Carry On Up The Amazon

I just had one of those days writers dream about. It started with an e-mail from my publisher that morning, telling me my second book ‘The Damage’ had been selected as a Kindle Daily Deal.

Obviously this was good news. I regularly get promotional e-mails telling me a certain book is available for a lower than normal price and I figured a number of people might see an advert like that for ‘The Damage’ and be tempted to give it a try. Hopefully I’d sell a few more than average but I didn’t have very many expectations beyond that.

I’m not arrogant about my writing, far from it in fact. Most writers I know are riddled with insecurities about their own work. It tends to come with the territory and the divas that think they are God’s gift to the writing world are, thankfully, pretty few and far between. However I have had enough positive feedback in reviews, Twitter messages and Facebook postings from readers to know that most people really like my David Blake books once they’ve read them. I reasoned that by the end of the Kindle Daily deal, I might have gone up a few notches on the much vaunted Amazon listings and perhaps picked up a few more readers along the way, who might enjoy ‘The Damage’ and maybe even tell their mates about. If I was fortunate, some of them might even buy the other books, ‘The Drop’ and ‘The Dead’ as well

I then got on with some work. Around noon I received the first bit of positive news. My agent had checked the Amazon rankings and discovered ‘The Damage’ was number 482 in the Kindle charts. That might not sound too great to anybody but an author but there are many thousands of books in the world and I had started that day with my second David Blake book residing at 33,889 (I know that because we eventually found out how many places up the charts it had soared in just one day). Agent, publisher and I were all very happy with 482.

I carried on with some editing for a while and genuinely forgot about it, figuring it might have peaked already. An hour later, my diligent Literary Agent checked again and told me we were at 138. Things were starting to look quite exciting all of a sudden. I was up there rubbing shoulders with the big boys; writers who’ve written a stack of best-selling novels and become household names in the process, with major publishers and huge advertising budgets to promote their latest work.

More writing followed but, by this stage, I was a bit distracted and beginning to wonder just how far I could climb this pesky Amazon chart and, subsequently, how visible my books might become to the wider world. I can put it into perspective by saying that they have done pretty well already; having been optioned for TV by Harry Potter producer, David Barron, who is adapting them with Layer Cake writer, JJ Connolly. My first book ‘The Drop’ was voted one of the top five Thrillers of the Year by The Times and ‘The Damage’ was nominated as one of the ‘Top 12 Best Summer Reads’, again by The Times but none of that helped me mount a major assault on the monolith that is the Amazon charts. It’s amazing the difference a bit of advertising and the power of social media can make.

By 2.00pm The Damage was at number 24 and we still had ten hours of the promotion to go. Figuring we’d make the most of it, the agent, publisher and I all tweeted about it and posted on FB. Then a lovely thing happened; people started to spread the word for me; lots of people. Twitter re-tweets were so numerous I couldn’t thank everybody for them individually and there were lots of shares on Facebook, saying that my book was on offer and worth a read. Many took the trouble to inform their friends and Twitter followers that the book was storming the kindle charts. It was lovely, life affirming stuff and I was touched by the level of kindness shown.

By 4.00pm we were, unbelievably, in the top ten of the Amazon chart. ‘The Damage’ was seventh in the Kindle book list, ahead of massive names like John Grisham and Dan Brown’s latest.  It was even higher than ‘Gone Girl’. That was a champagne moment, or it would have been if I’d had time to pause for a second to open a bottle, as messages were coming into me now at an amazing rate. Other authors I knew were cheering from the wings on Twitter, which was lovely but not wholly surprising, as the crime writing fraternity is, on the whole, an incredibly warm and supportive place. We’ve all struggled at one point or another, so we all genuinely like to see one of our own having a good day. This time it was my turn.

