For the Love of the Devil

I wrote "For the Love of the Devil" way back in 1998, when I was 28/29. The main characters are in their early twenties, so by definition it is a work of Young Adult fiction (and I bloody hate YA fiction - all those Kindle books about vampires and zombies falling in love, "written" by Indie "writers"). But let's not forget that although I do conform to conventionality with my alternative history novels, I am, at heart, a writer of transgressive fiction. And even back then, when this book was first published in 1999, those nascent transgressive emotions were evident. This was a book which features erotic scenes, and was sent for review, but ultimately rejected (the reviewer said that although they were enjoying it, one scene early on in the book turned their stomach). A little bit unfair, but as someone who read it said to me, "That scene with the imps chewing off a guy's cock was a bit much." So I guess the criticism was justified.

So why am I talking about a book that I wrote ages ago, and which was first published ages ago as well? Well, it's been republished with a new cover - the one you see above. I might be biased (the cover was created by my talented stepdaughter) but I think it looks fantastic. Just great for a re-release of an old novel. Obviously, the book has been (slightly) updated - I mention smartphones rather than ugly old cell-phones - and some of the less palatable paragraphs have been removed. The book was originally around 150,000 words long - now it's been pruned by about 6,000 words (I've never been through so many red pens).

But what is FtLotD about? Well, basically it's a love story about a young woman and a young demon (see, Christ, I was ahead of my time, what with all of these YA books written by 50-year-old, sexually-frustrated cat-ladies about young women falling in love with vampires and zombies). But that makes it sound a bit shit. What I love about this book (and it's not because I wrote it - there are some scenes that, when I read it recently, I thought were very twee, but I didn't want to rewrite the entire book) is that I created this vision of Hell (and eventually Heaven) that hopefully captures the reader's imagination. Here is a demon who is just "doing his job" in a hellish factory of torture. But the demon desires nothing more than to be human again. This book, I actually played it out in my mind, listening to music (and in particular, "Sympathy For The Devil") and imagining how it would look if it was turned into a film. There are some very dark characters, and some very troubled characters, but hopefully it sucks the reader into its world.  Style-wise, I was still finding my feet, my writer's voice. Actually, it's difficult for a writer to have a noticeable voice when writing in the third person (that's why I generally write in the first person now), but in a book like this, the writer's voice is less important than the story, the tale, the thing that keeps the reader reading. But I planned this novel before I committed pen to paper (actually, it was fingers to the keyboard of an ancient IBM-compatible 486 PC). Nowadays, I let my characters lead the story from beginning to the middle to the end. If nothing else, if you've read anything I've written recently, FtLotD is an interesting insight into how I wrote "back in the day" (really, back in the day, I wrote "die Stunde X" on a Commodore Amiga, using a word processor called Wordworth - they couldn't call it Wordsworth, because apparently that was the name of a famous wordsmith. Somewhere, I still have the first manuscript of that novel printed using a dot matrix printer).

I guess I'm rambling. That's what writers do. Sometimes, we hope that we write something profound, but I don't think this is going to be the post when that happens. Let me just conclude this one by saying that I'm proud (and embarrassed occasionally by the stylistic naivety) of this novel. It's a cheap "buy" for the Kindle (hey, if old cat-ladies can flog their vampire love stories on the Kindle, then I can sell this), and hopefully you'll be entertained for a few hours. Maybe you'll instantly forget it (I can't recall the plots of any John Grisham books I've read, so meh ...) but hopefully you'll be briefly touched.

The Kindle version is here.

The paperback version (for proper readers) is here.

(Disclaimer - apologies for any typos in this post. My proof-reader went to bed ages ago!)

Muslamic Ray Gun

My next novel, Muslamic Ray Gun, is currently being proof-read, the final stage in the publishing process. I'm hoping it should be out on 1 September 2016. What I'm also hoping to do, over the next couple of weeks, is publish on here the original opening chapter to this novel, a chapter which has since been dropped.

Muslamic Ray Gun is a coming-of-age story featuring the life of Andy Huxtable, a former member of Combat 18. As you can imagined, it's not for the fainthearted.

Hopefully, the week before publication, I'll be able to give you the cover, the blurb and the dropped chapter as a pre-publication gift. Keep watching this space.

A Fistful of Euros

A FISTFUL OF EUROS

The Sequel to Blood Money, starring Alex Savage.

Alex Savage is an asset. He’s been an asset all of his life, usually carrying out jobs for the British government. Jobs that they ultimately want to deny responsibility for. A former SAS corporal, and one-time operator for the Firm, Alex is now burnt out, jaded, with a whole truckload of baggage, and he doesn’t care what he does or who he kills for money. For the last few years, Alex has branched out into the private sector, where the pay is more lucrative, and the risks are less. 

