THE ELLORY JOURNAL

2011-11-27T09:09:00.000Z

AND THE BEAT GOES ON…

The tail-end of October into the middle of November saw me moving away from the current project of completing ‘The Devil and The River’ (due for publication some time in 2013), as I undertook two entirely different writing projects, both of which are still under wraps, the first very definitely a literary project which will be released in the spring of 2012, the second a tentative venture into an entirely different genre and arena. The first is a certain, the second is an unknown, and – at least to some degree – these activities have reminded me that it is always necessary to look forward, to keep reviewing what you are doing, and, if needs be, to reinvent yourself.
Perhaps the music side of things was not enough, after all!
Nevertheless, mentioning that as I am, The Whiskey Poets project is still very much at the forefront of my attention, and we are in fact playing a gig at a private party today. The CD saw the release of four tracks, three originals and one cover, and we have since completed the writing of a further five or six new tracks. We are aiming to have a live set ready for gigging in the New Year, but I am extraordinarily busy, as are both Chris (bass) and Simon (drums). With full-time jobs, families, and all else that is required of you as a human being, it is not the easiest thing in the world to routinely find the time to do what we need to do.
Anyway, all that aside, we will be on the road soon, and we are looking forward to it immensely. We have invested in a 5500 watt PA system, so we can pretty much deafen anyone from a hundred yards.
If any of you want one of the CDs, they can be obtained through the website (www.whiskeypoets.com).
Since we last spoke, ‘Bad Signs’ has been released (October 27th), and it appears to have been well-received. Unfortunately, Amazon is pretty much the only public forum where any kind of wider public response can be posted, and the vast majority of people who buy and read books don’t post reviews on Amazon. Hence, the reviews you wind up with – though very positive in the main – are not wholly representative of the overall opinion. Nevertheless, those that are posted are very much appreciated. Of course, it is impossible to please everyone all the time, and it never ceases to amaze me when I get a critical or negative review which begins, ‘I have read all of this author’s books, and though I liked the earlier ones, I didn’t like this one, and this is why…’, and yet they have never posted a single word about the books they did like! Is that the seemingly natural human tendency we have to point out only those things that we find fault with, and never acknowledge those things that we consider good? I don’t understand it! It’s like spending time with a friend, and the only things you ever say are those designed to draw attention to aspects of their personality or character that you dislike. Methinks such a friendship would not survive long!
Anyway, authors are not in the business of soliciting reviews, and this is merely a comment on the oddity of things, of which there seems to be no shortage in life!
I was reading Emerson the other day, always a good way to spend your time, and I came across two quotes, quotes I have read before, but they seemed particularly inspiring and relevant today.

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

Emerson was an exceptional writer, and an extraordinarily perceptive man, and the above two quotes seem to say a great deal about where we aren’t in this society at this time.
My brother reported to me the details of an article he’d recently read in one of the newspapers. Apparently a survey was undertaken of a great number of schoolchildren, ages ranging – I seem to recall – from eight to fifteen. When asked, ‘What do you want to be when you’re an adult?’, over seventy percent of them replied, ‘A celebrity’. When asked what it was they intended to be celebrated for, they didn’t understand the question.
I have been watching the recent Murdoch inquiry events, the phone-hacking ‘scandals’ et al, and it seems to me that Murdoch is a primary contributor to this current phenomenon where one is a ‘celebrity’ if a) one has money but produces nothing of any real value, or b) one shouts loudly enough that one is a celebrity without actually producing anything of any real value, or c) goes on a television program that is titillating, contentious, scandalous, gossip-driven, or just plain idiotic, and tells everyone that one is a celebrity, again without producing anything of any real value. I was in the supermarket yesterday, somewhere I go routinely, and I still cannot fathom the interest that justifies the continued publication of so-called ‘human interest’ and ‘chat’ magazines. The headlines blow my mind! ‘Slept with my boyfriend while his fiancée rotted in the garage’. ‘Shock horror – Cheryl Cole changes her shampoo’. ‘Chantelle is terrified she’ll get fat!’. ‘Katie dumped by new BFF’. ‘Danii says no to Simon for ever!’. And I’m thinking, ‘Who is this for? Who cares? Who, really, gives a single, solitary, meaningless crap about this banal and pointless drivel? Really?’
But these magazines keep being published so people must be buying them, and I’m wondering if those readers will ever read a quote by Emerson, or anyone else for that matter, that gives them some sort of real inspiration, a desire to create something that only they are capable of creating, something unique that leaves a mark on the world around them, and somehow improves it for the better.
Methinks, perhaps not.
Anyway, all that aside, I am not going to start ranting again. I have ranted so many times, and I know – for the main part – that it falls on deaf ears, and those whose ears are not deaf, well they pretty much have the same attitude as I about the shameful state we seem to have descended into as a culture.
When we are closing libraries, graduating a third or fourth generation of teenagers from school who not only don’t want to read, but can’t, when we are witness to half a dozen ‘I Hate Reading’ groups on facebook, between them possessing a membership that’s getting on for a million people, when we see professionally-printed notices and signs in the public domain that are littered with grammatical and spelling errors (Bussinessess Open As Usual; Newspapers & Ciggerettes; If You Look Under 21, We Will Need Proof Your Over 18 – all real examples within a mile of where I live!), then I think we are long past the point of being in trouble.
However, I will shut up. I get very vocal about this, and then I realise I am taking ever more firm and certain steps towards the status of Grumpy Old Man’, a status I am not resisting, not by any means, but it’s not very rock ‘n’ roll…or maybe it is. Elvis was a voracious reader, specializing in books concerning religion, philosophy and spirituality, and I know for a fact that Keith Richards is rarely without a book.
Personally I think books are cool and sexy. I think girls who read books are cool and sexy. I think that a lot of girls think that boys who read books are cool and sexy.
Why aren’t books cool and sexy any more? They are, and they should be, and that’s all there is to it.
End of story, so to speak.

Okay, on to other things…

We are all done and dusted on the copy-edit for ‘A Dark and Broken Heart’, due for release in May, 2012.
The blurb is as follows:

It should have been so easy for Vincent Madigan. Take four hundred thousand dollars away from some thieves, and who could they go to for help? No-one at all. For Madigan is charming, effective, and knows how to look after himself. The only problem is that he's up to his neck in debts to Sandia - the drug kingpin of Harlem, known as the 'Watermelon Man' on account of the terrible act of vengeance he inflicted against someone who betrayed him. This one heist will free Madigan from Sandia's control, and will finally give him the chance he needs to get his life back on track. But when Madigan is forced to kill his co-conspirators, he finds that not only is the stolen money marked, but an innocent child has been wounded in the crossfire. Now both Sandia and the collected might of the NYPD are looking for him. And beyond even this, the one person assigned to identify and hunt down Madigan is the very last person in the world he could have expected. Employing every deception and ruse he can think of, Madigan is engaged in a battle of wits that will test him to the very limit of his ability. Can he evade justice for what he has done, or will his own conscience become the very thing that unravels every one of his meticulous plans? Will this final lie be his salvation, or his undoing?

It is, once again, a very different book from the last one. It is set in New York in the present, and spans just a few days in the life of Vincent Madigan. There is no backstory to this one, as such. It is just a linear narrative, or, as a friend of mine so perceptively and accurately says, ‘Like one of those books where there’s a bunch of people and shit just happens…’, which – as far as I can see – is perhaps the most excellent way of describing any book! So yes, it is a book where there’s a bunch of people and shit just happens.
But, as I alluded to earlier, there are a couple of other things in the pipeline that will be around before May, so watch this space.

So, there we have it. A brief update. A brief rant.

I am sad to note that Tony Blair is still alive and well. Someone commented to me recently that he seems to be getting ever more orange in colour. I think he made a deal with the Devil, and has to spend one day a week in Hell in preparation for his eternity. Maybe Blair is learning the ropes, as the Devil has finally decided he’s had enough and has selected Blair as the most eminent candidate for his replacement. Headhunted, so to speak. With Hussein and bin Laden gone, Ghaddafi also, it seems that most of Tony’s closest chums have gone to prepare his reception in the bowels of Hell. Best place for him.

So, on that cheery note, I bid you farewell for now.

I trust all is well with you and yours, and I hope we shall speak again soon.

2011-10-23T14:46:00.000Z

LONG OVERDUE…

It is hard to believe that the better part of six months have elapsed since I last posted a blog. I have determined to post more frequently, and perhaps post shorter blogs, as I know five thousand words is a little long for my musings and diatribes!

Since we last spoke I have been travelling again, but to fewer places than last year. I have been back to France twice, once for the very prestigious and longstanding Paris Book Fair, called Salon du Livre, and again to bring my son back from Paris where he had spent a few days with his penpal. I spent several days in Switzerland at a book festival, then went to Mantova in Italy for a wonderful series of events. A soon as I returned from Mantova, I headed out to St. Louis for the Bouchercon 2011 extravaganza. Once more, Bouchercon was all about friends catching up with friends, and I had the great pleasure of spending some time with Daniel Woodrell again. Daniel has recently become one of my very favourite authors, not only because of his truly astonishing books (the most recent of which - ‘The Outlaw Album’ – I am currently reading), but because he is just one of the best people.

The Edinburgh Festival was a highlight this year, with a really excellent event. I didn’t make it to Harrogate, but did make it to The Lichfield Arts Festival, the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards and my brother’s wedding!

I also took on the position of Vice Chairman of the UK Crime Writers’ Association, and will be assuming Chairmanship duties in about a year and a half. The current Chairman is my very dear friend and travelling companion, Peter James, and it has been an absolute joy to be working with him on this. We have some exciting things in the pipeline, including the forming of a brand new organisation dedicated specifically to those of you who enjoy reading crime fiction!

However, as far as my own projects are concerned, ‘Bad Signs’ is out in a few days, ‘A Dark and Broken Heart’, due out in June 2012, is now finished and with the copy-editor, and I am half-way through ‘The Devil and The River’, the new book for 2013.

I have also finally found the time to get into the recording studio, and my band ‘The Whiskey Poets’ and I managed to get four tracks down on a CD. The CD, entitled ‘The Moonrise EP’ has been very-well received, and is actually on sale as a CD or as a download through the Whiskey Poets website (www.whiskeypoets.com).

We have just invested in a very substantial 5000w PA system, and we will be on the road soon, if all goes according to plan!

So, there we have it – a brief and to-the-point update on where I am now at, but – as I said – I intend to post more frequently, and in briefer splurges!

I trust all’s well with you.

2011-04-27T07:25:00.004Z

THE FRENCH INTERVIEW

Recently, on a trip to France, I met a wonderful lady called Catherine Dô-duc. She and I had been in touch by e-mail, and then I met her in La Garenne Colombe, and we started talking about books and music and life, as is always the case when you meet people of like mind! Anyway, she asked if I would do an interview for her blog and website, and I agreed, Over the subsequent few days, once I had returned to the UK, she sent me a series of questions and we completed the interview in four parts. This interview (in French, of course!), has been posted on her website. She was kind enough to send me a complete transcript in English, and I reproduce it here for anyone who might be interested.

QUESTIONS TO RJ ELLORY

Inverview published in April 2011 on the Blog du polar
(http://leblogdupolar.blogspot.com)

Interviewing Roger Jon Ellory is sheer pleasure, but it is also a heavy responsibility, for his numerous fans are waiting round the corner...

Here is part one of our 4 episodes interview. You happy readers will spend April in the company of RJ Ellory... In this first episode, we'll talk about... writing. Next time, we'll talk about writers, then movies and music.

Episode 1
Writing... and writing

LBdP :When I start reading one of your books, I always have this strange ambiguous feeling : your words seem to flow out like a torrent of emotions and images, with a powerful drive and energy. And at the same time, when I read again, the words are so carefully chosen, the sentences have such a flow, the editing is so visual that it is almost cinematographic, I can't help wondering how much work it must have been. And yet you say you almost never rewrite nor modify, with a few minor exceptions. How do you explain that ?Experience ? Or do you carry your novels living "within" you for so long that once you start writing, the whole work's almost done.

RJE :A great question! Well yes, for me it seems that this is a very organic and immediate process. As you know, I wrote a great many books before I was published, and I think this experience was very valuable. I do not write a synopsis or an outline for a book, but I do carry the book around in my head all the time. When I am working on a novel I am thinking about it all the time – where am I going, what should happen next, if this happens then how would this other thing happen, you know? I change my mind, I go in different directions, and only when I am finished and I understand how the book has ended can I then resolve all the little details from the start of the novel. I work as quickly as I can – writing perhaps 50,000 words a month, and in this way a book is finished in its first draft in about two or three months. Then I step away for a few days, and when I go back to it I spend a couple of days just tidying the areas where it needs some attention, and then I am done.

LBdP :You're a virtuoso as far as structure is concerned. For example, in A Simple Act of Violence, the progression of the story is very much influenced by the pages in italics, where the reader gets acquainted with the story of John and Catherine. The reader's vision undergoes an impressive shift from the initial fear to more and more understanding and even empathy. In fact, the sensation of horror shifts from the criminal to the system that made him/her a criminal. At the same time, the investigation follows a slower path ("slow motion thriller" like !). And yet you never lose your reader ! How do you work on that? Is the rhythm an intrinsic part of your writing project right from the start, or does it impose itself while writing?

RJE :No, I think it is an intrinsic part of the process, and I think about it like a piece of music, a symphony with many parts perhaps, and each part adds to the whole, but as each part progresses you hear repetitions of earlier themes, you hear melodies that you heard before but perhaps in a different key, and then you start to understand the whole piece. Also, as you progress you feel the tension of it, and you have an idea where it will end and how you will feel as the conclusion. This is not always the case, and sometimes it takes you to a different place than you expected. There is an old saying that the journey is always far more interesting than the destination, and I think this is perhaps the truth with my books.

LBdP :Always in A Simple Act of Violence, the CIA "shepherd" convinces his future agents by evoking the duality between morals and ethics. What's your position about this?

RJE :I think there is a great confusion between ethics and morals. I think morals are those rules established by a society that dictate what we can and cannot do, based on the society’s belief in what will be right for the survival of the majority of people. Ethics is a personal thing, however. Morally it is wrong to kill another human being. But ethically, if that person is a kidnapper or a killer and they are threatening the well-being of your children, then is it wrong to kill them in self-defence? Well, the answer is not as obvious as it seems. This is also the way society looks at it. Morals are social, ethics are individual, and where we have difficulty is where the society tries to regulate the ethical decisions of individuals without appreciating the circumstances and situation of that individual.

LBdP :You are very much involved in educational and culture issues. Do you feel that lack of culture leads to fanatism or terrorism? Is this one of the issues you wanted to deal with A Simple Act of Violence?

RJE :I feel that lack of education leads to all of society’s ills. Intolerance and racism, bigotry and fear of others is founded in ignorance, and lack of education is the cause of ignorance. Educated people, whether they are self-educated or formally educated are the most tolerant, the most aware, the most respectful of other people. And yes, I think I am always trying to give both sides of the story with my novels. A Quiet Vendetta for example, started with the idea of writing about the worst kind of person I could think of, and yet by the end of the book you felt a certain sympathy and empathy for him, almost as if you could forgive him. Why? Because you could now understand him if not morally, then at least ethically.

LBdP :You say that a writer should not only write about what he knows, but about what he's interested in. Would you envisage to write a novel with, let's say, a feminine viewpoint ?! Or where the main character would be a woman?

RJE :I said that a writer should not only write about what he knows, but also what he is interested in. And I have written a book with a central female character. It was the second book to be published in the UK, and it is called Ghostheart’

LBdP :Your novels are always located in the US. And yet, you have a somewhat terrifying vision of the system that underlies the functioning of this country. How do you deal with this?

RJE :I think I was weaned out of infancy on American culture. I grew up watching Starsky and Hutch, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, all those kinds of things. I loved the atmosphere, the diversity of culture. The politics fascinated me. America is a new country compared to England, and it just seems to me that there was so much colour and life inherent in its society. I have visited a good number of times, and I honestly feel like I’m going home in a strange kind of way, a bit like 'deja vu', if you know what I mean. And I believe that as a non-American there are many things about American culture that I can look at as a spectator. The difficulty with writing about an area that you are very familiar with is that you tend to stop noticing things. You take things for granted. The odd or interesting things about the people and the area cease to be odd and interesting. As an outsider you never lose that viewpoint of seeing things for the first time, and for me that is very important. Also many writers are told to write about the things with which they are familiar. I don’t think this is wrong, but I think it can be very limiting. I believe you should also write about the things that fascinate you. I think in that way you have a chance to let your passion and enthusiasm for the subject come through in your prose. I also believe that you should challenge yourself with each new book. Take on different and varied subjects. Do not allow yourself to fall into the trap of writing things to a formula. I think any author wants to write great novels. I don’t think anyone – in their heart of hearts – writes because it’s a sensible choice of profession, or for financial gain. I just love to write, and though the subject matter that I want to write about takes me to the States, it is nevertheless more important to me to write something that can move someone emotionally, perhaps change a view about life, and at the same time to try and write it as beautifully as I can. I also want to write about subjects – whether they be political conspiracies, serial killings, race relations, political assassinations or FBI and CIA investigations – that could only work in the USA. The kind of novels I want to write just wouldn’t work in small, green, leafy villages where you find Hobbits! And as far as my terrifying vision of this country, I think this same vision could be shown in any country. I think I could write about the UK or France or South Africa or Brazil in the same way. Every culture and society has its shadows, and we are simply directing a light towards those shadows.

LBdP :Stephen King's French translator, William Desmond, says that one of King's strength lies in his ability to reconnect the reader to his childhood emotions and feelings, to dig a hole in the multiple layers an adult has to build on top of his childhood. In a recent radio interview, you said something rather similar when you talked about one of the first books you read when you where a teenager. When I said that my first reading of A Quiet Belief in Angels, immediately made me think of Mark Twain, I thought of that aspect, that ability that you have to restore childhood innocence and to revive long gone emotions in your reader. Do you think that this could be one of the secrets behind the success of your books?

RJE :With me, the most important thing about any novel is the emotion it evokes. The reason for writing about the subjects I do is simply that such subjects give me the greatest opportunity to write about real people and how they deal with real situations. There is nothing in life more interesting than people, and one of the most interesting aspects of people is their ability to overcome difficulty and survive. I think I write ‘human dramas’, and in those dramas I feel I have sufficient canvas to paint the whole spectrum of human emotions, and this is what captures my attention. I once heard that non-fiction possesses, as its primary purpose, the conveying of information, whereas fiction possessed the primary purpose of evoking an emotion in the reader. I love writers that make me feel something – an emotion, whatever it might be – but I want to feel something as I read the book. There are millions of great books out there, all of them written very well, but they are mechanical in their plotting and style. Three weeks after reading them you might not recall anything about them. That is not meant as a criticism, because that degree of clever plotting takes a great intellect, and is probably something I just could not do well. However, the books that really get me are the ones I remember months later. I might not recall the names of the characters or the intricacies of the plot, but I remember how they made me feel. For me, that’s all important.
I have done, and still do, a tremendous amount of research. It was always very, very important to me to ensure that everything mentioned in the book was genuine and correct as far as the time and place were concerned. It can be quite a task. There is an old adage as far as writing is concerned – ‘Wear your learning lightly’ – meaning that you cannot bury your fictional work beneath a ton of facts. I have to be careful of that too; to make sure that the history and the cultural aspects necessary to give a sincere reflection of the time and place weren’t so overwhelming that the story beneath was lost. Some facts are hard to find, others somewhat easier, but still the responsibility lies with the author to make his or her work as sincere and genuine as possible.

LBdP :Related to the previous question, have you ever been asked psycho-analysis related questions about this childhood reminiscing faculty? How do you react to such interpretations?

RJE :I spent many years reading a great many books about the mind, life, people, human psychology and the way in which we work. I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on the truth. I don’t believe there is any science or religion or philosophy that knows all the answers to all of man’s difficulties. I have never undergone psychoanalysis, but I think I have asked myself a lot of these questions, and always with my brother and my friends we are discussing such subjects. It is an area of great fascination for me, and I often think about the effect of the past on the present, and how the past influences who we are and the way we live our lives.
To be completely honest, I think I don’t remember a lot from my childhood, but I must do. I think the emotional effect of my childhood experiences are there inside me, and when I write I sort of subconsciously draw on those experiences and emotions all the time.
I have often said that the French, more than anyone I know, look at everything twice. They see something for what it is, and then they look beyond. I think this is a fantastic quality, never taking anything completely at face value. This is something I try to do also, and I think it serves to help us understand ourselves and understand life far better. And the more we understand, the better we can survive and achieve a quality of life.

Episode 2
Writing and writers

LBdP :It seems that international crime writers form a kind of itinerant group travelling from Salons to Bookfairs all over the world, from Paris to Dubai, New York, Montreal... What do you think of this "globalization" of literature ? Do you appreciate meeting your "friendly competitors" in such occasions?

RJE :I do enjoy meeting other writers, and I do enjoy this globalization of literature, but the thing that I enjoy more than all of this is the fact that I have the privilege of meeting readers from so many different cultures, and seeing where one aspect of literature is important to one culture, and yet in a different culture it is something else.

LBdP :Are there any contemporary writers with whom you feel a particular connection ? Be it in literary approach, themes or other common points?

RJE :Well, there are contemporary writers I have met who I feel a sense of familiarity with, if for no other reason than we look at life in a similar way. I very much enjoyed spending time with Don Winslow, also with Daniel Woodrell. I talk to John Connolly, and he and I share a great many similar viewpoints about writing. I have met Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos, Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, and found them to be very intelligent, very perceptive, very human people, and I enjoy spending time with them very much.

LBdP :In France, we have at least one bad habit : that of overcategorizing literature. Your books must have come as a relief to the unfortunate so-called "intellectual" readers who still had to hide away if they wanted to read crime fiction. With your novels, they can proudly claim that they read literature ! Is this evolution common to many countries, or is it peculiar to France?

RJE :No, it is common to a lot of places, but perhaps in France there is a greater understanding of this than anywhere else. The reception I have received in France has been extraordinary and very special. I love to visit France. I love to speak with French readers. For me it is a great honour to have been so warmly received, and I hope this relationship and friendship will grow more and more as the years progress. The terms ‘human drama’ and ‘slow-motion thriller’ were coined in France, and this said a great deal to me. It said to me that you care, that you are interested, that such things are important, and though I am not too concerned whether I am writing thrillers or crime fiction or human dramas, it is great to be able to talk to people who just appreciate the books for what they are, as opposed to trying to justify why they are reading them! I do not think you need a reason to enjoy a book. Books are like wine: if it tastes good, then it is a good wine, no matter the year or the vineyard!

LBdP :Stephen King, in a florilege of texts consisting in advice to would-be writers, provided a bibliography of ca. 70 books in which only one was non-American. Do you think this is representative of the vision Americans have of world culture ? Do you feel, as some do, that European writers have somehow lost contact with the world as it is ?

RJE :I think there is a revolution going on. American literature – certainly in the fields of crime – has seemed to dominate the last thirty or forty years of publishing, but now, with the prominence of Scandinavian fiction, I think that publishers are now looking to South America, to Europe, elsewhere for ‘the next big thing’. I think this will serve to break down some of the barriers and get a lot more wonderful non-English writers translated into English and distributed around the world. Personally, anything that gets more readers reading, regardless of language, genre, subject or nationality, is the most important thing.

LBdP :What do you think of e-books ?

RJE :As far as e-books are concerned, I don't use one, probably never will, but anything that gets people reading is fine by me. E-books will never take the place of hard-copy books.
The tactile quality is important, the disposability, the fact that you can lose them, give them away, read them right until the plane touches down (as opposed to having to turn off electronic devices half an hour before landing), you can leave them on your sunlounger while you take a dip in the pool, and come back to find they are still there. Books never run out of charge, and physical books say something about you, and you can decorate a house with them!

Episode 3
Writing and movies

LBdP :Can you give us any news about the movie adaptation of A Quiet Belief in Angels by Olivier Dahan ?

RJE :I can’t tell you anything at all! I wrote the screenplay for Olivier, and he has had it for the better part of two years. I thought it was a good screenplay. I thought it really captured the emotional essence of the novel. But I think Mr.Dahan has lost interest in the project. I think we are now going to work on getting it into the hands of some other directors, directors who possess a sensitivity for the emotion of the story, and who are not afraid to make a ‘slow-motion thriller’!

LBdP : Did you enjoy the experience?

RJE:
In very simple terms, especially when we are dealing with novels that travel a little deeper than your average action-thriller, we are working with a great deal of thought and internal monologue on the part of the central characters. What they think and feel constitutes a significant part of the story. Therefore, in the field of novel adaptation, we are facing an inherent contradiction. Books focus, in the main part, on what our characters think and feel, whereas films focus on what people do and say. Often the difficulty in transcribing from book to film is that scenes have to be created that tell us aspects of the story that were entirely individual and personal in the minds of the characters throughout the book.
Additionally, a book – in general – has a scene of some significance every one thousand words. It is not a law, of course, but every three or four pages there is the introduction of a new character, some aspect of dialogue necessary to the plot, a conflict, a resolution, a red herring etc. In film, we are dealing with a scene of some significance every three or four minutes. Any more than that and the viewer becomes overwhelmed with information. There is too much to absorb. So here we have the conundrum. A book of one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand words will give us a hundred to a hundred and fifty scenes. A film will present us with a scene about once every three minutes, and a film, on the whole is ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes long.
The work of the treatment writer and the screenplay writer is to take one hundred and fifty scenes, all of them important to the story, and collapse them into thirty or forty scenes of a film. How is that done, also taking into consideration that additional scenes have to be added in order to tell us aspects of the story that were only thoughts and feelings in the novel? It’s a tough job.
When I was commissioned to write the screenplay for ‘A Quiet Belief in Angels’, the director told me that he knew many aspects of the novel would have to disappear, but all he wished to accomplish was that a filmgoer, leaving the cinema, would perhaps feel the same emotional impact as a reader having finished the book. That made a great deal of sense to me, and was an idea I could work with. I wrote the screenplay, and it taught me a great deal about succinctness, about clarity in dialogue. It taught me a great deal about how to say more with less words, and was a very valuable learning experience. Whether the film will ever be made is a different story!

LBdP :Many of your readers think that your novels seem to be written to become movies. How do you react ?

RJE :Reviews and criticisms are different animals. Reviews tend to give the reader an overview of the story, and are quite specific, in that the reviewer is often careful to highlight the fact that what they are saying is very much their personal opinion. Criticism is generally a more hostile and censorious affair, making a point of stressing what the reader did not like about the book. Critical comments can be very effective in introverting the author’s attention, contributing to that ever-present spectre of self-criticism that all creative people suffer. We criticise ourselves and our own work all the time; do we really need people to also remind us of our own failings? Perhaps, perhaps not. I read an article a while back that suggested that creative people, irrespective of genre or media, were composed of fifty percent ego and fifty percent insecurity. They possessed sufficient ego and arrogance to consider that what they created was worth sharing with the world, and at the same time they were terrified that what they created would be hated and despised. Artists, musicians, dancers, writers, poets, actors – I think they all suffer the same ghosts. I think it is – to a degree – a necessary affliction, though some artists take it very seriously. I think the trap that artists can fall into is when they start to take themselves very seriously. It is perfectly acceptable to be serious about one’s work, but when you became serious about yourself you run into difficulty. When you become too precious and conceited about your own work, then criticism becomes almost painful, I should imagine.
I know from personal experience, and also from talking to many other authors – both successful and not so successful – that the natural human error in all cases seems to be gravitating towards the negative, rather than the positive. Faced with two hundred reviews on amazon, the author focuses on the three very negative and harsh reviews rather than more than a hundred and fifty glowing reviews. Is that human nature in general, or is that just the case with those who attempt to do something creative? I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, ‘I don’t care what people say about me, just as long as they spell my name correctly...’, but I think this was bravado and bluff. I do care what people say about me, and I am sure Wilde did as well; the trick is not to care too much, so that others’ negative and critical viewpoints do not take over your own self-belief in what you are doing. I try not to concentrate on the negative. I try not to concern myself with how much better my fellow writers might be doing, for – as Krishnamurti said – ‘A life of comparison is a life of misery’.

LBdP :You said you'd thought about Clint Eastwood for the adaptation of A Quiet Belief in Angels. What would you think of Martin Scorsese for A Quiet Vendetta, or Michael Mann for A Simple Act of Violence ? Any other ideas ?

RJE :Those were my exact ideas! How strange that we have the same choices exactly! I also like very much the work of David Fincher, and also I think that Ben Affleck shows a great talent with such films as Gone Baby, Gone and The Town.

LBdP :Usually, crime fiction fans have a particular taste for the Golden forties of "film noir" (Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Asphalt Jungle...). Which movies would you take with you on a desert island and why?

RJE :I love these movies – the writing, the dialogue, the tension, the strength of character. I love movies that tell many stories within one story. Not only crime stories, but human dramas as well. I love movies that invoke feelings across the entire spectrum of human emotions. I love movies that make you think, make you work hard to understand what is happening, and for this reason I will choose ten movies as follows:
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• White Heat
• North by Northwest
• Strangers on a Train
• Twelve Angry Men
• All The President’s Men
• Capote
• Seven
• Three Days of the Condor
• The French Connection
That is a very hard list to make, but that gives you an idea of the sort of film I am interested in.

LBdP :Your approach to writing, your will to suggest specific emotions in the reader made me think of the Actors' Studio approach to acting. Does this method grossly consisting in "stocking" inside you emotions and feelings that have marked your real life in order to be able to call them back when needed has anything to do with the way you work when you write ?

RJE :I think those emotions are already there. I think I continue to live life with a viewpoint of experiencing as much as I can.
I often say that if you are not prepared to do something at least once a month that would embarrass your family, then you are going to lose your sense of humour. Life is not a rehearsal, it is the main performance! I think this attitude contributes greatly to the speed, the intensity, the immediacy, the spontaneity, the organic way in which I write. I write. I just write. I do not think about what I have written until after it is finished. I think I live life like this, always trying to make things happen the best what, but not afraid to get it wrong. Sometimes getting it wrong is the best way to learn how to get it right.

Episode 4

Writing and music

This is the last episode of our interview with RJ Ellory. This week, music is on ! RJ speaks about his passion and has made the remarkable effort of selecting his 20 favorite albums, those he'd take with him on a desert island. That was not an easy thing to do.

And as a final fireworks, the Blog dared ask RJ to answer a « revisited » version of Proust's questionnaire. Some of you might find it a terrible cliché. We thought these questions were very revealing. After all, this questionnaire has become a monument ! In the final lines of this episode, RJE talks about his projects, which will give us the opportunity to ask him more questions in the near future...

LBdP :You're a guitar player, rather into blues rock if I heard you well. Did this kind of music impose itself naturally as a spontaneous choice because, for example, of the way blues bands can take on long improvisations in which the musician (especially the guitarist) can express himself freely (provided he stays in tune !!) ?

RJE :Well, I have always been passionate about music, and just as I found a great empathy in American literature, so I found a great empathy in jazz and blues and country music. I have had long discussions about this very subject with my friend, Antoine de Caunes! Someone once said to me that music was the way in which one person translated their emotions into sounds, and then gave those sounds to someone else who translated them back into emotion for themselves. I agree with this. I think good literature works on an emotional level, and I definitely feel that good music works on an emotional level. As far as long improvisations are concerned, I am not so much this kind of musician. I like to conceive of a song that I write as delivering an emotional message, and when the message is delivered the song is done.

LbdP : Have you been influenced by the "white blues" wave of the 60s-70s in England (Clapton, Mayall, Alexis Korner and so on), or rather by "roots" blues players ?

RJE :Yes, of course. Influenced by both. I listen to everything from Son House and Blind Willie McTell to Led Zeppelin (from Birmingham!), and everything in between. You cannot understand any form of contemporary western music without appreciating Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Bob Wills, Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, Howlin’ Wolf – they are all there in the pot, everything from zydeco to rap, and they are all important.

LbdP : Do you read music ?

RJE :I do not read music for the guitar, but I read music for the trumpet, though I do not play trumpet any more. It is hard to sing and play trumpet together!

LbdP : How would you describe the difference (if any) between music and writing as a mode of expression ?

RJE :I think they are very much the same. Literature is evoking an emotion with words. Music is evoking an emotion with sounds. I think writing a song is like writing a chapter, and writing an album is like writing a book. Both are there to deliver an emotional message, and both can accomplish this but in different ways.

LbdP :Elliott Murphy said in one of his interviews : "If you play blues the other way round, you get out of jail, your wife comes back to you and you find a new job !" Does it work ??

RJE :Ha, that’s wonderful! And if I play country music backwards do I get my dog and my pickup truck back as well? I shall try it and let you know, though I don’t think I want my first wife to come back!

LbdP :How many members are there in your band, the Whiskey Poets ? Any projects, any chance to see you on stage one day ?

RJE :There are three of us, and we are relatively new. We are rehearsing songs to record in May, and we will record five or six tracks. And then we hope to be on the road.

LbdP :20 albums you'd take with you on a desert island ?

RJE :
• Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
• The Thirteenth Floor Elevators – Bull of the Woods
• Gene Casey & The Lone Sharks – Rhythm ‘n’ Twang
• The Gun Club – The Las Vegas Story
• Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quintet – Wildweed
• Bo Diddley – Hey! Bo Diddley
• Captain Beefheart& The Magic Band – Safe as Milk
• Cream – Disraeli Gears
• The Doors – The Doors
• Sir Douglas Quintet – Mendocino
• Dr. John – Gris-Gris
• Elvis Presley – The Sun Recordings
• Holly Beth Vincent – Holly & The Italians
• Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
• John Martyn – Solid Air
• Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
• Kelly Joe Phelps – Shine-Eyed Mister Zen
• Led Zeppelin – Led Zep 1
• Paul Butterfield Blues Band – The Elektra Years
• Roky Erickson & The Aliens – The Evil One

LbdP : What about your projects ?

