things like: "…Curran has an engaging style which has produced a very entertaining book…" and "Curran's talent is in ascension, and I for one cannot wait to read the sequel…"
Ironic that I get another great review while I have one foot out of the door, but like all the great reviews for the two books, they're things I can take with me when I look for my next publisher.

And while I’m here, just to add that I start writing The Traitor of Light next week having completed two weeks of intensive research on the project. This will mean a hiatus on blogging and twittering while I juggle writing and looking after the wee man so bear with me.

Until then, onwards, dear friends, onwards!

The passion of not being in print part 2

I’ve written this blog entry twice already. Both times I found myself ranting or rambling and getting lost down the track, forgetting about why I asked these questions in the first place. It came about after watching an interview with Tanith Lee at the recent World Horror Convention – a convention which didn’t go completely to plan for me (I came down with a man-cold that saw me laid low on the Saturday with a voice like Barry White and with the hearing age of a 100 year old). During the interview, Tanith Lee mentioned that she was no longer with a major publisher and I noted a little regret there. Her career path has not been so different to mine so far – albeit with more success from an earlier age. She started off with the same publisher, parted company for Byzantine reasons and is currently being published by the small presses. When it came to asking questions after the interview, my hand hovered, almost reaching up above the heads of the audience with one question in mind: “Do you regret not being published by a major now?” I didn’t ask it partly out of being shy, partly because even then my man-cold was kicking in and my voice was deepening to a croak, but I could imagine what her answer would be. It would be pragmatic, because at the end of the interview she said that all that mattered to her was her writing. The one time she did write something that was spurred by commercialism than artistic endeavour, didn’t write as well as she had hoped (though it was published – this is Tanith Lee, we’re talking about).

And so I thought about my own writing, and I asked myself that same question I would have asked Tanith Lee if the lurg hadn’t chosen at that point to impose it’s will on me. The result of that question was the last blog entry which a few people have replied to (and thanks for the comments, including those found on the Macmillan New Writers site).
In the main, the replies to the following three questions have elicited the standard reply of “yes, yes and yes again” but Eliza Graham’s and Len Tyler’s responses have made me think more about circumstance:
· If you knew you were never going to be published, at least by a major publisher, would you still write?
· Would you still be passionate about it?
· And if you have been published by a major but never would be again, would your enthusiasm take a knock?

It’s easier to shun something when you yourself have been shunned. I’ve read comments on blogs and forums from aspiring writers who have said “get rid of agents – why do we need them?” or words to that effect mainly because it’s those same agents who have turned down their work. Just as I’ve read comments on same forums or blogs from writers or agents dismissing the idea of ridding the publishing world of gatekeepers either because they don’t want to lose their livelihood, or because they have an agent and have done well out of it. So what I want to dispel is any hidden agenda, and the only way I can do that is to look at the three questions in context. Four contexts as it happens, marking the four times where my writing circumstances had changed.
So here goes…


1. I’m 18 years old

I’ve written my first book called The Forever Chain and I’ve started approaching publishers and agents. In my naivety I believe I’m the real deal and that publishers should start taking notice. I’m not the real deal at all, but publishers take notice anyway and HarperCollins are impressed, though not impressed enough to make me a firm offer. After deliberating they pass on The Forever Chain, but by that point I know I want to be a published author. It’s like fire in my veins and if I’m honest, it feels as important as the writing itself. Hence why I decide to write some projects I think would appeal to an editor – any editor. They all fail to get off the ground for the overriding reason that I’m not writing for myself but for someone else. To answer the three questions – well it’s inconceivable to me at that time that I wouldn’t be published eventually. I had unshakable belief back then that I would be.
Yet in all of that, the writing was the most important thing. I could only commit to writing what interested me rather than what interested someone else. I might write a dystopian fantasy that’s 250,000 words long when no one will publish books at that length from a new writer; I might write an apocalyptic anthology at a time when anthologies don’t sell. I don’t care.
I want to be published, sure. But I want to write more.