There were more tweets and more shares, more good wishes, congratulations and ‘wow’s from publisher and agent. The next time we checked, I half expected ‘The Damage’ to have peaked or gone back down again, authors are like that, by the time we’ve even been published we’ve had so many disappointments and knockbacks we basically prepare ourselves for them in advance, but it hadn’t peaked. When the chart was updated, I was at number three and somebody called JK Rowling was at number four. I instantly took a screen grab of that one for posterity. I figured it would be nice to show the grandchildren one day.

At half past eight, the book eventually peaked at number 2 in the Amazon Kindle chart having gone up a staggering 33,887 places in a day, and was only kept off the top spot by a book that had been in the top 100 for 75 days; ‘The Detective’s Daughter’ by Lesley Thomson. My other two David Blake books, ‘The Dead’ and ‘The Drop’, hung onto the coat tails of ‘The Damage’ and were dragged up with it until they were residing at numbers 40 and 149 respectively. I can only assume a number of people bought two of the books or all three together, once they’d had the chance to read the synopses and reviews.

I didn’t go daft. There was no Krug or caviar. Instead I had a couple of bottles of beer and tried to reply to as many people as possible to thank them for spreading the word. Then I sat back and enjoyed the nice, warm feeling of being second in a chart that probably boosts an author’s profile like nothing else can.  

I don’t yet know how many of ‘The Damage’ we sold but it was thousands. In one day. Like most authors, I am in it for the long haul though and my books have had their profile raised, which should lead to more people trying them out.

Of course it might make no difference to me at all in the end. I could ultimately be ignored, dismissed or forgotten by an apathetic public; a one day wonder, the guy who could have been a contender. I might live to be an old man, residing in some underfunded nursing home somewhere, surrounded by young people who might understandably doubt my credentials. They will look at me questioningly and ask themselves, ‘Did he really write a book that went above JK Rowling and Dan Brown in the Kindle chart?’ At which point, like some ageing actor from a forgotten era, who carries his creased and fading newspaper reviews around with him in his wallet, I will reach for whatever electronic device has superseded the lap top or tablet and I’ll show them that screen grab, while tunelessly singing ‘They can’t take that away from me, oh they can’t take that away from me,’ as they gently wheel me away for my medication.

This is an interview that originally appeared on Ruth Jacobs great web site ‘In the Booth with Ruth’, which is here: http://ruthjacobs.co.uk/2013/07/08/howard-linskey-interview/

 

What’s your writing background? When did you begin writing and what inspired you?

I started writing years ago for a very popular Newcastle United fanzine ‘The Mag’. That was the first time I saw my name in print and it gave me the confidence to go on and become a journalist working for regional newspapers. I’ve written all sorts of things over the years, for web sites, magazines and newspapers but I was also writing fiction as well. Like most writers, I got plenty of rejection letters but they were nice ones. They usually told me my stuff was good and that was enough to keep me going. Obviously I read books but I think I am even more inspired by films if I’m honest. My first book ‘The Drop’ has been compared to ‘The Long Good Friday’ and ‘Get Carter’, which I am pretty chuffed about, as I love both of those classic Brit ganster flicks.  

 

How often do you write? And how do you manage to fit in writing among other commitments?

I try to write every day but it doesn’t always work out that way, as life gets in the way. Before jacking in the day job, I could only write in the evenings and at weekends, which put a lot of pressure on me. There were points during the writing of my last two books where I did feel absolutely knackered but I managed to keep going somehow. It wasn’t easy though and I had to be pretty disciplined. I hate wasting time, as I still don’t have much of it. I look after my daughter, which is wonderful but it shortens my working day, as you can’t really write once a seven year old comes home from school. I never watch soap operas or reality TV or much TV at all in fact. I moved house a few weeks ago and still haven’t rigged up the TV but I haven’t missed it. I try and ration myself to an hour a day with a DVD box set. Perhaps unsurprisingly I like something that has a bit of quality writing in it, like ‘The Killing’, ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Borgen’ or ‘Boardwalk Empire’. I’m currently watching ‘Spiral’ the gritty French cop series, which is very good.

 

In which genre do you most enjoy writing?