RJE :Saints of New York will be published in France at the beginning of 2012. I'm working on a novel set in Tennessee in 1974 at the end of the Watergate era. The central character is a young Sheriff investigating the bizarre, almost ritualistic killing of a young teenager, and while investigating this murder he is also dealing very much with the ghosts of his Vietnam war experiences. I hope for it to be somewhere between Apocalypse Now and Angel Heart!

Proust's questionnaire revisited

Your favourite virtue
Integrity, the willingness to hold a position against disagreement and criticism

Your favourite qualities in a man.
Commitment to an agreement

Your favourite qualities in a woman.
Empathy

Your chief characteristic.
Perseverance

What you appreciate the most in your friends
Camaraderie

Your main fault
Impatience

Your favourite occupation.
Writing

Your idea of happiness.
Good friends, good food, good wine, good music, good conversation.

Your idea of misery.
The emotion attendant to a recognition of personal failure.

If not yourself, who would you be?
Kelly Joe Phelps, or some other blues guitarist and singer.

Where would you like to live?
Upstate New York.

Your favourite colour
Cerulean blue.

Your favoUrite bird.
Heron

Your favourite prose authors.
John Steinbeck, Annie Proulx, Tim O’Brien, Cormac McCarthy, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, and on and on and on...

Your favourite poets.
William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson

Your favourite heroes in fiction.
Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Sergeant Bilko, Bad Blake (from ‘Crazy Heart’ by Thomas Cobb)

Your favourite heroines in fiction.
Irene Adler, Sophie (William Styron), Thelma and Louise

Your favourite painters and composers.
Velasquez, Caravaggio, Turner, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, Gershwin

What characters in history do you most dislike.
Hitler, Hesse, Goebbels, Himmler, Eichmann, Mengele etc., Tony Blair, George Bush, George W. Bush, Hoover, Harold Wilson, Stalin.

Your favourite food and drink.
Jack Daniels and Buffalo wings!

World history characters I hate the most
Apart from the above, there are very few others. I do my utmost not to hate people, but some can’t help but deserve it!

The natural talent I'd like to be gifted with
An extraordinary ability to play the guitar

How I wish to die
Very old, but still working!

What is your present state of mind.
Determined!

For what fault have you most tolerance
Impatience

Your favourite motto.
Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose. (Benjamin Disraeli)

RJ Ellory answers to readers' questions

Questions from Pierre F.

Don't you think culture can lead to intolerance ? Some extreme right leaders are very intelligent.

I think lack of culture and lack of education is far more likely to be a causative factor in intolerance. Fear is ordinarily founded on ignorance, in my opinion, and the common denominator in cases of intolerance, racism and bigotry seems to be lack of understanding and lack of education about that which you are intolerant of. If culture was the cause of intolerance, then the solution to intolerance would be to return to the state of a completely uncultured race, and I don’t think that would be a realistic solution. I feel that lack of awareness and lack of culture are far more likely to foster and encourage intolerance and racism than the reverse.

About A Quiet Belief in Angels : which novels influenced you in writing this book ?

I think In Cold Blood was the only novel that really influenced my outlook when I was writing A Quiet Belief In Angels, and in a way it was more to do with Capote as a character than the book itself. He was raised in the Deep South and moved to New York, just as was the case with Joseph. People have commented that the novel seems Steinbeckian in its style, but I have read only ‘Cannery Row by Steinbeck and there seems to be no similarity to me at all in the style. A novelist I greatly admire is Annie Proulx, and I think The Shipping News and her short story collections were influential in my work when I was writing ‘Angels’. I am also inspired by poetry, especially such poets as Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams.

About A Quiet Vendetta, are your characters purely fictional or have you been acquainted to similar people in terms of behavior or attitude ?

Well, the fictional characters of Hartmann and Perez are definitely characters of my own creation, though the story is obviously littered with real characters from the history of the Mafia. I have had no first-hand experience of individuals who deal in such circles, so they are purely from my imagination.

About A Simple Act of Violence, some readers have compared it to Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog. Have you read it ? Was it part of your sources when you researched your books ?

I came across The Power of the Dog in late 2008. A Simple Act of Violence was written in early 2005. I have now read The Power of the Dog, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it is a very, very different type of book from mine. It was not part of my sources when I researched my novel. My sources are invariably non-fiction when it comes to the factual/historical background of a book.

From Edmond

How do you explain that A Quiet Belief in Angels is categorized among crime novels, since the murderer has no real motive ?

Well, the genre of a novel is entirely subjective. I just intended to write a good story about something I was interested in. I consider them human dramas, not crime novels as such. It was the French who coined the phrase ‘the slow-motion thriller’, and I think this is a wonderful expression. I am not much concerned about slotting into some predetermined pattern or pigeonhole, and I think my books are crime dramas, in a way, but they are crime dramas where the crime is secondary to the effects of that crime on families, communities and societies. I think there is also some degree of explanation postulated by Joseph as to the killer’s motives and rationale as he is waiting in the hotel room at the end of the book, but it is Joseph’s thoughts that we get. I am not a psychologist, and I do not presume to try and explain the reality of a serial killer. I think some books have done that well, and a lot have done that very badly, and I never wanted to write a novel from the killer’s perspective. I wanted to write the biography of a young boy, so influenced by traumas in his early life, that he dedicated his life to discovering the truth, regardless of what obstacles he met. I did not want to write a psychological text on why Man is capable of doing such things.

From Catherine S.

Would you consider writing a novel that would not involve any criminal action ?

Yes, I would. The thing that interests me more than anything is people. I like the drama that is created between people when they try to survive and overcome personal difficulties, so yes, I might one day write a novel that has no crime in it, except perhaps a crime of the heart (a betrayal, a deception etc., something that generates tension and friction between the characters).

2011-03-09T10:16:00.000Z

The Death of Common Sense
By Lori Borgman
________________________________________
Three yards of black fabric enshroud my computer terminal. I am mourning the passing of an old friend by the name of Common Sense.

His obituary reads as follows:

Common Sense, aka C.S., lived a long life, but died from heart failure at the brink of the millennium. No one really knows how old he was, his birth records were long ago entangled in miles and miles of bureaucratic red tape.

Known affectionately to close friends as Horse Sense and Sound Thinking, he selflessly devoted himself to a life of service in homes, schools, hospitals and offices, helping folks get jobs done without a lot of fanfare, whooping and hollering. Rules and regulations and petty, frivolous lawsuits held no power over C.S.

A most reliable sage, he was credited with cultivating the ability to know when to come in out of the rain, the discovery that the early bird gets the worm and how to take the bitter with the sweet. C.S. also developed sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies (the adult is in charge, not the kid) and prudent dietary plans (offset eggs and bacon with a little fiber and orange juice).

A veteran of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the Technological Revolution and the Smoking Crusades, C.S. survived sundry cultural and educational trends including disco, the men's movement, body piercing, whole language and new math.

C.S.'s health began declining in the late 1960s when he became infected with the If-It-Feels-Good, Do-It virus. In the following decades his waning strength proved no match for the ravages of overbearing federal and state rules and regulations and an oppressive tax code. C.S. was sapped of strength and the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, criminals received better treatment than victims and judges stuck their noses in everything from Boy Scouts to professional baseball and golf. His deterioration accelerated as schools implemented zero-tolerance policies. Reports of 6-year-old boys charged with sexual harassment for kissing classmates, a teen suspended for taking a swig of Scope mouthwash after lunch, girls suspended for possessing Midol and an honor student expelled for having a table knife in her school lunch were more than his heart could endure.

As the end neared, doctors say C.S. drifted in and out of logic but was kept informed of developments regarding regulations on low-flow toilets and mandatory air bags. Finally, upon hearing about a government plan to ban inhalers from 14 million asthmatics due to a trace of a pollutant that may be harmful to the environment, C.S. breathed his last. Services will be at Whispering Pines Cemetery. C.S. was preceded in death by his wife, Discretion; one daughter, Responsibility; and one son, Reason. He is survived by two step-brothers, Half-Wit and Dim-Wit.

Memorial Contributions may be sent to the Institute for Rational Thought.

Farewell, Common Sense. May you rest in peace.

2011-02-20T12:50:00.001Z

SOCIETY – WHERE DID IT ALL GO SO TERRIBLY WRONG?

Seems to me that the recent riots and revolts in Greece, Tunisia, Cairo, Bahrain and Libya are not about democracy, nor about religion, and – in a way – they are not even about politics.
Seems to me that they’re about human rights.
A revolt against the corruption of bankers and governments, each working hand-in-glove to milk ‘the system’ for all they can; a revolt against a ruling party, managing a country by tyrannical dictate, enforcing ‘laws’ with threats of violence and incarceration; public protests against politicians robbing the taxpayer through fraudulent expense claims…they are all saying the same thing.
We – the people – gave you the power to serve us, not to serve yourselves;
We – the people - gave you the authority to manage our finances, to design and enforce laws that protect the majority against the criminal minority;
We - the people – entrusted you with the education of our children, with the responsibility of assisting us as parents and guardians of the next generation to ensure that the next generation was literate, compassionate, well-educated, responsible, productive, all the qualities that are required to make a society work.
And what have you done?
You have lied, deceived, misled, sought personal gain above the well-being of the communities you serve.
You have failed to design and enforce laws that serve the majority.
You have permitted the education system to be corrupted by psychologists and psychiatrists, who – serving their own personal and financial goals – have invented such conditions as ‘attention deficit disorder’ and ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’ as an explanation as to why ‘certain children’ can’t be taught, and to justify administering life-threatening drugs that destroy their mental and emotional well-being before their lives have even really begun.
Last week I wrote a four-page letter to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education. I asked some specific and pointed questions:
Why are children no longer taught to read?
Why are we closing libraries, one after the other, when a local library is one of the very few places where real reading is encouraged?
Why are we asking ourselves for the reasoning behind closing the libraries when it is plainly obvious – people are not reading any more, and why are they not reading? Because we are not teaching them to read in school. It doesn’t seem so difficult to understand, does it?
How can we go back to the teaching itineraries of past decades? How can we do that? That should not be so hard.
My son, now fourteen, had to write an essay about the book, ‘Kestrel for a Knave’, by Barry Hines. A great book. A book I read in school and thoroughly enjoyed. He wrote the essay. It was a perfectly good essay. I asked him how much he enjoyed the book. ‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘we didn’t have to read the book. We just watched the film in English class…’
Just before Christmas I gave a series of lessons about Text Transposition (taking prose, for example, and turning it into a play or film script) at a local Sixth Form College. I attended three classes, thirty-five English Literature AS-Level students in each class. Not one of them had heard of Truman Capote. Nor had they heard of Faulkner, Hemingway or Steinbeck. A number of them had heard of Tolkien ‘from The Lord of the Rings ‘ films, but none of them were aware that those films were based on a book. Of the one hundred and fifteen students I spoke to that day, seventeen and eighteen years old, all of them approaching their AS Level exams, only nineteen had ever read a complete book in their lives. Nineteen.
I had read nineteen complete books before I was ten years old.
Their English Literature Module consisted of two assignments: Read Chapter One of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy. Secondly, read Chapter One of ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker. Why read only one chapter? Very simple answer to that! Because the examination requirement was the same in each case: ‘Describe, in your own words, how this novel begins.’ That was what they would be asked come examination time.
When I did O-Level at sixteen years of age back in 1981, we studied the following works: ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ from ‘The Canterbury Tales’ by Geoffrey Chaucer; ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by Shakespeare’; ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding, and ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee. We read both novels three or four times. We discussed them in class. We did watch the films, but the films were a ‘reward’ for working so hard, and we only saw the films after we had thoroughly studied the books. After the films we discussed how the films didn’t even come close to conveying the power of the books.
As far as Chaucer was concerned, we dissected Chaucer. We studied the language. We recognised the origins of modern language, as well as the Old English, Greek and Latin sources beyond that. We really learned about the evolution of our own mother tongue, because it was considered important.
And Shakespeare? After Chaucer, well Shakespeare was a breeze! We read that play; we each took characters and enacted the play in class; we read it again; we studied revision notes; we made our own revision notes. We discussed the issues of racism, bigotry and greed. Then we watched the BBC adaptation with Warren Mitchell as Shylock. Towards the end of term, as a class award for doing so well in the mock exams, the teacher took us to Stratford and we saw the RSC production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’. We enjoyed it so much that we made a deal with the teacher. If we did well at exam time, would he take us back to Stratford to see ‘Twelfth Night’? He agreed. We worked extra hard. We went back to Stratford and we did see ‘Twelfth Night’.
In our classes no-one was ‘dyslexic’. No-one had ‘attention deficit disorder’. I was at a school for ‘orphans and wayward children’ established by a trust fund. Everyone ‘came from a troubled background’, some of them from the worst backgrounds you can imagine, and yet none of them employed this as an excuse to be impolite, rude, discourteous, unproductive or violent. No-one was caught with a knife. Teachers were not assaulted.
The reality is that society has fallen to pieces.
It is a cliché to speak of values, but values have disappeared.
I was in the supermarket the other day, and yet again – standing at the till – I was assaulted by the same explosion of banal and mindless ’headlines’ across the newspapers and magazines. There seems to be rash of pointlessly idiotic periodicals that cater…to whom? So-and-so has been cheated on by her husband; such-and-such a person had a nosejob that went wrong; look who’s put on three pounds in weight since we photographed them last week… Basically the Katie Price/Jordan phenomena of ‘the celebrity lifestyle’. In a survey conducted last year it was discovered that over seventy percent of surveyed children, aged between five and twelve, when asked what they intended to be when they grew up, replied ‘a celebrity’. When asked what they wished to be celebrated for, they didn’t understand the question.
Katie Price is a role model for our children? Wasn’t she a sex-worker just a short while ago?
Is it only me? Am I the only one who does not care in the slightest for the mindless banalities of ‘celebrity personal problems’? Does it really matter that Kerry Katona is in rehab again? How does that affect my life? How does knowing this improve the quality of my existence, or the well-being and security of my family? If I fail to know that some footballer has been seen in a nightclub with some other footballer’s girlfriend, am I not going to be able to perform so well at my job? Is my salary going to be docked when I am questioned about these important issues?
Probably not.
Sadly, the ‘Chat’, ‘Closer’, ‘Heat’, 'Big Brother’ society is here to stay. I trust it will not stay long. I work as hard as I can to remain optimistic, but it is hard work!
I believe that if people were really taught to read in school, if they had a love of literature and learning instilled in them at an early age – as we did – then this kind of mindless dross would just be left aside, or would never have appeared in the first place. I think that’s right.
Which goes back to the first point I was making. This situation with education is merely a symptom of a sick society. It has been said that the downfall of every great civilization has been preceded by a rise in sex and violence as forms of entertainment. Now, I am no prude! Just read my books. I can write sex and violence as well as anyone. But sex and violence as the only form of mass audio-visual entertainment? I think we’re already there.
People are not crazy. People are not naturally anti-social and dangerous. Bigotry, intolerance and racism are not inherent in the human make-up. Humanity is inherent in the human make-up.
Propaganda and lack of education create racism, intolerance, religious and political discrimination. These are created conditions. They are manufactured and promoted conditions. And who are they manufactured and promoted by? Well, it’s simple. By those who possess a vested interest in creating conflict between races and cultures. The politicians, the bankers, the arms dealers, the drug cartels, and – in reality – some aspects of the psychiatric and medical professions. Why those last two? Because they make money if you are sick. Because they make money if you are ‘mentally unwell’. Seems to make sense that with all the knowledge, experience, skill, technical ability and finance we possess as a race of peoples that we could invest said resources in developing real understanding and real cures for the things that ail us.
If we just took all the money that our ‘governments’ spend on figuring out ways to kill one another, and we spent it instead on figuring out ways to help one another…
What do you think would happen?
Do you think we might resolve problems of education, crime, war, famine, disease, cancer?
Maybe?
I know that Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead was a hippy, I know he was at the forefront of the Californian drug culture, but he said an interesting thing: ‘If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.’
I have always believed that the human race possesses everything it needs to solve all of its own problems – disease, war, famine, illiteracy, insanity, corruption, drug abuse and criminality.
So why do we not do this?
Very simple, very obvious. Because there’s no money in it.
There is no money in peace. There is no money in well and happy people. There is no money in honest, law-abiding citizens.
But this is what we want, I hear you say. This is what we want! We want peace, health, well-being, an absence of war and criminality and insanity!
Which begs the question: Who does not want these things?
Again, the answer is simple: criminals, drug dealers, arms manufacturers and the like, and back of them are the corrupt politicians, their hands buried deep in the pockets of the taxpayer, possessing controlling interests in the media, the psychiatric drug companies, the medical research organisations, the weapons developers and distributors.
If I was a politician, or a government official standing behind the ‘puppet-politician’, then how would I ensure that my income sources did not dry up? I would use whatever media channels I could to convince people that people are fundamentally crazy, that there are criminals everywhere, that behind every corner and on the edge of every schoolyard is a paedophile waiting to snatch your child away; I would use those same media channels to decry and denounce my political opponents, using whatever propaganda – colour, creed, religious persuasion and personal interests – to make people see that we are all different, and that if people are different then they cannot be trusted. I would use this as a means of generating hostility and tension between denominations, between religions, between races and political groups. I would make it clear that people are not getting on, that conflict is always inevitable, and by these means I would promote an air of constant tension where people would feel that they could not freely speak. Hence I could justify expenditure on an ineffective police force, on arms, on pointless medical research for invented diseases (Bird flu, anyone? Swine flu, perhaps? Where did all that money go? Who had controlling shares in the failing medical research companies that were saved from bankruptcy by the government-assigned contracts for the ‘cure’ for those diseases?).
I would then distract the public’s attention away from the real issues facing society by lowering education standards so people cannot read, and thus cannot find out for themselves; I would employ ‘authorities’ to ‘research’ mental conditions that ‘prevent’ people from learning, thus giving myself a good ‘explanation’ as to why schools were failing; I would stifle any teacher’s purpose to really teach by overwhelming them with an impractical and ineffective curriculum that consistently demonstrated the futile purposelessness of teaching at all levels; I would tie up the Police and law authorities with such bureaucracy they just cannot effectively do their jobs; I would flood the public with mindless and meaningless ‘entertainment’ that appeals to the lowest common denominator of intellects, thereby undermining free thought, power of choice, self-determinism, rationality and reasoning power. I would, effectively, make the masses believes that the ‘masses’ were stupid, when they are in fact not stupid at all. This, realistically, further promotes division between ‘classes’ of people.
I seem to think that this has been accomplished already, wouldn’t you say?
But enough is enough.
I am hoping that the ever-rising tide of revolution that we have seen in Greece, Tunisia, Cairo, Bahrain and now Libya will finally deliver the message to our politicians: We will not be lied to any more. We give you your power to serve us, not yourselves. Do the things that you said you would do when we voted for you. Enough is enough.
And now we have to address another issue, an issue that is close to my heart. The field of mental health and the care of those who have yet to find respite from crippling mental and emotional burdens. Why are we addressing this? Because here, I feel, is a fundamental aspect of what we are facing as a race of people. Why? Because if we fail to understand ourselves, we fail to understand one another. If we fail to understand one another, then we will never understand how a society could effectively survive. Over the years I have pursued a personal mission to try and understand as much as I can about the human condition. Philosophy, religion, psychology, psychoanalysis, every area of mental and spiritual address that I could access. I have come to some conclusions, and I raise these as specifically personal conclusions, not as any statement of fact. They are my opinion, and by stating these opinions, I do not wish to undermine or offend anyone. However, being the person that I am, I am going to communicate them. Put it down to the fact that I am a reader, a free-thinker, and – as we have been so often told – readers and free-thinkers are always troublemakers!
It as been reported, by eminent and credible experts in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, medicine, nutrition and physiology that all 'brain chemical imbalances' are generated by physiological, nutritional, vitamin/mineral-deficient and medical reasons, all of which had a remedy that did NOT include the use or prescription of toxic life-destroying psychiatric drugs.
Psychiatry electric shocks thousands of people every year in this country, including children under four years of age. They use Ritalin, Prozac and other phenomenally toxic and suicide-precipitating drugs to subjugate people into mindless anonymity and ineffectiveness. I know this will go against the grain, but nothing makes me angrier and more upset than to hear of the terrible, terrible crimes that are perpetrated against perfectly innocent people by the barbaric industry of psychiatry. I cannot condone or acknowledge terms applied by the psychiatric profession. It violates every ounce of my personal integrity. I can accept that there are mental conditions - depression, mood swings etc. - but these have their root cause in physiological and medical conditions. Always and without fail. To give someone life-threatening brain damage by the application of horrendously toxic drugs in the name of 'treatment' is anathema to me, and upsets me greatly.
I do not get depressed. I do not get 'exhausted'. I do not run out of patience with people. I never agree to do something I don't want to do. I allocate so many hours per day for writing, and regardless of how I feel I do that work. That is why I am eighteen months ahead of schedule. I do not get 'stressed', I do not 'need a holiday', I do not have accidents nor get ill. I do not get colds, even when I associate with people who have colds and flu. My son does not get sick. He does not have accidents. He is fourteen and has never had a cold, never had an accident, never been to see a doctor, never needed A&E. We had him on a proper low-carb, high-protein diet as a baby from six weeks old, and he is strong and fit and well. He eats three good meals a day. He sleeps well. He gets plenty of exercise. He is a teenager but he is neither rude nor arrogant nor ill-behaved nor unruly. He is not 'being a teenager' in the accepted sense of the word. Why am I like this? Why is my son like this? Because we are ‘lucky’? No, not at all. Because we understand nutrition, diet, sleep, why people don’t eat, why they don’t sleep, the cause of allergies and asthma and a thousand and one other things that – when untreated – can bring about nutritional and glandular deficiencies that create the appearance of ‘mental disorders’. A very brief case of hypoglycaemia can cause all the indications of psychosis. Oh, we have a psychotic! Let’s call the Police. The Police don’t know what to do. They turn such ‘rowdy people’ over to ‘the authorities’ because these people are having a ‘nervous breakdown’. Unbelievable! How about some proper food, some rest, some quiet, some space away from troublesome family members of ‘friends who know best’? How about a simple remedy? No, not at all. Such simple remedies don’t make any money for anyone. Let’s drug them. How about that? Let’s convince the world that there are ‘mental disorders’, and then we can go on lining our pockets with government money…
I am sorry, but I hear terms like 'bipolar' and 'depressed' and 'SAD' and all the other invented conditions like 'Expressive Language Disorder', 'Caffeine Disorder', 'Maths Disorder', 'Written Language Disorder' from the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and it just makes my blood boil. They are criminals, murderers; they are barbaric. These are the people that run IG Farben and Roche and GlaxoSmithKline. These are the people who developed LSD for the Nazis to dump in the UK water supply. These are the people who developed Zyclon B for the concentration camps, and built the gas chambers as well, and they are still operating as 'beneficial drug companies'. There is the American Psychiatric Association, founded by Benjamin Rush, the profile of whom is still on their seal. And Rush? What did he come up with? A mental condition called ‘negritude’. What’s that? It’s being black. What’s the remedy? Beating someone until they are white. You know the remedy is working because the person is becoming ‘whiter’ in colour. True. Absolutely true!
Unbelievable!
I apologise again, but I am saddened beyond belief when I hear of someone else who has been duped into thinking that they have a 'mental disorder’ and that is the explanation for the difficulties they run into in life. There is a handling for all these conditions and NONE of them involve ECT, drugs or incarceration. They are not ‘psychiatric’ conditions. They are invented and manufactured conditions. Psychiatry – even by its own definition – is not a science.
And these are the ‘authorities’ who have now insidiously inveigled their way into our school system, who have labelled our children, made everyone think that there are ‘different types of children’, and it is a lie.
Children can be taught to read. Reading is good. Reading is important. Reading is vital. People who cannot read are denied any education at all, not just in school, but in life. Well-read and literate people are more tolerant, accepting, compassionate, patient, well-balanced, honest, productive, caring. They have less preconceptions and prejudices. Obama said this again and again. He employed it as one of the mainstays of his Presidential campaign. Literacy promotes success. Illiteracy promotes criminality and ineffectiveness. They are proven statistics. They are unavoidable truths.
So who doesn’t want our kids to learn? Who doesn’t want them to read? Who doesn’t want them to find out the truth for themselves?
It isn’t the parents. It sure as hell isn’t the teachers.
I wonder... Could it be the drug dealers – legal and illegal? Could it be the arms dealers? Could it be those who want people at each others’ throats? Could it be people who possess some kind of vested interest in keeping people subdued, stupid, unaware? Could there, in fact, be money to be made from governing a country where people don’t ask questions any more? Where democracy is outlawed? Where a tyrannical ruling party governs through fear and deception? Surely not! Surely people aren’t that corrupt and dishonest?
Seems to me that what is happening in the Middle East is a warning to all governments.
How did Abraham Lincoln say it: ‘You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time’.
We do not need a revolution, merely an evolution.
Enough with war, with religious intolerance, with racism and bigotry and hatred. These are not real conditions. They are not part of the human condition. They are false, fabricated conditions, and they must be recognised for what they are and ended.
That is all I have to say for now.

2011-02-14T09:22:00.001Z

A COMMENT ON READING…

In October of 2010 I went to Alcatraz. On the way towards the ferry there was an epigram from some congressman or governor or somesuch: ‘If you break society’s rules, you go to prison. If you break prison rules, you come to Alcatraz’.

It was an overcast day. It was raining. It was the best way to see Alcatraz.

I took a lot of photos and uploaded them on facebook. I look at those images now, and it’s hard to imagine anywhere more terrifying. It is the most visited National Park in the USA. Why do people go? Morbid fascination for the horror of the place? Wanting to understand what it must have been like to be incarcerated there for years upon years? I don’t know. All I know is that it is the most chilling and unsettling place I have ever been in my life.

During the audio tour, both ex-convicts and ex-wardens speak. One convict simply said that New Year’s Eve was the worst night of the year on ‘the rock’. Why? Because the San Francisco Bay Yacht Club held their New Year’s Eve parties on boats in the bay, and if the wind was blowing in the ‘right’ direction, ‘You could hear the clink of glasses and the laughter of girls…’

It left me speechless.

During that same San Francisco trip I had dinner with Walter Mosley. It was like riffing with Kerouac and Mailer and Salinger and Martin Luther King to a soundtrack of Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Mingus and Gil Scott-Heron.

A day or so beforehand, I had drinks with Daniel Woodrell, author of ‘Winter’s Bone’, simply one of the best books I have ever read.

Earlier on my travels I saw Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Baltimore and Washington.

I saw Matt Skellor and Lurrie Bell play at Legends, Buddy Guy’s blues club in Chicago. I saw Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women at the Hi-Line Lounge, Ingrid Lucia and Gene Casey at the Rodeo Club, and then Gene Casey a second time at Hill Country, where I ate some of the best food I had ever eaten.

I hung out with Jack Lamplough and Emer Ferguson, two of the very best people I know, and we ate soft-shelled crabs and hanger steaks at the Bridge Café, the oldest licensed porter establishment in New York.

I went to France. I travelled through Paris, Rouen, Montpellier, Limoges, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes, St. Malo (where I was stranded for a day and a half after pretty much every author had left for home, but found a great new friend in David Peace, the author of the incredible ‘Red Riding Quartet’), and on through Banon, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Besançon, Frontignan, Brussels and Geneva.

I did two tours in Canada, a tour in Australia, one in New Zealand, a trip to Amsterdam, another to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps, and most recently have attended the Istanbul Writers’ Parliament and the BC Negra Festival in Barcelona.

I visited forty-four cities in ten countries.

Half the year I spend writing books, and the other half I seem to be explaining why to strangers.

I remember reading an interview with BB King. He was asked about his life, about what was his most abiding memory after sixty years on the road, after more than one hundred albums, after playing with some of the finest musicians that ever lived. King paused, he smiled wryly, and then said ‘Airports and hotels rooms…’

I know precisely how he feels.

I do not mention this as some sort of couched complaint. Quite the contrary! It has been, and will continue to be, an enormous privilege and honour to be invited to international festivals, to meet readers, to speak about my books, to answer questions. I can never forget a line that came from John Lennon, I believe: Find something you love and you’ll never work another day. Well, writing has always been my great love, that and music, and my writing has now started to give me the time and space to pursue my musical interests. Writing has opened up doors for me where they would otherwise have been closed. I have met people – and in some instances become great friends with people – who would have otherwise been unknown to me. Without writing, I do not think I would have seen any of those forty-four cities.

My ninth book, ‘Bad Signs’ was due to be released in June 2011. It has long since been complete, as has a book for 2012, and I am currently working on the book for 2013. The paperback version of ‘Saints of New York’ was slated for release in April 2010. Well, that paperback release has now been postponed until September 2011, and the release of ‘Bad Signs’ – intended for a prominent hardback launch and a sensibly-discounted price, all in an effort to see if we couldn’t push it into the Sunday Times Top Ten list – has been postponed until October or November of 2011. This is of no great concern, at least not from the viewpoint of releasing a book each year, but it is of concern as a comment on the state of the British publishing industry. Booksales are down fifteen to twenty percent across the boards – fiction and non-fiction. Is it because of the ‘recession’, the ‘credit crunch’, the ‘economic slowdown’? No, it is not. It is because people aren’t reading. It is because we are now seemingly incapable of teaching our children to read, and bringing them up with the attitude that books are important.

My son is fourteen. When he started to learn to read at school my wife took it upon herself to do all she could to advance his reading ability. When he was 12 he was tested. We were proudly informed that he had the ‘reading age of a sixteen year-old’. No, he didn’t. He didn’t have anything of the sort! He had the reading age of a twelve year-old who had been encouraged to read. Last week he submitted a school essay about the Normandy landings. He wrote a sentence about an army captain tending to a wounded medic on Omaha Beach, and as he described this scene there was one sentence that stood out: ‘Get to cover!’ screamed the captain as he tended to a wounded medic, but things like irony bore no humour any longer.’ I honestly believe there are few fourteen year-olds who understand the concept of irony. In an earlier essay he used the word ‘travails’, and was assured – utterly and completely – by his English teacher that ‘there is no such word in the English language.’ My son showed her the word in the dictionary. She was suitably apologetic. For three weeks my son has had a copy of ‘Kestrel for a Knave’ on his bedside table. He wrote an essay about it. It was a good essay. I asked him how much he had enjoyed the book. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I didn’t read the book’. Puzzled, I asked him how he knew the story. ‘We watch the film in English class, and then we write our essay. We don’t have to read the book’. A couple of months ago I went to a local Sixth Form College to give some lessons on Text Transposition (taking text from a book and turning it into a different media – a play, a screenplay, a poem etc.), and I talked with one hundred and thirty-five students over three lessons. Out of those one hundred and thirty-five, only nineteen had ever read a complete book in their lives. These were seventeen and eighteen year-olds taking their AS Levels in English Literature! Their Literature module requirement was to read Chapter One of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy and Chapter one of ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker. Their examination question both cases was: Describe, in your own words, how this novel begins.

My brother, the person I rant and rave at when I get onto this subject, read an article in a leading UK newspaper. Apparently someone had done a survey of comparative exam requirements and results. He found that the percentile score that now awards you an ‘A’ grade at GCSE/O-Level was the same percentile score that would have given you a ‘C’ Grade five years ago, an ‘E’ Grade ten years ago, and fifteen years ago would have given you a ‘U’ Grade (Unclassified – basically so low that you didn’t even warrant a mark). The Labour Government’s plan to increase standards of education was – as were most of Blair’s policies – a thinly-veiled obscuring of the truth. If you drop the standard, then everyone wins. No-one gets left behind! Great…everyone has ten ‘A’ Grade O-Levels, but we have sixty percent of our adult population at a level of functional semi-literacy! Thanks once again, Tony!

When I did my English Literature O-Level (1981), I was required to read ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ from ‘The Canterbury Tales’ by Chaucer, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare and ‘The Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding. We read the books/plays. We went to Stratford to see the RSC perform ‘Merchant’. We saw the TV adaptation with Warren Mitchell as Shylock (amazing!), and then we read the play again. We alternated parts in class, we performed it as a whole play over three lessons. We talked about it, we studied it again, we watched the TV adaptation again. We loved the play by the time we were done. We appreciated what it was about. Oh, and we studied Chaucer first so when we got to Shakespeare he was easy in comparison! And seeing the play in Stratford and watching the TV adaptations were considered a real treat, a ‘reward. In fact, for paying so much attention and working so hard.

It sorrows me no end to see the closure of libraries due to lack of funding. It sorrows me more to see that very few people are fighting it, and those that are fighting it are of my generation and older. My grandmother – a WRAF WWII veteran who served as a secretary to Bomber Harris – used to say, ‘If you can read, you can live a thousand lifetimes.’ The younger generations have not been given the gift of reading, and – unfortunately – the responsibility lies at our own feet. Literacy promotes communication; literacy engenders self-confidence, tolerance, patience, a work-ethic, a pride in one’s own production and value in society. There is an incontrovertible link between literacy and honesty, an incontrovertible link between illiteracy and criminality.

So, what do we do?

We teach our kids to read again. We instil in them a love of reading. We teach them how to read. We raise a new generation of real readers, and with that we recover our ability to communicate, one with another, our desire for understanding, our desire for success.

It is a coincidence that the collapse of any society is directly paralleled by the rise in sex and violence as forms of ‘entertainment’, that in itself preceded by a noticeable decline in literacy and appreciation of the arts?

We have lost our heritage as some of the most well-educated and literate people on earth. We are still publishing vast numbers of books, and I do not even want to consider the number that are pulped!

Literacy is a gift, a legacy passed down generation to generation. In our desperate urgency to ‘raise educational standards’ we have completely forgotten why we are educating people. We are educating them to work, to produce, to become contributing and honest members of a society and a culture.

Why is it not possible to return to basics, to start teaching children to read again? It is not a difficult thing to do. It was accomplished with us.

Reading is where it all begins. Without the ability to really read, to understand what we are reading, to use dictionaries to increase our vocabularies, then we are lost as readers, and - more importantly – as a culture.