2. I’m 29 years old

I have had a cowboy agent for four months who doesn’t return my calls and who has done nothing with my book despite paying a fifty quid admin fee. I have a book which agents have a problem with: it’s a mixture of history and dark fantasy, and no one is publishing books like that. Agents want me to write history books, or they want me to write horror books. Not both. Each time I get a rejection letter I yell at the letter as though the agent or publisher can hear me. I tell them they’re short-sighted, they have no imagination and no idea what the public wants. I still have that unshakable belief in what I’m doing and I decide to quit my bloody useless agent and make a conscious decision to stop sending my work to any agents and publishers. At this point I no longer care about being published. To me the system is broken and I decide to write purely for my own pleasure and for my friends, because I get a real buzz out of writing.

Eight months later, a friend from work convinces me I should enter a Channel 4 writing competition that Pan Macmillan are running. I send in the first two chapters of a book called The Secret War – the same historical fantasy all the agents and publishers vesaid as being “not marketable”. Out of 40,000 entrants I am short-listed by Pan Macmillan to form a new imprint called Macmillan New Writing.

Two years later, The Secret War is published by Macmillan New Writing – a book that I said I would never compromise on, a book that I would defend in the face of rejection letters that said simply “this isn’t a book or genre we think we could sell”. And a book that is picked up by Random House Germany one year later for an advance that would – and I quote Mike Barnard – “have many established writers popping the champagne corks”.


3. I’m 34 years old

I’m a published author. I have two books published, one in paperback, and one in hardback. I’ve sold rights to Germany and Spain. I’m writing a Victorian thriller and have plans for a third book in the Secret War series that’s a little different to the first two.
If someone told me I would be leaving Pan Macmillan by the end of the year, I would have laughed at them. I have a great relationship with my editor. In their words they want to “grow me”. I’m writing what I want to write and in the words of MC Hammer “you can’t touch this.”

My publisher passes on the Victorian thriller - The Black Hours - because it goes against my “author branding”. Then they pass on the third Secret War novel because it does not return to the same themes of the first two novels – which was the point. It needs to be fresh, I tell them. They want another Secret War or Hoard of Mhorrer novel.

This is the first time in my writing life that I have considered publishing above my writing instincts. So I tell them fine – I’ll give you a book like the first two.


4. I’m 35 years old

In the past ten months I’ve become a little jaded with the publishing process and my third book is turned down. I want to write what I want to write. A close writer-friend told me they believed that my publisher had already made a decision to reject my third book – the book they wanted me to write - even before I sent it to them. It’s possible they did. To be honest, it’s academic, because I made the decision to leave my publisher. After all, if they don’t want the next three projects I’m writing, why stay? I’m certainly not going to ask them what they want, because it won’t be what I want to write, and I already do a well paid job I don’t want to do, so why spend all my free-time doing the same thing without any commitment to being paid? I sound like a petulant child – but when the dust settles I realise that my feelings still remain. I want to write for myself.

So now I’m without an English language publisher. And when anyone asks me if I’m okay with that, I tell them “well, put it this way. Since I announced I would be quitting my publisher I haven’t sent a single submission or letter of enquiry to an agent or any other publisher.” In fact, last weekend I spoke to my first agent in four months since parting from Macmillan. People look bewildered when I say this, especially the writers. But to me, it’s just not a priority. The writing is.
And always has been.


Most of the comments to the last post have said the same thing: they would still write - though the implications of being dropped or not being published would have varying impacts on their writing. What this blog post has shown me is that there isn't a straight forward answer to my questions, and everyone will have a different take on it. Some may aspire to the "yes, yes and yes again" approach but cannot break from the fear of not being published comfortably. Being published by a major house is a shot of confidence and one that might be all smoke and mirrors, but it felt prestigious then and would do again. Other writers might not give a monkeys having not been comfortable in the first place (would they change their tune if offered a six figure advance? It would be a struggle not to).