I’m not too hung up on genre but I have no problem being described as a crime writer or referred to as an author of thrillers, though it doesn’t worry me to write outside those genres either. I have written a historical story set in World War Two, which I am in the process of editing, so you might see that published at some point in the future hopefully. I grew up reading John Le Carre, Len Deighton, Jack Higgins and Frederick Forsyth so I’ve always enjoyed WW2 and Cold War thrillers. I’m currently reading Peter Guttridge’s ‘The Thing Itself’, which has sections set in WW1, WW2 and the present day and I’m loving it so far.

 

What draws you to write in that genre?

I’m led by the story not the genre, so I came up with the idea of ‘The Drop’ then realised it was a crime story. I enjoy writing crime because it gives you the opportunity to place your characters in pretty extreme, stressful situations involving death or injury, imprisonment or betrayal and it brings emotion to a story when so much is at risk for the characters.

 

Can you tell me about your current project(s)? 

Now that my trilogy of Newcastle gangster stories is complete, I’m giving David Blake and his crew some time off.  My new book is a crime story but this one has some different characters. I am tackling a book about a journalist who returns to his home to investigate the disappearance of a missing girl.  As usual with my books, it is more complex than that though, with several different story lines all happening at once, over two time periods. Somehow I never seem to keep it simple but I enjoy writing books that have a lot going on in them.

 

What are your writing plans for the future?

I don’t look too far ahead but I want to keep on writing books for as long as people are keen to read them. I’ve been lucky so far. ‘The Drop’, ‘The Damage’ and ‘The Dead’ have all been well received. I am published in the UK and Germany and the David Blake books will hit America in the autumn…or should that be ‘the fall’? The books have been optioned for TV too, so I just want to build on all of that and keep going.

 

Music Maestro

This post is from a piece I was asked to write about music and writing:

I like to listen to music while writing but my choices are limited because I just cannot write while anything with a lyric is playing. I am so interested in writing of any kind that I become too easily distracted by other people’s words to write my own. As a result, I am usually restricted to tuning into Classic FM, so most of my gritty, contemporary crime stories are written while the music of long dead composers plays gently in the background.

Music does feature in my books. I figured David Blake, my white-collar gangster anti-hero would spend a fair bit of time in night clubs, so I researched the kind of music that would be played in them these days and was quite surprised to pick up a taste for R&B along the way. I found myself driving around with Rihanna and Black Eyed Peas CDs in my car and Flo Rida or Neo blasting out of the radio. Down with the kids? No, it’s more of a guilty, private pleasure. If I attempted to bust some moves to Rihanna, I’d look like one of those embarrassing dads trying to dance at a wedding.

If I’m really looking for a bit of inspiration to get the words flowing or to drag me away from the twin, distracting evils of Facebook and Twitter, I’ll play a film score. I’ve always been a film fan and my writing is more influenced by films than books if I’m honest. I love soundtracks and these days, with the advent of YouTube, it’s even easier to find obscure scores from long forgotten movies or TV shows. I’m a fan of Ennio Morricone, particularly his score for ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ and John Barry’s themes from, ‘The Ipcress File’, ‘The Persuaders’ and the Bond films never seem to diminish with age. Hans Zimmer, composer of ‘Gladiator’ amongst others, writes some stirring stuff to help gee up the word count and it doesn’t get more atmospheric than Trevor Jones soundtrack for ‘Last Of The Mohicans’.

Ipcress File Theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Jw6_Xgszk

I’ve never been able to pick up a copy of my all-time favourite film soundtrack, so I have to summon it up from YouTube whenever I feel the need to hear it again, which is often. The theme for ‘The Long Good Friday’ is simply terrific.  Francis Monkman’s pulsating score might sound like it was distinctly of-its-time but still provides the perfect backdrop for London’s top boy, Harold Shand’s arrival at the airport, ten minutes into the film. Bob Hoskins doesn’t even have to emote at this point. The theme tells us everything we need to know about Shand. He’s nails and you wouldn’t mess with him……unless you happen to be the IRA of course, which sets us up for possibly the finest climactic scene of any British film ever. Hoskins face, as he is driven away at the end of The Long Good Friday, to the strains of Monkman’s brilliant theme, lives long in the memory.