We have ‘dumbed-down’ our standards, our schools, our colleges and universities, simply because we have failed to observe that everything begins with basics. Teach nothing but Mathematics, Reading, Writing, basic Geography, History and Science until the child is eleven or twelve. Really establish the fundamentals of reading and literacy, and those will be the foundations upon which any and all further and more advanced studies will be stably built.

We test too much. We examine too much. We tie our educators’ hands with bureaucracy and administration. We do not let teachers teach, and teaching is perhaps one of the noblest professions that a society possess. Raise literate, productive children, and they will become literate productive adults, and there is the backbone of any society and culture.

And I know this little article about where I have been I the past year has turned into a monologue about educational standards, but I am in a tremendously fortunate position. I write for a living. It is my job. Unfortunately, as is being seen throughout every publishing company in the country, if not the world, authors are being ‘let go’ in their dozens, simply because it is proving commercially and financially impossible to continue to publish the number of books we do when people are not reading them.

I trust that the tide will turn. Part of this article has been written into a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. I’ll let you know if he replies.

I wish the publishing industry was all good news and stories of success, but it is not. It is at an all-time low, and there doesn’t seem to be any real signs of short-term recovery. And while the vast majority of publishers are concerning themselves with the ever-increasing rise of literary consumption by electronic means, they are missing the point. If people are not reading, then it doesn’t matter what medium you use to deliver literature to them. They’re still not going to read it!

I shall step back, take a deep breath, and compose myself now. I shall endeavour to make the next post an awful lot more optimistic!

I trust all is well with you. Stay in touch. Your e-mails and letters mean a great deal to me.

Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2011-02-08T18:49:00.002Z

BARCELONA ON-LINE FORUM

Attended the Barcelona BC Negra Crime Fiction Festival last week, and while I was there I did an on-line forum. Here's the links to the chat we had:

In English: http://dilmot.com/entrevistas/rj-ellory/en

In Spanish: http://dilmot.com/entrevistas/rj-ellory

2010-12-20T10:14:00.002Z

A CHRISTMAS POEM...

I simply am a simple man,
I have no faith, no master plan,
I take offence at none at all,
save those who try to say we'll fall,
if we believe in other stuff,
the stuff they think is just enough,
to keep them straight and right and true,
like God and Christ and Allah too,
and sometimes I just wonder why
they can't accept that people try,
to get along with black and white,
without concern for what is 'right',
for I believe there is no truth,
save that which you deduce in youth,
and watch evolve as years pass by,
the wisdom you attain with time,
and patience comes, and tolerance too,
forgiveness, kindness, through and through,
and how you learn to make ends meet,
to stand your kids on their own feet,
and grant your friends importance too,
their thoughts, their needs, their points of view,
and taking charge in times of stress,
and giving more and taking less,
and when it comes to Christmas time,
with laughter, cheer and lots of wine,
accept then too that people need,
Ramadan, Hannakah, Easter, Eid,
to show their faith, to say their prayers,
to help them ease their weight of cares,
and give it all its due concern,
not things dismissed, but things to learn,
for surely all of us should know,
acceptance is the way to go,
that people differ, east to west,
and one man's faith is not the best,
they all mean something, they all make sense,
they all can stand their own defence,
for somehow, somewhere, in some small way,
they help us meet another day,
they aid, confirm, protect, support,
they banish fears, unwanted thoughts,
remind us that we're human too,
that people win, and people lose,
and still we battle on, survive,
and try our best for better lives,
and hope for peace, a peace for all,
an end to pain, an end to war,
so at such times we celebrate,
not in the faith, the name, the date,
but in the company of men,
and recognize that now and then,
we all need time to pause, reflect,
to ask ourselves if we suspect,
that we can be a better friend,
a kinder, gentler heart to lend,
in times of pain, in times of woe,
to those who have no place to go,
in place of faith, instead of prayer,
a simple wish to heed and care,
for all mankind, both friends and foes,
both strangers and the ones we know,
and at this time, as gifts exchange,
we see that there is nothing strange,
tradition, custom, folklore too,
it matters little which you view,
they're all the same, they bear no blame,
they all possess a common aim,
to slow man down, to make him think,
to make him see a common link,
to make him see the simple truth,
that children, infants, those of youth,
have no division, no design,
they do not see these coloured lines,
they simply see another friend,
a start, a middle, and an end,
another way to fill their life,
with laughter, kindness, free from strife,
and so I think on Christmas Day,
as presents wend their merry way,
from mom to dad, from dad to son,
as games are played with endless fun,
we should recall that we'd be sunk,
without a reason to get drunk!

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and a truly happy and successful 2011!
Best, always,
Roger.

2010-11-26T12:58:00.004Z

A QUESTION OF FREEDOM...

The European Writers’ Parliament, the absence of V.S. Naipaul, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I am not a political writer. I am, however, a writer. I am not a political person. I am, however, a person. As a human being, I stand for the rights of human beings. I possess a proud and dedicated commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December of 1948 in Paris. The declaration is now available in three hundred and seventy-five dialects and languages. The Declaration arose as a result of the experiences during the Second World War. It was designed to establish a number of agreements between member countries that would prevent any possibility of the recurrence of the horrors of the Second World War. It presented thirty articles which have been amended and extended as deemed appropriate in numerous international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws.

The Universal Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations by a vote of 48 in favour, 0 against, with 8 abstentions (Byelorussian SSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, as well as Yugoslavia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia).

The following countries voted in favour of the Declaration: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Thailand, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.

To date, I do not believe there is one member country who has fully abided by this Declaration.

Part of the Declaration’s preamble states:

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people...”

And, subsequent to this preamble, the Declaration goes on to list thirty Articles, but I highlight only two here, for these relate to the area of discussion now prevalent at the European Writers’ Parliament in Istanbul:

Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

I am here in Istanbul as a guest of the Turkish Government and I am attending the European Writers’ Parliament as a delegate of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An invitation was extended to me, and I gratefully and graciously accepted. The intended purpose of the Parliament was to discuss the nature of European literature, the part it has played in history, the part it will play in our future.

Before I arrived I was asked a number of questions, which I detail below. My answers are also included. These were questions that were forwarded by the Turkish press.

1. In the history, the authors like Hemingway, Gide, Sartre come together against the fascism or war and write a manifest to criticize the world. Now, as a writer what is the main problem of the world? At the end of the parliament as you know, a big declaration will be created, so what will be written in this declaration, what are your previsions? [sic]

I believe, fundamentally, that the basic difficulty we face in the world today is a lack of tolerance of others' religious, political, philosophical and personal views. This lack of tolerance has arisen as a result of a failure to communicate, and the creation of barriers between cultures and societies by self-serving governments and socio-political groups. If we could simply communicate, and as a result of that communication bring about an understanding of the humanity of all peoples, then the vast majority of the world's difficulties would be addressed and solved.

2. What is the main feature of European literature? [sic]

The main feature of European literature is the fact that it carries with it the perspective of history. European literature possesses a legacy and heritage that stretches back many hundreds, even thousands of years, and innate and inherent in that is the responsibility it bears to present the Western viewpoint to the rest of the world as a whole. It relates to the issues we face as a race of peoples. Criticism of the West, just as is the case in criticism of the East, has come about as a result of communication barriers and breakdowns, and literature possess the power to address and resolve the vast majority of those barriers. This, obviously, then extends in a reciprocal fashion, and the East would be afforded as much opportunity to present itself to the West through literature.

3. What could be the benefits of the parliament for the European literature? [sic]

The Parliament for European Literature - I believe - possesses the capacity to generate immense change. By breaking down the differences between cultures and philosophies, by bringing writers from many different backgrounds and cultures together, and as a result of their meeting raise awareness of one anothers' issues, areas of concern, socio-political obstacles and motivations, one could establish a common ground of understanding and tolerance which would then be exported through the written word to an audience of millions. A book is still capable of
changing a life, and the more understanding, tolerant and compassionate our authors are, the more change can be affected by what they write.

Those were my answers – albeit brief – but I was constrained within a certain number of words. These questions, and my answers, came long before I began my journey, and long before I heard of the controversy surrounding the invitation extended to V.S. Naipaul.

As has been reported – in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and many other newspapers around the world, V.S. Naipaul had been invited as a keynote speaker. He was due to address the collected body of over one hundred authors from around Europe. He did not come. A Turkish poet made a statement to the effect that he did not wish to be represented at the Parliament by V.S. Naipaul due to the fact that Naipaul has previously stated his disagreement with various aspects of Islamic practice. This was then picked up by Turkish press, then the world’s press, and there were adherents to both sides of the discussion appearing with each passing hour. In order to prevent the Parliament being hijacked by this issue, Naipaul released a statement to the effect that he would not be attending. It was too late. The Parliament was already hijacked, and all for the good.

The panel upon which I sat for the last two days, a panel devoted to ‘reconceptualising the boundaries of European literature’ was the panel upon which Mr. Naipaul was due to sit.

During our panel we discussed this Naipaul issue. It was topical, contentious, a subject of both indignation and debate. We considered the nature of the declaration that we – as a collected body of writers – would make following our attendance at the Parliamentary commissions.

We could not, however, avoid discussion of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.

One attending Turkish author, recently acquitted of violation of Article 301, was awaiting an appeal by the prosecution service. If successful, he was to be tried a second time for the same crime. If found guilty of this crime, he would be imprisoned.

Before amendments were made to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code on April 30, 2008, the article stated the following:

1.A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2.A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3.In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4.Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

On April 30, 2008, article 301 was amended by the Parliament of Turkey, with the following changes:
•replacement of the word "Turkishness" with the phrase "the Turkish Nation" (so "denigration of Turkishness" became "denigration of the Turkish Nation");
•reduction of the maximum penalty from three years to two;
•removal of the special provision aggravating the punishment for denigration when committed by a Turkish citizen in another country;
•requiring permission of the justice ministry to file a case. The permission procedure of Article 301 will be carried out by the Directorate General of the Criminal Affairs of the Ministry of Justice where competent judges are seconded to the Ministry. Even if a criminal investigation is launched upon the permission of the Minister of Justice, the prosecutor still has discretionary power to decide not to prosecute.

I am not levelling a judgment. I am not here to criticise another country’s penal or justice codes. However, I am here to observe, appreciate, attempt to understand, and thus make a declaration of my opinions. This is, after all, the very foundation of freedom of speech as a concept.

We were all asked to submit a paragraph or two to express our views. These statements would then be coalesced into one unified and structured statement that communicated our collective attitude towards what had happened here. I appreciate that Mr. Naipaul did not wish for the Istanbul Conference to be hijacked by this issue, but it has been. I am pleased. The Naipaul issue is a matter that can serve to highlight the hundreds of thousands of such situations worldwide. I do not imagine there is one country amongst the 48 signing members for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights who are guilt-free or innocent of violation of these same UDHR Articles as noted above.

So I wrote my statement, as such:

“We, as the European Writers’ Parliament, unreservedly and without condition, acknowledge, support and promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all that this Declaration intends, specifically and especially, the rights that we – as human beings – inherently possess to communicate, either verbally or in writing, our own opinions, and to communicate about, disagree, or agree with the opinions of others, regardless of political, philosophic, ideological or religious affiliation or membership, and we also reserve the right to maintain, uphold and support said affiliations and memberships without fear of reprisal, attack, censure, persecution or punishment.”

Considered far too legal-sounding, I rewrote the statement more simply, as so:

“We – as free thinkers and writers – support the right to communicate our own opinions without fear of persecution or punishment. In a world where the ability of all peoples to communicate one with another increases ever-daily, we wish to state
our protest regarding any inhibition or attempt to inhibit the right to freedom of thought or speech.”

All delegates were given the opportunity to make a statement, and these have now been submitted in writing to the relevant moderators of each Parliamentary Commission. The mediators are now tasked with the responsibility of assembling the many statements into one cohesive whole which will then be submitted to the press, to the Parliamentary organizing body itself, and also – as far as I understand – to the chairpersons of the Office of the City of Culture here in Istanbul, and the President of Turkey.

I don’t believe any of us came here to be contentious, controversial, argumentative, critical, censorious or disrespectful.

I, for one, came here as a guest, as a writer, as a human being, but in seeing what I have seen here, in hearing what I have heard, all I could possibly ask is that all forty-eight declared members of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights review this declaration, recognize and acknowledge that this Declaration was established for a very precise reason, and that the representatives who signed on behalf of each of the member nations were the elected and authorised representatives for each of their respective nations.

Additionally, I wish to make a last comment regarding one more Article of the UDHR.

Article 26

1.Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2.Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3.Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

If we - as writers, individuals, parents, as human beings - directed our coordinated attention and action towards execution and enforcement of the above Article; if we recognised that there has been nothing but a denigration of the importance of education, and a decline in worldwide literary standards since the publication of the UDHR; if we recognised that the proposed ‘solutions’ of labelling children with unsubstantiated and unproven ‘psychiatric’ conditions as an explanation for their failures in study, and removed these influences and ‘remedies’ from our culture; if we reverted to the proven, basic methods of imparting skills in reading and writing as an absolute priority; if we – as a race – simply realized that our future depends exclusively on raising generations that are cultured, well-read, able to study, able to learn, able to apply what they know in practice, then perhaps we would, at last, be heading in the right direction.

We can talk all we wish, we can write all we wish, but if language and literacy are lost, then who will be there to listen?

Read and understand the thirty Articles of the Universal declaration of Human Rights.

Ask yourself a question: What world would we now have if each and every nation had enforced adherence to this declaration within its own territories, and had held every other member nation responsible to do the same?

If such a thing had happened, then I would not be writing this. I would perhaps be in the Istanbul Hilton discussing European literature with V.S. Naipaul.

2010-11-19T08:29:00.003Z

MAD BUSINESS...

I am travelling again. Have spent the last week in France - Paris and Lyon - and am now in Geneva. I will leave Geneva in a couple of hours for Besancon, then Aix-en-Provence and Banon, then back to Paris, then home. Next weekend I am in Istanbul for the European Writers' Parliament, and then I have a brief trip to Courmayeur in Italy for the Noir Festival in mid-December. That will be the last trip of the year! It has been crazy. Five French trips, also Holland, Dubai, New York, San Francisco, Australia, New Zealand, two tours to Canada - one to Montreal, the seocnd to Toronto. I think I have done in excess of one hundred and fifty thousand miles!

So you have to excuse my laxity in posting a new and substantial blog. I will do this, but when I am home again. I am keeping up with everyone on the e-mails and facebook, and though I am not posting a lot on twitter, I am answering the messages I receive. It's always great to hear from you, so keep on writing!

'Saints of New York' has done well, at least from the reviews and reports I have received from readers. I don't know that my books will ever light up the top of the bestseller lists, but we keep on trying. I think the top of the bestseller lists will be forever crowded with celebrity memoirs, cookery books, and the usual formulaic stuff. I don't say this critically, of course, but sometimes it is a little frustrating to see one book after another released that seems to be an awful lot like the last one! In France they have a wonderful expression for such books - 'written with the feet'!

Anyway, I shall drag my bitter and exhausted carcass back across the border into France, and we shall speak again soon! I hope all is well with you.

Best wishes, always,
Roger.

2010-11-02T18:16:00.001Z

DATES, TIMES, VENUES FOR THE FRANCE/SWITZERLAND WEEK...

Mardi 16 - 19h
Librairie Longtemps
22, avenue Mathurin Moreau
75019 Paris
01 40 03 63 38

Mercredi 17 - 19h
Librairie Passages
11, rue de Brest
69002 Lyon
04 72 56 34 84

Jeudi 18 - 18h30-20h
Librairie Payot Chantepoulet
Rue Chantepoulet 5
1201 Genève
00 41 22 731 89 50

Vendredi 19 - 18h
Librairie Les Sandales d'Empedocle
95, Grande rue
25000 Besançon
03 81 82 00 88

Samedi 20 - 16h
Librairie de Provence
31,cours Mirabeau
13100 Aix en Provence
04 42 26 07 23

Dimanche 21 - 14h
Librairie Le Bleuet
Place Saint Just
04150 Banon
04 92 73 25 85

2010-10-02T08:29:00.004Z

AIR MILES...

I while back I read an interview, I believe it was BB King, though it could have been someone else. Let’s say it was him. Anyway, he was asked – after so many decades as a professional touring musician – of his most memorable recollection of all those years on the road. The gigs he’d played, the musicians he’d jammed with, the sights he’d seen... Out of this wealth of extraordinary experience, what was his most abiding memory.

He paused, smiled wryly, looked away for a moment, and then said, ‘Airport waiting rooms...’

I know how he feels, and I am half his age.

It is the 1st of October. I find myself again in Paris. I have just flown from Birmingham, and now I have a three-hour wait before a four-hour train journey to Avignon in the south. I have been told that it is a truly beautiful place, and I have no doubt that it is, but I was in Paris for three days last weekend, and when I return home this coming Monday it will be merely a week before I leave again for Bouchercon Crime Fiction Festival in San Francisco. From San Francisco I fly directly to Toronto, and there I begin another eight days of touring before I am home once more. After Canada I have another week in France and Switzerland, and then the European Writers’ Parliament in Istanbul, and then there is only Italy before the end of the year.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining! I love to travel, I love to meet new people, I love to spend my time with writers and readers. After all, as I keep saying, writers and readers are simply the best people in the world. Just to highlight the point, I came off the plane at Paris-CDG, and there I was hauled up by a man and his wife, both of whom had attended the Lincoln Festival last year. I refrain from giving their names here, simply to acknowledge their right to privacy, but both truly lovely people, and it is moments like this that make you feel that what you are doing has some significance and importance.

So, what is it that I am saying?

I’ll share with you another little anecdote. Bear with me...

A few weekends ago, my son – now thirteen – had three of his friends come over to stay. For the sake of this little anecdote we’ll call them Groucho, Chico and Harpo. What can I say about my son? An extraordinary young man, now taller than his mother, with a line in Wilde-ish sardonic humour the like of which you have never heard from the mouth of a teenager. Bright, inquisitive, a voracious reader (thank God!), who can sit and explain the difference between ‘sarcasm’ and ‘irony’ better than anyone I know. This is the guy – after years of tolerating my verbosity and tendency to talk too much – who will ask me a question, and then – quickly, before I have a chance to respond – will add, ‘But please dad, an answer and not a lecture this time, okay?’ Anyway, he has his three friends over. Groucho, Chico and Harpo. These are kids who’ve gone to school with my son for the past three years. They love to come and stay with us. They get to watch the movies they want, to sleep in, and though my son marshals forces to ensure they assist him with his assigned domestic chores, they also appreciate that my wife and I are not – by any stretch of the imagination – ‘normal’ parents. As an example, my son has to come down two or three times a day to tell me to ‘turn the bloody guitar down, will you? I can’t hear my X-Box!’ Sometimes I think we have a reverse relationship. He tells me to grow up, will you? every once in a while as well. Anyway, I digress. It is Sunday morning. The three friends have stayed over. They are having breakfast. They all want different things. No problem. My wife does breakfast. I do dinner, sometimes lunch, but breakfast is my wife’s territory. So Groucho wants cereal, followed by five pieces of toast with Nutella, and after that some fruit. Chico wants pizza. Harpo wants left-over Chinese takeaway. Good enough. Breakfast is on the way! My son, the thirteen-year old who will eat two bowls of dynamite chilli before he goes to school, goes upstairs to get something. In his absence, one of the young friends asks me a question.

‘What is that you do?’ he ventures.

I smile, somewhat bemused. These are kids my son has gone to school with for several years.

‘Sorry?’ I say. ‘I beg your pardon...’

‘Well,’ he says. “Like for a job. I mean, you’re either here all the time doing whatever you like, or you’re not here at all. We were just wondering whether you had a job...or something?’

‘I have a something,” I reply. ‘Yes, I definitely have a something.’
The three of them look at me blankly.

I am thinking: Has my son never told his friends what I do?

I say what I am thinking: ‘Er...well, has my son never told you what I do?’

Groucho looks at Harpo, Harpo looks at Chico, Chico looks at Groucho...

They start to smile, almost simultaneously. They snigger. There’s an inside joke. A thirteen-year olds’ joke which I probably won’t get.

‘What did he say?’ I ask. ‘Come on, spill the beans guys...what did my son say?’

Groucho speaks first. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘He just told us to ignore you. That you were pretty harmless, and that we should ignore you.’

‘Ignore me?’ I ask. “Why would he think you needed to ignore me?’

‘He said we should ignore you because you were a crazy old man...’

They knew I wouldn’t get mad. I don’t do getting mad. I found it funny. Hilarious, in fact.

A crazy old man.

Mmmm, I’m thinking, Never a truer word spoken in jest...

So here I sit, in the SNCF Gare at Paris-CDG. Another couple of hours’ wait, and then a four-hour train journey to spend two days in Avignon and Villeneuve answering French questions. I love France. I love the French. I love French readers the most. The questions I am asked in France are comparable to no other questions I am asked anywhere in the world.

Do an event, a festival, a library appearance in the UK, in the USA, in Australia, and I am asked such things as, ‘Where do you get your ideas from? and ‘When did you start writing?’ In France, they say things like, ‘Drawing an analogy between the first five chapters of your novel and the Parsifalian legend, can you justify the representative symbology you employ in delineating the relationship between the antagonist and protagonist, and from this can you hypothesize the direction your novel might have taken if the roles had been more Freudian than Jungian?’

In a word, ‘No, I can’t...’, and besides, I stopped justifying things somewhere in my late twenties.

However, despite the fact that I sometimes find the questions a little challenging, there is nowhere in the world where I have been greeted and appreciated like France.

‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’(Seul Le Silence) has been out for a while here, and that was followed by ‘A Quiet Vendetta’ (Vendetta), and on October 7th, they are releasing ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ (Les Anonymes). Last week I was in Paris to do some press interviews and receive the Livre De Poche Award for Seul Le Silence, and tomorrow I will receive the Villeneuve Detection Fiction Festival Readers’ Award for Vendetta.

If the response I get in France was replicated elsewhere, the UK, the USA as well, I would be a happy man.

Or would I?

This raises a question. I question I have long asked myself. What is happiness? Some say it is the journey, some the destination, others simply overcoming the obstacles attendant to pursuing a goal or aspiration, and once the goal is accomplished you need to find another goal with obstacles to overcome otherwise you will be simply unhappy again.

I know I get frustrated. Why, only this morning I tried three different WHSmiths outlets at the airport in Birmingham, and none of them had copies of ‘Saints of New York’, and this is a book that was released only yesterday! Unfortunately, I do not sell enough books to warrant the cost of putting my book in WHSmiths. It is a Catch-22 situation. Sell enough books and you can afford promotional campaigns and placement in bookshops. But how do you sell enough books to justify the staggering expense of such things when the books you write are not available in bookshops, and nor are they advertised or promoted anywhere? Like I said, a Catch-22 situation.

It comes down to word-of-mouth, and there’s no predicting those books that catch peoples’ imaginations, those books that people start talking about.

It is – without question – a crazy old business, and who better than a crazy old man to get involved in it.

However, regardless of my gripes and grievances, I love writing. It is all I ever wanted to do. That, and play music. Like Lennon said, ‘Find something you love and you’ll never work another day...’, and I have found something I love, and consider myself profoundly fortunate to be in a situation where I can earn a living doing something that actually doesn’t feel like work.

So I have done Dubai, and Holland, and France three or four times, and Australia and New Zealand and Montreal and New York so far, and I have more France, more Canada, the US West Coast, Istanbul and Italy yet to go...

And there are lots more flights, and lots more trains, and lots more waiting rooms...
And there are lots more restaurants within which to eat alone, and lots more anonymous hotel rooms and intermittent web connections, and trying to keep up with the e-mails (often the highlight of my day, by the way!), and all the while working on new material, and writing new songs, and getting on with this ridiculous business of being a professional writer...

I had a conversation with another writer a few weeks ago. God knows where we were. He said he’d read an article about artists, those individuals who create something and then put it out three for the world to admire and enjoy. This article postulated that artists – whether they be writers, painters, ballet dancers, musicians – were composed, personality-wise, on the basis of fifty-percent ego, fifty-percent insecurity.

That made sense. Arrogant enough to consider that what they have created is something that everyone will appreciate and enjoy, but maniacally insecure and hoping like mad that people do actually enjoy it.

I think I feel like that most of the time.

So ‘Saints of New York’ has been released. Not very many copies. Not a very big print run. Irrespective of how many copies of ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ might have sold as a result of the Richard & Judy Book Club promotion, the fact remains that those readers that buy R&J books are not loyal to the authors, but to the list. They don’t want the next ‘Ellory’, they want the next R&J selection. Makes sense. R&J was/is a fantastic method of getting people out of the reading comfort zones. So, ‘Saints of New York’ might sell five percent of the number of copies of ‘Angels’, but still it is out there, and people will read it, and they will give their verdict.

I have completed ‘Bad Signs’ for June 2011, and two days ago I completed the novel for 2012. As a working title, it is called ‘A Dark and Broken Heart’, though – as in many instances before, it may not keep that title.

I wait, insecurity intact and fully-formed, to hear what the UK makes of ‘Saints of New York’, as I will also wait patiently to see what they think of ‘Bad Signs’, and all the rest of them. I have spoken to authors who sell a million copies in every country they’re published, authors who are releasing their tenth or fifteenth or twentieth book, and the insecurity doesn’t go away. Not ever. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s what makes you try as hard as you can with every book you write.

And so I am going now. It is a new day. I arrived last night in Villeneuve, and I took some snaps and posted them on facebook. It is Saturday morning, and I am looking forward to the events I have to do this weekend, and the questions, the unmistakably French questions...

‘Monsieur Ellory...looking at the relationship of Ernesto Perez and Detective Robert Miller, I am struck by the similarity of Miller’s journey into the world of Perez and the legend of Orpheus into the Underworld. Can you please explain...’

Sure I can, I can hear myself saying. It’s like this...

2010-09-02T06:35:00.003Z

CATCHING UP...

Okay, so here we are in Australia. The Antipodean tour begins! The Melbourne Writers’ Festival is the ostensible reason for being here, but we are taking advantage of my first trip Down Under to get to as many places and do as many interviews as we can. I’m off shortly to travel the city with my publicist, and we shall be doing as much as possible in the time that we have.

Today I’ll be at The Avenue, Readers’ Feast, Dymocks and Readings Carlton. Tonight there is a dinner for the Festival itself. Tomorrow is Radio 3MDR, The Morning Fix, an interview with The West Australian, then ABC 666. On Saturday I am doing a seminar with Peter James called ‘The Art of Suspense’ at the Festival itself, and on Sunday I am in discussion with China Mieville and Catherine Lim about how we differ in our presentation of politics and political themes in fiction. Monday I am flying to Sydney, and will attend interviews for Radio West, Hot FM, an on-line TV interview for The First Tuesday Book Club, then 3MDR, ‘The Good Life’ with Ann Creber, lastly Radio 2CC, ‘Talking Canberra’. Tuesday I have an interview with AAP Newswire, and then bookstore-visits to Brays and Shearers. I then fly back to Melbourne the same afternoon, stay over one night in preparation for a 5.00am departure for Auckland.

The New Zealand schedule is as follows:

Wednesday 8th
Interview for Radio NZ
Interview for Crime Watch blog
Interview for Newstalk ZB and BBC Worldwide
Takapuna Library Event (6.00pm)

Thursday 9th
Newstalk ZB Dunedin
Nelson Mail Interview
Stock signing at Paper Plus Nelson
Nelson Library Event (12.00pm)
Write On, Dunedin Toroa Station Interview
Radio Southland Interview
Marsden Books Event (5.30pm)

Friday 10th
Breeze Wellington Interview
Radio One Dunedin Interview
Breeze Manawatu Interview
Good Morning TV Interview
Coromandel FM Interview
Mosgiel Library Event (3.30pm)
Dunedin City Library Event (5.30pm)

And that will be that...then heading back to Melbourne, onwards to Dubai, onwards to Birmingham and home.

I have now returned from the Melbourne bookstore visits. I also got a copy of ‘Saints of New York’ which I have never seen before in a finished copy, and it looks great! My publicist, Mary Bayley, believe it or not a Texan, knew where to take me for CDs as well, and I visited Basement Discs. Here I collided with Pat, one of the sellers there, and – ironically, coincidentally – I presented him with my credit card to pay for the ridiculous amount of CDs that I had bought, and he said, ‘You’re the crime writer...I bought your book only the day before yesterday’. Small world! Mary also brought with her a poster she’d picked up at a Jimmie Vaughan/Thunderbirds gig she attended at Antone’s in Texas in 1974, and we happened to park outside a print store...so now I have a copy of that very same poster to frame and hang at home.

So what did I buy? I’ll tell you...

Canned Heat, ‘Uncanned’; The Who, ‘Who’s Next?’; The Doors, ‘Morrison Hotel’; Pink Floyd, ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’; George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Collection; Keb’ Mo’, ‘Live and Mo’’; Larry Carlton, ‘Fire Wire’; Ray Lamontagne & The Pariah Dogs, ‘God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise’; Elvin Bishop, ‘The Blues Rolls On’; Dean Thomas, ‘Greyhound to Mecca’; Moreland & Arbuckle, ‘Flood’; John Doe & The Sadies, ‘Country Club’; Jason & The Scorchers, ‘EMI Years’.

See – it’s feeding an addiction!

Can never have enough CDs, can never have too many guitars, can never make too many friends!

So, off to Melbourne Writers’ Festival Dinner this evening, catch up with some old faces, meet some new ones, share war stories, drink some excellent Australian wine, and hopefully I will sleep tonight without having to call The Housekeeping Team.

Best, always,
Roger.

2010-09-01T21:06:00.001Z

THOUGHTS AS THE SUN RISES OVER MELBOURNE...

As I have commented before, this writing business is a strange one. Seems you spend half your life alone, sat in some room somewhere, hammering away at the keyboard creating your latest work, and the other half of the year in new and far-flung places explaining yourself to strangers.

This morning, a little after 6.30 am, I am in Melbourne. I arrived sometime yesterday morning – early, as far as I recall – after a series of three eight-hour flights, one from Birmingham to Dubai, the second from Dubai to Singapore, the last from Singapore to here. Upon arrival in Melbourne I was given a lift along with an Australian author and her husband. He is a Mexican research scientist. She has just published her first novel in Australia. Lovely people. And the driver was a volunteer for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and she’d been up since God knows what hour that morning, ferrying authors from the airport to their respective hotels.
So I was deposited at the Sofitel in Melbourne, a five-star hotel, one of those plush hotel rooms where they seem to have gone to the most extraordinary trouble to hide the light switches. There are a dozen lamps, and you spend twenty minutes trying to figure out how they illuminate. Some you have to clap your hands. Some you have to approach tentatively and then they light up suddenly like they want it to be a surprise. Some just have switches that are in corners too awkward to reach with normal human arms.

But I am ensconced. I unpack. I have eleven hours ahead of me before I meet my publicist. He’s flying in from Sydney. I won’t sleep. I know that much. I have already been up for twenty four hours as I can never sleep on planes. So I drink some wine, I watch French gangster movies (‘Mesrine’ Parts one and Two – excellent!), I consider reading but I don’t feel like it. I’ll make it through the day, go to dinner, crawl back to my hotel room, and then I will sleep the sleep of kings.

Except I don’t. I lie awake all night unable to find any comfort whatsoever. There is a leaflet by the bed. It explains to me that I have been provided with a Mybed, part of a unique sleep comfort service. With the Mybed comes a selection of five pillows, respectively a ‘Therapeutic Pillow’, a ‘Foam Pillow’, a ‘Tontine Latex Pillow’, a ‘Posture Support ‘V’ Pillow’, and a ‘Feather Pillow’. Apparently there is a ‘Housekeeping Team’ who will assist me to select a pillow. The Team is available on a twenty-four hour basis. I consider calling them. They will appear in midnight blue boiler suits, rather like a CSI Unit. They will have headsets, clipboards, they will stand outside my room , their backs against the wall waiting for the ‘all-clear’, and then they will descend – efficient, clinical, businesslike. It will be ‘Def-Con 5’ and they will count off ‘T minus 45, T minus 44...’ until the right pillow has been isolated for my needs.

I decide not to call them. I know I’ll go to sleep soon.

But I don’t.

I decide to get up and write a blog entry. I haven’t done this for a while. I decided, some while ago, that I would post a blog entry at least once a month every month. Then someone started responding to my blogs with nothing more than links to dodgy Japanese porn sites. That annoyed me. Combined with the staggering lack of responses from anyone else, I thought ‘To hell with it...’ and posted on facebook instead. That precipitated loads of responses, and I was suitably reassured. However, I do want to maintain a blog, and in my current state of mind – knowing I should have slept at some point during the last 72 or 96 hours, slightly irritable (as evidenced by the somewhat sarcastic tone of this missive) – I thought I should make the effort.

So here we are. The start of a long tour. I have a week in Australia, a week in New Zealand, a couple of days at home, then a residency for two days in Birmingham, and then out to Paris for a few days, and then home again, and then Hanley, and then back to the south of France, and then a residency in Oxford, and then a week in San Francisco, and onwards to Canada for a week or so, and then home. Aside from one further trip to France and Switzerland for a week or so, and then a week in Italy in December, that is me done on the touring for this year. Qatar was cancelled. That’ll happen next year now.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of travelling when you put it down on paper, but it has begun to feel like a lot. I have already done France twice, Dubai, Holland and New York. I do enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, and – as is always the case when you launch a new book – there is a rush of excitement, a sense of anticipation, a hope that people will enjoy it. And I really do hope that you enjoy it.

‘Saints of New York’ has already garnered a couple of great reviews, one from crimesquad.com in the UK, the second from the Sydney Morning Herald, but it is the real readers that concern me, the ones who read ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’, the ones who voted for ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ for the Theakstons, the ones who e-mail me about ‘The Anniversary Man’. Those are the guys and gals that matter to me.
So we shall wait and see. I will be off soon, out to meet my publicist and start the first day of interviews and events.