I love an audience, what self-respecting author wouldn’t (why do we tweet and blog if that’s not the case?), but it’s not as important to me as putting words down on paper. I’m not an actor, nor a comedian – I don’t do stand-up, and I when I write I play to an empty house. To answer my own questions in a more succinct way (other than yes, yes, and yes again), I am still writing and writing is not a job to me. It's a joy. The tedium is everything else that's not creative. But that's not to say I'm procrastinating. The writing is what gets me there in the first place, and if I don't find an English publisher this month, or next month or next year, well that isn't the end of the world either. Eventually I will. I'm not bothered if that’s a major publisher or an independent/small press – but I do want to be published in my own country at some point. But while it would feel a bit farcical to be only in print in German and Spanish, if that never happened, I would be disappointed, but I would still write.
I would still write and I would probably self-publish because there is an audience out there and self-publishing isn’t as back-breaking as it used to be and given a little work you can still reach someone, anyone. There is still an audience out there.

Being a part-time writer - more importantly, one that doesn't have to rely on the income I make from writing - I have the luxury of believing that publishing is a pantomime, but one that is necessary in whatever guise you find it (major, minor, indie or self) if you want an audience that is. I believe that what matters most is what you bring to the table, not whose table you're sitting on. A writer who worries about who their publisher is or will be, is a diner who arrives with an empty plate or a cook who forgets to turn the oven on. There are more important things to concentrate on because writers are writers. It's what we do. It's all that counts.

For me it always has.

The passion of not being in print

Now here's a question and one that affects some us here... If you knew you were never going to be published, at least by a major publisher, would you still write? Would you still be passionate about it?
And if you have been published by a major but never would be again, would your enthusiasm take a knock?

This is but one question that's come out of the World Horror Convention here in Brighton and before I post my reply, what are your feelings in this?

Shards, Safety and Cascos

Rather than spit out snippets of news via Twitter (and thus flounder in the effluent of sound bites that Twitter can be guilty of – myself included) I’ve decided to post a couple of summaries on “what’s going on”, and perhaps explain as to why I've been so quiet and why "slacking off" is necessary.
(And if you want to jump to a news item just click on the link:
News on the Traitor of Light
World Horror Convention 2010
Warriors of God...
The Black Hours - just cast your peepers below and you'll find it!)


The Black Hours

On Monday I completed the 4th draft of The Black Hours. Essentially a re-write of the 3rd draft (there were some problems around pacing and the last quarter of the book), I'm very happy with how the 4th draft has turned out. It has a suitably bleak coda yet is reasonably optimistic at a character level. As a genre piece, again this is going to be difficult to categorise. It is alternative history with a hint of steam-punk thrown in, a little bit of horror, plenty of action and adventure with a dash of "crime". What there aren't, are any supernatural creations and in that the Black Hours is a big departure from the Secret War books. Nor is it episodic like the Secret War books, as the narrative flits from several points of view like an episode of 24.
In fact, this is perhaps how I would best describe the Black Hours: a Victorian 24, with plenty of characters whose lives are invariably changed by those events in late November 1892 with more twists and turns than a van full of… (well you get the picture…)

Still to come is a quick draft - what I call a “reader's draft” - that will remove any embarrassing inconsistencies that can arise when writing a multi-plotted, 150,000 word novel. This should take a couple of weeks during which I’ll be commencing the next project (see below) whilst making The Black Hours changes via my trusty iphone (and Stanza) when I get the opportunity.

After the readers' comments come in, there will be one more draft - the red-pen draft - and then it will be completed, finito, end of… some time at the end of the year.

So there you go. I'm on track and pleased with what I've got so far. All I need now is someone who will publish it in English!

So What's next?