The Long Good Friday theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAXxYKave6o

A couple of years back, I managed to get hold of the soundtrack for the classic British gangster film ‘Get Carter’, which has a particular resonance for me. My first book ‘The Drop’ has been described as “A Get Carter for the 21^st Century”, partly because the two stories share a common gangster theme but primarily because ‘The Drop’ is also set in Newcastle (though the original book ‘Jack’s Return Home’ by Ted Lewis is famously not based in Tyneside). Roy Budd’s soundtrack is one of those scores that’s instantly recognisable. ‘Get Carter’ is a very good film that becomes a terrific one because the incidental music lends it an instant ambience of understated cool. It even makes up for Michael Caine’s ludicrous accent; a Geordie returning to his homeland? I don’t think so, unless the Elephant and Castle is actually a district of Wallsend. Somehow it doesn’t matter and ‘Get Carter’ is still a classic.

Get Carter theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoa3OTJfWIY

When my second book ‘The Damage’, came out, I was interviewed on TV for the first time. The ‘North East Tonight’ reporter asked his cameraman to film me walking up and down the mean streets of Newcastle. I was eager to please but more than a little self-conscious. I didn’t expect much from the end result but was pleasantly surprised when they aired the footage. I was no better looking, cooler or harder than normal - I look like a chubby Peter Beardsley on a good day - but, as I made my way through the dimly-lit, pedestrian tunnel behind Newcastle Central Station they played a bit of background music that I instantly recognised; the theme from ‘Get Carter’. The reporter concluded that, “Forty one years on from Get Carter, Newcastle may have another gritty gangster thriller to define its character in the eyes of crime novel readers.” I don’t do cool; never have, never will but that was……almost cool. So shoot me know. Thanks to Roy Budd’s iconic theme, that short walk, captured on film, was easily my finest hour.

That TV interview: http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2012-05-08/newcastle-gangster-novel-adapted-for-tv/

Living with a Gangster

I was honoured to be invited onto author and reviewer Graham Smith's blog in May, which is where the following post first appeared. Graham has a lot of interesting posts on his blog from up and coming writers. There's a chap on there at the moment called Lee Child for example and he seems to be doing okay. http://grahamsmithwriter.blogspot.co.uk/

For the past three years now I’ve been living with a gangster. It’s been a dysfunctional and abusive relationship but you might be surprised to learn that he took the brunt of the violence not me. In three books now; ‘The Drop’, ‘The Damage’ and ‘The Dead’, which has just been published by No Exit, I have taken great delight in placing my Geordie, white-collar criminal, David Blake, in trouble again and again. Blake has been beaten up and shot at, chased by men on motor bikes then threatened with imprisonment, torture and execution. He has been targeted by hit men, assaulted by Police officers and forced to fend off an attacker in his apartment, using nothing but an urn containing the ashes of his girlfriend’s mother.

Blake is no saint however and he, in turn, has killed people in all three books; with knives, guns, machetes or simply by ordering their deaths. Not bad for a man who never actually considers himself to be a gangster. Blake’s life is pretty stressful, so he has occasionally turned to drugs but, being an old fashioned, northern lad, he tends to prefer booze or, on occasions, women to relieve that stress. He is not the best boyfriend material however, having cheated on his girl with minimal guilt, and is unlikely to empathise with you if you’ve had a hard day at the office, as it is unlikely to have been as tough as the 24 hours he has endured.

And what has David Blake given me in return for all of the grief I’ve put him through? Well, plenty. Apart from the obvious relief and joy that comes with finally becoming a published author and seeing my name on a book cover, I wasn’t sure what to expect as a first time novelist. Would anybody read my book, would anyone actually like it? Thankfully they did and they do. I have had some wonderful moments because of Blake. I’ve been reviewed positively by, amongst others, The Daily Mail and The Times; the latter naming me as one of their top five thriller writers of the year because of ‘The Drop’, an accolade that I still can’t quite believe, even now. Frankly I’d be happy to have that one etched on my tombstone.