I may yet call The Housekeeping Team to make sure I sleep tonight. I wonder if the Team Leader will be Gil Grissom or Doctor Langston. Hopefully Gil; he seems like the kind of guy with whom I could share a bottle of Jack and listen to forensic war stories until I drift off.

Until we speak again, best wishes, as always,
Roger.

2010-08-21T08:56:00.002Z

I HAVE NOT DISAPPEARED...

Prompted by my good friend Mary, reminding me that I have a responsibility and a duty to post blog entries as well as posting on Facebook and Twitter, I have to explain that my lack of attention to the blog has been born out of a fustration with the seeming lack of responses to what I post, combined with someone's intent to reply to my blog entries with a series of links to dodgy Japanese porn sites! All those little dots that follow my posts are actually links to these sites, and if that's what people think of what I have to say...well, then maybe I will just stick to FB and Twitter.

But perhaps not.

I do like to post blog entries on the site, and I did approach it with a view to posting a least one article a month, but I have let it slip.

I will post again, no fear, but bear with me! A lot has been going on, and the Australian/New Zealand/USA/France/Canada tour rapidly approaches, and I will be vanishing from the start of September to the start of November.

Speak soon, no doubt.

Best wishes, always,
Roger.

2010-06-10T08:08:00.000Z

APOLOGIES FOR THE ABSENCE…

Sometime last year I missed a month on the blog. I decided then that – come what may – I would always post at least one blog each month. Seems I have missed one again. Somehow or another May went by me in a flash, and here we are in June, and I apologise for my failure to report on news and events for last month. However, I have just noticed that this is my 100th blog entry!

Since we last spoke I have been out to Montreal to accept the Quebec Laureat for the French translation of ‘A Quiet Vendetta’. The two books in French translation have done extraordinarily well. ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ (published in France as ‘Seul Le Silence’), and the second release (published as ‘Vendetta’) have sold a huge amount of copies, but – far more importantly – they have been greeted very warmly by the French. The Quebec Laureat - full title, ‘Prix des Libraires Du Quebec’ - is a very prestigious annual award nominated and given in two categories. There is the ‘Quebecois’ category (for those authors who are natives of Quebec), and the ‘Hors Quebec’ (outside Quebec) category for everyone else. Last year ‘ A Quiet Belief In Angels’ was shortlisted for the Laureat and lost, by one vote, to ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy. This year ‘Vendetta’ was shortlisted in the company of such august and wonderful authors as James Frey and Philip Roth, and went on to win. That ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ also won the Inaugural Prix Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur was already acknowledgement enough, but to have won the Laureat for ‘Vendetta’ was quite overwhelming. The award has been given for seventeen years, and not once in all those seventeen years has anyone from the ‘hors Quebec’ category actually gone to Quebec to receive the award in person. Well, I went, and I did the speech in French, and my French accent was graciously tolerated! The award itself (pictures of which I posted on facebook, and can still be found in the ‘photos’ section of my profile page) was a wonderful wooden carving employing basswood, mahogany, cherry and maple, all sourced from that area. Montreal itself is an amazing place. Neither American (despite some very ‘American’ architecture in amidst the French-influenced, and the characteristically Quebecois buildings), nor English (despite the fact that Queen is still head of State), nor French (despite the fact that French is very definitely the first language), Quebec is very definitely just Quebec. It is like nowhere else I have been, and I am looking forward to any opportunity I might have to go again. It was a great experience, and I want to thank everyone involved in that amazing trip for their support, their friendship and their encouragement.

And now to facebook. I do have a profile page under my full name – Roger Jon Ellory. There have also been fan pages set up by different folks – ‘R.J. Ellory’ and ‘R.J. Ellory Author’ and different pages for different books. If you want to send me a friend request to my personal facebook page please do that. You’ll know it because there’s about a thousand friends currently, and my profile picture is me playing the guitar.

Which brings us to music. Right. So, where to start. Myself and a couple of friends got together, and with very little practice indeed (and I mean fifteen minutes, at best!) we played at a private party. Someone took some snaps which they then forwarded to me. I posted them up on facebook, and I gave the ‘band’ a name – The Renegades. I think this has now been officially adopted as the name of this dubious outfit, and yes, we are working on a set-list, and yes, we are going to be playing live soon. This is the plan. It has been the plan for a few months, but with the amount of travelling I’ve been doing it hasn’t really been realistic to get it organised until recently. I will keep you posted on this project as it progresses.

And thus to travel. Since the start of the year I have been out to Dubai, also to Montreal, to St. Malo in the south of France for the Etonnants-Voyageur Film and Literature Festival. Here I had the great pleasure of doing another event with my dear friend Vikas Swarup (author of ‘Q&A’, the book that was made into ‘Slumdog Millionaire’). I took a lot of pictures there, all of which are on facebook. I also spent a couple of days in Amsterdam talking to the press about the Dutch release of ‘A Quiet Vendetta’. For the remainder of the coming year we have organised a week in New York for the launch of ‘The Anniversary Man’ (which is actually released today, but we are doing some promotional work out there – radio interviews and whatever, and we are having an official launch party at ‘Partners & Crime’ on Greenwich Avenue on the evening of the 6th of July, so if you’re out in New York in the first week of July well just come along…). Also I will be in Montpellier at the Frontignan Literary Festival at the end of this month; at the Lichfield Big Read (‘One City, One Book’ – talking to 200 people who’ve all read ‘Ghostheart’); at Harrogate for the whole Crime Festival weekend; a week in Swanwick at the very famous Writers’ Festival; a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, to include the Melbourne Lit. Fest.; also events in Birmingham and Oxford at the Hotel Du Vin and Malmaison chains; a week in Qatar for the Qatar Festival of Writing; back to France for the festival in Villeneuve-les-Avignon; then a week in San Francisco at Bouchercon, the largest crime fiction festival in the world, and finally another two weeks in Canada, a trip which will include the Toronto Literary Festival and trips out to Ottawa and numerous other places.

As far as the books are concerned, ‘Saints of New York’ is out in September this year and ‘Bad Signs’ is done for June of 2011. And currently I am about two-thirds the way through writing the book for 2012, working title is ‘A Dark And Broken Heart’, but that will more than likely change. With the release of ‘Saints of New York’ in paperback next year, Orion intend to completely redesign and re-release all the previous books, so I am interested to see what I am going to look like for 2011.

Also, for the second time I have been shortlisted for the CWA Dagger In The Library (an award given to an author for a body of work, as opposed to one particular novel), and I have been longlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Award for ‘A Simple Act of Violence’. The shortlist is selected by public vote, and public voting ends tomorrow…and if you still haven’t voted and want to then you can on the Harrogate Crime Festival website, or the following link: http://www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/crime/award/

So that’s where I’m at currently. I appreciate all the e-mails and letters and cards and facebook messages. I get a few responses to the blog entries I post, but there seems to be a predominance of cryptic Oriental ideograms appearing as ‘responses’ to my posts, and I have absolutely no idea what that’s about!

You will be pleased to know I have not taken a holiday since 1985 (and that was just a week’s hitchhike to Wales and sleeping on the beach), and I have absolutely no intention of taking a holiday at any point in the foreseeable future. There is work to be done – always!

And so we are done for now. I trust you are all well, and that you are reading as much as you can as often as you can.

Reply please. Send me e-mails, facebook notifications, whatever you like! It’s always great to hear from you.

Take care, and all best wishes,

Roger.

2010-04-12T09:09:00.002Z

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS…

Martin asked a few questions before the weekend, and here are the answers:

1. Do you ever feel frustrated and fed by all the appearances and places you have to visit, when you could be writing and being with your family, or do you enjoy all aspects of being an author?

No, I don’t feel frustrated and fed-up! More now than ever, an author has to make an effort to go out and create his or her own readership. The vast majority of books published receive no support – financially or promotionally – from the publisher, and thus the responsibility lies with the author to work as hard as he/she can to find and connect with new readers. In the UK we publish 133,000 books a year. That’s 30 every hour, twenty-four hours of the day. I would guess that only two or three percent have a ‘marketing/promotional spend’ attached to them, and the rest are reliant on word-of-mouth, personal reference, the enthusiasm of booksellers in bookshops, reading group support and the promotional efforts of the author. There are, of course, authors who find the personal aspect of writing – meeting new people, doing readings and signings – intensely rewarding, and then there are authors who do not like making public appearances. It is true to say – in the main – that those authors who make the effort to go out and meet readers have an infinitely greater chance of selling books, and as a result have an infinitely greater chance of continuing to write and publish, because only with booksales sufficient to warrant further investment from the publisher do authors continue to be published. Personally, I love to travel, I love to talk about books, I love to meet new readers and spend time with people who are as enthusiastic about books and writing as I am. Hence I make the effort to do as many public events as possible and support the libraries as much as I can. I could stay home all year, but then I would write three books a year, and being only able to publish one I would soon get very frustrated with all the backlogged material that I knew no-one would ever read!

2. Do you ever get nervous when having to speak in front of an audience? If so how do you cope with it?

I don’t, no. I know that ‘public speaking’ is terrifying for most people, but I have never really had a problem with it. In all honesty, I don’t know that there is any other real or workable solution for ‘stage fright’ than forcing yourself to go out and do it.

3. How do you react to criticism? Either from the public or from publishers, agents, editors. i.e. if there’s a particular scene that they want cut out, but you want left in, how strongly would you argue your case? Or if they don’t like a book, would it make you write differently?

This is several questions as once; we’ll take them individually.

- How do I react to public criticism?

Well, it’s par for the course. It’s something that you have to accept will always be there. It bothers me greatly when I read reviews on amazon, and someone says, ‘This is rubbish. I have a six year-old who could write better than this’. Sometimes the comments are wholly vicious and unpleasant. The frustrating thing for me is that I meet a lot of people who have read and enjoyed the books, and yet they don’t put reviews on the net. Amazon – fortunately or unfortunately – is one of the very, very few public forums where people can post reviews that will be read by people. In my experience, the number of people who post reviews versus the number of people who have read the books in infinitesimal. I really wish people would post reviews! Regardless, the bottom line is that you are not going to please everyone, and if you spend all your time worrying about what people think then you’ll never do anything for fear of criticism. You learn to accept it, to try not to be bothered too much by it, but sometimes the things you read are so hostile that you wonder what purpose the person is trying to accomplish by saying such things.

- How do I react to criticism from agents and editors?

Well, you don’t get criticism from agents and editors. You get suggestions, advice, recommendations. They don’t criticize, per se. If your agent or editor reads some part of your work and feels that it’s not right, or could be better, then they certainly wouldn’t refrain from saying anything, but it’s never done with a negative slant. It’s always approached with a view of making your work as good as possible. Aside from that, your agent or editor works with you because they enjoy your work, your style, the type of material you produce, and thus criticism – in the accepted sense of the word – is not part of your relationship.

- If there’s a particular scene that they want cut out, but you want left in, how strongly would you argue your case?

Very strongly! The thing you will find with your editor is that he or she will generally operate on the basis that it is your book, it is your creation, and they will honour your wish to maintain it as you wrote it. If you feel very strongly about a scene, then I would generally imagine that the scene was integral to the plot, and thus I don’t think an editor would ask for it to be removed.

- Or if they don’t like a book, would it make you write differently?

Well, if your publisher didn’t like a book they have the right to refuse to publish it, and would actually ask you to deliver another book to them. That has never happened with me. I wouldn’t think there were very many cases where a publisher ‘didn’t like’ a book. I know that in the vast majority of cases authors have to make editorial changes to their work – big or small – based on recommendations from editors, but not to the extent where they would have to write differently, or scrap a book completely.

4. Do you have complete control over what you write? What I’m asking is, do you have to target a particular audience when you’re writing, as set out by your publisher? I remember a couple of years back when you wanted a book out earlier, but it was put back by your publisher?

Yes, you do have complete control over what you write, but – once again – you are contracted to a publisher, and the publisher has the right to refuse to publish a work that it is unsatisfied with, or feels is inappropriate. I don’t know of any author who has been asked to ‘write to a particular audience’ as such. I can imagine that there are certain authors who – having found a receptive audience – then continue to write a particular type of story to serve that audience, but I don’t know that authors are ever coached to fulfil a particular brief that their publisher believes will fulfil a ‘market requirement’. In my experience, the publishing industry as a whole is not that mercenary. And as far as a book being put back or released on a different date by a publisher, this is only done because the publisher believes that waiting to publish it will give it a better chance of garnering attention in an already very jam-packed publishing calendar.

5. What do you think of contemporary writers? Ken Follett, who I rate very highly, was very scathing about Hilary Mantel, the recent Booker Prize winner. I have started reading a few of these, i.e. William Boyd, Sebastian Barry and others, and have found them very good, and not all as difficult to read as I imagined.

Unfortunately I cannot answer this question. I have not read any books by Ken Follett, Hilary Mantel, William Boyd or Sebastian Barry. However, I will say that I have no interest or desire to be critical or negative about any authors’ work, regardless of who they might be or the quality of their novels. I know what it takes to produce a novel, and I know that the vast majority of books are written by extraordinarily committed and hard-working people. As Aldous Huxley once said, ‘A bad book is as much a labour of love as a good one’, and the idea of criticising another writer’s work is anathema to me.

6. I guess you’ve met lots of writers now in your time, even some of the greats and I just wondered what sort of people they are? I know some of them in the past have a reputation for being difficult or having problems. Alistair MacLean and Ian Fleming had drink problems for instance, Virginia Woolf had mental problems and committed suicide. I’ve heard JD Salinger was a bit of a recluse and so on.

In my experience, I have found writers – on the whole – to be generous, interested in others, intelligent, humorous, well-read, eager to answer questions and meet their readers, and of the view that they are themselves very fortunate to be published, and willing to help and advise unpublished writers. I can honestly say that – as a professional writer for the past seven or eight years – I have yet to come across a writer I have disliked or found to be rude, offensive, self-important or anything else. Of course, I have not met all writers! Amongst those I have met who I have found to be wonderfully receptive, good travelling companions, and great to share a stage with at events and suchlike are Mark Billingham, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Jeffery Deaver, Laura Wilson, Chris Simms, Steve Mosby, Kate Mosse, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride, Robert Crais, Simon Kernick, Lee Child, and many, many more. I think writers – especially crime writers (as these are the writers I have greatest exposure to) – are a wonderful fraternity, each supportive of their fellows, and each as generous as the other with their time and encouragement. I think all people, regardless of profession, have their idiosyncrasies and oddities! The simple fact that those in the public eye have those idiosyncrasies and oddities made known does not make them any less ‘ordinary’. I don’t think being a writer predisposes you to alcoholism, depression or anything else, any more than any other profession might!

7. Have you ever thought about writing in another genre besides American crime fiction? I was thinking of your 22 unpublished novels. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how they do today? Not that I’m saying you should give up your present genre as you do it so well.

I have no plans to write in another genre at the moment. I think the ‘genre’ within which I write encompasses everything I want to write about – the spectrum of human emotions, history, politics, music, culture, social commentary, conspiracy theories, crime and punishment and all else. The one thing I see in the ‘crime fiction’ genre is that it does encompass all genres and all subjects. You can write a crime novel that is also a love story, a thriller, a conspiracy, a historical work, and thus you have a huge canvas with which to work. My earlier works, for the moment, are staying in the attic where they have been for the last twenty-something years. It would take as much tiem to work one of them into publishable condition as it would to write another book, and writing a new book is always so much more interesting.

8. Is there any more news about the filming of AQBIA?

No, no further word yet. This is the nature of the film industry, it seems. You hear nothing for three years and then everything happens in a fortnight! We shall see what transpires…

9. What do you think of E Readers? Will they mean the death of the printed word, or the saviour of the publishing industry?

I don’t think they will mean either. I think e-readers will be used alongside books. Recordings of music never took the place of live music. Photography never took the place of painting. I think there is a disposable, give-away, tactile, share-able, inexpensive, lend-it-to-someone-and-don’t-worry-about-getting-it-back, gift-orientated, sense-fulfilling quality to books that will never be achieved with anything but a real book. I think e-books will increase in popularity, but I don’t think they will ever exceed the sales of hard-copy books.

2010-03-27T10:07:00.002Z

IF I HAD TEN DAYS IN A WEEK AND SEVEN WEEKS IN A MONTH, THERE'D STILL BE TOO LITTLE TIME...

Seems merely a few days since I last posted a blog, and with my determination to write at least once a month, I am finding myself having to sit down and just do it amidst all the other things that have to be done ‘yesterday, if not the day before…’. Such is the nature of things at the moment.

Well, since we last spoke I have been to Dubai. Dubai was remarkable. The Emirates International Literary Festival held right there in Festival City. A great hotel, the most amazing events, sharing events with the likes of Mark Billingham, Jeffrey Deaver, and my great friend Paul Blezard. Greg and Kate Mosse were there as well, and though we speak often and see one another as frequently as we can, it’s always a real pleasure to spend some time with them. One of the highlights for me was a trip with Mark out to the Indian High School. This is the largest school in the Gulf, catering for over nine thousand students. We were met by several of the teachers and governors, and the lady who had organised the event began by explaining that the IHS exam period had just ended, and thus the vast majority of students were not in school. ‘Therefore,’ she went on to say, ‘I have to apologise sincerely as we only have four hundred and fifty students for you to talk to.’ Mark and I – used to talking to thirty or forty students in an English school - were suitably impressed. ‘Okay,’ we said. ‘Four hundred and fifty is just fine’. And thus we were escorted through to the main hall, and there – in an arena that could seat over two and a half thousand people – we were greeted with a standing ovation from four hundred and fifty students and about a hundred parents and teachers, presented with bouquets, and introduced by the organiser of the event while a slide show of our book covers was played on a vast screen behind the stage.

We spoke for an hour or so, we answered questions provided by the students, and – as I have always maintained – children invariably ask questions that are so much more demanding than adults. Each child, when presented with the roving microphone, began the question with ‘Good morning Sir, and thank you for your kind attendance here…’ or something of that nature. Quite, quite remarkable. The children were happy. They wanted to learn. They wanted to know everything we could tell them about reading and writing and travelling, and who we were and what we did, and how our days began and ended. It was an enlightening and sobering experience. The largest school in the Gulf. Nine thousand, two hundred students. No drugs, no crime, no bullying…nothing but a vigorous and enthusiastic desire to learn.

At the end of the event, after having signed books for an hour or more, I was presented with a drawing, executed by the Head of the Art Department himself. It was a picture of me on the stage, beautifully done, and at the bottom it read, ‘Token of love from students and staff of IHS – DXB’, and then signed and dated by the artist. I am having it framed for my study wall.

Aside from this wonderful experience, there was the desert trip, organised by Emirates, the falconry exhibition, the camel rides, the Sufi dancers at a Bedouin encampment where we ate the most remarkable food, the wonderful hospitality of Isobel, Vivienne, Georgina and Maryann – the organisers and administrators of the festival itself, and on the final evening we were all driven out in buses to the home of Maurice Flanagan, Executive Vice-Chairman of the Emirates Group, and here – in the stunning surroundings of his garden – he hosted a ‘Thank you’ dinner for all the authors who had attended the festival. Here I shared some time with Jacqueline Wilson, Roger McGough, Martin Amis, Mark Billingham, Jeffrey Deaver, Kate Mosse, Kate Adie, Joe Abercrombie, Tim Butcher, Garth Nix, Alexander McCall Smith, Gervase Phinn, Michelle Paver, Darren Shan, Francis Wheen, Yann Martel and a host of other world-renowned and celebrated authors, biographers, playwrights, poets and social commentators.

It was a truly remarkable event, and one I will remember for the rest of my life.

And then I came home! I was home for a few days, and then I had to fly out to Amsterdam for a couple of days. The first book published by De Fontein in Holland (‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’) was successful, voted ‘Best Thriller of 2009’ by one of their leading newspapers, Volksrant. Now they have just published ‘A Quiet Vendetta’ and this is also selling well. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, similarly old and charming in many places – much like Paris, but with canals. I arrived at about 11.00am on the first morning, did half a dozen newspaper and magazine interviews in the Hotel Ambassade (renowned for its hospitality for authors, and possessive of a hotel library in which there is a signed copy of one book by every author that has ever stayed there…quite a sight to behold!), and then in the evening there was a celebratory dinner in one of Amsterdam’s finest Italian restaurants (‘a ‘Vendetta’ themed dinner, you see…how could we have eaten anything but Italian food?), and here I spent a couple of hours in the company of the wonderful people from De Fontein, the Dutch publisher, and some of the key sellers and buyers in the book industry. I have to say a huge thank you to Susan, Catrien and Genevieve for organising everything, and for making the brief trip to Holland so enjoyable and productive. The following day there were more interviews, more photographers, and then a flight home in the late afternoon.

I have now posted many of the events I will be doing later in the year on the website calendar. There are three trips to France – St. Malo, Villeneuve lez Avignon and Montpellier. I will be doing Swanwick for four days, also the Lincoln Book Festival, and though I’m not doing any panels at Harrogate I will be there regardless. I am out to New York in July, and I’ll be travelling to Connecticut and Massachusetts as far as I know. San Francisco is in October, but I have just agreed to do the Melbourne Literary Festival in September, and then a further week of touring in Australia. This has not been confirmed solidly, but it looks likely. There is also a strong possibility of a Canadian tour before the year is out, and as soon as I have any more details I’ll get them posted on the site. Additionally, I will be in Derby, Steyning, Hampton in Middlesex, Lichfield and Lord knows where else.

On the music front, my bass player and I have met a couple of times, and we keep trying to nail the drummer down to the punishing rehearsal schedule we intend to maintain. But, as I always say, ‘You gotta have a big heart and a strong backbone to play with kids like us’. I’ll keep you posted on that front as well.

As far as new books are concerned, we have finally found the right image for the cover of ‘Saints of New York’ and we are releasing that on September 15th. ‘Bad Signs’ is done, and will be out in June 2011. I am currently writing the book for 2012, untitled as yet, and beyond that I have news that this book will be the first of a further four that I have now been contracted to write. Therefore, there will be books for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Great news. I am toying with the idea of writing the last three as a trilogy. A vast crime epic spanning three generations of the same family perhaps. We shall see. That is quite a way away, and I have no pressure to decide at the moment. If nothing else, I have a tendency to change my mind rather quickly about what I shall write next!

So there we have it. A brief synopsis of where I have been and what I have been doing. I really did intend to post every week, but it just doesn’t happen, and then we reach the end of the month and I have to try and cram everything into one blog.

Regardless, it has been a busy month, and the way the rest of the year is looking, well I think it’s going to get busier. Oh, and ‘Vendetta’ was shortlisted for the Le Point European Crime Novel of the Year, and it came second! Seems always to be the way of things, n’est ce pas?

Until we speak again, all my very best wishes, and stay in touch through the website, okay?

Roger.

2010-02-26T09:36:00.001Z

A SHORTAGE OF DAYS…

It was only yesterday that I realized that there were in fact fewer days to look forward to this month than usual. Coupled with my intent to post a new blog at least once every month, I thought I better get going. Is it only me, or do the days and weeks and months disappear ever faster as we grow older? All I know is that we are close to the end of February, and there seems to have been so many projects I wanted to have finished by now, and yet they remain incomplete or undone.

As you probably know, the final copy-edit of ‘Saints of New York’ was completed a week or so ago. The book is now in production, and I hope to see bound proofs sometime in the next month or so. I imagine – if past experience is anything to go by – that a handful of them will wind up on e-bay!

I have completed ‘Bad Signs’, and this is going to be released on June 16th 2011.

Beyond that, we are currently in the process of negotiating a new publishing contract with Orion. I hope to have that resolved satisfactorily in the next month or so, and as soon as I know the result of that I’ll let you know.

Travel-wise, I am heading up to Glasgow for the Scottish Association of Writers Annual Conference over the 5th to the 7th of March. I hope to catch up with my great friend Michael Malone, he of the wonderfully generous reviews, and a great writer who I hope to see published this year. Returning on the 7th, I have a day’s leeway, and then I am off to the Emirates International Festival of Literature in Dubai from the 9th to the 14th. I am in Amsterdam for promotional reasons at the end of the month, just for a couple of days to conduct newspaper interviews etc. April sees me in Lichfield, York and London, May in the Midlands, Lincoln, Allestree in Derby and then down in Middlesex at Hampton Library. June is Sussex and Dunstable, and then in July I am heading back to the US to do a short tour of the north-east, including New York, Boston and Connecticut. Later in the year we did intend to undertake a major assault on the West Coast, hoping to visit San Diego, Sacramento, L.A. and San Francisco amongst others, but we are leaving that for another year. I will attend Bouchercon, of course, in San Francisco in October, but a more major tour of the west will have to wait for 2011 or 2012.

I have started another book, as yet untitled, but due to the fact that I do not have to deliver it until the middle of 2011…well, let’s say that there’s a little more of a relaxed schedule around this one. I worked so much last year that I sort of ended up a year head of schedule, and it is this leeway – time-wise – that has given me the opportunity to start playing music again.

On this front, I have been working hard. There is a phenomenon so widely noticeable in life, and it seems to be that whatever it is that you direct your attention towards, well you wind up with more of it. I was in London recently at my publishers, and I happened to notice a book on the shelf there. Entitled ‘My Bass and Other Animals’, it was the autobiography of Guy Pratt, a professional bassist who played with Pink Floyd and other bands of spectacular repute over many years. The name rang a bell, and it was about six or seven pages in that I realized why. He and I attended the same school, Kingham Hill in Oxford, a school that was initially established by the Barings-Young family to cater to ‘orphaned or wayward boys’. Originally, any boys attending the school would stay there until the age of seventeen, and then they would be shipped out to the Barings-Young Farm in Canada to learn ‘life skills’. Seems that they stopped doing this before I attended, because I wasn’t shipped out to Canada, but it was fascinating to me that someone from my school would also have his work published by the same company. Anyway, I lent the book to my bass player, Chris Malin (another truly extraordinary musician who has toured with some great bands), and he loved it too. Guy Pratt is not only a great musician, but also a stand-up comedian and a very funny man, and I highly recommend the book.

Otherwise, I was fortunate enough to run into a man called Steve ‘Doc’ Yankee who hails out of East Lansing, Michigan. Doc is a phenomenal pianist and keyboard player, again a professional who tours with blues musicians et al. He has introduced me to people such as Bryan Lee, an amazing blind guitarist, and a package of blues CDs are winging their way from Michigan to Birmingham even as we speak. I have sent Doc some of my books, and will continue to send more, and this is a working arrangement that seems to be working very well!

So, we have indeed started on the music front. Meetings have occurred, discussions have taken place, the first half of a set list has been agreed upon, and work is due to begin on the real business of getting a band into pubs and clubs. I wouldn’t imagine we’ll be out there for three or four months yet, but it is something I am every much looking forward to. There will, of course, be an open invitation to all of you to come and see me make a fool of myself in public, but I spend so much of my time doing that anyway that it really doesn’t hurt to do it to a musical backing as well!

So this is where I am, and what I have been up to. I trust you have all been well, and that life goes as you wish. I have recently begun to accept that the standards I set for myself are – realistically – utterly unattainable, and this is a two-edged sword. While this attitude never lets me rest on my laurels, and while this gives me the drive to go on working harder and harder to accomplish what I want to accomplish, it also means that I never really allow myself to enjoy those things that have been done well.

I think I kind of prefer it that way, to tell you the truth.

Until we speak again, my very best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2010-01-24T11:38:00.000Z

THE FIRST MONTH OF THE NEW DECADE…

Trusting that you all had a great New Year, I first wanted to wish all of you success and happiness for the remainder of 2010. For me, it has been an odd month. A strange in-limbo kind of month. I have been working on the copy-edit of ‘Saints of New York’, due out in the UK in September this year, and the first draft of ‘Bad Signs’ has already gone to my editor for review. ‘Bad Signs’ is not due to be published until the early summer of 2011, and then the book beyond that (which will be number ten) would not then be published, realistically, until the summer of 2012. Considering the fact that the first draft of a book needs to be delivered to the publisher twelve months prior to the release date I don’t actually have to deliver that script until the summer of 2011. So what have I done? Essentially, I have bought myself a year. There are a couple of other significant projects I will be working on, book-wise, but what they are and how and why they will appear is being kept under wraps for a little while. There are public events and tours – Cumbria in early February, the Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference in the first week of March, the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai directly after that, and then Lichfield and York and Lincoln and Dunstable, and who knows where else as we progress through the spring, but still – all things considered – I have more time on my hands than I have had for many years. I am trying to organise another trip out to New York for Thrillerfest in July. I think this would be a smart move considering that ‘The Anniversary Man’ is being released by Overlook NY in June, but it all comes down to finding the money to do such things, as is always the case!

I am working hard on the music front. I had the first meeting with my bass player, and we are beginning the project for real on February 7th, creating a set-list and starting to work on the actual business of putting a band on the road. Who knows how this will turn out, though having not done this for the better part of twenty-five years I am looking forward to it immensely.

France continues to be a hugely exciting country for me. I went there five times in 2009, and hope to go back again this year. ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ (entitled ‘Seul Le Silence’) has done extraordinarily well, and continues to sell in numbers far beyond expectations. ‘A Quiet Vendetta’ (entitled ‘Vendetta’) has also just been released in the equivalent format to the UK hardback, and is doing great. Sonatine-Editions, my French publisher, has decided to go with ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ next, and it will be called ‘Les Anonymes’. This is due for release in February of 2011.

All in all, things are progressing well. However, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have utterly unattainable standards. This is a two-edged sword, of course. The upside is that you never rest on your laurels, and you are always working hard on what can be done next, what translation can be secured, where can other tours and promotions be undertaken to get more books out there and being read. The downside is that no matter what accomplishment you might achieve, you never just take a break to enjoy it. It always could have been bigger. It always could have been better.

I am keeping up with the daily flood of e-mails, and am posting on twitter on a daily basis, even if it is only rafts of funny quotes about life and living and people. I receive messages back from people to say they are momentary, humorous distractions to the stresses and travails of life, so I will continue to post them (called ‘twippets’ by a good friend of mine, a cross between ‘tweets’ and ‘snippets’).

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the launch of the new More4 and Channel 4 Book Club, sponsored by Specsavers, again created by the remarkable Amanda Ross of Cactus TV and Richard & Judy Bookclub fame. Amanda is a powerhouse of enthusiasm for all things book-related, and she continues to drive forward on this front with immeasurable energy. As I say now, and have said so many times before, I don’t think there is anyone in the country doing as much for popular reading as Amanda, and all authors – regardless of genre – owe her a debt for just getting more people reading more books.

So there we have it. A brief snapshot of where I am at and what I am doing. Preparations for the October tour of the West Coast of the US are in play, and I am very much looking forward to that. I have made provisional notes for book number ten, though what it is about – save the fact that it will be contemporary, it will more than likely be set in NY, and it will be darker than pretty much anything I have ever written before – I will refrain from commenting on at this time.

We shall have to wait and see what direction it takes when I begin it for real…

So, as always, thank you for your kindnesses, your e-mails, your words of encouragement and support, your friendship, your relentless trips to the libraries and bookstores…

Everything you give back means the world to me, and I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

Until we speak again, my very best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-12-31T07:50:00.002Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

To all of you - friends, acquaintances, associates, colleagues, confidantes, co-conspirators, compadres, readers, writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, photographers...everyone I know, everyone I have come to know throughout the eventful and exciting twelve months that has been 2009 - I trust you will have a great New Year's Eve wherever you might be and whoever you might be with, and I wish you all happiness and success for 2010!

Thank you for your kindness, your support, your encouragement, your e-mails and messages and most excellent well-wishes.

I thank every one of you for all that you are.

Roger.

2009-12-17T09:54:00.002Z

THE END OF ANOTHER YEAR...