In the first week of April I start writing The Traitor of Light, my first original fiction in over six months. I'm a little nervous about this one; more than I've been with any other book, including The Hoard of Mhorrer. It’s obvious to me that this is the book that will make or break the Secret War series. It's a book that Macmillan turned down for reasons that I understood but did not agree with, and a book that is quite ambitious despite being about 50,000 words shorter than each of the first two Secret War books.

So why pursue a project like this?

Well, every writer asks themselves whether they have enough in the cupboard to do a new project justice, and this one is no different. It will draw on all my strengths as a writer, but will also demand that I strengthen other areas in my writing that are perhaps weaker. So in a lot of respects, this is my thesis - the book that will graduate me or will leave me frustrated. It's a risk, as I always believed it would be, but it's one that I'm willing to take because in the end, I don't want to write Secret War knock-offs. I want to write books I believe in, books that push me out of my comfort-zone, that develop my writing skills. Being a “safe” writer won’t do that.

Time will tell whether or not I can pull this off, but I'll tell you… I'm bloody excited about it.

But that's not all I'm excited about...

World Horror Convention 2010 Brighton

This is a big thing for me. More so than I expected all those months ago when I signed up for the convention at BFS Con in Nottingham 2008. Not only is WHC2010 four days - and four days where I won't be mindful of my ten month old son (who I'm sure to miss, but will relish the relaxation of not talking all things baby or changing nappies) - it's four days of speaking to some of the luminaries of the business. I'm not just talking Horror here, but everything that overlaps with the genre, like fantasy, Science Fiction, crime… the works.

And then there’s my first panel on Saturday: a discussion moderated by Christopher Fowler, with Michael Marshall Smith, Nicholas Royle, Simon R Green and Jasper Kent, on "When is Horror not Horror?" I won't go into this too much in case I pre-empt any of the arguments here, but as a writer who was led more and more down the historical route and away from the fantasy and horror realms, this is quite pertinent to me.
I have my own opinions on “when is horror not horror?” - and my answer is not the same as one friend who said:
“When is horror not horror? Well… When it’s a quarter-pounder with chips.”
I replied with: “but what if that quarter-pounder was someone’s liver and the chips were someone’s fingers?”
They didn’t say anything but dashed to the bathroom. We were in Burger King at the time.
(The friend obviously wasn’t a “Hitcher” fan.)

I'll admit to being nervous about attending the panel, not only because this is my first panel but because of the writers alongside me. Christopher Fowler's Roofworld was one of the defining books of the late 80's in our household - my parents loved it (my mum particular made a high-pitched noise when I mentioned Christopher would be moderating the panel) and I was reading Nicholas Royle's stories when I was but 15 years old (the first of which was in FEAR magazine). I haven't read any of Simon's, Michael's or Jasper's books (though I will be starting Jasper's soon and I'm part way through reading Michael's short story in the BFS anniversary collection) but I know enough about their writing to feel just a little humble. Being a new writer, and a relatively "young" new writer (age is relative, they tell me – a 35 year old footballer is seen as being over the hill, a 35 year old novelist is just a baby – they are semantics that make little sense!), any new experience is always a little unnerving yet exciting - such as my first radio interview, my first book signing, my first reading etc - which is the essence of Horror anyway: to be lifted out of comfort into weird, scary circumstances that thrill as well as terrify.
I know I'll be nervous when I get up there. But by the end I'll feel quite exhilarated I'm sure - just like a good horror novel should do.

Other than the panel - and the candy-shop of books on sale during the four days (I hope my bank-manager isn't reading this) - another reason to feel excited is Pitch Black, an event on Thursday described by the organisers as the "Frankfurt Bookfair for Horror writers". There are some influential people attending, and under the current financial climate I do doubt how many will be expecting to fill their copy books with new writers, but for me it's a chance to punt the Secret War books, and the Black Hours to an English publisher - and maybe an agent.
After all, it would feel quite wrong to be published only in Spanish and German and not in my native tongue, don't you think?...