In the north east in particular, the books have gone down really well and I have received a stack of messages from folk who enjoyed reading a story that is set in an area they know. I’ve been interviewed in all of the local papers, made numerous appearances on BBC Radio Newcastle and even been on TV.  I’ve also given away my books in competitions on NUFC.com, the web site for exiled Newcastle United fans around the globe, which I think gave me almost as much pleasure as the Times review. ‘The Drop’, renamed ‘Crime Machine’, has been published to great reviews in Germany, so ‘The Damage’ will follow it there next year and, in the Autumn, Harper Collins will publish both books in the U.S. God knows what they will make of my Geordie gangster in America.

The only thing that could possibly top all of the above is the e-mail my publisher received from someone claiming to work for David Barron, producer of the Harry Potter films. He had apparently bought a copy of my book, read it, loved it and wanted to turn it into a TV series. This seemed a tad unlikely but it turned out, astonishingly, to be true. A few weeks later I was sitting in my agent’s London office in a meeting with David, who turned out to be a very nice bloke indeed. I spent a pleasant hour or two with the man behind the most successful movie franchise the world has ever seen, discussing the practicalities of bringing David Blake to the small screen. The scripts are being developed by JJ Connolly, another top man, who wrote the great British gangster flick, ‘Layer Cake’. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to watch David Blake being put in peril all over again; this time on the telly.

Now that the trilogy is finally complete, I’m not going to say whether Blake, or his large assortment of supporting characters from the Newcastle underworld, will ever make a re-appearance. That’s dependant on me coming up with a strong enough storyline. The last thing I want to do is churn out two dozen very similar books, on auto pilot that, like Hollywood sequels, fall foul of the inevitable law of diminishing returns.

I have an idea for a new book and I’m afraid there’s no space for David Blake in this one. I owe the fellah a great deal but I’ve been seeing other people lately; in my mind’s eye at least. I’m going to take a break from Blake for a while, to allow some different characters to live with me instead. However there is no way I am ever going to forget the man and everything he has done for me. Who knows, maybe one day, I’ll come crawling back to him.

On the Joys of Editing ‘The Dead’

This writing lark is easy really. Just rattle out a first draft of your novel in six months or so then send it off to your editor, who’ll ring you straight back to tell you she just loves it, don’t change a word; job done. Oh, if only.

I finally sent the second draft of ‘The Dead’ off to the publisher last week, meeting its deadline by, well, minutes, if I’m honest. The second draft is the big one. When I send the first draft to my agent and editor it feels a bit like stepping off a cliff. Nobody else has seen it until that point, so I have no idea what their reaction will be. There was a huge sense of relief this time when they both really liked ‘The Dead’, because they would tell me if they didn’t, believe me.

So they both loved it but there were just a few changes needed. Even though I have been through this process before with ‘The Drop’ and ‘The Damage’, I was still lulled into a false sense of security by their positivity, mainly because I was pathetically grateful that they didn’t hate the book. They really like it! So I must be nearly finished, right? Wrong.

I then had to wade through every comment on my one hundred and four thousand word manuscript and there were a lot of them. Not every page warranted their scrutiny but every now and then there’d be a little observation on the side of a page, “Can we have a little bit more of this….or a little bit less of that? Could we delete this bit for pace but could we expand on this? How about an extra scene here, where we see this explained earlier and, I hate to say it, but do we really need this chapter at all….you know…the one you spent a week writing.…..oh and that character…you know the one…..sorry but I’m afraid she doesn’t really work for me at all.”

At this point my heart sinks and not because I resent my agent and editor’s input, far from it. It’s precisely the opposite in fact. I really respect their opinions and had to think long and hard about what they had told me, because I want this book to be the best it can be. I obsess about it in fact. I picture readers having the exact same thoughts they do. I know what it feels like to spend eight quid on a paperback and invest a week or two of your commute time or that precious last hour before bed, only to be disappointed by the outcome. I don’t want to be responsible for that feeling in anyone, so I am my own worst critic. I’d rather change or bin anything that doesn’t quite work long before it reaches the reader.