Well, as anyone who has been following my blog has already realized, 2009 has perhaps been the most eventful year thus far for me. Aside from the New York trip in July, the French and Belgian tour, and then the mad rush around the East Coast in the latter half of October, it has been the year for translations (books now in twenty-three languages), the penning of the screenplay for ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ for Olivier Dahan, the release of ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ in paperback, ‘The Anniversary Man’ in hardback, my appearance on twitter, the posting of numerous videos on the youtube RJ Ellory Channel (Yes, I have my own youtube channel!), and an endless number of UK events, signings and library appearances. 2009 has seen me in Colchester, Lincoln, Exeter, Cumbria, Filey, Whitby, Scarborough, Cambridge, London, Harrogate, Reading, Warwick, Kingston-upon-Thames, Pontypridd, Tylerstown, Leicester, Netherton, and a dozen or more other places around the West Midlands.
For me the writing was all about the writing itself, the intent to engage and entertain, to evoke an emotion with the characters and the narratives. The work has now gone beyond that into the realm of people themselves. The highlights of my year are always the events, the fact that I’m meeting new people all the time, that there are so many readers out there who get involved. I receive endless e-mails, often as many as sixty or eighty a day from all over the world, and I answer every single one of them. The common theme (apart from the one lady who sent me an e-mail to let me know that everyone in her book club hated my work with a passion, and in fact that had now spilled over into an intense hatred of me as a person, and she had been horrified to learn that I had secured another publishing contract and that I was going to insult the world by writing and releasing more novels!) is that people have enjoyed the books they have read, and have plans to read more of them. This, for me, has to be the greatest compliment of all. That someone, having read one book, now plans to read further.
So it is with a sense of optimistic anticipation that I look forward to 2010. The launch of ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ in the USA in September was successful, and following on from the immense success of the same book in France it has opened up new markets and a new influx of e-mails! ‘Vendetta’ has just been released in France, and has been received very well indeed, and in June of 2010 the American publishers are going to release ‘The Anniversary Man’ as the second American book. Why they do them in a different sequence overseas is unknown to me, but it doesn’t matter. They are all stand-alone novels, and there is no series to follow.
So, notwithstanding the fact that I have completely unattainable standards are far as my own sense of accomplishment is concerned, I can say that I am relatively pleased with what has been achieved in the last twelve months. I hope for bigger and greater things in 2010, and already we have tours planned for Ireland, Norway, Dubai, France, and then back to the USA to do the Mid-West/West Coast, finishing a tour through such places as Texas, LA and San Diego in San Francisco for the Bouchercon Festival 2010. Bouchercon 2009 (Indianapolis) was absolutely wonderful. It was great to see many old friends again, and to make some new ones.
I hope to return to New York in July 2010 for Thrillerfest, and if so I will post news of that on the website.
Also, as far as website changes are concerned, I did post the list of foreign-language titles and the publisher as I have received a lot of e-mails asking for this info.
So there we have it. A brief update. Despite the fact that 2009 has ended with a completely unexpected and horrendous tax bill (just to make me happy for Christmas!) it has been a good year. I have started playing music again, and my intent – as mentioned in the new updated biog on the website - is to start gigging again in the early spring. You have been warned. The Manta Rays had the reputation for being the loudest band north of London and south of Manchester, and at one University gig (said University remaining nameless) we were the only band in their history to be escorted from the premises by security guards with dogs. The fact that the bass player then proceeded to scale the front of the halls of residence building and try to convince the inhabitant of one room to let him in was also a matter for later investigation by the University Social Secretary. But that was many years ago, and I have certainly mellowed a little since those days. The ethos of Jim Morrison (quoting Blake) that ‘the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ was very much my attitude at the time, and I have moved away from that opinion in recent years! I have not slowed down, God forbid, but rather decided to invest my time and energy is slightly more constructive (or rather less self-destructive) activities.
Guided by my brother’s viewpoint that ‘were you only that little bit more intelligent you could have gotten a proper job’, I intend to spend the next year without a proper job. We are releasing ‘Saints of New York’ in the UK in the autumn (more than likely October sometime), and then ‘Bad Signs’ will be out in the autumn on 2011. Beyond that there are more books to come, and I will keep on working, and keep on trying to do better with each one, and with the ever-widening readership we are securing in many countries I hope to be able to actually survive in this ridiculous business at some point in the not-too-distant future. As Hemingway said, ‘Compared to writing novels, horse-racing and poker are good, solid business ventures’. It is not the easiest thing to undertake, and it is certainly not advised if you wish to maintain some semblance of a financially prosperous lifestyle. But, to quote Lennon, if you ‘find something you love then you’ll never work another day in your life’. I am happy not working, and I hope to continue not working in this same vein for many years to come.
I wish all of you a wonderful Christmas. I hope you find time for yourselves, your families, your friends. I also trust that 2010 will be successful on all fronts, and that you all end up getting what you want, not what you deserve!
And with that sentiment, I leave you to the mad last few days’ rush of preparation for the holiday.
Take care, and my very best wishes as always,
Roger.

2009-11-29T21:05:00.003Z

SUPPORT OF ROOM TO READ AND E-BAY AUCTION...

One day left on the e-bay auction to have your name 'immortalised in print' in a new book. Room To Read is an amazing charity, and I am supporting it, along with several other authors, and we are auctioning the input of your name into a new novel. So, if you want to support this amazing work, and you want to find your name in print in a forthcoming novel, then bid now. You can find this auction if you put the phrase 'immortalised in print' in the e-bay search window.

Good luck!

2009-10-29T21:49:00.004Z

A MATTER OF EXTREMES...

It is now a week since I returned from the US. Two weeks through New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, Indianapolis...and before that a couple of weeks in France. I have gone from one extreme to the other. Utter confusion, rushing from one place to another, one event after the other, dozens and dozens of people to see and talk to, and now I am home...

All is quiet.

The only sound of significance seems to be me thrashing a Telecaster!

It seems to mimic the many years I spent writing and writing, and then suddenly - unexpectedly - I am dashing all over the place talking about what I've written and meeting about three hundred people a day!

I have returned to 'Bad Signs' and am working on that again. I hope to have it complete by the end of November at the latest. I am also awaiting word back from France on the screenplay for A Quiet Belief In Angels. There will be work to do, I am sure.

Last night was excellent, by the way. Due to the fact that I was away for much of October, and October is the month of the Birmingham Book Festival, the organisers - primarily Jonathan Davidson and Sara Beadle - set up a launch event for The Anniversary Man at the Birmingham Library Theatre. I did a reading, and was then interviewed by the wonderful Amanda Smyth, author of 'Black Rock'. She gave me a copy of her book and I have started reading it. Most excellent. Anyway, we had a very good turn out, and I have received many e-mails from those who attended to say they enjoyed the event.

I also received an e-mail from my US publisher. He was away while I was in the US and thus we did not see one another, but he e-mailed me to say that things are going well over there, we are making friends and allies, and that we have a lot of hard work ahead of us! Music to my ears!

So I am back in the UK now. Wales Crime Week will see me in Tylorstown and Pontypridd on the 9th of November, and then I am in Milton Keynes on the 12th, at the University of Leicester on the 14th, and then I have an event in Netherton, another at the Screenwriters' Forum, a guest appearance at the Society of Young Publishers and Lord knows what else. All over the place as usual.

Still I know we have a long way to go. Still I know that we have a very small foot in a very big door. Teeth gritted, fists clenched, never slowing or stopping or considering that we have earned a rest...there's another book to write, another event to organise, another person to speak to who might give my work a go if I am able to sufficiently enthuse them. This is the way it is. Perhaps the way it will always be.

A thoughtful mood perhaps, but thankful as well - to everyone who has bought and read the books, and has recommended them to their friends. It is for you that I write the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.

So all that you do is appreciated, and I look forward to seeing you very soon at some event, or perhaps on the train or in the street as has been happening recently!

Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-10-27T14:14:00.003Z

OFFICIAL, AND YET UNOFFICIAL...WELL, A BOOK LAUNCH EVENT ANYWAY...

Tomorrow evening, 7.30pm, Birmingham Library Theatre in Chamberlain Square, we have an event to launch 'The Anniversary Man'. It's being done as part of the Birmingham Book Festival, and though the book was published back at the start of September I still wanted to do an event in my home city as part of the Festival. I'd love to see as many people there as possible. It is ticketed and the tickets are £5.00, £3.75 on concession, but there is wine and things to eat, and there will be other booklovers so you'll be guaranteed of having the best company in the world...

See you there, I hope, and if you don't show up...well, I'll have to call Ernesto won't I?

Best wishes, as always,
Roger.

2009-10-21T13:30:00.002Z

LEAVING NEW YORK...

Last day here. Will miss it. New York has become home from home in a way. From the first moment I arrived last July it felt like somewhere I'd been before, somewhere I'd known.

Last night we did a great event at the Mercantile Center for Fiction in the Diamond District, Midtown. Myself, Peter Quinn and Laura Joh Rowland. The Mercantile Center was established back around 1820 by merchants and clerks in the area, long before the advent of public libraries. It quickly became one of the foremost cultural centres in the US, and people such as Mark Twain, William Thackeray and Frederick Douglass have spoken there.

We each presented different books, and though I am on tour to promote A Quiet Belief In Angels, I actually did a reading from The Anniversary Man which is coming out in the States in June, 2010. The plan is to release the UK backlist (Candlemoth, Ghostheart, A Quiet Vendetta, City of Lies, A Simple Act of Violence) every nine months, while also maintaining the same publishing schedule as we have in England for each new book (Saints of New York, Bad Signs etc).

I think I'm going to be returning to New York a good number of times, and probably sooner than I expect! Well, what can I say? No complaints here.

So I have half a dozen radio interviews to do now, and then I am flying out of here at about 6.00pm US time. I arrive back in the UK about 10.00am on Thursday morning, and then I'm driving down to Surrey to do an event at Waterstones in Kingston-upon-Thames.

Hope to see some of you there!

Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-10-20T16:28:00.002Z

THE END OF AN ADVENTURE...

The end of an adventure is simply nothing more than the point at which another adventure should begin...

However, the current American Saga draws to a close. Through New York, Nashville, Miami, Indianapolis, Atlanta, yesterday in Philadelphia (where Jack and I had Philly cheese stakes at Pat's down on Passyunk, where we saw the Liberty Bell and the station at 30th Street...and well, so many other things on a flying visit through a remarkable city), and now back in New York where there was an event last night at B&N in Tribeca, and afterwards Manhattans at the Harrison, and this morning a whole bunch of radio interviews with KTOE-AM, WOCM-FM, CRN, and Knucklehead Radio out of Maine, and tonight there is an evening with Overlook at the Mercantile Center for Fiction on 47th Street, and tomorrow morning more interviews with 'Where World Leaders & Thinkers Come To Chat', WDIS 1170 AM, KCMN-AM, WASN, The Frankie Boyer Show and Mountain Public Radio...

And then home to England...

What can you say? What words could be used to describe what I have experienced, the people I've met - my dear, dear friend George Easter, and Ali Karim, David Gulli, Larry Gandle, Mike Bursaw and Steve Warne who did so much at Bouchercon to get people buying my books...

And new friends like Laura Caldwell and Marcus Sakey, and Melissa von Siegel at the Gene Casey 'Lone Sharks' gig we went to down at Hill Country...and hell, it's endless...

These are once-in-a-lifetime things that you wish would happen more than once in a lifetime.

Like John Lennon said, 'Life is the thing that happens when you're making other plans'. It's not a rehearsal. It's living. And sitting in Barnes & Noble in Tribeca last night, talking to people I've never met before and more than likely will never meet again, and talking about the long haul back of me and how many years it took to arrive at this destination, just puts it all in perspective.

It's been something else. Next year I'm going to do the other side of the country, and we'll have to wait and see what happens there.

Until later, best wishes as always,

Roger.

2009-10-15T04:30:00.002Z

SOMETIMES THERE ARE THINGS THAT JUST LEAVE YOU SPEECHLESS...

Well, this evening I went out to Winnetka, a really beautiful suburb of Chicago, and I met some readers at the Book Stall at Chestnut Court, Pam and Gerald and Mary amongst them. I don't really know what to say. Sometimes you meet people and their enthusiasm for what you do is a little overwhelming. To find myself the better part of 4000 miles from home and to have someone appear with first edition hardbacks of 'Candlemoth', and for that person to tell you that they have every book you've written and they have read all of them... Well, you can imagine.

The event was wonderful. Book Stall at Chestnut Court is another one of those absolute gems of an independent bookstore, and whatever it takes we have to do whatever we can to keep these stores going. This is the last bastion of unbiased and non-commercial book recommendation in the world. Booksellers - real booksellers - are a dying breed, and only by supporting such bookstores will we keep them alive.

After the event I was driven to Buddy Guy's Legends Club. Here I saw the incredible Matthew Skellor. Now, for me, Sonny Boy Williamson and Sonny Terry have always been the 'one and onlys' as far as blues harpists are concerned. The tone, the warmth, the feeling back of their playing is unbelievable. I have to be honest and say that I had never heard of Matthew Skellor, but after this evening I am going to make it my business to buy this man's albums and follow his career. An astoundingly good player. Really astounding.

And Lurrie Bell, one of the true blue legends of Chicago blues guitar was there, and he guested on a good half a dozen numbers. Incredible tone, a wonderful voice, and much under-rated. The man is insanely good, and he played much of the guitar on Skellor's latest album 'These Kind of Blues'.

So what can I say? A great event in Winnetka, and then a few hours of great food (Chicago Jambalaya) along with Jack Daniels, 3-2-1, Matthew Skellor, his guitarist Billy Flynn, and then a guest appearance by the extra-terrestrially good Lurrie Bell. Could life be better? That's a hell of a question. Maybe if my wife and son were here to enjoy this with me, only then could it be better.

Indianapolis tomorrow. Bouchercon. The Big Book Festival. Hell of a thing.

Speak soon, and best wishes,

Roger.

2009-10-14T17:53:00.002Z

CHICAGO...WELL, WHAT CAN YOU SAY?

Fifty degrees cooler, somewhere in the low forties. Overcast. A little cold even by British standards. But this is Chicago.

The event will finish tonight at 9.00. I'll be back at the hotel around 9.30. Then it's simply a question of whether it's B.L.U.E.S., House of Blues or Buddy Guy's.

I'm thinking Buddy Guy's.

But first we have The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka. A lot of authors, a lot of books, and should be a great event.

Looking forward to it, and hopefully seeing some of you there as well.

Best wishes,
Roger.

2009-10-13T21:43:00.006Z

THANKS FOR WARNING ME ABOUT THE HEAT...

I am in Miami. It is October. It must be thirty-five degrees down here. That's what - the high nineties? Good God Almighty! It's nearly Christmas and it's this hot?

Anyway, I'm here to do an event at Books& Books in Coral Gables, a bookstore that has the well-earned reputation as one of the finest independent bookstores in the country.

I flew out of Atlanta early this afternoon, and found myself back in Florida. I came here at the beginning of 2007 when Jon (my editor) and I arrived with the Channel 4 film crew to make the little documentary piece for the Richard & Judy Book Club. So here I am, the better part of three years later, arriving in Florida to promote the same book, but this time to an American readership.

The one thing I have been routinely surprised and pleased about is the level of acceptance I have encountered in the States. I had so many years of difficulty trying to get a British publisher to publish an American novel, and I even tried some American publishers...all to no avail. But when it comes to the readers...well, it seems they don't give a damn where you come from. They're just interested in a good story, and that's all there is to it. That's a sentiment I can agree with wholeheartedly.

Anyway, Coral Gables it is, 7.00pm at Books & Books, and I'm going to be there...hope some of you are too!

Best wishes,

Roger.

2009-10-13T01:22:00.002Z

YES, I'M IN GEORGIA, AND YES, IT'S RAINING...

Great event at Borders this evening. Wonderful people, and huge thanks to Harrison Hicks for setting it up. As always with such events, I came away with a list of recommended authors that I have to read. Always the way when book-lovers get together...you wind up adding another three or six or ten names to your list of authors to discover. But then that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Miami tomorrow and an event at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables.

Hope to see some of you Floridians there!

Best wishes for now.

Roger.

2009-10-12T10:59:00.002Z

ON THE ROAD...

Well, here we are. Monday morning, the 12th of October. A little before 6.00am and I am leaving Nashville. I have a connection in Dallas Forth Worth, Texas, and then a flight to Atlanta, Georgia where I will be doing an event at Borders on Peachtree Road NE at 7.00pm.

Last night I figured it out - all the distances between the places I am visiting. It came to a little over 12,000 miles. That's in ten or eleven days. Having just completed a 6000-mile round trip of Belgium and France it adds up somewhat! 18,000 miles in a month, and all to meet readers, booksellers, to talk about writing and other things of common interest like music and food and good wine and friends.

I want to say a huge thank you to Barbie Chadwick for being my host here in Nashville. I want to express my gratitude to the Southern Festival of Books, and Humanities Tennessee for inviting me, for their wonderful reception and kindness, and I really hope I can come back sometime soon. I also want to say thanks to Mary Ann Nichols. Mary Ann lives here in Tennessee; she's a good friend of Jack's (my publicist), and she gave up her afternoon yesterday to have some lunch with me, to talk about Nashville, about Tennessee and Mississippi, to tell some tales and recount some anecdotes. It was a wonderful afternoon, and I know she had many other things she should have been doing, but she gave me her afternoon and I really, really appreciated it. People like Mary Ann are where that famous reputation for famous Southern hospitality came from.

It's times like these - sat in a hotel somewhere on the other side of the world, where I take a moment to look at where I came from (not just Birmingham...you know what I mean, right?), and I consider the four and a half million words of unpublished handwritten manuscripts in my loft, the hundreds of rejection letters, the years of trying and trying and trying, the sheer cost (something in the region of £12,000) of what I spent on photocopying and postage through those years, and all to be told 'Thanks, but no thanks'.

At the event yesterday I explained the philosophy back of my persistence, something that was expressed very clearly in a quote from Disraeli. 'Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose'. Now, I am nowhere near achieving the level of success I want to - not at all. I am a wee baby as far as the American bookbuying and reading public are concerned, but I have made a start. I am here. I am going to make this 12,000 mile trip around the East Coast and I am going to make as many friends as I can and try and convince as many people as possible to give 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' a go. Okay, it's written by an Englishman, but - if yesterday's reception and welcome is anything to go by - American readers are the same as British and Irish and French and Belgian readers. They just want a good story. They just want to know that the author did his damnedest to write as good a book as he could, and I think it's safe to say that I did that.

So off I go. I have a cab arriving imminently. I'm gone from Nashville and on the way to Atlanta, Georgia. Not the first time I've been to Georgia. I was there for a week with Channel 4 in 2007. That was a hell of an experience. Absolutely unforgettable.

Oh, one final thank you to Jack and Aaron and Peter and Linda and Veda and everyone at Overlook. I wouldn't be here without you, and I think you know how much this means to me.

Best wishes, and speak to you from Georgia.

Roger.

2009-10-11T15:41:00.002Z

THE SOUTH WILL WRITE AGAIN...

Apologies for the cheap title, but I couldn't resist it!

Anyway, here I am in Nashville, Country Music Capital, and I thought this morning about the South and Southern writers. I have always been a voracious reader of a certain type of literature, a type of prose that is more poetic and lyrical than the styles you might find in other types of literature, and it occurred to me - not for the first time - that the vast majority of writers I read are from the South. Here we have writers who have not only written the very best books that have come out of the USA, but writers that have written the very best books in the world. Capote, Harper Lee, Daniel Woodrell, Tim Gautreax, Ron Rash, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Woolfe, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and despite the fact that Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island he moved to Knoxville when he was four and grew up there.

And those above are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head!

'A Quiet Belief In Angels' was selected for a promotional campaign run by the Southern Independent Booksellers' Association. For the fall they have selected a number of titles that deal with the South, or are of Southern origin. The sense of privilege I feel to have been included in this promotion (called the 'Okra Pick') is immense. I walk amongst giants - tiny, somewhat overwhelmed - but extraordinarily fortune and privileged to be somewhere within their collective shadow.

I am going now to do my event at the Southern Festival of Books. Once done I will sign books for whoever might be there. Then there are some other authors' events I wish to attend before returning to Broadway and the Nashville mile...bars and clubs and restaurants from one end of the city centre to the other, all of them featuring some of the best live acts I have ever had the good fortune to see. Anyone who says they don't like country music...well, they haven't heard country music!

2009-10-11T02:53:00.004Z

WHATEVER IT TAKES, THIS GIRL NEEDS TO BE RECOGNISED FOR WHO SHE IS...

I have seen The Cramps, The Gun Club, Van Morrison, Steve Miller, BB King, Peter Green, Ingrid Lucia, Meatloaf, Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women...I have seen more bands than I can even begin to remember, but this evening - in Nashville, at Legends Corner - I saw Becki McLeod, and well...I have to tell you that this girl can sing like no-one I have ever heard before. My record collection includes Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Bessie Smith, Melody Gardot, Imelda May, Patsy Cline...and the list goes on and on and on...and I have to tell you that Becki McLeod is amongst the best of the best.

Dynamic, electrifying, soulful, vibrant, raw, energetic, passionate...this girl can sing with the best of them, and her band is incredible. Apparently there are videos on youtube. She is also on myspace at beckimcleodmusic (I think!) but whatever it takes you have to find her. Listen to her. Buy her albums. Do whatever you have to do. This girl is absolutely incredible.

I spent the evening listening to someone who is talented beyond words, and she is working for tips! This is a tragedy. Please support this singer. She is a serious front runner for being the best singer I have heard in a very, very long time...

Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my viewpoint.

Roger.

2009-10-10T18:00:00.002Z

THERE'S A GIRL IN NEW YORK CITY, CALLS HERSELF THE HUMAN TRAMPOLINE...

A strange title for the blog entry! It's actually a line from the Paul Simon song 'Graceland', and I couldn't help but think of it as I flew into Nashville.

Well, what can I say. The US Tour has begun in earnest. Yesterday I arrived in New York, and hooked up with my great friends Jack Lamplough and Emer Ferguson, also Aaron Schlecter, my editor at Overlook. The next few days will be a whirlwind. Today is Nashville, Monday is Atlanta, Tuesday is Miami, Wednesday is Chicago, Thursday and Friday are Indianapolis for Bouchercon, Saturday is Cincinnati, then back to New York, and then out to Philadelphia...

And I haven't even mentioned the fact that I just completed a 6000 mile round trip of Belgium and France which took me through Brussels, Lille, Nantes, Rouen, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Montepellier and Paris. That was something I planned to blog about as I travelled, but you know the way things go - hotels with no internet hook-up, delayed trains, everything else imaginable. Anyway, it was a remarkable trip, and the success of both A Quiet Belief In Angels and A Quiet Vendetta in France have been astonishing.

So, back to the here and now. Country Music Capital of the World! I knew I was in the right place when I came through Nashville Airport and Jeff Carpenter was playing live in the lounge. That, and the fact that Gibson and Voxes and Marshall Amps and Fenders were in display cases around the Baggage Reclaim areas. Guitar-pickers heaven!

I am out of the hotel shortly to go visit the Southern Festival of Books, and I'll be here for two days.

Oh hell, I didn't mention the fact that yesterday in the Penguin Head Office in New York I sat with Jack and I signed four hundred hardback copies of A Quiet Belief in Angels. I have this picture on my phone of this island of books...I'll post it on the site or stick it on facebook when I get back home.

So au revoir for now. Internet connection-dependent, I intend to blog as I go and keep you all posted on what's happening over here. Today I have two missions. Go meet as many readers and booksellers as I can, and secondly...buy a pair of cowboy boots in Nashville. Oh, and then there's the Country Music Hall of Fame, Gruhn Guitars, Tootsies Bar...

As my brother keeps reminding me, 'If you were only that little bit smarter you'd get a proper job...' Bring on the Jack Daniels. Let's get that IQ pushed down a few more notches, eh?

Speak soon, and best wishes to you all.

Roger.

2009-09-13T09:10:00.002Z

AN INTERVIEW WITH AUDIO JOE...

Recently did an inteview with a good friend of mine, and here's the link if you want to read it:

http://electro-candy.co.uk/2009/09/12/the-anniversary-man-a-conversation-with-r-j-ellory/

Best wishes,
Roger.

2009-09-08T09:21:00.004Z

ADAM'S REVIEW...

The link to a review from Adam Bird, a man I have been talking to for a year or more about numerous and varied different things. He wrote a great review of 'The Anniversary Man', but there's also an article he links at the bottom of the post about six serial killers who were never caught...

http://adamdbird.blogspot.com/2009/09/anniversary-man.html

2009-09-03T07:02:00.002Z

RELEASE OF 'THE ANNIVERSARY MAN'...

Well, here it is. September 3rd, 2009. Release date of the seventh title, 'The Anniversary Man'. It seems like only yesterday that we released the first title, 'Candlemoth', but that was all of six years ago in 2003. I am now six years older, not necessarily six years wiser, and time has passed so rapidly it's hard to believe.

Later this month it gets busy. I am out on tour to France and Belgium for twelve days, and then New York for a fortnight. Somewhere in October I am going to Norway for a few days as well. The books ('A Quiet Belief in Angels', published as 'Seul Le Silence', and 'A Quiet Vendetta', published as 'Vendetta') in France are doing very well. There is a website (www.liwreo.com) where you can see these very cool-looking 'video trailers' for both books. 'Seul Le Silence' has just been released over there in paperback (what's know as a 'livre de poche'), and 'Vendetta' has just come out in large format paperback (as they don't do hardbacks in France).

Next week is going to be interesting, to say the least. We are releasing our first title in the US. It's 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' again, and the response thus far from newspapers, magazines, readers' groups and libraries over there has been amazing. We shall wait and see what happens...

So that's where we are. I am at Thimblemill Library in Smethwick at 2.30 today for an event. Hope to see some of you there. Otherwise, I am working like a dog to get the book for 2011 done before I disappear for a month on tour. I am a little more than half way through and it's going well. That's the 'Bad Signs' book that I've mentioned a couple of times before.

And for those of you who are on twitter, I am on there too now. You'll find me under 'rjellory'. Twitter is a challenge for me. For someone who regularly sits down and writes three or four thousand words at a straight run it's interesting to be limited to one hundred and forty!

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-08-27T21:01:00.004Z

SPECIAL EDITION HARDBACKS...

Just to let you know, there is a company called Scorpion Press. They produce beautifully-bound special edition hardbacks, and they are releasing an edition of 'The Anniversary Man' with a special insert by Ken Bruen detailing his thoughts about the book. You can go to Scorpion's website at http://www.scorpionpress.org.uk, call them on 01544 370296, or e-mail on info@scorpionpress.org.uk. There is a limited edition print run of 70 copies, except now there are only 67 because I've just ordered three!

2009-08-12T19:58:00.001Z

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW...

We have just been informed that 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' will be reviewed in the New York Times on the 6th of September. Not only is it an honour to be reviewed in such an influential and august publication, it is also slightly scary...

2009-08-06T08:11:00.003Z

UNDELIVERABLE MESSAGES...

There is little that bothers me more than being unable to reply to a message. Last night I received a wonderful e-mail from George Parker in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and yet I have tried to reply to him numerous times at the e-mail address he gave me, and my replies keep coming back as 'undeliverable'. I have searched his name on 'facebook' but cannot find anyone of that name from this area of the country. So George, if you happen to read my blog, this message is for you. E-mail me again, or send me a message through facebook or twitter or something, as I cannot abide the idea of you thinking I couldn't be bothered to reply...

I reply to every message and e-mail personally, and consider it of extraordinary importance to do so.

Best wishes,
Roger.

2009-08-05T09:36:00.002Z

US TOUR DATES (SO FAR) ...

Well, as promised, I have some US tour dates to post. The reason for posting them here is that the blog is now linked to the Amazon Author Central Page on Amazon.com, and thus will be available to the US readership. More will follow, of course, but for now we have the following events confirmed:

October 11
Southern Festival of Books, Nashville, Tennessee - All Day

October 12
Borders, Peachtree Road, Atlanta, Georgia - 7.00pm-9.00pm

October 13
Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida - 8.00pm-10.00pm

October 14
The Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm Street, Winnetka, Illinois - 7.00pm-9.00pm

October 15
The Bouchercon Crime Fiction Festival, Indianapolis - All Day

October 16
The Bouchercon Crime Fiction Festival, Indianapolis - All Day

October 17
The USA Book Festival, Books by the Banks, Cincinnati, Ohio - All Day

October 19
Borders, Avenue of the Arts, 1 South Broad, Philadelphia - 12.30pm-2.00pm
Barnes & Noble, 97 Warren Street, Tribeca, New York - 7.00pm-9.00pm

That's what we have for now, but as soon as we have more I'll let you know. All of these are on the website 'Signings and Appearances' page as well, which is at www.rjellory.com

Trust all's well, and speak soon,
Roger.

2009-08-05T08:00:00.002Z

TWITTER...

I have now joined the Twitter Brigade. I am going to be posting comments both pointless, meaningful, profound, humorous, observational, distracting, ridiculous and puerile, as is my wont. I can be found, predictably, under the name 'RJEllory'.

The appeal for me is the 140 character limitation on any message you post. Used to being in a situation where the expectation is somewhere in the region of 150,000 words, 140 characters is a very challenging limitation. If I get good at it I might take up writing haiku...

2009-08-04T15:47:00.002Z

WELCOMING A NEW READERSHIP...

A brief word or two to activate the new RSS Feed on the Amazon Author Central Facility that we have just created on Amazon.com (the American site).

A Quiet Belief In Angels is being released in the USA at the start of September, and I will be posting new blogs to talk about what's happening over there. I am also going to be touring in the USA in October, and in my next blog I will outline the bookstores and festivals I am attending and the dates of each.

My US publisher - Overlook Press - are working extraordinarily hard to make the launch of the book as much of a success as possible, and I am proud to be published by them.

So a word of thanks to everyone at Overlook Press, and here's to September!

2009-07-15T22:27:00.002Z

CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY...

Well, congratulations to Colin Cotterill who won the CWA Dagger in the Library Award this year. I figured it might be third time lucky but never mind!

Anyway, onward and upward. If there's one thing we English do well, it's accepting defeat and victory with the same resolute attitude.

It is always good to be nominated - six thus far and won only one. Still have an outstanding Barry Award nomination for Best British Thriller 2009 but I'm up against Stieg Larsson so I don't think there's any real chance of winning that!

I'm holding out for a Pultizer, of course, but I've got to sort out my American citizenship to secure a nomination!

Oh, by the way, I am back from New York. I did intend to post another blog about the final events of my trip, but I got back to the UK and had to leave for London pretty much immediately. I did take a lot of pictures. They are being processed as we speak, and I shall put those in the gallery as soon as I can.

Hope to see some of you at Heffers in Cambridge on Tuesday evening.

Best, as always,
Roger.

2009-07-12T03:57:00.005Z

A RARE AND SPECIAL EXPERIENCE...

Well, as the blog title suggests, it is rare and special indeed to find someone who understands what the hell you're talking about when you mention T-Bone Walker, Leadbelly, Howlin' Wolf, and then in the same sentence drop names like Doug Sahm, Steve Earle and the Dukes, Roky Erickson and the Aliens, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, John Cippolina and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and then on to Mahalia Jackson, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Lux Interior, Kid 'Congo' Powers, Chris Duarte, Panther Burns, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club...

It was one of those conversations...the ones that go off fast and furious in four different directions, right?

Well, Jack Lamplough is that man, and this evening he and Emer took me to the Highline Ballroom to see an incredible band called Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women. The Guilty Women need to be seen to be believed. Christy McWilson on vocals, Laurie Lewis and Amy Farris on fiddle, Sarah Brown on bass, Lisa Pankratz (from Dripping Springs, Texas!), and Cindy Cashdollar on slide guitar. Cindy is remarkable, playing not only lap slide, but also a shoulder-slung dobro. Let me tell you, these girls were unreal! Dave played hits such as Abilene, King of California, Marie Marie (an ode to his first girlfriend which has the line 'two weeks of back pay and a car full of gas'), and a song that not only referenced T-Bone Walker, but spoke of 'everyone's gone...my mom's gone, my dad's gone, my brother's gone', and then went on to incorporate the unforgettable riff from Van Morrison and Them's classic 'Baby, Please Don't Go'. The encore was a homage to the 'philosophy of Doris Day' with an ass-kicking version of 'Que Sera, Sera'. Unbelievable!

Well, that concluded a day that began with a three or four hour walk down through Tribeca, Greenwich Village, the Chelsea Market, Lower Manhattan and Lord knows where else. We saw De Niro's restaurant at Tribeca, also Harrison's, and then we ate food to die for at The Red Cat . Oh, and I cannot forget the small matter of stopping at the famous White Horse Tavern to drink a glass of 'Anchor Steam', legendary hang-out for Mailer, the Beat Generation radicals, and where Dylan Thomas downed nineteen straight whiskies, and then staggered back to the Chelsea Hotel, announced to the bellhop that he had 'drank nineteen straight whiskies...and that must be a record for sure', and promptly collapsed. Rushed to hospital, they didn't manage to revive him and he died that night.

This is a world where the turning of every corner presents you with a new moment from history. Pier A, surrounded with barriers that bear the words of Helen Keller, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others, all of them speaking of their love and passion for New York. The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Battery City...and on it goes. It seems endless, and hopefully it is.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow we film for the website, and we will see Harlem perhaps, even Tompkins Square Park where the final scene of 'A Quiet Vendetta' unfolds. I feel like I am walking through so many scenes from so many books, and I am constantly reminded why New York always appeared to me as the perfect setting for any novel, regardless of genre. This is a truly remarkable city - eight million people, and each of them have a story.

I was going to post again when I got back to the UK, but sometimes you have things happen that you have to talk about right away.

Until something else happens that I just have to write about, I trust all is well with you, and I send my best wishes, as always.

Roger.

2009-07-11T13:14:00.004Z

NOTHING CAN PREPARE YOU FOR THIS...

This morning I woke at eight. I was alone in a beautiful apartment in SoHo. From the landing outside my bedroom I can look down over the balcony into the living room below. There is a wrought-iron spiral staircase that will take me there, designed in such a way as it seems to just hang in space unattached to anything of substance. My head is clear. My thoughts are lucid. I am a little tired as I have been on the go for three days. Yesterday I walked several miles across Manhattan - all the way from the Grand on 42nd Street to Broadway and West Houston. I stopped at The Strand Bookstore on the way and bought a book by Cormac McCarthy. From there I went to Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookstore on Warren Street (possibly the finest mystery and thriller bookstore in the world), and I spent a little time talking with Otto, who has been immensely supportive about the US release of A Quiet Belief In Angels. Lee Child was there, always so friendly and such a gentleman. I met Tom Rob Smith, and once again had the pleasure of catching up with Sarah Weinman (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind), Steve Martini, a whole host of other authors, bloggers, publicists, agents, editors and thriller-junkies who I see when I come to the States...

But I digress.

Last night I had drinks with my great friend Jack Lamplough, publicity director and all-round genius from Overlook. I also had the immense pleasure of meeting his partner, Emer. She put me right on a few things about the creative licenses I have taken with New York, and at the same time made me feel more acknowledged as a writer than most people have in my life. The bar where we were drinking had three walls. The fourth 'wall' was an open-plan balcony from where you could see the Brooklyn Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge and the 59th Street Bridge. We left as the sun went down and took a walk to the Bridge Cafe at 279 Water Street, nestling there beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, a location it has occupied since 1794. It is the oldest continuous business establishment in New York, founded originally as a 'grocery and wine and porter bottler' by Newell Narme. It continued to be a grocery, and then was granted a liquor licence, and in April of 1879 the District Attorney indicted the building as a 'Disorderly House'. The Census noted that it provided facilities for six prostitutes.

Well, here we ate. Seated there beneath the original 1896 Saloon License, we drank a wonderful bottle of wine, we ate soft shell crabs, and then huge hanger steaks. The first of those three things I have done many times, the second and third I have never done. The company was superb, the conversation wonderful, the food remarkable.

Pizza at Lombardi's, the Vesuvio Bakery, the coffee store credited with creating the first capuccino in 1929, the Empire State Building, the site of the two towers (mind-boggling), Gramercy Park, the Hudson, yellow cabs, ten-dollar Rolexes for sale on street corners, the Woolworth Building, Uptown, Downtown, MidTown, Bleeker Street, West Broadway...