La Factoria de Ideas

...Which brings me to another bit of news: Pan Macmillan's right's department have told me the Spanish translation of The Secret War should be out in September this year. The deal is primarily about royalties and I can't wait to see what Spanish readers make of it. With the third Secret War novel - The Traitor of Light – having a heavy Spanish emphasis, this might build a few bridges I can use in the future with regard to research (and possibly blag a holiday or two!).

And this might be particularly useful for the last bit of news…

Warriors of God

Announced recently on Twitter, The Warriors of God is a new project. Less than a week old in fact, and one that is dependent on a few things.

The basic plan is to write 12 connected short stories (or episodes) between 8000-10,000 words long based on the Secret War universe. These "episodes" will concentrate on the lives of several monks of the Order of Saint Sallian - as described in the first two Secret War books -and will follow the monks through six months of campaigning and training, basically to Hell and back - sometimes literally.

The stories will feature some of the main characters from the novels, such as William Saxon and Engrin Meerwall, but as supporting characters only. The intention of the series is really to build an arc for the monks of the Order that I can bring to the table when I write the next two books of the Secret War series (Traitor of Light, and The Fortress of Black Glass). Essentially, it's an opportunity to develop characters that I couldn't under the constraints of the first two novels which were largely relentless adventure romps.
To that effect, the episodes won't be page to page adventuring and action; in the best traditions of the mini-series, there will be episodes of contemplation and character building, just as there will be those big action set-pieces. The characters, I hope, will be intriguing and colourful. By concentrating on the relationships between the monks rather than being plot-centric I want the readers to care about these characters so when they arrive in the last two books, their emotions will already be invested. Which is important to me.
As I said in early posts for The Fortress of Black Glass, this final book will be bleak and not everyone will make it through to the end.

I plan to write the stories over the 12 months between September this year and Summer 2011. In October 2011 these stories will be published on the MFW Curran website at a rate of one per week for 12 weeks until Christmas, with the first episode/story hopefully appearing elsewhere on other blog-sites, writing-sites and maybe even in a short-fiction magazine (tba).
Then, depending on the success of these 12 stories, I plan to publish them as a collection either through a small press publisher or via self-publishing, along with the e-book.

But this project is all dependent on time. To succeed I'll need the time and space to write a short story a month as well as write the drafts required for the Traitor of Light. It won't be easy, and I've learned enough in the last year not to over-stretch myself, so I'll be playing it by ear - as ever.
And I'll be philosophical if it doesn't work out (a writer can be nothing but) - though if it does work out, then this could mean you'll be seeing a lot more of the Secret War in the future, folks...

Honour amongst thieves

Anyone dropping by recently might have noticed the number of tweets railing against a recent book I’ve been reading. In short, it was a terribly written novel, published in a genre that I have some affinity with, by a respected publisher and by an author who has written enough books to know better.

I’m torn between writer and reader right now. You see as a reader I want to warn anyone off buying this, not because it’s just my opinion that it’s rubbish but I get the awful feeling this has been written purely for commercial reasons and readers aren’t going to get much out of it; judging by the reviews, the ending is a cop-out and has been written expressly to be turned into a series of books AND films (of which the first is already going into pre-production and was announced even before the book was published which had the alarm bells ringing from the beginning) – which I suppose is no reason to slag-off a book if it was well-written and remotely original. In this case it is not. In fact there is nothing positive I can say about this book, other than it was mercifully short – perhaps another reason why readers would feel pissed off shelling out eight quid for something that reads like an over-inflated novella.

But as a writer, there’s something about ‘honour amongst thieves’ that has stopped me from coming out with the title of the book. On the internet there is no shortage of writers published or not, who have no qualms about slagging off other authors, sometimes personally, but I’m not one of them. I’ve seen writers attacking bloggers and vice versa, sometimes hysterically, about a review they have not agreed with, and life is just too short and too busy to fend off a lunatic novelist or their fans whose book you just didn’t like.