When Alex carries out the audacious assassination of a man in a French prison, it brings his skills to the attention of a Parisian gangster who wants him to execute the daughter of the director of the French security service. The gangster is prepared to pay a fistful of Euros for it. It all seems like an easy way to make money, until the French security service demand that he carry out a job for them at the same time. It’s not the first time Alex has faced a conflict of interests. 

And even with his girlfriend planning a trip to see him, Alex begins to realize that there isn’t much love in the city of Paris. 

Kindle Version

Paperback Version

For My Mother

Today, I tried to think of the things you did for me When I was young, the times when I needed help
When I couldn’t do things for myself I thought of the times when you told me off
Because I’d done something wrong
And sometimes it was because you was angry
But sometimes it was because you didn’t want me to get hurt
I thought, as well, of the times when I was older, when I should’ve known better
When you still looked out for me, even when I made mistakes
Even when it was all my own fault, you still looked out for me
I remember the time I was on the floor, hugging my knees
And you called the doctor, and you made sure they came and cared for me
And they ensured I didn’t die
And still you looked strong, you stayed strong, and even though I’d done wrong
You tried to blame yourself for my crimes, like it was all your fault
When clearly it wasn’t
Throughout all of this, I buried my head in the sand
Or maybe I was just self-obsessed
Or maybe I was an optimist and ignored all of the signs
I never saw you become weaker overnight
It was more of a gradual decline
And still I refused to accept it as reality
We would joke about the inevitable, about the things I would do after the inevitable happened
And you would laugh
But perhaps neither of us realized the inevitable would happen so soon
I’m a writer, and I have an imagination, and I live my life in a world of creation
So reality, when it hit me this time, it hit me hard
It made me think the reality is that I will struggle to cope
When the inevitable happens
Today, I tried to think of all of the things you did for me
When I was younger and when I was older
But there are too many to mention and our time is too short to mention them all
The reality is that we would run out of time
Just know that I appreciate them all

Writers and money

Let me start by saying that the majority of writers don't earn a lot of money. There are the ones who probably sell a handful of copies of their books to family and friends. There are the ones like me who sell lots of copies to complete strangers. And then there are the ones who sell fucking shedloads of books in Waterstones.

But I don't write books to make money (although, making money from writing is great).

I can tell you that a few years ago, I was earning nigh on £30k a year in the civil service, but successive changes of jobs and drops in pay meant that the last job I was doing, I was earning less than £10,000 a year. It was then that I decided it really wasn't worth remaining in "work", mainly because the pay was shit and it was sucking the life from my creativity. Now, I won't tell you how much I earn from selling books, but I can tell you I don't earn £10,000 a year. I do earn enough to pay a few bills and keep me in beer money, pay for petrol for my car, and get my car taxed and insured. And I don't have to worry about the rat race anymore. I'm a true bohemian - underpaid, undervalued, but still happy.

But people look down on me. "You don't work?" Well, actually, writing is working. "Is it though? I mean, how can it be if you're not in Waterstones?" Well, because I'm making a bit of cash from it, I sometimes spend 60+ hours a week doing it, and I-- "But you don't make enough money to pay a mortgage - you drive a rubbish car. Have you thought about getting a job?" Hmm. Well, you see where I'm going with this. People expect other people to earn lots of money or spend 35 hours a week chained to a desk, or else they don't respect them. The classic is, "Perhaps you should give up trying to chase your dreams and get yourself a job." For Christ's sake, writing is a job. I write books, some people enjoy reading them, and I get paid for doing it. It's not a dream I'm chasing. I've long since given up the dream that I'm gonna be number one in the Waterstones' charts. That simply doesn't happen.

Here's the thing - and this is the truth. Only a handful of writers get a major publishing deal. It's not worth the risk paying some new writer £250,000 for a book deal, not unless you're 100% you've got another "Harry Potter" on your hands - and those types of books are as rare as rocking horse shit. Publishers like famous people - they're more bankable. So that leaves most new writers with just a couple of choices. Self-publish, or try to get a deal with an indie publisher. The indie publisher will push your book a little bit, but they don't have the budget to compete with the major publishing houses. Effectively, if you're a small-time writer, you'll be lucky to earn more than a couple of grand a year selling books, even if you have a deal. But remember, that still makes you a writer.

Me, I'm a writer. Am I a full-time writer? Sometimes, I am. But some weeks, I don't write at all. I'm a bit lazy like that. Do I earn a fortune selling books? Well, no, but are we judged on how much we earn? Is that the most important attribute a person can have?

Those bad review blues ...