I have seen them all in two days. This afternoon I am going out and about to take pictures. This evening I am going to a gig at BB King's House of Blues. Tomorrow we are filming footage for the website all over the city.

I am mostly speechless, definitely in awe, and cannot conceive of the possibility that New York could ever disappoint anyone on any level.

Oh, and this morning I went out for coffee and pastries. I could make coffee in the apartment but I don't want to. I want to 'go out for coffee' in New York. As I was leaving the store I glanced to my right, and there - seated at a table - was a beautiful young woman reading 'In Cold Blood' as she enjoyed her breakfast. As any of you who know me will all-too-quickly understand, that book holds a very dear and special place in my heart. I was reminded of Capote, of his life in New York, and with that came thoughts of Steinbeck (who, I believe said - though don't quote me - something along the lines of 'New York is a dirty, crime-ridden, filthy, dangerous place, but once you have lived here then there's nowhere else in the world that's good enough'), and I appreciate that sentiment utterly.

My editor and great friend Jon Wood, a man who has been to New York many times, was the recipient of the second message after my arrival. Once I had let my wife know that I had arrived safely I sent Jon a text. It read, simply: When I die, I want to die in New York.

I don't know if it has a similar effect on other people, but it has certainly had that effect on me.

And I have to say a few words about Overlook Press - about what these guys have done. We had a dinner on Thursday evening. The menus were personalised to 'welcome RJ Ellory and acknowledge the US release of A Quiet Belief In Angels' (and here I have to say a huge thank you to Meredith for organising such a wonderful evening). Our guests were from BookSense, the American Library Association, the Wall Street Journal, Borders et al. Wonderful people. Hugely enthusiastic and supportive. The Thrillerfest magazine has a full page ad for the book, as does The Strand. There are stickers and pens with the books title on them, and everywhere I turn there are people with Advance Readers' Copies, all of them wanting signatures, all of them wanting to tell me how much they are enjoying the book.

It has taken six years to find a US publisher. I can honestly say that the six-year wait was worth it. Just as I battled to get published in the UK and was eventually taken on by a very brave Jon Wood at Orion, so I have battled here, and to have found Peter Mayer, Jack Lamplough, Aaron Schlecter and David Falk...well, I don't really need to say a great deal more aside from the fact that I couldn't wish for better people. These, let me tell you, are the kind of people who define friendship and quality of life. I feel I have been profoundly fortunate, both in the UK, also in France, Norway, Brazil, so many other places, to have found great people who really seem to understand what I am trying to do with my books, and to now cap it all with an association with Overlook is almost too good to be true.

As Rick says at the end of 'Casablanca', I believe that this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

So, I will gather my things together and go out into the city once more. I will take some pictures for the website gallery, and I will post again when I get home.

Thanks for listening, as always, and I trust all is well with you.

Best wishes,

Roger.

2009-07-01T07:24:00.005Z

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME...

Well, I figured I would post this month right at the start as I think it's going to be a hectic month. I am away to do events in Filey and Whitby tomorrow, and then on the 8th I am off to New York for a week. If you didn't catch it on the last post, there's a new American website to promote the September release of A Quiet Belief In Angels (at http://www.quietbeliefinangels.com/).

Initially I was going to NY for Thrillerfest, but the trip has been extended to take in some promotional work, and also set up things for the eight city US tour in October (which will encompass Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta and Boston). As far as I understand that trip will take in a range of bookstores, and also some radio and TV stuff. Besides that we have Reading and Harrogate and a number of other venues over the summer, so I don't think I'm going to be bored for lack of action!

I have just returned from a four-day trip to Paris. I was esconced in the bar of one of the oldest and most beautiful hotels in Paris, and there I met with journalists from Paris Match, le Figaro, Balthazar, L'Optimum, Elle, GQ and others. I also did a couple of bookstores - L'Arbre des Lettres and Livre Sterling. It was ironic, but when I went to Paris earlier in the year to meet with Olivier Dahan I was strolling around the Champs Elysees, wandering down backstreets and generally staying out of trouble, and I came across this bookstore. Outside they had a table loaded with copies of 'Seul Le Silence' (the French AQBIA), and I went inside and told them I was the author. I asked if they would like me to sign the books for them. Between us we managed to determine that I was not a complete lunatic, and Valerie - the lady who worked there - let me sign all the books. So however many weeks later my publisher takes me to do a bookstore event, and it's the same place! Anyway, Livre Sterling is owned by Emanuel, and has been run from the same location for 28 years. The reception there was tremendous. They brought a huge silver bowl full of ice into the store. They parked a half dozen bottles of wine in it. They had cheeseboards, huge slabs of pate, fresh ham, fresh bread, and people would come from the street, they would eat, drink, talk about books, and then Emanuel and Valerie would introduce them to me, I would talk to them for a while, and then they would buy one or two or three of my books and I would sign them. And this went on for the better part of three hours! Now, I don't think you'll have any diagreement with me if I suggest that this is the way that booksigning events should be run.

'Seul Le Silence' has done very well in France, and they are releasing 'A Quiet Vendetta' there in September (called, simply, 'Vendetta'), and the interviews that I did were very positive. The journalists I had met had read both books, and we very informed about me. It was refreshing to be received in such a way. As I have long said, in England you tell people you are a writer (published or unpublished, it doesn't matter), and the feeling you get is that they think you're doing this because you can't get a proper job. In France it is completely different. They consider it is something of value, and that anyone engaged in the field of the arts deserves a place at the dinner table.

I also made two new friends while I was out there. Firstly, Philippe Aronson, the translator assigned to me for the trip, a man of Franco-American parentage who lives in Paris with his French wife. He is a very charming and funny guy, great company, and I couldn't have asked for a better translator.

Secondly, I met Jenny Macquart. Jenny and I had already been in communication through facebook etc. She is a Professor of Music, a Theatre Director and a composer from Strasbourg. With her fiance, Jerome, she also performs live in the cafes and clubs of Paris and Strasbourg. She is a wonderful musician, and a very talented composer. A while ago she sent me a piece of music she had composed after having read 'Seul Le Silence'. Haunting, evocative, utterly spellbinding, I took it down to London and played it for the collected publishing staff at Orion and they were similarly enchanted. She was great company for the little while we spent together, and I hope that we shall have a chance to meet again. She has recently taken on significantly greater roles at her college and with a theatre group for teenagers, and wish her the very greatest success with her projects.

And so to America...

America is a land untapped and uncharted for me. The release of 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' in September is a landmark for us. It has always been my contention that as far as English authors in America is concerned, it goes one of two ways. Either you secure an American publishing deal right away, or you battle and slog for however many years, and then finally get somewhere. Well it has been the latter for me. It seems that I have spent as long trying to get published in the US as I did trying to get published in the UK right at the beginning. Nevertheless, the initial response to 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' - certainly from other authors in the US, has been tremendous. We also received our first 'official' US literary review last night, as follows:

It is 1939 in a tiny Georgia farming town. Joseph Vaughan, a bright, thoughtful 12-year-old boy, loses his father. That death is followed by a series of horrific murders of very young girls that casts a pall of fear over the town. Joseph organizes his friends into the Guardians, but the murders continue, and Joseph comes to believe — presciently — that they will haunt his entire life. Already a best-seller in England with editions in many foreign languages, this is an unlikely and, in many ways, admirable book. Author Ellory is English, but his evocation of life in the deep South is richly drawn and deeply detailed. His characters are well developed, and portions of the book ably mimic great southern writers, allowing readers to savor both the words and the images they offer. When Joseph flees home and moves to Brooklyn to be a writer, the author changes voice to portray an edgy, exciting, clamorous new world. Although it occasionally drifts into over-the-top melodrama, the novel presents an appealing mix of murder, madness, conscience, lost love, and redemption.

Thomas Gaughan Booklist - Trade Publication for The American Library

We are pleased with the response, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that the Americans will take to it the way the English and the French (and a few other countries) have.

Up-to-date news on future books etc. I completed both 'The Darkest River' and 'The Saints of New York' recently and sent them to my editor and my agent. After having read them, and following a short discussion, we came to the unanimous conclusion that we will publish 'The Saints of New York' in 2010. 'The Darkest River' may or may not be published at some later date...we shall see.

I am currently working on a new book with the working title 'Bad Signs', and the reason for the title comes from the idea that if one is 'born under a bad star' then one carries a bad sign all of one's life. I will say nothing more about it for now, save that it deals with a mid-1960s West Coast killing spree...

Good to hear from you, as always. Keep the letters and e-mails coming, and - as you know - I will answer them personally (always), and as rapidly as I can! If you write and you don't get a response immediately then I am away somewhere and will reply as soon as I get home.

It makes a great difference to hear from you personally, and it is greatly appreciated.

Until we speak again, which I hope won't be too long away!

Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-06-29T20:58:00.002Z

LAUNCH OF US WEBSITE FOR A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS...

If anyone is interested the promotional site for the US release of 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' has just been launched.

Click on the following link:

www.quietbeliefinangels.com

Hope you like it!
Best, as always,
Roger.

2009-06-05T09:02:00.004Z

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM...

Well, if ever I wanted an easy life, I know now that I'm not going to get it!

I have worked like a dog these past few weeks to get 'The Saints of New York' completed. That was done and dusted a week or so ago. Prior to that I completed the first draft of the screenplay for 'A Quiet Belief In Angels', and proof-read the pages for 'The Anniversary Man', due out here in September. I also had to proof-read the American version of 'Quiet Belief' in readiness for its release, also in September. There have been the usual endless procession of interviews, meetings, events and publishers' obligations, and I did all this with the underlying awareness that once we reached June things would start to get crazy. Well, they have.

Next week I am doing three libraries a day for four days in Cumbria; tack on a day travelling at each end and it's a week's tour. I come home for three days, and then I am off to Paris for four days - interviews with Nouvel Observateur, Paris Match, radio stations, events at bookstores etc., some of it further promotion for the French 'Quiet Belief', some of it preparatory promotion for the September release of 'Vendetta'. I am then home for four days or so, and then it's Filey on the 2nd of July, Whitby on the 3rd, home on the the 4th for four days and then out to New York on the 9th. I'm away for six days and will be doing Thrillerfest and numerous interviews and meetings with US bookbuyers and booksellers. A week after that it's 'Bodies In The Bookshop' in Cambridge, then Harrogate on the 25th and 26th...

August looks like I'm home, but you never know.

September we have the UK release of 'The Anniversary Man' on the 3rd, the US release of 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' on the 8th, the French release of 'A Quiet Vendetta' (called simply 'Vendetta'), and Lord knows what else. The release months are always mad-busy, and it looks like we might be doing the UK launch party at Cactus TV in London. Now that would be something special!

The really exciting trip is October. An eight city US tour which will take me back to New York, also to Washington DC, Chicago, Indianapolis (for Bouchercon 2009), Phoenix, Atlanta, Nashville and Boston. That's going to run from the 9th the the 19th.

Oh, and the first print run for the US release is 100,000 (yes, one hundred thousand!) hardbacks. The publisher (Overlook Press) has sent out many, many galley proofs and has secured VERY positive and complimentary comments from the likes of Clive Cussler, Ken Bruen, Alan Furst, David Stone, Otto Penzler, Val McDermid and James Patterson. Overlook have worked extraordinarily hard, and I am indebted to them for their amazing enthusiasm and dedication to this project.

So, as you can see, things have been busy, but it seems they are going to get one hell of a lot busier.

I am looking forward to responses to the screenplay, also the reception for 'The Anniversary Man', and - perhaps most interestingly - the US response to 'A Quiet Belief In Angels'. It has been a hectic six months, but hard work is like heroin to me, and I am in my element when there are deadlines, pressures, impossible demands and more to do than is really possible. As they say, heat and pressure makes diamonds.

One thing I am doing is more reading. I have been reading Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, Salinger, McCullers, and have now embarked upon 'The Executioner's Song' by Normal Mailer. And I have started making notes and undertaking research for the next book (which, if they publish the ones I have already written, will be released in 2012). It's working title is 'Bad Signs', and though it more than likely will not keep that title I find it is always better to have something than nothing. Though it will tie into events on the West Coast, also Nevada, it will be placed predominantly in the Deep South. I am not in a desperate hurry to get started on it as I have 'The Anniversary Man' yet to be released, and another two books complete beyond that, but - as is always the case with me - if I am not working on something, even indirectly, then I tend to get restless. If not sat in front of a typewriter I tend to slouch around in a bathrobe, never shaving, always drinking, yelling at kids in the street and taking pot shots at the neighbour's dogs with a BB gun. Oh well, someone's gotta do it, right?

So I trust all is well with you. I believe we are in for a long, hot summer, and for those of you who like that sort of thing...well, go ahead and enjoy it. And for those of you that don't, just find somewhere cool and shadowed, take a pile of books with you, and don't come out until September.

Take care my friends. Best wishes, as always,

Roger.

2009-05-05T20:21:00.004Z

CONFIRMATION OF RELEASE DATE...

Just a quick note. There has been an ongoing discussion during the last month or so as to whether to hold to the publicised release date of 'The Anniversary Man' of September 3rd, 2009, or if my publisher would hold off and release it in the spring of 2010. I received confirmation today that they are holding to the September release date. The book is finished, of course, and I wanted it to come out in September, and thus I am very pleased about this. I hope you are too!

Best, as ever,
Roger.

2009-05-01T08:20:00.004Z

SUCCESS IS ENTIRELY DEPENDENT UPON CONSTANCY OF PURPOSE...

I use the above quote (courtesy of Benjamin Disraeli) for good reason. A couple of days ago I did an interview with a very good friend of mine - Ali Karim (he of inimitable taste and style, he of Shots, Deadly Pleasures, CrimeSpree et al), and one of the questions he asked me was about advice for aspiring writers. I have a very simplistic view regarding aspiring writers, and because I went through so many years and so many books 'aspiring' I believe that for once I can be an authority.

Constancy of purpose. It's not complicated.

Hard work. That's even less complicated.

Truth of the matter is that all published authors were unpublished authors the day before they were published. What was the difference between those guys and anyone else? They stuck at it.

The other point that I made was that hard work - in and of itself - is quite addictive. For me it's like heroin. If I don't have enough to do I go find more things to do. I have just done three trips to Paris (one for the award, one for the film - more about that later, and one for the Quais Du Polar Festival in Lyon). I have just agreed to a week in Cumbria, a day there, a day back, and four days in the middle where I will do twelve library events. I spent three days last week at the London Book Fair, meeting overseas publishers, doing what has to be done at such events, and I agreed to go to Dubia, Germany, Finland, Holland, Portugal and back to Paris. I received an e-mail when I got back from London asking if I would do an evening event at the Scottish Association of Writers. I e-mailed back to ask how long the event was. Three days, they said. So why can't I come for three days and do seminars, workshops, readings, spend some time in Scotland and get to know some people? You can, they replied, somewhat suprised. Good, I said. Put my name down for three days. I am also going out to New York in July for Thrillerfest, and then Indianapolis in October for Bouchercon (with Ali, of course!)

Last year I did more than a hundred events. This year I plan to do more. Whether it be a small readers' group in a curry house in Harborne (which I did last night, and it was great!), to the Dubai Literary Festival, the facts are the same. You don't own a readership. You earn it. You don't keep readers because you are charming, because they like you, or anything else. You keep them because you work very hard at the next book, trying all the while to make what you're doing better than what you did before, and you understand that you continue to be published because of the good grace of your publisher and the fiction readers of the world. Forget that, and as far as I'm concerned, you might as well pack your suitcase and go home.

There is nothing that pleases me more than meeting readers, old and new. I love the debates, the questions, the challenges, the disagreements, the criticisms, the suggestions about how I can do my job better. I don't ever do 'readings' at these events, not unless they are requested specifically. That's not what people come to events for. They come to ask questions, to get answers, to find out what I like to read, to share their favourite books, and we all go away with a much rejuvenated love of good fiction.

Anyway, as I was asked the question by Ali, that's how I answered it. Hard work, constancy of purpose, recognition that you have a responsibility to entertain, to evoke an emotion, perhaps to edify, intrigue, educate, counfound or challenge. That's what good fiction is all about.

So, to other matters.

As you know I went to Paris back in March at the request of Olivier Dahan, writer/director of 'La Vie En Rose', the Oscar-winning biopic about Edith Piaf. Olivier had just returned from America where he had completed filming his first English-speaking film, 'My Own Love Song', a film that stars Renee Zelwegger, Nick Nolte and Forest Whittaker. The film has also been scored by Bob Dylan, no less. Olivier had read the French translation of A Quiet Belief In Angels, and he asked me whether I would be interested in working on the screenplay for a film of the book. Yes, I said, of course I would. We spent three days together. He showed some of the great sights of Paris. We ate some great food, and we talked about making AQBIA work as a film. I left with the agreement that he would talk to his production company, and if they were as enthusiastic about the project as he and I obviously were, then he would have them speak to my agent and work out a deal.

Last week we did the deal. Last week Legende Films came back to us and I signed the contract to write the screenplay. I have started work on it already, and have put together three hundred and twenty-two scenes which cover the basic structure and storyline of the book. It has been a very interesting experience, to say the least. And though I am quite prepared for the fact that the film might not necessarily be how I imagined it, I know that it will be a great film, and I feel very privileged and honoured to have been asked to do this by such a gifted and eminent filmmaker.

So to the London Book Fair. I went to LBF last week to meet James Patterson, and to thank him for the very kind words he has quoted for the American release of A Quiet Belief In Angels in September. AQBIA is being published by a firm called Overlook Press out of New York. They are a truly wonderful teams over there, headed up by Peter Mayer, a legend in the publishing industry. My editor, Aaron Schlecter, the publicity director, Jack Lamplough, and the sales director, David Falk, have been working extraordinarily hard. They have sent the proof copies of the US version out to many, many authors, and already we have received very complimentary quotes from James Patterson, Ken Bruen, David Stone, Alan Furst, Val McDermid and Clive Cussler. All of these authors are world-class, they are people I respect and admire enormously, and it is a great honour to be told that they have enjoyed the book. By the way, James Patterson is one of the most magnanimous and kind-hearted people you could ever hope to meet, an exceptionally hard-working writer, and regardless of whether or not you enjoy his books, he is still testament to the quote I used at the start of this blog. The amount of time and money and energy and effort he dedicates to literacy programs and supporting libraries all over the place is staggering just by itself.

Well, where are we now? I got a message from a producer at the BBC (the lady I went to Washington with) to say that she had just completed an interview with Lee Child. I met Lee in Baltimore last year and he was tremendously kind. He was very generous with his time and advice regarding securing the services of a US agent and publisher, and he helped no end. Anyway, she told me that he passed on his best wishes, and that she should let me know that he had a copy of 'A Simple Act of Violence' in the car, which he had bought! I thought 'For God's sake, you'd just have to e-mail me or the publisher and we'd send you one!', but no, it seems he went and bought a copy.

As I said, I am off to NY in July for Thrillerfest, Bouchercon in Indianapolis in October, back to Paris for three days at the end of June for the promotion of the new book ('A Quiet Vendetta' is being released in France in September of this year), and besides that I am done with 'The Anniversary Man' (out here in September), have sent the second draft of 'The Darkest River' (for 2010) to my publisher, and I am about three-quarters of the way through 'The Saints of New York' for 2011. Otherwise, I will be travelling, event-ing, working on the AQBIA screenplay, and generally continuing to act ridiculous and irresponsible as is my wont.

Aside from that, the summer is on the way. The troublemakers are doing their utmost to upset us all with swine flu, just as they are doing with global warming, just as they tried to do with bird flu and God knows what else they spend their time cooking up in the drug company laboratories (don't get me started!), and there are a million stories out there all waiting to be told.

Writing is writing. It is an individual activity. Renard said that writing was one profession where no-one considered you ridiculous if you earned no money. So go earn no money. I did for over twenty years. Not advised, of course, but still a fact. Writing is not dependent upon your mood, the time of day, the weather, other people, or anything else. So for those of you with questions about what to do and how to do it, please send those questions to me, and I will do my best to answer them. But I have to leave you with Disraeli's quote above, and also a few words from Walt Disney, who said 'Do what you do so well that people come back, and bring their friends'.

I trust all's well with you, and I send my best wishes as always,

Roger.

2009-04-04T15:06:00.004Z

THE FRENCH CONNECTION…

Last weekend, after a day and a half at the Chichester Writers’ Festival (organised by Kate and Greg Mosse), held at the extraordinarily beautiful estate of West Dean (bequeathed by Edward James for the furtherance and prosperity of the arts – check out their website and see what they do there), I flew to Lyon for the Quais Du Polar Crime Fiction Festival. Apart from meeting a great number of French readers, booksellers, and also my French publishers, I did a panel with Laurence Block and Jason Starr, both of whom I knew from Boucheron in Baltimore last October. I stayed in Lyon until late on Sunday, arrived back in Birmingham in the early hours of Monday morning, spent Monday writing the articles to accompany the new photographs from Washington on the homepage of the website and catching up on the other thousand-and-one matters that needed resolution, and then on Tuesday morning I took the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Paris for the evening presentation of the Inaugural Prix Du Roman Noir Du Nouvel Observateur. Le Nouvel Observateur is a very widely-read current affairs magazine in France. It has a circulation of considerably more than half a million a week. They tend to concentrate on politics and the arts, and this is the first year they have awarded a literary prize.

I knew I was in the shortlist a couple of weeks ago, and alongside me were Dennis Lehane for ‘The Given Day’, James Lee Burke for ‘Last Car To Elysian Fields’, Don Winslow for ‘The Winter of Frankie Machine’ and Carl Hiaasen for ‘Nature Girl’.

Well, on the evening of Tuesday, March 31st 2009, in front of over one hundred and eighty people from the Parisian literary, journalistic and artistic community, I had to get up and acknowledge acceptance of the award, and give a speech in French.

If you know French and want to know what I said, or if you don’t speak French but you just want to see me being sufficiently humble to make a clown of myself, then you can access the video through my agency website with the following link:

http://www.amheath.com/pages/news/index.asp?NewsID=47

Well, I must say that I was astounded to receive the award, and very pleased indeed. As I said to my editor, there is something extra-sexy about getting a French literary prize.

At this juncture I must say a heartfelt thank you to Leonore, Arnaud, Marie and Francois at Sonatine (my publisher) and Fabienne (my press agent) at Sofab for all the remarkably hard work they put into promoting and publicising the book in France, and also to Fabrice Pointeau, my French translator, who did such an amazing job of turning ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ into ‘Seul Le Silence’.

Lyon was wonderful, Paris was amazing, and I am currently awaiting news on whether I will be contracted to write the screenplay of ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’, the purpose and reason for my earlier trip to Paris a month or so ago.

Anyway, what else transpires? The day after getting back from Paris we released the paperback of ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ at Borders in Birmingham, and on Friday (yesterday) I went to London to film an interview about the book which will be shown exclusively on play.com before it is then available more widely elsewhere.

I am 80,000-ish words through ‘The Saints of New York’. I have just agreed to a week of events in Cumbria - twelve libraries in four days. Bouchercon is in Indianapolis in October, and I will be there to promote the US release of ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ which is being published by Overlook in September.

‘A Quiet Vendetta’ (entitled ‘Vendetta’) will be released in France in September also, as will the paperback version of ‘Seul Le Silence’, and we are releasing the French version of ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ (which will be called ‘The Anonymous’) next year.

Otherwise ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ is being released in the following languages over the next six to twelve months:

Language/Publisher
Japanese/Shueisha
Brazilian/Intrinseca
Lithuanian/Jotema Publishing House
Norwegian/Vega Forlag (already available in hardback)
Taiwanese/Business Weekly Publications
Portuguese/Editorial Presenca
Polish/Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie Sp Z.oo
Korean/Woongjin
Dutch/De Fontein
Italian/Neri Pozza (Giano Imprint)
Romanian/Editura Leda
Serbian/Stylos
Czech/Millennium Publishing
Hungarian/Ulpius-Haz
American/Overlook Press
French (paperback)/Livre De Poche

There are also half a dozen or so languages already contracted to publish ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ and I’ll let you know what they are in a later post.

So that’s where we are at the moment. I’ll keep you posted on any news about the film. If you go to the homepage of the website you’ll see that we have changed it around a bit. There’s some more menu items going on there soon, and we have put up a few of the pictures from the Washington trip with a few words about them that might be of interest.

Trust everything is okay with you all, that you are now enjoying the first bright days of spring! Keep your e-mails coming, keep reading, and we’ll speak again soon.

Best wishes, as always,
Roger.

2009-03-05T08:56:00.003Z

BBC INSIDE OUT - WASHINGTON, JANUARY 2009

Last night on BBC 1 in the West Midlands, they aired the piece we filmed in Washington.

If you didn't catch it and want to see it you can go either to the BBC iplayer website, search for Inside Out and select the West Midlands program, or follow the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j14mg/Inside_Out_West_Midlands_04_03_2009/

and fast forward through the program to about 19 minutes and 15 seconds where the piece starts.

I think it is available to view on the iplayer site for about a week.

Though it is only twelve or thirteen minutes long, it does capture a little of the flavour of the trip. Though we did many, many hours of interviews with the different people there (as noted in my blog entry 'Washington - January 2009') the bulk of those interviews couldn't have been included simply due to time constraints.

I hope it's of interest to you!

Best wishes, as always, and I trust all is well.

2009-02-05T14:14:00.001Z

OBSERVATIONS ON A SNOWY DAY…

Some years ago I came across an article that someone had written about how we as a nation had changed. It described our collective childhood memories – cycling in flip-flops without helmets, kneepads, shoulder-pads, with wooden lollipop sticks rubber-banded to the spokes of our bikes so we could make a sound like a motorcycle (apparently!); it talked of disappearing at sunrise and coming back at sunset with never a concern about where we were or what we were doing; it talked of leaving front and back doors open, of giving spare keys to our neighbours in the event that we locked ourselves out, or just so they could ‘check on things’ while we were on holiday; it spoke of low school and work absenteeism, of how we did our best to get well when we were sick so we could go back to school or work; there were no childproof lids on medicines – we just knew to stay away; there were no airbags or safety belts, and riding up-front was a treat; we drank water from the garden hose; we shared fizzy pop from cans and bottles, and no-one ever died from it; we spent hours building go-carts out of junk, and then hightailed it down steep hills at breakneck speeds, and ploughing into stinging nettles three or four times soon made us wise to the need for brakes; we had no mobile phones or tracking chips in our shoes, and no-one worried about whether or not we would get lost or kidnapped or run over; we did not have playstations, x-boxes, no video games, no videos at all, no cable, no internet, no personal computers or chat rooms…but we had friends, and we went places with them, and we discovered hidey-holes and secret places and we built dens in the woods and lit fires, and we fell from trees and scraped our knees, and sometimes we lost a tooth or two. There were no lawsuits. There were accidents, nothing more nor less, and we learned very quickly not to do that again. We had fights. We punched as hard as we could. We got over it, and usually became best friends. Our dads didn’t go round and fight each other, nor did they call the Police. They took us out in the garden and taught us how to fight back even harder. We rode bikes in packs of six or eight or ten, and we wore our coats by the hoods only. We made up games with bits of wood and stones and old tennis balls; we threw worms at each other, and mud, and sometimes we ate things that we shouldn’t have eaten, but no-one went to hospital and no-one died. The Police were there to be respected, and we did respect them. We said ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’, and we minded our manners when we were told to. If we got in trouble our parents sided with the authorities, and said things like ‘It serves you right…’ as they cancelled our pocket money.

Our actions were our own, and consequences were confronted.

My son is twelve. This is the second day this week that his school has been closed. Because of snow. About two and a half inches of snow.

I went to school in the wilderness of Oxfordshire. It was a mile and a half to the nearest post box. There was no such thing as a ‘day off’. Snow banks reached three and four feet in height, and we walked to school. In shorts. We had snowball fights all the way, and when we got to school the teachers threw snowballs too.

If that happened now there’d be a lawsuit, a civil investigation, suspension, internal inquiries, and someone somewhere would lose their job.

What in God’s name has happened to us?

Where did it all go so wrong?

Political correctness has become ‘fear of saying anything even when it’s the truth’.
We live in a world that seems populated with frightened people, people who want to say and do and think and feel, but believe they cannot.

We live in a society where the younger generations are being taught to never think for themselves, to expect something for nothing, to believe that calculating how much public benefit you can get is better than working for a living.

What happened to pride in a career? What happened to the feeling of doing a damned good day’s work, and never once thinking that you deserved more than you had legally and legitimately earned?

And the education system? Don’t even get me started!

So, apart from ranting away on some polemic about how dreadful things have become, I will temper my diatribe with a simple observation: People do not need to be told how to live their lives. They are more than capable of making their own decisions and learning from their own mistakes. Tell a child what to do, and they will invariably contradict and do something else.

Forbid someone to do a certain thing or behave a certain way, and they will behave that way just to get back at you. It’s human nature.

The government (a term I used advisedly as they seem to govern very little of anything), continues to fail us. They spend so much of their time worrying about what we might think of them that they have become afraid of doing anything decisive.

The comment that Obama made when he met with David Cameron? ‘What a lightweight’. That says everything about who we rely on to manage our affairs, control the corrupt and greedy bankers, advise and direct the actions of the Police and the legal system, provide social and community support, and give us a means by which we – as a society - can co-operate with one another racially, politically, culturally and religiously. Look where they have got us. We don’t go to school because someone might slip over, or someone’s parents might be late to collect them, or a teacher might get a snowball thrown at them…and then where would be be… Oh my God.
Sometimes I look at our history as a nation – our heritage, the legacy of the Victorians, of Elizabeth I, of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Brunel, Watt, Churchill, of what we accomplished in the First and Second World Wars, of London surviving over two hundred and fifty consecutive days of the blitz, of the sacrifice that ordinary people made to preserve some degree of sanity in Europe…and then I see those same people, now in their eighties and nineties, being left alone without heating or adequate food, being treated disrespectfully by teenagers and children, and a government that stands by and allows this to happen, all the while worrying about whether the ‘human rights’ of some burglar have been violated because he slipped on the floor while he was stealing your DVD player.

What is the deal with these politicians, the very people who are supposed to represent the very best of this country, those who are supposed to epitomise honesty, integrity, intelligence, courage, hard work, decency and trustworthiness?

Are they all just naturally liars and idiots? I am afraid to say that they just might be.
I can only hope that the future will see a change for the better. I am naturally optimistic, but it seems that the society within which we live, at least the society that seems to be being created for us, makes it harder and harder to be optimistic.

Instead of spending millions putting internet facilities and CD and DVD rental services in libraries, apparently to ‘entice’ more people into those libraries and thus get them reading again, why not teach people to read in school? Do what the Romans did – reading, writing, basic arithmetic until you are twelve, and then apprentice in a trade and learn the value of work, of getting something done, of having created something that has a value that can be exchanged for something else. How hard would that be? Get rid of OFSTED, Social Service bureaucracies, pen-pushing desk jockeys who spend all their time figuring out how they can pass the buck. Let the doctors and nurses use their training and ability to help people the best way they know how, and don’t belabour their days with paperwork and reviews and threats of legal suits. Give the Police back control of their own services. Let them catch real crooks as opposed to having to fulfil ‘arrest quotas’. Have the government use the vast resources of money that we give them to pay for real healthcare, effective schools, for creating new jobs, and make ministers and politicians really accountable for their own decisions and actions; approve unemployment benefit on the basis of the number of hours of community work that an individual does each week – if he doesn’t have a job, then let him work for twenty-five hours a week alongside local councils as they repair things, regenerate run-down areas, remove graffiti, plant trees and other such projects. Stop rewarding people for being sick and incapable. People are not sick and incapable. Make a job valuable. Make it worthwhile. Cut back income tax, road tax, council tax, death duties, tax on alcohol and cigarettes…and apply a standard sales tax on goods. Give people the money that they earn – all of it – and they will spend it. Use a standard sales tax from those expenditures to fund the social services we need. And stop spending billions on drugs, psychiatry, warfare and unemployment. No-one wants them. No-one needs them. We will survive an awful lot better in their absence.

And those are my thoughts on this snowy day – as the Scots, the Poles, the Scandinavians, the Canadians and so many other peoples laugh at us for our pathetic response to two and a half inches of snow.

I really do not want to be considered a ‘lightweight’, and I’m sure you don’t either!

2009-02-04T20:21:00.003Z

AMAZON VERSUS HACHETTE - THE WAR OF TITANS

For those of you who don't know, Hachette Livre, the company who owns many UK publishing labels such as Orion, Victor Gollancz, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson (and many more!), is in a stand-off with Amazon UK.

For years Amazon has increased the percentage of commission it takes from the publishers as each book is sold. Last year Amazon informed publishers that they were increasing the percentage again. Hachette refused to comply. As a result there are many books published by Orion, Gollancz, W&N etc. that have had the 'Buy Now' button removed from their page. If you look at 'A Quiet Belief In Angels' you will see that you cannot buy this directly from Amazon. It has not been available from Amazon for several months. You have to either buy a new copy from an Amazon-registered dealer, or a second-hand copy. Ordinarily this means that you pay more for the book.

I do not presume to understand the political ins and outs of this situation. All I know is that there are a great many authors who are published by the Hachette group, and their books are unavailable from Amazon.

All I can ask of anyone is to write reviews of my books on Amazon. Also write reviews of any other Orion books you might have read. This brings the issue more to the forefront as when reviews are written Amazon take notice.

Ultimately the stand-off has to end. It has gone on for months and months and months, and a great deal of excellent authors are being denied sales because of this situation. I am not saying that Amazon is right, or that Hachette is right. That is not the issue. The issue is that a compromise has to be reached, and I believe that it is up to us - as readers and writers - to force this compromise and get them to reach an agreement.

So please write reviews. And ask anyone you know who has read the books to write reviews as well. It makes a huge difference!

Thank you!