I also know how a bad review feels, so coming from another writer it might feel as though one of your peers is having a go, personally. I know reviews are just opinions, but they are also public criticisms. Like a guy who just can’t make a girl cheat on her boyfriend (because I’ve been on the receiving end) I just can’t give a bad review for a book. Call it chickening out if you want, but look at this way… If the book is really crap why give it more air-time than it should have.

Good books are meant to be spoken about – and spoken about often. Crap books are meant to be forgotten.

So let’s forget about it, shall we?

A Few of My Favourite Things

Over on Un:Bound there’s a new post on my bookshelves and reading habits. But I thought I’d give you a quick preview of it here. Obviously I have a shelf for my own books, books that sit on the top shelf in the lounge to remind me of my responsibilities and to feed that narcissistic desire I think all published authors have (publishing is three parts endeavour and one part vanity don’t you think?):

But my bookshelves are also about beloved books too, those that feel personal to me:

This is a just a selection of my few signed books that have inspired me over the years. People have often asked me what is so important about a signed book and I think it’s all about bridging the gap between author and reader. A signed book is a book where the author has taken their time to make the experience more personal for a fan or reader who is spending their hard-earned cash (and more importantly their hard earned time) to keep the faith in one’s work. It’s important to some readers to meet their authors, and if it’s important for the reader, it’s just as important for the author. I’ve never understood any writer who refuses to sign books. It’s worse than elitism, it smacks of laziness and resentment. Fans keep writers going. Without them a writer might as well get a bar job or something.

So here’s a collection of writers who believe in their readers just as this reader believes in them. As a published author, I’m still very much the fan-boy. Something, I think, will never change…

“3 Days” or “How long could you not write for?”

It's an odd question, I know, but for someone whose imagination is on constant duty, simply switching off that writing-brain is not an easy task. I haven’t written a thing today and don’t intend to write any prose until Monday, other than this short blog entry. That’s no big deal, I hear you say, but consider that I’ve never gone more that two days without writing some prose in some form - in over a year - and a break, however short, is going to be hard for me.

(Even if that break is only 3 days.)

So how long could you not write for?
I guess you could say that in any given year I will write for about 10 hours a week, and average around 10,000 words in that week. That’s about 520,000 words a year, or 500,000 words a year if you ignore holidays… and yes, that does mean for about two weeks in a year, I’m not writing something, as well as working a 30 hour day-job, being a husband to a beautiful wife and father to a demanding, yet lovely son. It’s obsessive, and I do recognise that I am wholly addicted to my imagination - so a break, however short, is a big deal to me.

(Even for 3 days.)

Last year was tricky. Last year there were more breaks because of Daniel, and breaks where I wasn’t writing anything – or so I told people. Truthfully, I was writing short stories on the quiet or researching future projects during those weeks which I promised would be writing-free. I just couldn’t help myself. I even started tinkering with The Black Hours when I should have been relaxing after another sleepless night caused by our three month-old son. But that was okay – I wasn’t burning myself out. I was fine. No harm, no foul, as they say. And I did take some breaks.

(But not longer than 3 days.)

From April, my life will be mental. That’s perhaps the easiest way of putting it. From April, Sarah will return to work and those 7 hours I sacrifice every week for the writing will be sacrificed for our son and his childcare. So that’s 7 hours lost but I still plan to write 10,000 words a week during weekends and evenings.
It’s going to be tough, I have no doubt. Tough on my rapidly disappearing social life. Tough on my family. Tough on me. If I’m stupid, I’ll burn myself out, but I think I know what I’m doing. As Frances said in the comments to a previous post, what do I do with my creative energy? How do I manage it? The truth is, my writing has its own momentum and the moment I stop for longer than 3 days is the moment I fear I will stall. After 3 days, I fear my writing will go stale and I will lose the motivation, the discipline and the momentum to keep writing. So I keep writing. Not the same thing all the time. It could be a short story. It could be a new novel. Anything. And maybe a break, now and then.
For 3 days.
Or as the Pythons say, “One more than 2 and no more than 3."
"4 is right out.”

