Eee, book covers!

I've had a lot of fun lately designing book covers, both for myself and for others. The latest was for my good friend Jochem Vandersteen's latest hard-boiled book, the first in his Vance Custer series and soon to be published. Here's a preview of the cover:

The mastery of James Lee Burke

I've said many times before that James Lee Burke is probably the finest writer working in America today. His latest book, Wayfaring Stranger, is not going to dissuade me from that opinion.

Burke has had two strands to his fictional world - one of them involves the one-time police officer and private detective, Dave Robicheaux, who has featured in the majority of his novels over the last 30 or so years. The other strand plays with the fictional Holland family - apparently a meditation on Burke's own family, the Hollans. He has gone backwards and forwards in time with this family, and in Wayfaring Stranger we alight just before, during and after the Second World War.

Wendel Holland lives with his slightly detached mother and his grandfather (the hero of an earlier Burke novel), and at some point in the early 1930s has a run-in with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, a meeting which colours and illuminates his adult years.

5 Signs Crime Fiction is Still Evolving - A Guest Post by Rebecca Gray

Today I'm pleased to publish a guest post by Rebecca Gray, who writes about real crime at backgroundchecks.org. Her comments on the impact of technology and new media have certainly made me think about my own practice as a writer in the modern world. Please add any comments you wish or write to Rebecca directly at the email address below.

image courtesy ponsaluk

5 Signs Crime Fiction is Still Evolving

Rebecca Gray

Crime fiction as a genre dates back to the 19th century, when Poe chilled readers with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Conan Doyle gave birth to the archetypal detective in Sherlock Holmes. You can still cast new writing in that classic mold, but today's crime fiction continues to expand its reach, merging with different fields like science fiction and fantasy or exploiting the possibilities of new media.

Changes in modern culture and technology are driving these changes in crime fiction. The plots of old classics in detection like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Red House Mystery depend on the lack of formal methods for processing a crime scene we now use routinely, so in order to produce similar novels today, a writer would have to craft a story deliberately excluding modern techniques and solutions.

Support your local writer

A couple of months ago I heard about Pubslush, a site that is like a Kickstarter for books. If you don't know it, Kickstarter is a site where creative people can get financial backing from ordinary folk for their creative projects. Pubslush aims at achieving the same result for writers.

So, seeing as I'm well into writing the fifth Sam Dyke book, The Strange Girl, I thought I'd give it a go. The result is the page I'm linking to here. If you're so disposed, and have money to spare, you can donate some of it to a worthy cause - me - and in return, when the project is finished you'll get a reward of some kind, assuming I reach a minimum attainment.

I'm not anticipating lots of take-up, to be honest, but I'll treat it as an experiment and if it works, that's great. If not, meh.

Here's the link to my project page:

The Strange Girl project

The Alliance of Independent Authors

I'm proud to say that I've just been granted Professional Membership of the Alliance of Independent Authors, a body that has been founded to promote and protect the interests of independent and self-published authors.

This is the first time I've been a professional member of anything and it gives me great pleasure that this first occasion should be for something that I love doing.

You have my permission to stare at and admire the badge on the right-hand side of this page.

Exciting news

This is just a placeholder post before I get around to reviewing James Lee Burke's latest book, Wayfaring Stranger.

There have been a couple of exciting developments recently, involving translation. First, I joined a site called Fiberead, who asked if I'd be interested in having one of my books translated into Chinese. Well, frankly, what writer wouldn't? China is currently the third-largest user of ereaders at the moment, and I guess that user-base will only increase with time. Getting my book into a form that will be readable should only be a good thing. The site is currently recruiting translators for Actress.

The second translation is coming from a site called Babelcube, who have put me in touch with a lady called Silvia Jurado Hermida, who is going to translate Actress into Spanish. Obviously this is also a large potential market, with Amazon having Kindle stores available for Spain and Mexico, for example. It's promised to be completed within 70 days - which will be some going.

Finally, just a nod towards Wayfaring Stranger, James Lee Burke's latest contemplation of The Way We Live Now. This book takes the Holland family strand that he's written about before and is positioned during and just after WWII. Although not evidently a 'crime' novel there are certainly strong plot elements in it that get the pulse racing, with Burke's usual mix of extraordinary villains and unusual characters. More later.

Digital Book Day

Just a note to say that July 14th will not only be Bastille Day, marking the beginning of France's freedom from oppression, but also Digital Book Day, marking the freedom of a number of ebooks from the oppression of having a price attached to them ...