2009-02-03T13:12:00.002Z

WASHINGTON – JANUARY 2009

Give or take a week, it is pretty much a year since I flew out to Georgia to film the television piece for the Richard and Judy Book Club broadcast. Those of you who were in touch with me at the time, and those who read the blog and looked at the pictures I took, are aware of how important that trip was, not only from the viewpoint of the R&J Club, but also from the viewpoint of how it was to follow in the footsteps of Joseph Vaughan, to visit the places where he travelled, to see some of the things he would have seen.

Well, I have just returned from Washington, and though the purpose of the trip was to film the piece for BBC’s ‘Inside Out’ program (which will be aired in mid to late March), as with Georgia the purpose of the trip was superseded and underpinned by so many other factors. I followed in the footsteps of Robert Miller and John Robey, and they were profound steps indeed.

This will not be a short blog, and though I am going to try and convey the significance of where we were and what we saw, it will be difficult. I am going to try and give you a rundown of what happened from a journalistic perspective, but I am not a journalist.

Before I begin I have to tell you about the people who went with me. From the BBC my producer, Lindsay Doyle – a remarkable woman in so many ways, and a tremendously gifted producer. It was easy to see exactly what she wanted from the piece, and yet she too was so moved by what we saw and heard that I do not – in any way – envy her the work she will have to do when she is in the editing suite. As she said to me so many times ‘To fit all of this into twelve minutes…well, we could make an hour long show and still have material that it would be difficult to leave out.’ Lindsay has become a great friend, and the support and guidance she gave me in doing this piece was invaluable.

And then there was Ciara Redman, researcher extraordinaire. The groundwork and logistics she did prior to our departure proved so effective… Well, we were in Washington for five days, and you will see from the following blog entry and the film itself that she managed to secure the time and willingness of some remarkable people, and what we came away with would never have been possible had she not been so brilliant at her job.

Finally Paul Hutchins, our cameraman. Paul has been all over the world. Paul remains un-phased by anything. Paul is not only a superbly talented and professional cameraman, he is also a wonderful companion. He knows what he wants, and he gets it. The way the piece will ‘look’ when it is done will be because of Paul’s ‘photographer’s eye’ and his willingness to just do it again, and then again one more time, until he has what he wants.

As far as the BBC guys are concerned, not only were they superb at their individual jobs, they were a pleasure to be with all the time.

And finally, there was Jon, my editor. Jon came with me to Georgia. Jon is without doubt one of the best friends I have ever had the good fortune of knowing. Not only is his knowledge of all things seemingly endless, he is still aware – as I am – of the sheer amount of things that we don’t know. Thus all our adventures together are learning experiences, and so full of questions and debates and discussions. I know he also appreciates the significance of what we saw and what we did, and there is not one person in the world with whom I would have preferred to share the Washington experience. He is acknowledged in the front of every one of my books for very obvious reasons, and I cherish and value his friendship enormously.

So to business. We arrived mid-afternoon on Wednesday and went to our hotel. It was already late in the day and we prepared our schedule for the following morning. And what a morning that proved to be…

I am a huge fan of the film ‘All The President’s Men’, the Alan J. Pakula-directed masterpiece starring Redford and Hoffman regarding the work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who tracked those thin leads that led all the way back to the Oval Office tapes that resulted in Nixon’s resignation. In the film the editor of the Post, Ben Bradlee, is played by Jason Robards. Robards won an Oscar for his performance. Our first interview was with the veteran Post reporter, Walter Pincus, a man personally hired by Bradlee, a man who was present not only during Watergate and the Post’s coverage of Nixon’s resignation, but also Nicaragua, the Clinton/Lewinski situation, and subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of 9/11. At a guess, Walter is in his late seventies. Apparently the current record for oldest working Post journalist is ninety-two. Walter said he might try and beat the record. Well, I interviewed Walter in the Post conference room, and there on the wall was the original lead plate of the ‘Nixon Resigns’ headline from the Post’s printing room… And after the interview was done Walter was generous enough to allow us to film him working at his desk, a desk in the very same newsroom where Bernstein and Woodward worked, the very same newsroom where they filmed ‘All The President’s Men’.

From the Post we drove out to a branch of Starbuck’s where the three workers were murdered, a case which became known as ‘The Starbucks Murders’ (information about which is freely available on the web), and we saw the memorial there on the wall. This was a precursor to meeting Brad Garrett, retired FBI Special Agent, the man who worked on and solved the Starbucks case alongside many, many more. What we wanted to talk to Garrett about was threefold. We wanted to know about the Starbucks investigation, also the Washington Sniper case, but also – more importantly than either of those – we wanted an inside look at the world of a working FBI man. Brad was very forthcoming and co-operative. He took us on a drive out of Washington to show us where the perpetrator of the Starbucks killings lived, and from there he drove us to an industrial lake behind a cement factory to talk to us about a case that – even now – still haunts him. A fisherman, casting lines out into the lake, saw a thirty-gallon trash can float to the surface of the water. The lid, once wired to the can itself, had come loose, and in the can he could see two heads. The Police were called, and once the can was dragged onto land it was discovered that a Vietnamese woman and her two year-old child, both kidnapped some five months earlier, were inside the can. From all appearances it seemed that they had been put in the can alive.

Brad said that despite this case happening more than thirteen years ago, it was rare that a day would go by without him thinking of it. Working as a private investigator now, he said that though there were many aspects of the FBI life he missed, there was still the ‘addictive nature’ of the work in his blood. It was something he spoke of with great intensity, and it was so very easy to see that such a job was not a job at all, but a vocation, even a lifestyle.

Our last interview that day was out in Fallschurch, Virginia. Here we met with June Boyle, a thirteen-year veteran Homicide detective, her years before Homicide having been spent in Robbery, Sex-Crimes, and many other areas. June was immediately charming, very warm, very human, and she drove us out to a park where we sat on benches near a playground and spoke of her life in the Fairfax County Police Department. Here I am not going to expound on the Washington Sniper case. There is a huge amount of information about this case on the web, and for a brief outline check it out on Wikipedia. Safe to say that the Washington or ‘Beltway Sniper’ case was the most important investigation on the east coast for as many years as anyone could remember. Well, Detective June Boyle was the detective who finally interviewed and secured a confession from Lee Boyd Malvo, the young accomplice to the Washington Sniper. She spent six and a half hours with him. She secured his confidence and his trust. She arranged his food, she sent out for veggie burgers, for boxes of raisins, at one point sharing the raisins with him that he gave her with his own hands. And then she got him to open up, to really start talking, and with that information the case had a foundation and a grounding that would never have been possible without her. Despite the fact that the Attorney General authorised Malvo’s trial to take place in Virginia, and thus gave the jury the opportunity to execute him, the jury decided not to. They gave him life in prison. I asked June how she felt about this, and in a split second her expression changed completely. ‘Malvo should be dead," she replied, so matter-of-factly. 'There are some people in this world that should be dead, and Malvo is one of them’ It was a glimpse behind the face that she wore for the world. In that moment I realised that despite her generosity of spirit, despite the fact that she is a tremendously big-hearted person, she is also a police detective, and has been witness to some of the very worst kind of people the world has to offer. This is a lifestyle, a vocation, that one can never leave behind. June, in her own words, said that she ‘missed the rush, the excitement, the buzz of a new case, a new lead, the feeling that it was going somewhere…’. She, of all the people we met, gave me the greatest insight into the mind of characters I choose to write about. She was not married, she had ‘survived’ numerous relationships, she now cared for her mother but essentially lived alone. She seems, certainly to me, to have given her life to her work. She was very good at it, perhaps too good, and I certainly felt nothing but the most tremendous respect for what she had done and who she is. I wish her the very best for the future.

So our first day of filming ended. A hell of a day.

The second day began with Alyce. Alyce is thirty-one, a mother of two. Her son is nine and lives with his grandma. Alyce’s daughter, getting on for three years of age, lives with Alyce. I am not going to give you Alyce’s surname or the names of her children for obvious reasons. Alyce, for ten years, was a heroin addict. She was homeless, destitute, broke, and a junkie. At one moment I asked after the whereabouts of her daughter’s father. ‘Well, he lives in the same doorway where I used to live…’ was her response.

Alyce has just finished the third year of her medical studies. She has been off heroin for a little longer than that. She has another two years to go, and when she graduates as a nurse she wants to specialise in helping those who are adversely affected by drugs. She has recovered her relationship with her parents and her siblings. She has secured low-income (Section 8) housing and lives in a really nice home (because she has made it so), and she is testament to the fact that people can survive. Alyce was generous, warm, friendly, talkative, very open about her life and her personal experiences, and she has an optimistic outlook for the future. We asked her about Obama, the possible changes, the political and cultural future of America, and she smiled wryly. She said ‘Race doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what color the President is. He seems to be a smart man. The last one wasn’t smart. That’s the thing that will make a difference.’ A very astute observation. While the rest of the world is talking about what colour the President is, someone right there in the middle of it sees it for what it is. Is he smart, or is he dumb? That’s the thing that will make a difference.

Lastly we visited with Patrick Anderson, novelist and crime fiction reviewer for The Washington Post. Patrick was kind enough to have us interview him in his apartment, and certainly for me he seemed to epitomise the literary, well-read, East Coast gentleman, a man who many novelists would both admire and fear. Patrick does not mince words. If he likes something he likes it. If he doesn’t, well he doesn’t, and he certainly has no difficulty saying so. We asked him about crime fiction of the past, crime fiction for the future, and he gave us some very insightful observations that you will see in the interview when it is broadcast.

And so our second day ended, as did our interviews, and the last day of official filming was ahead of us.

Saturday was bright and cold. The perfect day. The light was good, the vast crowds from the week before had dissipated and gone home, and we got to see Washington the ‘morning after the party’. The White House, the Federal Triangle, the State Department, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, Arlington Cemetery with the Eternal Flame and memorials for both JFK and RFK. We visited Robert E. Lee’s house at the top of the hill, and from there we could see the White House, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. Iconic images, all of them, and yet somehow they were reminders of the things that America has become famous for in the last eight years or so. Foreign policy decisions, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rumsfeld, the Bush administration, so many other mistakes that have made the election of President Obama so necessary for the future. Time will tell, but I am optimistic…

It was our last full day in the US capital, and though we had accomplished what we set out to do – to film the different pieces we needed to film, to take the general views for the camera, the sections where I would record a voice-over once back in Birmingham, I also felt that we had been a window into something that would have been unattainable any other way. Tourists don’t get into the Washington Post, they don’t talk to FBI agents or homicide detectives, they don’t walk through Section 8 housing complexes and speak with recovered heroin addicts about the trials and tribulations of being sick and poor and a parent, and yet somehow possessing a strength of spirit sufficient not only to survive those experiences, but to then dedicate the rest of their lives to helping people escape from the same terrible circumstances. As a tourist you see the White House, Capitol Hill, Arlington Cemetery, but you see it as an outsider, a spectator, without any of the underlying awareness of the consequences of the decisions made at Capitol Hill, the kind of decisions that have filled Arlington with war-dead. Jon said a very interesting thing. He said that all generals should be made to stand on the roof of the Pentagon and look up at Arlington, the ocean of crosses and monuments, and then make a decision as to whether to go to war. He also said that considering the fact that the USA has so little relative history, the history they do have seems to mean so much more to them.

On Sunday morning Jon and I went out to Columbia Street. I filmed a short piece-to-camera for the Orion website in the street where Catherine Sheridan was murdered at the start of A Simple Act of Violence. In a strange way this was more sobering than anything else. We write fiction. We create characters and put them in fabricated circumstances, and whether we write for the sake of entertainment, or we write to evoke an emotion, or we write simply for pleasure, we are still writing fiction.

Standing there on Columbia Street and talking about Catherine Sheridan, so soon after having spoken to Brad Garrett about the Vietnamese woman and her baby who were kidnapped and then drowned in an industrial lake…after having spent time with June Boyle and listened to her talk of the Washington Sniper case, the arrest and interrogation of Lee Boyd Malvo, the fact that the jury saw pictures of his victims, innocent people with their heads blown apart, and then were confronted with pictures of Malvo as a baby and were sufficiently influenced on a sympathetic level to refuse to commit to the death penalty…standing on that street and talking about a fictional character made me so much more aware of the real people. The ones that do die. The ones that are murdered. Sobering, to say the least.

I take a great deal of memories away from Washington. I think they are things that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and will certainly inform and influence my writing.

And I took a lot of photographs – at least two or three hundred. I’ll be posting them on the gallery as soon as I can.

I am so often asked why I write about America. I am often challenged, accused of trying to be something I am not.

I disagree. I tell stories. That’s what I do. I have always done, always will. I feel I have a duty and a responsibility to engage and inform and educate and entertain. I believe that there are things I can show people that they otherwise would never see. I believe this is a privilege, and it is something that I feel very fortunate to do.

To this end I must thank again the guys from the BBC, Jon and my friends at Orion who helped organise and arrange the trip, and finally Walter, Brad, June, Alyce and Patrick – great people all, so giving of their time, their insight, their thoughts and feelings.

Oh, and thanks to the people of Washington who made our job so much easier with their courtesy and consideration. You have a great city, a great people, and let us hope – in so many ways – that the recent inauguration of a ‘smart president’ makes the difference we are all hoping for in these difficult times.

Best wishes, as always, and speak soon,
Roger.

2009-01-10T13:34:00.003Z

EVENTS FOR 2009...

I am not planning on staying home for the entirety of 2009. I have numerous events lined up and more being arranged as we speak. I shall update the calendar as soon as I get a moment!

Trust all is well with you, and speak soon.
Roger.

2008-12-29T01:29:00.003Z

MESSAGE TO MARGARET ROBSON...

Margaret...you e-mailed me through the website and asked me a question. I wrote an extensive reply, and then the message was returned as 'undeliverable' to the address you used. Please e-mail me again, or post a response to this blog entry, and I can get your question answered.
Best wishes,
Roger.

2008-12-22T08:47:00.001Z

TOWARDS THE END OF 2008…

Well, this has been nothing if not an eventful year. With A Quiet Belief In Angels now being translated into nineteen languages – some of them already done and released – I am receiving more and more international e-mails, and last week I received an invitation to speak at the Quais de Polar Crime Fiction Festival in Lyon next March. It clashed perfectly with a three-day festival I had already agreed to attend in Chichester, but the wonderful Kate Mosse, organiser of the Chichester Festival, has given me leave to attend on Friday the 27th and the early part of Saturday the 28th, and then I will fly out to Lyon and appear there during the latter part of Saturday and all day Sunday. I am also arranging many, many events nationwide, including Darlington, Eastbourne, Lincoln, the Harrogate Festival, Northampton, and then there’s the week in Washington at the end of January to film ‘Inside Out’ with the BBC.

And thus we approach Christmas. I am an unashamed fan of Christmas – hugely enthusiastic about giving gifts, cooking, music, movies, family, friends and all that goes with it.

The traditional Christmas Eve dinner, watching ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ (what a complete sap I am!), and then bribing my son and my nephew to go to bed so we can wrap all their gifts and put them under the tree. This year my brother will be staying with me, and this will be the first Christmas we have spent together in over twenty-five years.

And 2009 looms, and with the launch of ‘The Anniversary Man’ now changed to October, we have the release of the paperback of ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ in April, and then six months of promotion and events.

‘The Darkest River’ is done and ready for editorial comment, and I am currently working on ‘The Saints of New York’, the contemporary police thriller set in New York that I hope will be published in 2011. There may be a chance we release this in 2010 instead of ‘The Darkest River’ but that has yet to be decided. As soon as I have any news on upcoming titles and release dates I’ll let you know.

I estimated the other day that in the past twelve months I have received in excess of three thousand e-mails from readers. I have answered every single one, save two or three where I have replied with the e-mail address I have been given and the e-mail has bounced right back. This always bothers me greatly – the fact that there might be someone out there who sent me an e-mail, and then never got a reply. I ALWAYS reply, without fail and without exception, and so if you have not received a reply it isn’t because I didn’t, but because something happened with your e-mail address and it never got to you. I apologise for this, and I hope you will e-mail me again.

I have done a huge number of library, bookstore, school, festival and private events during 2008, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all the organisers, librarians, teachers, readers, writers, hotel staff, travel agents and flight attendants that have assisted and supported this in every way.

I want to thank everyone at Orion, of course – Editorial, Publicity, Foreign Rights, Translations, Audio, Sales, Marketing, Managerial and the rest! There are too many to mention (my Orion Christmas card list runs to over eighty names and I send them each a card every year!), but they know who they are, and I want them to know that 2008 has been a remarkable year in so many ways and none of it would have happened without them.

Endless thanks to Euan Thorneycroft, my agent, and congratulations to him and his wife regarding their second child, due in early 2009.

Also Robyn Karney, my copy-editor – a truly remarkable woman, uncompromisingly professional in everything she does. Working with her has been a joy.

I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation (once again!) to Amanda Ross at Cactus TV, additionally Duncan, Gareth, Jon and everyone else behind both the Richard & Judy Book Club and the trip we made to Georgia in January. Also Kate Mosse, a great friend, for her support and encouragement; to Ali Karim, Steve Warne, Barry Forshaw, Lorne Jackson, Duncan Tift, Ben Hunt, Matt Lewin (whose books I am reading as we speak!), George Easter, Marie Helvin, Jonathan Davidson, Paul Voyce, Sarah Broadhurst, Sharone Neuhoff and Richard Reynolds; authors I have met and become friends with this year – Simon Kernick, Mark Billingham, Sophie Hannah, Stuart McBride, Robert Crais, Katherine McMahon and many more!

Thank you – all of you – for a wonderful year, a year which has concluded in memorable style.

And thank you for your e-mails, letters, comments, reviews, disagreements and criticisms! Next year I promise to work harder, okay?!

So my very, very best wishes to all of you for a truly wonderful Christmas, and may 2009 bring you everything you want, though not necessarily everything you deserve!

Perhaps we will speak again before 2009 appears, but if not then take care of yourselves and one another.

Roger.

2008-11-16T18:45:00.005Z

BALTIMORE, WASHINGTON, INSIDE OUT, THE ANNIVERSARY MAN, THE DARKEST RIVER AND THE SAINTS OF NEW YORK.

A convoluted title to this blog entry, but it makes sense, believe me!

Well, it seems like an age since I have had a moment to sit down and write a proper blog entry. I have many excuses, but excuses are merely that and nothing more.

So what’s been happening?

Well, as you can see from the two photo galleries (‘Bouchercon 2008’ and ‘Sights and Scenes of Baltimore’) I came back from Baltimore with numerous pictures. I wanted to get them on the site before I wrote another blog, just so I could stop saying ‘I have nearly got around to the pictures…promise!’ Well, my wife took on the job of updating the galleries, and she sat and uploaded and titled every one. The bulk of the pictures feature my very good friend Ali Karim, editor of Shots Magazine, and you should check out his own blog for some of the anecdotes from our trip.

That was Baltimore. Now we come to Washington. I am off to Washington in the early part of next year for Barrack Obama’s inauguration. I will be there for a couple of days, no more than that, because we are filming a short piece for a BBC program called ‘Inside Out’. Considering the fact that ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ is set in Washington, we felt it was apropos to do a feature piece on the book in the city of its setting. Tying that in with the inauguration of the most important President-elects in the better part of a century, I think it will be an interesting feature. It will be aired on BBC Midlands ‘Inside Out’ program sometime towards the end of March, and then it should be syndicated to the other regional networks. It will also be accessible online, of course, on the BBC’s ‘Inside Out’ program web link. As soon as I have a transmission date I’ll let you know.

And so to ‘The Anniversary Man’, the book slated for publication in June 2009. I am sorry to have to inform you that the release has been moved to October 2009. I don’t know what to tell you about this apart from the fact that it was a purely strategic decision on the part of my publisher. The book is done, is ready to go, the title is agreed, the cover is designed, the job is finished, but due to the fact that the paperback version of ‘A Simple Act Of Violence’ is coming out in April 2009 they felt that releasing a new hardback two months later would be too soon. All I can do is apologize. There is nothing I can do to change this, and though I would have liked to have released the book in June, delaying it does make sense from a business-orientated perspective, and it is a business after all!

Next is ‘The Darkest River’. Well, I have received so many, many e-mails from people asking when there will be another book like ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ – the sort of smalltown drama-type thing, that I have written one. Completed about two weeks ago, its working title is, as mentioned, ‘The Darkest River’. Set in the small town of Monticello in northern Florida, the book begins a week before the assassination of Jack Kennedy, and ends approximately a week afterwards. It is the story of Lewis Hunter, a young man accused of murdering a black girl, and the investigation that ensues. Drawn into this drama is his father, the writer Paul Fredericks, a man who – until November 1963 – was utterly unaware of the fact that he had a son. Due to go to Dallas to interview President Kennedy and the First Lady on November 22nd, Fredericks is diverted to northern Florida by the young man’s mother, and as a result of his own sense of emotional responsibility, also his curiosity about whether or not his ‘new-found son’ was actually the guilty killer, he stays for the duration of the Police investigation and the subsequent aftermath. Cutting through these events is the assassination of JFK and the events of November 22nd in Dallas. Similar in length to ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’, and perhaps a little less ‘prose-driven’, it is nevertheless a story in a similar sort of vein, certainly from the emotional angle, and – if all goes according to the new schedule – it should see the light of day somewhere around the tail-end of 2010.

Lastly, we come to ‘The Saints of New York’, my working title for the 2011 book which I have recently begun. A contemporary setting – New York. A troubled and harassed homicide detective, Frank Parrish, not only having to contend with daily consultations with the Precinct Counsellor for his wayward and subversive behaviour, is also investigating the deaths of a number of teenage girls. Through his daily discussions with the counsellor, we learn of Frank’s father, John Parrish, a much-decorated member of the Organized Crime Control Bureau and the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force. Despite his many commends and citations, despite the endless record of successful arrests and convictions, John Parrish was not who the world believed he was. A member of the ‘Saints of New York’, a handful of corrupt and self-serving NYPD officers who collaborated with organized crime networks, John Parrish was involved in some of the most important heists that took place in the 70s and 80s, including the infamous Lufthansa heist, which was – at the time – the largest robbery ever to take place on the United States mainland. Netting the better part of six million dollars, only one hundred thousand dollars was ever recovered. I shall not say anymore, ‘cause I ain’t written anymore!

So that’s where I have been and what I have been up to. ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ is selling, and has been received well. A review from The Guardian said ‘This is an awesome achievement – a thriller of such power, scope and accomplishment that fanfares should herald its arrival’. Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better response.

So I leave you my thanks for all your continued support and encouragement. I have received a wealth of e-mails, and I have answered them all, and will continue to do so. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.

We will speak before Christmas, I am sure, but – being a huge fan of Christmas myself – I want to take this opportunity to wish you all the most wonderful time before anyone else has a chance!

I am looking forward to 2009, not only from the viewpoint that another book will find its way out into the world, but also that I will have the chance to speak to so many more of you in person at the numerous events we are planning.

Take care my friends.
Roger.

(p.s. An update - considering the hugely prohibitive cost of accomodation in Washington during the week of the inauguration, we have decided to go a week later, and stay for longer. We are planning interviews with homicide detectives, a trip to Arlington Cemetery, the Washington Monument, the White House and Capitol Hill. I am not certain of the broadcast date, but it should be some time in March.)

2008-11-04T22:41:00.003Z

NEARLY THERE...

The past few weeks have been crazy. I've done a huge number of events, and I just wanted to let you know that we've been working on getting all the pictures from Baltimore (Bouchercon 2008) uploaded to the gallery. A couple more days and we'll be done, so bear with us!

'The Anniversary Man' (release date June 25th, 2009) is done, and also 'The Darkest River' is complete (slated for release in 2010).

I'll blog more when I get a moment. Promise!

Speak soon, and best wishes.

2008-10-12T15:54:00.002Z

A FORTUITOUS MEETING...

I continue to be amazed and astounded by the extraordinary kindness and generosity of other writers. I have just had the honour of meeting with Dennis Lehane and he has kindly taken a copy of A Simple Act of Violence to read.

Earlier I met with Lee Child, John Connolly, Laurence Block, Harlan Coben, Steve Hamilton, Ed Wright, Linwood Barclay, and many more, and every single one of them demonstrated quite effortlessly that writers are some of the very best people you could ever hope to know.

The book dealers here - Mike Bursaw (Mystery Mike) and Steve Warne (CHC Books) specifically - have been tremendously supportive, and have been convincing people to buy my books. Ali Karim (Shots), Jeff Kingston-Pierce (Shots), George Easter and Larry Gandle (Deadly Pleasures), agents from Writers' House and Fineprint...all of them so encouraging and supportive of whatever you are doing. It has been a whirlwind of activity, and though you are all too aware of the necessity to sleep, you just don't want to because of what you might miss.

I, for one, will be sorry to leave Baltimore behind, but all too pleased to remember that I have made so many friends here that I hope, and honestly believe, will now be friends for life.

2008-10-11T14:24:00.003Z

BOUCHERCON CRIME FICTION FESTIVAL 2008

Well, what can I say? Greetings from Baltimore! I arrived here on Wednesday or Thursday, I honestly cannot remember now, and I have been overwhelmed by the tremendous reception I have received. Mingling with such stellar luminaries as Harlan Coben, George Pelecanos, Larry Block, attending the Barry Awards, and last night the Shamus Awards banquet followed by a guided tour of the Westminster Hall catacombs and Edgar Allan Poe's grave... It has been a whirlwind of meetings and greetings and panels and author interviews, all of them fascinating and informative. To really appreciate the enthusiasm with which crime fiction is met here, I can only say that at 8.30 am you appear at a panel and find that there are two or three hundred people there right with you!

I travelled with my long-time companion and great friend Ali Karim. Ali, I know, will be posting extensive reports on Shots when he returns to the UK along with a gallery of great photographs he has taken. He will forward a good number to me and I shall add them to the gallery on this site. I shall post a report on the outcome of the week when I get home. I am in Leeds at the Morley Literary Festival the day after my return to the UK, and then I have events in Guildford and numerous other places, so bear with me. I'll get it done as fast as I can!

There has been a great deal of interest about A Simple Act of Violence here. My good friend Steve Warne brought over three boxes of the hardbacks, all of which I sat and dutifully signed the day I arrived, and they have pretty much sold out along with every copy of the previous books that he brought with him. I have conducted meetings with agents, have two more such meetings today, and I'll keep you posted on anything that happens regarding a US publishing deal. Meanwhile, Germany has just bought A Simple Act of Violence and the new book for 2009, so things continue to move forward.

I shall sign off now, but I just wanted you to know that things are good here, that it's been a most excellent trip thus far, and we'll speak soon.

Best, as always,

Roger.

2008-09-30T18:46:00.000Z

WHERE HAS SEPTEMBER GONE?

Having received an e-mail through the website from a good friend, I was reminded of my New Year’s Resolution to never let a month go by without posting a blog entry. To realize that we are now in the very last day of the month says everything about the speed at which my working life has been flying by. With the release of ‘A Simple Act of Violence’ on Thursday, the book for 2009 having been submitted to my publisher and accepted for publication in June of next year, the work on the book for 2010 almost complete, and the fact that I decided to move house last Sunday…well, a month has disappeared without my being aware of where it’s gone.

As we approach October, I look ahead to the numerous public events I am scheduled to attend. Aside from the many local and national readings, signings and literary festivals, I am also spending a week in Baltimore for the Bouchercon Crime Festival (where I have been shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction Novel 2008). My travelling companion, bodyguard, guide and general drinking compadre is the inimitable Mr. Ali Karim, he of spectacular reputation (Shots Magazine, Crime Spree, Deadly Pleasures and many more). Ali has been there for me since Candlemoth, endlessly supportive, marvellously generous in his reviews, his words of encouragement and his unfailing support. I owe him a great debt of personal gratitude, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to help me navigate the maze of authors, agents, publishers and readers that is Bouchercon.

As for the 2009 manuscript, I am very pleased that both my agent and editor have enjoyed it so much, and we are all looking forward to the response it will receive. After the success of A Quiet Belief In Angels, so relentlessly promoted by all at the Richard and Judy Book Club, it will be interesting to see the reaction generated by A Simple Act of Violence. In light of so much attention on the US administration, the election of a new president, the financial woes now occasioned by the ‘credit crunch’ in America and the rest of the world, A Simple Act of Violence will perhaps remind people of the lengths the US government has previously gone to in order to secure their own interests. If ever a book was going to get me in trouble, it would be this one. 2009’s book is nowhere near so contentious. A rather more straightforward crime thriller (as if I would ever write a ‘straightforward’ book, but you know what I mean!), it deals with the work of a serial killer in present day New York, busily replicating famous serial killings on the anniversary of their original perpetration. From John Wayne Gacy to the Genosee River Killings, from the Sunset Slayers to the Zodiac, the gallery of miscreants and human horrors I have included therein is substantial. No punches are pulled, and though it is not a gratuitously violent or disturbing book, it nevertheless deals with powerful subject matter and the uncompromising truth of what such people are capable of. It was a very interesting research path to follow, and I enjoyed writing the book immensely. As I mentioned before, it is due for publication in June 2009, and though we have not yet decided on a title I believe we will have one by the end of this week.

So that’s what I have been up to, along with answering every one of your many hundreds and hundreds of e-mails (and please keep them coming – it is a great pleasure to be in touch with you all).

I will try and keep you posted throughout October as I wend my way from one end of the country to the other, and when I return from Bouchercon I will try and get some pictures posted on the site.

Until then, keep reading, keep writing, keep talking to one another, and no doubt we will speak again in the not-too-distant future.

Best, as always,
Roger.

2008-08-03T12:02:00.002Z

LOOKING AHEAD…

With ‘A Quiet Belief In Angels’ having reached sales of 250,000, translations ongoing in fifteen languages, and the publication of the new book ‘A Simple Act Of Violence’ on the 2nd of October, I have found myself being asked to do more and more author-related events. I took a moment to review my schedule for October, and beginning with a visit to Walsall Leather Museum for an event in co-ordination with Walsall Central Library on the 1st, I then have the first live reading of the short story I was commissioned to write by the Arts Council of Great Britain on the 2nd, an appearance at Cadbury College on the 6th, and then on the 8th I leave for Baltimore in Maryland for the Bouchercon Crime Festival. Returning on the 13th, I take a day’s breathing space, and then I am at the Morley Literary Festival in Leeds on the 15th, the Guildford Book Festival on the 18th, Bedford Central Library on the 21st, and Baglan Library in Port Talbot on the 23rd. It goes quiet until the 30th when I am at a Writers’ Group in Essex, and then I am in London on the 31st for a meeting with my publisher.

Which begs the question – when do I write?

Fortunately I have been industrious. The novel for 2009 is done, and I am 125,000 words into the novel for 2010. I still try to get at least 10,000 words a week written, sometimes more, and I have to get this done in between all the other ‘business’ that goes on around being a published author. I watched a movie last night – ‘The Score’ with Robert De Niro and Ed Norton – and there was a line that De Niro came out with when discussing his life as a thief. He said ‘There’s a great deal of people out there with a great deal of talent. And the truth of the matter is that they’ll never get anyplace, because they don’t have the discipline.’

Well, without in any way trying to sound knowledgeable on the subject, I think that that is a very true observation for any field of endeavour. I never had the nerve to rob banks or carry out high-tech art heists, but I did have a desire to write. The thing that twenty-two unpublished novels taught me was a work ethic, for want of a better expression. It’s the sense of certainty that if you just keep going, if you just keep working, if you just keep trying to get better and better and better, then – eventually – it’ll come right in the end. It’s that old saw about how there’s no real thing as failure, there’s just people who quit.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when you hear of such things as ‘overnight successes’. There’s some fellow who’s penned his first novel, submitted it nonchalantly to the first publisher he could think of, and all of a sudden he’s not only received a £250,000 advance, but it’s an automatic bestseller, topping the charts everywhere you look. Well, such things can be categorised as ‘urban myths’. They happen, but they are rare, and in many such instances the novel, once published, is an anticlimax. It is also true to say that such ‘overnight successes’ are short-lived and rapidly forgotten. I know of many ‘new Steinbecks’ who never wrote a second novel.

Anyway, I dug up a list of quotes that I came across some time ago regarding writers and writing, and I thought – for amusement if nothing else – that it would be good to share them with you. They are not necessarily true, of course, but they do go somewhat towards acknowledging the fact that a great many people take the business of writing far too seriously. Perhaps those who take it the least seriously are the writers themselves, as evidenced by the selection I have given below…

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
Russell Baker

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
Ernest Hemingway

To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.
Henry Fielding

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it.
Leo Rosten

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.
Terry Pratchett

There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are.
Somerset Maugham

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world -- they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.
C. N. Bovee

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton

Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic.
Jean Sibelius

What a blessed thing it is that nature, when she invented, manufactured and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism does he write "I had a fun time"? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing.
Jean Kerr

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard

So my advice this month is simply to write, and then write some more, and when you have grown weary of writing, write something else. If it is universally acknowledged and recognised that a painter gets better the more he paints, that a car mechanic becomes that much more knowledgeable and efficient with every car he takes apart and puts back together again, then why would this not be true for writers.

You learn to write by writing, not by talking about it, not by listening to critics, and certainly not by reading books about how to write ‘bestsellers’ written by people who have never written a bestseller.

Repetitive Strain Injury is the order of the day. Write until your hands are strong enough to crush golf balls.

2008-07-07T07:35:00.009Z

LITERARY FICTION VERSUS EVERYTHING ELSE...

Once again my good friend from California, Mr. William McCall, has forwarded an article of interest which deals with the subject and analysis of 'literary fiction'. I know this is not always the case with genre writers, but personally I have no real concerns whether what I do is taken 'seriously', as far as literary standards are concerned. It has always seemed to me that the most important thing in fiction is telling the story, and as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the simple matter of evoking an emotion in a reader seems always to be the most fundamental, and yet most important aspect of writing.

But, regardless of my viewpoint, there are those writers - toiling ceaselessly in the vineyards of creativity - be it crime, romance, history, science fiction or fantasy - who carry a basket of sour grapes when they are ranked, certainly in literary terms, beneath those who are viewed as 'proper writers'.