So then… 3 days is the maximum...
(…and after that I am a willing slave to my imagination.)

And while we’re talking about German editions…

I got these this week… the German editions of The Hoard of Mhorrer. And very nice they are too:

I still love the logo design for my books and even though I'm proud of the English editions, the German books are the ones that get me excited the most.

It's just a pity I can't read German very well...

Doing that thing that writers should do

Last month a few people contacted me by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and other places to ask “just what the hell is going on?” and “when’s the next Secret War book coming out?”

I’ve assured them all by saying, “yes, I will be working on book 3 soon, but no, there’s no fixed date for publication”. That would pre-suppose I’ve nailed a publisher to a lucrative contract to publish all the Secret War books. That hasn’t happened, and I’ll be honest – I haven’t approached anyone yet.
At the moment, I don’t wish to deal-in with a proposal until I know what my cards look like, and so far while I have a strong hand, I know I can make it stronger. Once the fourth draft of The Black Hours is completed at the end of this month - in advance of the World Horror Convention in Brighton - I will approach an agent or two, to seek representation possibly, and to see how far away I am to getting a deal that will keep me writing for the next 3-4 years. The Black Hours will be part of that deal, as will the already-published books 1 & 2 of The Secret War series. I’m still with Random House, Germany, which could mean – strangely – that book 3 of the Secret War series may see publication in German before the English version. But stranger things have happened in the peculiar world of publishing…

So what about my next projects and where does the Secret War series figure? Well, my immediate writing schedule is already planned out. 2010 will be the year I complete The Black Hours and make headway on The Traitor of Light, and I expect to complete book 3 of The Secret War by the summer 2011. It won’t be a long book (about 300 pages) though it will require my customary 4 to 5 drafts, so it will take some time, folks. Depending on whether I have a publisher by then, it will be edited professionally and then sent to Random House Germany, and hopefully an English publisher too.

After that, I plan to write another stand-alone novel, either The 22nd Floor or The Fixer of Clocks, before embarking on the fourth Secret War novel. The Fortress of Black Glass is all there waiting to be written, I just want to give it all my attention rather than leap into it as I did last year at the request of my former publishers. I’ve since learnt you can’t rush these things, especially for a book that could be as long as 600 pages.
After Fortress, I’ll be taking a short break from series-writing with another standalone novel, probably whichever book I didn’t complete in 2012. And this will bring me nicely to 2015.
After then…? Well, there’s 20 more books that I have plots and characters for, including those mentioned on the website. It will all depend if I’m writing full-time by then and whether all my attention is fixed on completing those projects. There are plans for more Secret War books (there were 12 in all), but other projects may intervene by then. We’ll have to see - I don’t want to short-change my readership, and I don’t want to string out a series that shouldn’t progress beyond four books.

So, to summarise what’s happening on the book front for the next five years:

The Black Hours (400-500 page stand alone historical thriller) – to be completed 2010
The Traitor of Light (300 pages; third book of The Secret War series) – to be completed 2011

And in no particular order…

The 22nd Floor (300 pages; stand alone horror novel)
The Fortress of Black Glass (600 pages; fourth book of The Secret War series)
The Fixer of Clocks (300 pages; stand alone science-fiction thriller)

Add to that a short story every month, and this should keep me out of trouble for the next five years, shouldn’t it?

I’ve opted out

Talk about last minute, but then in all honesty I was undecided. So what swung it for me to opt out of Google Book’s settlement?
Well, lack of control really. A lack of control of what is digitized from my works. After all, come July the rights to my first two books will revert back to me and technically it will mean I will be out of print and Google will be allowed to digitize my books without my say-so.