When I wrote the second book in the David Blake trilogy, ‘The Damage’ I took out two whole chapters because both my agent and editor thought they were “good but they slow down the narrative”. I think I allowed myself to use the word ‘bollocks’ quietly to myself more than once, as I contemplated the time it had taken me to write, edit, re-edit and final-edit the words I was about to delete but when I looked at the book again with fresh eyes I knew they were right.

Editing ‘The Dead’ was tricky. I’d specifically asked my extremely talented editor, Keshini Naidoo, if she could help me get the word count down and she removed 5,000 words before returning it to me. This was great on one level, because it saved me a lot of work, but it still hurt a little when I saw some of the writing I had been quite proud of culled from the page, even though I knew it had to be done. I then went and made another fifty-five fairly major changes. I know it was that many because I made a list of all the work I had to get through to complete that second draft, so I could cross each one off when I’d finished. Some of those changes took a few minutes, some half a day. The worst one involved removing a key character that had become an integral part of the story and one of half a dozen plot lines that were all interwoven nicely together in ‘The Dead’. As I mentioned, neither my editor nor my agent were convinced by the character and felt removing this plot line would streamline the whole story and make ‘The Dead’ a stronger read. No problem I thought, as I methodically removed every scene involving that character, sobbing to myself inwardly as more than eight thousand words hit the cutting room floor.

Eventually, draft two was complete and a manuscript covered in electronically generated amendments – the Microsoft word equivalent of reams of red pen crossings-out – was off to the publisher. This version will be copy edited and returned to me with just a few grammar amends and literals that three pairs of eyes all somehow missed (it happens, believe me) and I’ll get to read through the whole thing again to check that I’m finally happy with it. Draft three will be the final version that hits the book shops on April 25^th. We will be launching ‘The Dead’ with a couple of events and some signings, plus radio and press interviews, which is a fun and exciting way to complete a very lengthy process. I can go into the launch with a clear conscience because, after all of the hours of hard work, fretting, editing, more fretting, further editing and fretting about my fretting…..I am really happy with the end result and I hope that readers of ‘The Dead’ will be too.

The only bit that remains is the nervous breakdown, which I have pencilled into my diary for the end of May.

It’s strange though. I had been really looking forward to completing that difficult second draft and was going to reward myself with a nice little rest from writing for a while. After a couple of days I was already reading through my notes on a new book.

The writer Eugene Ionesco once said, “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” In my case, he could possibly have added ‘with just a few strategic breaks to read web articles about incoming Newcastle United players during the January transfer window” but, aside from that, the gist of what he said is undoubtedly true.

The next book after ‘The Dead’ will be my first that does not feature David Blake. I have some great ideas for this one and I think it will work but I know there will be countless man-hours devoted to knocking the first draft of that one into shape. Then, if I am really lucky, my agent and editor might both agree that they love it……………but they’ve got just a few, little changes in mind…………

Geordie gangster, David Blake, returns in 'The Dead'; to be published by No Exit on April 25th, 2013. In the third installment of the trilogy the reluctant gangster is back on his home patch and facing his biggest challenge yet

David Blake is now running three cities, top boy. Life is sweet until his bent accountant is arrested for murder. The money man is nailed on for a life sentence until he puts five million pounds out of Blake's reach. Now Blake faces an agonising choice; fix the acquittal of a child killer or run out of the cash he needs to bankroll his empire.

Meanwhile, Serbian gangsters are slowly taking over his territory and a crazed Russian Oligarch wants to use Blake's drug supply line for his own ends. Back at home, the Police are closing in, determined to take David Blake off the streets of Newcastle forever, and Blake's girl Sarah is asking awkward questions about the death of her father that he really doesn't want to answer.