So this article piqued my interest, and I am posting it here for your amusement or edification, to confirm what you already know to be the truth, or simply as something to talk about.

It was written by Robert McCrum from The Observer, and is entitled 'World of Books Debate'.

"What is 'literary fiction'?

"To many, it's the titles on the short list for the Booker Prize. To some, it's those serious-minded novels of high artistic intent by writers with a passionate commitment to the moral purpose of fiction. To others, it's a slippery piece of book jargon. It's certainly a label that's attracted its share of critical opprobrium. 'Literary' can be synonymous with 'highbrow', but I've heard 'pretentious' and even 'unreadable'.

"Literary fiction is what many writers aspire to, though quite a few will also run a mile at the first hint of it, too. Every reader will have his or her idea of what constitutes such a category, but the acclaimed masters of Anglo-American literary fiction today probably include, among dozens, Michael Ondaatje, W.G. Sebald, Don DeLillo and Jeanette Winterson. Such are the names that sit at the top table, but below the salt you'll find an extraordinary galère, ranging from magical realists to provincial miniaturists.

"These are the footsoldiers of an empire of literary fiction that stretches across the English-speaking world, funded by massive advances and underpinned by thousands of column inches. Some of the writers whose entire careers have been devoted to this cause have tried the patience of their faithful readers but, for better or worse, literary fiction has kept its place at the top of the literary food chain. And the Booker Prize has remained the Oscar, Emmy and Pulitzer of literary fiction in the UK (and Commonwealth).

"Coincidentally, the lifespan of the Booker Prize, roughly 1970-2001, marks the generation in which literary fiction has flourished throughout European culture. Recently, however, this consensus about the desirability and importance of literary fiction has begun to show signs of wear and tear.

"One or two critics have begun, nervously, to point out that literary fiction has become just another genre, like humour, crime or adventure. Some have even gone so far as to observe that the label could simply be a way of describing a novel that places style before content, puts prose before plot, and subordinates character and narrative to nebulous aesthetic concerns.

"Such complaints have generally gone unheard or, at least, scarcely unnoticed. For good reason. Literary fiction has been supported by an awesome establishment of writers, editors, critics, agents, publishers and booksellers, all of whom have, in different ways, been unwilling to question the dominant orthodoxy.

"Nowhere has literary fiction been more fiercely entrenched than the United States. Here, the establishment I've described has been reinforced by a network of creative-writing communities, from Iowa to Yaddo, each devoted to turning out publishable examples of literary fiction.

"But every consensus carries within it the seeds of its own demise. This month's edition of the Atlantic Monthly, the venerable and influential Boston literary magazine, contains a 'Reader's Manifesto' by a certain BR Myers, subtitled 'An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose'.

"Mr Myers rushes out of the saloon into the noonday sun with both guns blazing: 'Nothing,' he writes, 'gives me the feeling of having been born several decades too late quite like the modern "literary" bestseller. Give me anything as long as it doesn't have a recent prize jury's seal of approval on the front and a clutch of precious raves on the back. In the bookstore, I'll sometimes sample what all the fuss is about, but one glance at the affected prose - "furious dabs of tulips stuttering", say, or "in the dark before the day yet was" - and I'm hightailing it to the friendly black spines of the Penguin Classics.'

"If you were in any doubt that Mr Myers was in a mood to compromise, the assault that follows on 'literary' American writers like Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, and Cormac McCarthy, among others, indicates that he is in no mood to take hostages.

"Myers's argument is an entertaining and passionate lament for what he sees as the parlous state of contemporary American literary writing. If this manifesto was simply a bilious and near-reactionary broadside by one maverick, it would be of interest only to professional literary people. The evidence, however, is to the contrary. Already, I hear the Myers manifesto has made waves in the literary community of the East Coast. It will soon be recycled here. My guess is that its more measured judgements will find sympathetic ears in the British literary world.

"Cataclysmic change is often triggered by the random accumulation of apparently insignificant events. Myers is saying nothing that has not been said behind the hand, and out of the corner of the mouth. In years to come, literary historians may look back on this manifesto and realise this was the moment at which, like the little boy in the fairytale, that someone dared to say out loud that the emperor has no clothes."

Robert McCrum

Personally, I think the world of Annie Proulx, Don De Lillo and Cormac McCarthy, but I do appreciate the point that Mr. McCrum is making. Perhaps, very simply, all that is required is that space is made at the table for those who write within certain genres as well as those who write 'proper books'. But then, as is always the case in such scenarios, someone is going to have to lead the way by moving their chair so another place or two can be set.

Speak again soon.

Best wishes, take care,

Roger.

2008-07-02T09:47:00.007Z

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER…

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire, and then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer -- and if so, why?

So wrote Bennett Cerf – publisher, man of letters, social commentator and humorist.

Leo Rosten said that the only reason for being a professional writer is that you just couldn’t help it.

A recent survey of the public regarding preferred professions placed ‘professional footballer’ at number one, and second only to that was ‘writer’.

It made me wonder what it was that was so utterly captivating about such an idea. Was it the fact that you were self-employed? The simple case of not actually having to get out of bed if you didn’t feel like it? The utter simplicity of one’s job – that all it required was hammering out a few dozen words on your battered Underwood typewriter, and publishers, screenplay writers and movie producers would elbow one another out of the way to push six figure cheques under your nose? (As if…)

Perhaps all of those things, and - then again – perhaps none.

Telling stories is as old as speech, and no less important.

Telling stories is a tradition, a heritage, a legacy…it is the past making its way toward the future in an effort to show us those things we have failed to learn by our own experience.

Telling stories is a hope that magic can be restored to an age that has almost forgotten.

Paul Auster said that becoming a writer was not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accepted the fact that you were not fit for anything else, you had to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days, and I concur with his attitude.

Some of us, I imagine, write out of anger; some out of pain; some write out of prejudice or loss, some out of passion, the promise of something better, perhaps the belief that – even now – a book can be capable of changing a life. Some of us write to remember, some to forget; some to change things, some to ensure things stay the same.

Some of us – as my agent and editor will all too easily testify – write because we cannot stop.

I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have the job I do. John Lennon said that if you find something that you love you’ll never work another day in your life. I agree unreservedly.

With the upcoming release of my sixth book, ‘A Simple Act of Violence’, behind it the success of the Richard and Judy Book Club nominated ‘A Quiet Belief in Angels’, I find myself in a situation I have always dreamed of: attending a book signing or an author event and having people show up that I don’t actually know!

A few days ago I was at a Young Offenders’ Institution talking to two dozen 15-18 year olds. On Monday night I went to a High School in Derby and talked to pupils, teachers, parents and governors. Last night I was at waterstones in Bristol and receivered a wonderfully warm reception from the staff and their Reading Group. Last week I did three events in Milton Keynes, all of them to promote the National Year of Reading. I am off to Reading, Guildford, Manchester, Harrogate, Cambridge and Port Talbot. I almost spend more time on the train now than I do behind a typewriter, and I ask myself why?

Because being a writer is a pleasure and a wonder. Because having a story to tell obligates you to tell it. Because, as Moliere said, first we write for ourselves, then we write for our friends, and lastly we write for money. I am doing it for reasons one and two, and I don’t know that I ever will arrive at number three.

There was a line uttered by a character in my last book. I stole the line directly from my grandmother when she said, "Doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, what you do, how much money you make…if you can read, well you can experience pretty much everything there is to experience."

And Sol Stein, a famous New York editor, once said that the primary motivation behind non-fiction was to convey information, whereas the primary motivation behind fiction was to evoke an emotion.

That’s what happens when I find a book I love. It becomes personal. It becomes something you’ll never forget. You find yourself wrestling people to the ground, threatening not to let them up until they give their word that they’ll read the book that you’ve just finished. And sometimes they love it the same way. And sometimes they are singularly unimpressed and cannot comprehend what the fuss was all about. But it starts a discussion or a disagreement or a debate, and out of it comes the names of their favourite books, and you make a mental note to find those books, to read them, to begin another adventure in some other place and meet fictional characters that somehow connect with you and make you believe they might, in fact, be real.

That is what writing is all about, and that it why I write.

It is perhaps true, as Jean Renard said, that writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. The red carpet is not rolled out every time you nip to Asda or Waitrose. Your life is not an endless stream of dazzling parties where you rub shoulders with George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Stephen Soderbergh. The paparazzi do not give handfuls of grubby fivers to your local taxi firm so they can be tipped off when you order a cab. The publishers and producers and film directors camping on your front lawn and thrusting six figure cheques at you every time you leave the house is a myth.

The thing that is not a myth is the magic of storytelling, and the tremendous sense of value that a great book has always had. And will always have.

Helen Exley said, "Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled ‘This could change your life’".

And the inscription over the doorway at the Library of Thebes was just four words:

"Medicine For The Soul"

2008-06-06T11:25:00.014Z

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING...

I last posted a blog entry on the 2nd of May, and though a month seems an awful long time to go without speaking, it is not for lack of want, but lack of time. (That just seems like the weakest excuse!) I have been busy – working, writing, travelling etc. I have done events in a number of libraries – Cradley, Stourbridge, Hamstead to name them, and I also ran a Writers’ Seminar at Waterstones in the centre of Birmingham. I have been to Glasgow to speak at the exposition given by WF Howes, the company that produce both my Large Print and unabridged audio books, and I attended the Orange Prize for Fiction awards on Wednesday evening, the winner of which was Rose Tremain.

I have been back and forth to London a half dozen times – meetings to discuss the new book, the previous books, the website, the marketing campaign (both for A Quiet Belief in Angels and A Simple Act of Violence), and I have troubled my editor no end by refusing to stay in hotels and camping out in his spare room.

One of the highlights of the last month has to be the backlit 96-sheet poster (called so because it is 96 times the size of a sheet of A1 paper) that was put up by the exit to Birmingham’s New Street Rail Station to advertise A Quiet Belief In Angels. The plans to modify and upgrade the website will allow for a gallery of pictures to be added, and I will post a couple so you can see how magnificent it looked. I also have in-situ photographs of the poster campaign running on the London Underground system, and for these I have to thank Julie at Orion who not only designed them, but made the whole thing happen.

Additionally, we have just learned that A Quiet Belief In Angels has been shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction Novel. The nominees for this award are decided by the American crime fiction magazine Deadly Pleasures.

We have also secured a good number of translations for A Quiet Belief In Angels since Christmas, and since I often get e-mails requesting details of publishers etc I thought I should list the languages and the names of the publishers through which these translated versions will be available.

Candlemoth
German - List
Italian - Sonzogno Editore
Dutch - AW Bruna
Swedish - Ordbilder

Ghostheart
Dutch - AW Bruna

A Quiet Vendetta
French - Editions Sonatine

City of Lies
Bulgarian - Era 2000 Book Publishing
Portuguese - Editorial Presenca
English Abridged Audio - Orion
English Large Print - WF Howes (Clipper)

Serbian - Stylos

Czech Republic - Millennium Publishing

A Quiet Belief In Angels
English Abridged Audio - Orion
English Unabridged Audio - BBC Audio
English Large Print - WF Howes (Clipper)
French - Editions Sonatine
Japanese - Shueisha
Brazilian - Intrinseca
Lithuanian - Jotema Publishing House
Norwegian - Vega Forlag
Taiwanese - Business Weekly Publications
Portuguese - Editorial Presenca
Polish - Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie Sp Z.oo
Korean - Woongjin
Dutch - De Fontein
Icelandic - Skuggi Publishing

Romania - Editura Leda

Italy - Neri Pozza

Czech Republic - Millennium Publishing
Serbian - Stylos

A Simple Act of Violence
English Abridged Audio - Orion
Italian - Neri Pozza

We are also in discussion regarding several other languages, and as they become available I’ll let you know.

So, aside from that, I have been working on the book for 2010, the one for 2009 now complete. Provisional date for the untitled 2009 hardback release is June, just a year from now.

As you possibly already know, the release date for A Simple Act of Violence was moved from September 4th to October 2nd 2008, not because the book wasn’t ready, but because there was a logistical reason that prevented its September release. A limited number of hardbacks will be produced, primarily for library consumption, and the main release will be in trade paperback format. This is basically a paperback that’s the size of a hardback. The reason for this is to lower the cost and make the new book that much more affordable. The mass market paperback version will be released in April 2009, a couple of months before Book Number Seven is released in hardback in June.

You will also be pleased to know (some of you!) that I have secured a four book contract with my publisher, the first of which will be A Simple Act of Violence. So taking into consideration that the last of those books will be released in paperback in 2012, I will now be employed for four more years!

Oh, on to the subject of movies. I’ve seen some recently that I would like to recommend. Breach (Christ Carter and Ryan Philippe), Little Children (Kate Winslett and Patrick Wilson), Hard Candy (Ellen Page, and Patrick Wilson once again), Harrison’s Flowers (David Strathairn, Andie McDowell, Adrian Brody, Brendan Gleeson), In Bruges (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson), and I have also enjoyed a number of great French comedies with the likes of Daniel Auteil and Gerard Depardieu such as Aprez Vous, Le Diner de Cons and The Closet. I also highly recommend 36 with Auteil and Depardieu, a tremendous movie that is touted as ‘the French version of Heat’.

Music I have listened to recently, apart from the staple diet of Tom Waits, Dr. John, Holly Beth Vincent, Frank Sinatra and Dave Brubeck (eclectic, eh?), I have been listening to Bireli Lagrene, Emily Loizeau and Aldo Romano…the French influence again, you see? French music, French movies, and me learning French cooking…this will all end in tears, n’est ce pas?

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. I have a busy couple of months ahead – events in Milton Keynes (three in one day), an online discussion forum on the evening of Tuesday 17th June, Bristol (twice), Margam Festival in South Wales and the Harrogate Festival. Events keep being added, and you can keep up-to-date with them on the ‘Signings and Appearances’ section of the website.

And if the website suddenly changes appearance at some point in the next few weeks don’t worry, it’s being upgraded and modified and made more user-friendly.

So there we are – a monthly update. If there’s any exciting news I’ll post again, but in the meantime keep the e-mails coming through the website. It’s great to hear from you, and I will answer every one.

Oh, just one little thing…I received an e-mail from Mark Russell. I replied, of course, but my reply kept coming back as ‘undeliverable’. I wouldn’t want Mark to think that I hadn’t responded.

Take care, speak soon, best wishes.

2008-05-02T16:32:00.005Z

A REMARKABLE FOUR MONTHS...

This morning, for the first time since its release on December 27th, 2007, A Quiet Belief In Angels slipped out of the Top Five on Amazon. Whether it will climb again we shall see! For more than sixteen weeks Quiet Belief has been in the top three or four, and last weekend spent two days at number one. The book is still selling, and by approximate calculations the better part of 180,000 copies have now found their way into peoples' hands. There are more than 175 reviews of the book on Amazon currently, and that doesn't even touch on the quantity of e-mails I have received through the website (over 1000 in the last six weeks alone...and yes, I have answered every one of them, and yes I have continued to e-mail back and forth with quite a few people, and yes, I will always answer e-mails and messages because answering questions and talking to people about books is what it's all about!)

Aside from that, the first three books - Candlemoth, Ghostheart and A Quiet Vendetta, all originally published under my full name, Roger Jon Ellory - were given new covers and re-released under 'RJ Ellory' to fall in line with City of Lies and A Quiet Belief in Angels. My pat response to the question "Why are you now RJ Ellory and not Roger Jon Ellory?" has always been 'Because it saves on the cost of printing ink...', but that is not true. The abbreviation came about as a result of a discussion between a Sales Director at Orion and the chief buyer of Waterstones some while back. When asked why my books weren't selling as well as Orion had hoped, the buyer made the recommendation that my name be shortened. This was to ensure that people remembered it with greater ease. Whether it worked or not I don't know, but I feel privileged to be in the august company of such other 'abbreviated' writers like JK Rowling, EM Forster, HG Wells, JD Salinger, AA Milne and JRR Tolkien!

Additionally a new advertising campaign starts on the London Underground from the 5th of May. This is simply a picture of the cover of Quiet Belief, and alongside it some of the comments that have been made by reviewers on Amazon. This is the first time there has been an independent publicity campaign, and it's going to be very interesting to see what happens as a result.

Aside from that I have been doing library talks and signings, and also attended the London Book Fair at Earl's Court. I met a good number of my foreign publishers from such places as Brazil (a wonderful gentleman called Jorge Oakim), also Malta (a splendid fellow called Ed Azzopardi who sat beside me at dinner that evening), and others from Scandinavia, Lebanon, France, Germany, South Africa and Spain.

To date we now have a good number of languages secured for the books, including Japanese, Lithuanian, Brazilian, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Taiwanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese and Bulgarian. Additionally City of Lies and A Quiet Vendetta are availbale in large print from Clipper, and Quiet Belief is out in abridged audio, due out soon in unabridged audio, and the next book - A Simple Act of Violence - is also coming out in audio alongside the book.

Which brings us to A Simple Act of Violence. It is done, copy-edited, being bound in Advance Reader Copy proofs, and will be released either at the beginning of September or the beginning of October. It could come at either time, but the decision about which month depends to a degree upon the marketing and promotion that needs to be in place for a book to be released. Regardless, I am very excited. I will say nothing about it, save that it is a book I am very proud of indeed, and I really do hope that you like it.

So that's where we are at the start of May 2008. Aside from resigning myself philosophically to the fact that A Quiet Belief in Angels will not be in the Amazon Top Three ad infinitum, I am very pleased with the way things are going (though I have exceptionally high standards, and shared a brief and drily humourous conversation with my editor the other day that went along the lines of:
"So how many have we sold?"
"God, I don't know, maybe 250,000 in all."
"And what's the population of the country?"
"Sixty, sixty five million I'd say."
"Okay, so we need a copy of each book in every household in the country, and then we go global."
"Right, right...couldn't agree more? And then?"
"Well then we need to seriously look at some of this space research. I cannot believe there are no other inhabited planets in our solar system -- "
"Sure as hell there are, and they want to read, don't they? I mean for God's sake, who doesn't want to read?")

You get the picture.

So enough already.
Will try and post more frequently, but as I said that last time, and though I say it with the best will in the world, there is something about life that seems determined to upset the best laid plans an' all that. You're all-too-familiar with that one, right?

Trust you're all well, and I send my very best wishes, as always.

2008-04-03T21:45:00.013Z

THE THREE H'S...

A very good friend of mine from the US - the writer William McCall - forwarded this excellent article to me today. It relates specifically to songwriting, but William made the point that it connects with writing literature just as well in many ways, and I agree with him completely.

So here it is - The Three H's by Darrell Brown

I had no idea I was going to turn out to be a songwriter. I would bet my next year’s royalty checks that when I was getting slapped on the butt and crying out my first melodies as a newborn, my parents were not dreaming of the day that their youngest baby boy would grow up to become a songwriter. The family business was an air freight trucking company. So God bless my parents for knowing by my second year in grade school that music was my first love and it wasn’t going to be me driving around in the hot Arizona sun at 18 in an Econoline van full of freight to deliver. So with everything I have in me, I thank my mom and dad for letting me follow my intuition.

I loved performing but I found out quickly that singing disco cover songs on the “amazing ascending and descending” Coca Cola Tomorrowland Terrace stage at Disneyland six nights a week would pay the bills but it would not bring the likes of Clive Davis or Ahmet Ertegun down to check out the “credo” artist shaking his booty in an orange and purple polyester jumpsuit singing “Le Freak” by Chic — especially when I was singing the back-up vocal (“Aaaahhhhhh, freak out!). So after a year and a half at Mickey and Minnie’s house, I saved up enough money and quit. I immediately went out and rented an upright piano from Hollywood Piano Store and started trying to write songs. It was a good move. It worked.

These many years later I usually find myself in Nashville, Los Angeles, New York, London or some other city, sitting at a piano with my laptop computer, No. 2 pencil and pad with another songwriter or artist. We then proceed to vent and hash out our thoughts and feelings, our anger and frustrations, our longings and hopes and try to gently coax them into the shape of a song. And that song must have the three H’s in it: Honesty. Humanity. And hooks.

First, honesty, because I believe that people will only put up with a lie for so long and I want my songs to last forever. For me, finding out if a song is honest or not is a gut thing. An honest song will show innocence, vulnerability and strength all at the same time: “I Can’t Make You Love Me” sung by Bonnie Raitt and written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper or Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Songs that rise above the songwriter and performer and have a life of their own.

Then, it has to be full of humanity, and by that I mean the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual sides of humanity. The big themes — the brokenness and the triumph of it all. So people can relate to what I am writing and singing about.

Then, finally — and this is extremely important to a song — it has to be filled with hooks, basically because I don’t want to bore people to death with all the honesty and humanity I am parading about. Hooks, as most of you know, are an absolute staple of pop music, bits and pieces of rhyming syllables or words, rhythmic chords and melodies chiming in and out and strung together in some fresh way so they never leave your brain, so you can’t stop thinking about or humming that song wherever you go. No hooks? Then it is not a great song and never will be.
Examples of great hooks? There are so many, but here are a few that come to mind. The chorus of Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears (“Take a good look at my face….”). The refrain of The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” (“I can’t get no…”). The very first line of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” or of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” sung by (but not written by) Roberta Flack.

I also know this from experience: Not all of the songs I write will be good ones. Actually, a lot of them will be ridiculously bad (experience has also taught me not to show those songs to anyone for obvious reasons). But when an honest, four-dimensional, hook-filled piece of humanity is finally born, there is a clue to recognizing its timelessness. There is a peaceful, non-judgmental appreciation that falls over me when I hear it, a feeling — or even a knowledge — that we songwriters really had nothing to do with its creation in the first place. It’s as if we were archaeologists at a dig and all we had to do was chip away the stone and brush away the sand that hid it from view. We were just lucky enough to be in the room that day when it showed up to sing to us.

So that's that. As an afterthought, where Darrell speaks of 'hooks' in songs, there are obviously 'hooks' in books, though they take a slightly different form than those you find in music.

But you get the picture, right?

Sure you do.

Take care, speak soon.

2008-04-03T21:42:00.002Z

CONGRATULATIONS TO DEBBIE...

I would like to send a personal 'Thank you' and congratulations to Debbie, the winner of the Authors for Autism auction that concluded last night. I am not going to tell you how much was raised (though it was very impressive!), nor am I going to tell you Debbie's surname. Even as we speak, she is being written into the novel for 2009.

Thank you to everyone who gave their support to this tremendous auction, and to Philippa Stannard at the Autism Society for arranging it with such aplomb and briliance.

2008-03-18T12:37:00.006Z

AUTHORS FOR AUTISM...

Some weeks ago I was asked to do something to help those who are researching and treating autism. Knowing very little about the subject, I looked into it after having agreed to do what I could.

Myself and a number of other authors - including such luminaries as Jodi Picoult and Louis de Bernieres - are auctioning character names for new books. It's really simple, and I have heard of it being done before. You hold an auction, and the winner of the auction has their name written into a novel by their chosen author. You can find out more about it through the link below:

http://www.autismspeaks.org.uk/

So I'd like you to do whatever you can to assist in raising as much money as possible for this tremendously worthy and valuable cause.

Thank you, and my very best wishes as always.

2008-03-14T16:32:00.003Z

A DECISION HAS BEEN MADE...

A very short note - for anyone who might be interested - regarding the new book for September. After a considerable back-and-forth we have concluded that we are sticking with the second title considered. Though it's working title was SACRED MONSTER (a reference made in the book that both my agent and I picked up on, and thenceforth it became a bit of an in-joke), the new book is going to print with the title:

A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE

I hope you like it...

Speak soon.

2008-03-13T19:49:00.003Z

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE BOOK DEPOSITORY...

Slightly unnerving though it might have been to do an interview with The Book Depository (remember November 22nd, 1963?), you can find the full text of this interview if you click on the following link...

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/viewarticle.php?type=interview&id=119

Hope you enjoy it!

2008-03-09T10:05:00.002Z

IN RESPONSE TO A RECENT LETTER...

Last week I received an e-mail from someone who contacted me through the website, and he commented on the recent posts and exchanges regarding the subject of criticism and reviews.

As a critic/reviewer himself, he raised the question as to whether there was justification and validity in 'reviewing' a piece of music, literature, a film, even a football match if the reviewer was not themselves a musician/writer/actor or director/footballer etc. The answer was unquestionably and resoundlingly a 'Yes!', of course a review can be done by someone who was not themselves an expert in that field. Why? Because, essentially, we felt that a review and a criticism were two different things. Everyone has unique and individual tastes and preferences. You can recognize the value and worth of something even though it might be something that doesn't suit your personal tastes. I think where we have gone with this objective look at the subject is the realization and recognition that a very small percentage of people do not give an honest review, but rather wish to tear something to pieces to suit some other vested interest or ulterior motive. That, therefore, by definition, cannot be considered a review.

I was also asked a couple of questions regarding A Quiet Belief In Angels, and as they were questions that I have been regularly asked, I thought it would do no harm to post the body of my reply, removing - of course - all personal references. I am sure my correspondent will not mind such a liberty!

So, as follows...

Initially, I must say I find it remarkably refreshing to be in touch with someone who remains decisive in their viewpoint. It seems that people are somewhat afraid to have a definitive viewpoint about things, and are often careful to say not what they mean, but what they believe others wish to hear. I think the PC-mad insanity of this current culture is predominantly to blame, but that is another discussion for another day. Being so driven to write, I often find myself in a situation where there are many things I have a viewpoint about that have no place in a novel. That was the primary reason for starting the web log 'The Ellory Journal' - merely an opportunity to express myself on certain subjects. It has promped some interesting responses, especially most recently when I posted a brief number of thoughts regarding the whole subject of criticism.

As for the writing of Quiet Belief, I think you might have a perspective on this if you read the books in the sequence they were written. Candlemoth was first, then Ghostheart, A Quiet Vendetta, then City of Lies preceded AQBIA. They are all very different, almost different styles in some instances. It has been commented on a number of occasions that if the covers were removed there might even be those who could not necessarily identify them as the work of one author. Personally, I have taken this as a compliment. Nothing would please me less than the feeling (on the part of a reader) that they were all much of a muchness, that there was little to differentiate between them. Reading them in sequence, certainly for me, begins to feel like a progression, and there also seems to be an emerging theme, as if there are three types of novels - Candlemoth and AQBIA, a kind of rites of passage, more slow-burn exploration of human nature and circumstance; then Ghostheart and City of Lies, both faster-paced, perhaps a more traditional crime thriller; thirdly, a kind of epic saga spanning many, many years and dealing with organized crime as is found in A Quiet Vendetta, and also the new book in September. The book beyond that (for 2009) will be a faster-paced thriller, and then for 2010 I am working on another novel more like Candlemoth and Quiet Belief.

The thing that impels me is the idea that each book is a journey in its own right. To a degree that goes some way towards explaining why I set the books in the States. I have no doubt that an excellent book could be written in an English setting, but at this time it doesn't appeal to me. The States presents a seemingly broader canvas, and the subjects I want to write about just would not work in Tewkesbury or Chichester!

And as far as AQBIA is concerned, what I wanted to do was present the life of a character. It will probably be something that you recognize in the other books, the idea of an ordinary individual in an extraordinary situation. I find myself constantly writing characters into emotionally challenging situations that I know will 'stretch' my ability as an author. When faced with the prospect of sending a character down one of two roads, I will pick the one with no pavement, no tarmac, strewn with rubble and dense with undergrowth! The easier option never appears to be an option for me.

And at what point did I decide on the guilty party in Quiet Belief? Actually, very close to the end. I do not methodically plan novels. I do not sit and work out where they will go per se, but I do establish quite early on the emotional range of the thing and the kind of thoughts and feelings I would hope to leave with a reader once the novel had been read from start to finish. The location, the central character, the emotional impact. Those are the things that occupy my mind more than anything else. This explains why your e-mail pleased me so much (the e-mail expressed the view that AQBIA was not really a 'crime thriller' in the strict sense of the term). I didn't intend to write a 'thriller'. I intended to write the biography of an ordinary individual thrust into extraordinary situations. And the point you made right at the end about the identity of the killer almost being an aside was so accurately perceptive it made me smile. The book was never intended to be a 'whodunnit'. None of my books are. My books - as far as I am concerned - are supposed to be nothing more than an opportunity for the reader to become briefly lost in someone else's life. Seems to me that an author has a responsibility to transport a reader somewhere where the reader has not been, cannot go, would not want to go, or wished to go but could not. Something like that.

Anyway, I ramble. I thank you for your time, your interest, your support and encouragement.

And that was the end of my reply!

So, there we have it. An update on some of the attitudes that have been expressed regarding review and criticism, and an answer to a couple fo questions: Why do I write American? and How do you approach the writing of a novel?

Keep in touch. It's great to receive so many e-mails (more than 400 in the last month!) And I ALWAYS reply!

Take care, best wishes, speak soon.

2008-03-02T22:24:00.006Z

THE 'PENALTY' OF PROGRESS...

It was, I believe, Oscar Wilde who said 'I don't care what they say about me as long as they spell my name correctly...', or words to that effect. Perhaps, lacking skin as thick as Mr. Wilde, I do care what they say about me. At least to some small degree.

It has been interesting over the past few weeks watching the reviews that have been posted on Amazon regarding 'A Quiet Belief In Angels'. Obviously, small though it may be in comparison to the visibility of certain other literary, cinematic and musical luminaries, exposure is something of a two-edged sword. If no-one knows what you are doing then there is no target for criticism. The moment you put your head above the trench, look out for the shots.

Amazon is an interesting outlet. It accounts for approximately twenty percent of the books I have sold. It is also one of only two places where direct contact with readers can be established. The first point of contact is through my website, and the readers that e-mail me through the website are sufficiently interested in my work to have not only found the website, but to then send me a message. I must say I have never received a hostile, negative or critical e-mail. They have been - unanimously - messages of encouragement, support, sometimes questions regarding a book that has been read, in some cases questions from aspiring writers asking for help. I never let an e-mail go unanswered. The idea of failing to reply to someone is anathema to me.

So then we come to Amazon, again a means by which a reader can contact a writer, but not because the reader has a specific interest in a writer, but simply because they have read a book and want to make a comment. There is a scoring system, a grading from one to five for the book, one being the lowest grade, five being the highest. In excess of eighty percent of the reviews I have received for AQBIA have been four and five stars, and as we stand - out of a current total of eighty seven reviews - fifty eight of them have been of the highest grade. You would think that this would be reason to be pleased, but here we seem to highlight the fundamental human error, the fact that we always and invariably seem to concentrate on that with which we are dissatisfied, as opposed to that which meets our standard. I find it intriguing that there are reviews on Amazon of many, many, many wonderful books where the reviewer seems to have taken it upon themselves to be as vindictive, negative, personally vicious and hostile as they can be. On the Richard & Judy website there is on reviewer who has written not one, but four particularly nasty reviews of my book, and it reads as if she tried one review, thought perhaps that she had not been critical enough, and then proceeded to write another three, each time becoming more bold in her attacks, more vociferous in her hatred!

When I read similarly dreadful reviews of Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveller's Wife), Carlos Ruis Zafon (The Shadow of the Wind), Kate Morton (The House at Riverton), Louis De Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) - choosing only these at random because they have been hugely successful and very, very popular - I sat back for a moment and contemplated the nature of criticism and the effect it might create on the creator of that which was being criticised. How did Alice Sebold feel when she read something so hostile, so barbed, so seemingly spiteful, and written by someone she had never met, and was never likely to meet? I am not questioning someone's right to like or dislike a book, a painting, a piece of music. That is not the point here. The point is whether or not there is some seed of an idea in the mind of an individual that drives them to destroy something that others evidently enjoy.

Bob Dylan made an interesting comment in a lyric. Struck by the seeming negative attitude of some people he met, he was inspired to comment on them as 'bent out of shape by society's pliers, care not to come up any higher, but rather drag you down in the hole that they're in...', and it seems that this observation might have been as astute as many other observations he made.

So, without preaching or attempting to be pretentious, or overblown, or trying to be something I am not, or just failing to write even a halfway decent book (as my critics have unreservedly pointed out as some of my many failings), I am going to remind anyone who might ever decide to create anything of any aesthetic value that sometimes 'constructive criticism' is just plain old criticism, and that generally the ones who are the most helpful are the ones who point out what's right about something in an effort to make it better.

Critics don't direct films or write books or compose music or stage plays or design buildings...they just stand on the sidelines and criticise those who do.

This, though it may sound negative, is not a criticism, just an observation.

So please - if for no other reason than it is your vocation, your calling, your reason to be - go ahead and write the book, compose the song, complete the lyrics, finish the paintings, and get them out there where the world can receive them. The world - at least the vast majority of the world - will accept what you have done and tell you what they love about it. The small (and I mean very small) percentage will tell you that you shouldn't have bothered, that what you have done has no value, was a waste of their time, and you really should have remained at home and stayed quiet. That's what they want you to do. Why? Because if you shine brightly, it makes them look even more dull than they already are.

Go shine. Do what you were meant to do. To hell with the critics.

Last question: Who can remember the name of the guy that told Michaelangelo that he should try something other than painting?

No, neither can I.

Until we speak again, take care, best wishes.

2008-02-24T18:26:00.004Z

AND HERE'S THE FULL VERSION OF THE ARTICLE FROM SHOTS MAGAZINE...

http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/interviews/2008/r_ellory/r_ellory.html

Huge thanks to Mike Stotter, the Editor at SHOTS, for his tremendously hard work!

2008-02-24T10:31:00.005Z

AN INTERVIEW WITH A GREAT FRIEND...

Last week I had the pleasure of colliding once again with a very dear friend - Ali Karim , he of The Rap Sheet, Shots, and numerous other crime fiction sites and magazines. A most excellent man who has supported and encouraged me from Day One. He had a few questions, I answered them, and he put together an article for The Rap Sheet, the link to which is given below.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mike Stotter, Editor of Shots, for the first time, and I really hope it won't be the last!

I thought you might like to see the interview.

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/02/quiet-belief-in-himself.html

Best wishes, as always.