Now I’ve heard the arguments, especially from the Society of Authors, about this being the best deal for the author. But that assumes we have no choice, and we do. We have a choice about not being digitized without agreement or arrangement. And I’ve agreed not to. Google says the author receives 64% of whatever profit is earned from their digitization and they think that’s fair. Most e-book publishers give the author up to 85% of the profits and you just know that Google will do anything to make sure the author gets as little as possible probably using net rather than gross profits.
They aren’t doing this for art, for the author, or for the reader – to think otherwise is quite naïve. Google are doing this for themselves.

So I’ve opted out and retained control.
Time will tell if that was a good thing or not…

Twits and New Years resolutions

Eagle-eyed visitors to this blog will notice there is a new resident on the toolbar to the right...

A few weeks ago I started twittering/tweeting/twitting as a means to fire news-bites across the electronic highways quickly, kinda like shouting from the top of a very tall building in a city busy with tall buildings. There is so much traffic on Twitter that it really is like trying to stand out in a very big and very noisy crowd. So no, I wouldn’t say that Twitter is the most effective means of communication (what exactly can you communicate substantially in 170 characters or less?) but it is the most immediate.

One of my New Years resolutions was to keep an internet presence going as long as possible for 2010 and thus enhance my publicity skills (books don’t sell themselves; authors do). So in December I dived into the 21st century by purchasing an i-phone as a means to increase my profile on t’internet. I must say that the i-phone is quickly becoming indispensable to me and my writing (but rather than ramble on about it here, I’ll leave that for a later blog entry).
Now, we were talking about twits weren’t we?
For the uninitiated, Twitter and the i-phone is a marriage made in pixel-heaven. The low character count means you don’t get the dreaded “mobile-phone-claw” due to texter’s cramp. It’s also instantaneous and while you can’t get away with writing any old shit all the time, you can get away with it some of the time. There is so much you can do with it, it’s no wonder so many people are twittering away.
Now I won’t twit as much as my peers, only for as long as I have something meaningful to say, but it will replace some of the more random and brief blog entries found here. And you don’t need to be part of Twitter to read my “twits” either. Each time I twit, it will be replicated on the right.
It’s that simple.
I hope.


New Years Revolutions

Other than keeping this blog, the website and the twitting going through 2010, another New Years resolution is to embrace any writing-related opportunity that comes my way and last week I signed up for a programme item at the World Horror Convention 2010 in Brighton. Having never done one of these before, I’ll be interested to see what it entails. It’s got me excited and admittedly a little nervous as all steps into the unknown are, but it will enhance something that I’m already looking forward to (I can’t wait for March to come around). So if any of you are attending WHC2010 and you see some bearded guy in a shirt and jeans looking (probably) a little tipsy with a stack of books under his arm, don’t hesitate to accost/berate/heckle/have-a-natter with me.
As Austin Powers says, “I won’t bite. Hard.”

(Note: I’ll post more details about the event on the blog when I get them…)


More New Years Postulations

And as we’re on the subject of resolutions, here are two more: to write one short story a month and to read one more book than I did the previous year (a resolution I’ve kept going for the past two years now). The reading is self-explanatory; the writing is all down to learning the craft. In the main I’ll be writing non-generic short stories from wherever I find inspiration, from different POVs to unfamiliar voices. Ultimately it’s about keeping on top of my game and experimenting. Some of the stories will work. Some won’t, but a writer who does not train is a writer who succumbs to parody/boredom/writers-block and then creative seizure/death.

I’ve already drafted January’s short story, “Regarding Mr Prittier”, and may well look to publish it somewhere once I’m 90% happy with it (I’d like to say 100%, but a writer who is 100% happy with anything is probably deluded). “Regarding Mr Pritter” is the first bit of original fiction I’ve written since September and the first original fiction of this year. And this decade. While it isn’t a genre piece, I think there is a little magic in there somewhere. Hopefully it will mark a successful start to 2010.


Finally, happy new year to you all…
May the writers among you find inspiration and may the words keep flowing…
And may the readers among you find magic and wonder in the pages freely bought or hard earned…

MFWC
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