You can go along to this site and on that day, download books from a number of wonderful writers for FREE! What could be better? OK, maybe a hot tub, but apart from that? Not much, I warrant. Here's the link, so put it in your diary:

Digital Book Day

Marlowe rises from the grave ... then sinks into it again.

It's been called literary ventriloquism - the ability to write in the 'voice' of another writer. That idea, once a jeu d'esprit, has now become big business. I guess it began with Kingsley Amis writing a James Bond novel - Colonel Sun - after Fleming's death, following his own critical examination of the Bond phenomenon, The James Bond Dossier. Subsequently, Wikipedia provides a frighteningly long list of Bond books written by other writers, culminating most recently with William Boyd's poor effort, Solo.

Recently, the Booker-Prize winning author John Banville, writing in his guise as Benjamin Black, has produced a Raymond Chandler 'continuation', The Black-Eyed Blonde, apparently a title that Chandler had earmarked in his notes for future use. This follows a couple of attempts at Chandler follow-ons from the prolific and often excellent Robert B. Parker - Poodle Springs and Perchance to Dream, neither of which met with much approval from hard-boiled fans. But then, expectations are high when it comes to Raymond Chandler.

And the hits keep coming ...

Now I've published the fourth in the Sam Dyke series, it seemed appropriate to offer the first three as a so-called 'Box Set'. It's available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple and probably lots of other places, too. What's more, buying this set is cheaper than buying all three separately!

Here's the cover and some links ...

From Amazon US: Amazon.com

From Amazon UK: Amazon.co.uk

From Barnes and Noble: (coming soon)

Kobo: Kobobooks.com

A new Sam Dyke - The Bleak

I've just published my new Sam Dyke novel, The Bleak. Here's the blurb (that's technical speak):

For P.I. Sam Dyke, taking this particular case is not promising. A secretary is worried that her boss is cracking up, and she doesn’t know why. 

It doesn’t take Dyke long to discover that it’s not just the pressures of work that are getting to this man, a scientist. It’s his colleagues, too. Their leader, Stratford Greif, is a hyper-intelligent biochemist who has a personal philosophy that is taking him in one direction—to produce a calamitous event that may destroy the lives of hundreds of people. Or more.

Dyke sets himself on a course to prevent Greif from achieving his ends. A course that endangers him, his new partner and, it seems, anyone else who disagrees with what Greif wants to do ...

And here's the cover: 

I know many of you are keen to add this to your collection so here are the links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Smashwords

Public Service Announcement

Tammy Moore from New Writing North, the writing development agency for the North East of England, has asked me to circulate the following info to anyone who's interested in crime writing - especially if you're based in the north. 

Crime Story

A weekend festival for crime writers and readers

Spend a weekend getting under the skin of a fictional crime with top crime writers, criminologists, lawyers, police and forensics experts. New Writing North and Northumbria University invite crime writers (aspiring or established) and readers to Crime Story – a weekend of discussion and workshops focusing on a fictional crime and how it would be investigated in real life.

Ann Cleeves, prize-winning author of the Vera Stanhope series (now a major ITV series) and Shetland Island Quartet series, has created a crime especially for this weekend. Throughout the Crime Story weekend criminologists and forensic scientists will give insights into how labs work, experts in policing will talk you through scene of the crime procedure and journalists will discuss the moral responsibility of reporting on heinous crimes. There will also be prize-winning crime writers at the festival – Louise Welsh, Margaret Murphy (AD Garrett) and Ann Cleeves – who will talk about how to incorporate the forensic facts into fiction. Participants will be guided ably throughout the weekend by author and former crime fiction critic for The Observer Peter Guttridge.

This is an unmissable opportunity for any lover of crime fiction, whether you’re an aspiring writer or want to dig deeper into your favourite, fictional world. To find out more about Crime Story, and to book your place, go to www.crimestory.co.uk.

I'm sorry I won't be able to make it because it looks like a great event. 

The Booktrap - a nice place to be caught.

I haven't posted for a while because I've been busy writing the next installment of Sam Dyke's investigations.

However, I have had time to get involved in the creation of a new site produced by writers but aimed at readers. It's called The Booktrap and it's been set up by writers from the Authonomy.com site. This site is run by publishers HarperCollins and is a place where writers can upload work for critique from other writers and eventually, if their work is popular enough, be read by the professionals at HarperCollins.

The Booktrap is an entirely separate undertaking, however, and includes a website promoting the authors' books and a Facebook page for general Facebooking stuff. Here are the links. Please go along and do the Liking thing.

The Booktrap webpage.

The Booktrap on Facebook.