A lot of would-be writers - and published writers as well - are mortified when they get a bad review on Amazon. I know I used to be. But the thing is, bad reviews fall into two distinct categories. Those which give you constructive feedback and those which are just totally unconstructive. Take my last review for "die Stunde X". Apparently, the reader found it to be "outstandingly bad" (I feel the same way about most books by Martina Cole and Andy McNab, though I still read their stuff). He goes on to state that the book is banal and the characters are two-dimensional. In fairness, I wrote the book twenty odd years ago, and my characterizations weren't that strong back then (I was still learning to write - give a guy a break, and all that). Now, it could be said that I take the guy's criticism on board - though I do tend to disagree that the book is "banal" or "outstandingly bad" (such negative superlatives have no place in reviews written by nobodies). The book sales alone for its sequel would tend to disprove that (if you think the first book is shit, you certainly won't buy its follow-up). But delving deeper into the review, which only took a few seconds, I found that guy had reviewed only two other books and had described both of them as being pretty rubbish as well - he's a regular Mr-One-Star reviewer. It's one thing to write reviews, but surely this guy must have read at least one book that he actually likes? And there's the thing. People usually only write a review if they absolutely loved a book or absolutely hated it. The fact that this guy can only criticize negatively speaks volumes. At first, I was upset - for about 60 seconds - but the review came on royalties day, so I just cracked open a bottle of champagne and forgot about it.

What I'm saying is this. If you're a new writer, you're going to feel really depressed if you get a bad review. Don't be. Take on board any of the criticism you manage to find within the review, consider whether the reviewer has a point, and perhaps learn a lesson from it. Then consider the fact that reviewer is probably just a bog-standard reader who has never written a book (readers are fantastic people, but they're not writers), and your book probably just doesn't appeal to him or her, and it's really nothing personal. And if you're a prolific writer, a) you will learn more about writing with each book, each short story, that you write, b) you will start to make a few book sales and earn a bit of cash and c) you will get to the point where you just don't give a fuck about banal reviews by people with nothing better to do with their lives than rubbish the hard work of others. Remember - there are no monuments to critics ...

How to fucking concentrate

My mind is a mess. Constantly, I'm thinking of too many things at once. It gets worse when the manic part of my baby bipolar kicks in. I stay awake for hours, I start working on one book, switch to another, before leaving that to consider a fresh, new short. I take a break to change the playlist on Spotify, and then become embroiled in a debate on Facebook. Then I'll spend an hour lying on my bed thinking of new problems for my characters to face.

It's no secret that I can write fast. I can write 5,000 words in an evening, more so if fuelled by alcohol in my local pub, where no one ever talks to me. My record is 10,000 words in an evening. Of course, that's a first draft and sometimes subsequent drafts change drastically. But I could, if I put my mind to it, write a 100,000 word thriller in 10 days. And yet, I don't spend all day, every day, writing. I wish I could. But there are myriad distractions. If I write on a computer, it may ding to tell me that some wanker has disagreed with my politically incorrect post on Facebook. A friend might email me, and I'll have a chat with them. When I've had a mind to, there is the distraction of Internet dating sites, where I have learnt a new tactic - to view someone's profile without contacting them. That's like a cat shitting on your doorstep. You know he's been there, he's paid attention, but he can't be arsed to do anything other than take a shit. Someone might text me. I might start to sing along to a song and decide to get up and dance. The TV will catch my eye and I'll have to watch another episode of Spartacus - just because. I could be writing one book and think to myself, "I'm not feeling this." And if I'm not feeling it as the writer, then the reader definitely won't be feeling it.

I need to concentrate.

And here's the irony. The majority of my income comes from writing. Sure, it's not enough to live a decent existence (they'd never give me a fucking mortgage), and common sense would tell me that I should spend more time writing - especially if it's my "job". But then, because it's my "job", I like to skive off every now and then. And because I'm the boss, I can actually do that. But when I skive, my salary stays the same. If I work, there is the potential for it to increase. But then, because I'm not motivated by money, I'll skive off a bit more. And that vicious circle just keeps going round and round and round ...

I do need to concentrate.

I need to concentrate on just one book at a time, and get it finished. I'm working on "One Eight", I think about "Dark Satanic Mills". Both are halfway complete, yet "One Eight" will be around 70,000 words, whereas "Dark Satanic Mills" is already 150,000 words. And then, to compound things, I started to write another novel, "Smuggler's Blues" - very personal to me. And that doesn't even include the ideas in my head, the books for which I've yet to put serious pen to paper.

The thing is, most writers will churn out a book a year, and I used to think that was pretty poor. Three months to write, three months to edit, six months to publication. So surely two a year is better? But sitting in the driving seat, it's not so easy. And let's not even mention the apathy of the "public" to my serious books, ones like "Besotted", "Putrid Underbelly" and "Maggie's Children". The stuff I enjoy writing. My "public" likes "die Stunde X" and "nach Schema F", so then I feel compelled to write another book in the series. But writing to order is a difficult thing to do. I do want to write the third in that series, but I need to be in the zone.

Shit. It's not easy being a writer ...

And yet, I've just written these last 700 words in about 5 minutes. Mindless cock-babble.

PS - I've not edited it. I'm sure there are mistakes ...