When Johnny Met Ali

Ali Karim had an extensive interview with John Connolly over at the Rap Sheet recently, which makes for a terrific read, although they touched only briefly on JC’s forthcoming THE GATES (boo). To wit:

AK: So tell us more about THE GATES, which you’ve described as a young adult novel that “involves Satanism and quantum physics.” Will Charlie Parker make an appearance in that story?

JC: Hah! No, Parker doesn’t make an appearance in THE GATES. It’s actually very different from what I’ve done before. Well, there are probably slight echoes of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, but essentially THE GATES is a mischievous book. It’s about a small boy and his dog who discover that their new neighbours are Satanists who are trying to open the gates of Hell. The book is filled with odd little footnotes about science and history. It’s probably the lightest book I’ve written, and the most purely entertaining. Frankly, writing it was a blast.

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS on Crime Always Pays: In Which It All Gets Even More Self-Referential Than Usual

Rafe McGregor has been kind enough to post a review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the forthcoming opus from your humble host, which will be available at a Kindle near you in the very near future. The gist runs thusly:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is excellent, even better than THE BIG O. It has a great plot, cool characters, and there isn’t a single word wasted. This is really fine writing, masterful to the point where if I’d received the MS anonymously, I’d have assumed it came from one of the big bestsellers like Connelly, Crais, Rankin, or Child.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here ...
  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, for those of you who aren’t this blog’s three regular readers, is the sequel to THE BIG O, in which most of the characters from THE BIG O take off on a variety of trans-Europe road-trips, fetching up in the Greek islands for fun, frolics and the occasional Bellini. Join Karen, Ray, Madge, Doyle, Rossi, Sleeps, Frank, Melody and Sleeps for another screwball noir romp in which the money is just a McGuffin with extra cheese! Or, don’t!! You – yes, YOU! – decide.
  Rafe was also kind enough to descend into a mild form of existential angst over the fact that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS – as all three regular readers will be aware – was dropped by its intended publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I should say at this point that the decision wasn’t as simple as the book not being good enough to publish – it was all a bit complicated, actually – although my brand of existential angst, when I first heard the news, was fairly raw.
  But at this point, I’m pretty much okay with it. That’s partly because I’ve spent the last few days formatting the story for Kindle, which is also a good opportunity to give the story one last proof-edit, and I’m as happy as I’m likely to get that the story stands up. It’s not perfect by any means, and at this stage – which is probably the 14th or 15th time I’ve read it through – I’m wondering why anyone else would want to read it.
  On the basis that some people might want to read it, however, I’ve been every bit as diligent on the Kindle proof-edit as if it was for a conventional publishing. No reason I shouldn’t be, of course: when it comes down it, for yours truly, the story is sacred and everything else is just detail. Apart from the fact that most people don’t have access to Kindle – a rather relevant factor, it has to be said – the format is virtually irrelevant. It matters not a whit whether the book is published electronically, on paper between cardboard, uploaded to the web, or scratched onto papyrus. As with the sob story about the book being dropped by its publisher initially, nothing bar what people think of the story itself will have any lasting value.
  I’m hopeful that the Kindle publishing will lead to a more conventional publishing, not because, as Rafe suggests, there’s more money to be made that way – the writer’s royalties aren’t that different when you publish to Kindle – but because more people are likely read it, in 2009, as an ordinary book. But if that doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen, and I’ll be as proud of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, as a story, as if it had appeared as a conventional book.
  Meanwhile, and speaking of proper books, here’s a review by Garbhan Downey of Adrian McKinty’s FIFTY GRAND that’s worth checking out; and Ali Karim casts an eye over John Connolly’s THE LOVERS.

Bristol 2009: Natural Born Shillers?

I was a bit ambivalent about the Bristol Crime Fest this year, I have to say. On the one hand, it’s always terrific to meet up with people you only see once or twice a year, if you’re lucky, some of whom dandered out for a bite to eat on Friday night (L to R: award-winning blogger Peter Rozovsky (sans beard), Vincent Holland-Keen, Donna Moore, Ewan (aka Donna Moore’s other half), Cara Black, Chris Ewan, Rafe McGregor, and Your Humble Host). A good night was had by all, although some appetites were rather ruined by Ewan’s mention of Donna’s party piece, which she was gracious enough not to showcase …
  On the other hand, events / conventions aren’t really about the business of writing, but much more about the business of marketing. I shouldn’t really grouse about that fact, given that I was privileged enough to be asked to sit on two panels, one of which took place on Friday and was moderated by Donna Moore, alongside Chris Ewan, Steve Mosby and Kevin Wignall. The panel went well enough, in that none of the panellists were chucked out any windows for boring the audience to tears, although I did find myself explaining why, exactly, I’d hijacked a mini-bus at the age of 15. Gosh, you get a bad rap and The Man never lets you forget it …
  But I only attended one panel I wasn’t involved with all weekend, and that for about 20 minutes, and that only because I got caught up in Ali Karim’s gravitational pull and he was already headed that way. The panellists were all interesting people, and two of them had published novels set in Greece (Paul Johnston and Anne Zouroudi), which is something I have a personal interest in, given that I’ve been working on-and-off on a novel set on Crete for the last five or six years, but … well, I don’t know. It’s hard to feel that you’re not really discovering anything you wouldn’t from reading between the lines of a back-page biog, I suppose … which isn’t to criticise the writers, because all the panellists I saw were pro-active and engaging. Maybe it’s just the case that writers talking about writing just isn’t very interesting, much in the same way as porn stars talking about sex isn’t very interesting. Or so I imagine …
  By the same token, and maybe it’s just that the dry sherries were in, the various conversations on Friday night were much more fun.
I had a particularly good one with Steve Mosby and Ali Karim (right) about a whole range of subjects – which is to say, of course, that Ali talked while Steve and I nodded occasionally. Still, there was a couple of fascinating topics, not least of which is the new demand in the US for companies which will maintain your on-line persona after your death, updating your Facebook, emailing your buddies, and even keeping your game-playing avatar hale and hearty while you sleep the big sleep. Perverse? Yes. Pointless? Yes. Chunky material for a Phil Dick-style book? Most certainly.
  Anyway, Friday was a good day, given that I bumped into Karen Meek and Norm Rushdie, and Dec Hughes and Brian McGilloway, and Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Maxim Jakubowski and Paul Johnston, and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours bitching about the publishing industry with Rafe McGregor, gentleman that he is. All of which went some way to off-setting the embarrassment I should have been feeling at attending Crime Fest with no book other than THE BIG O to promote, which was first published two years ago, and – technically speaking – has never been published in the UK. For shame, etc …
  Which brings me back to the whole being-marketed-at issue. Would I have been happier with the weekend if I’d had a book to market? Not really. And I should say that I’m not dissing Crime Fest here, because I think it’s a terrific experience, and brilliantly run, and I’ll be back again next year to hook up with like-minded folk. But, to be honest – and I’m probably shooting myself in the foot here – the whole issue of selling / marketing books is simply a necessary evil that follows on from the privilege of being published in the first place. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d imagine most writers would much prefer to live in splendid isolation, tossing a manuscript over the wall of their mansion every year or so to a waiting editor, leaving the whole business of promotion and generalised shilling to people who are trained and / or have a vocation for the selling side of things.
  Hey, maybe there’s a market for a company that could maintain an electronic avatar-style version of writers, 3-D simulations who go on the circuit and promote the books, while the real writer stays home and writes. Any takers?

Santa’s Little Helper

’Tis the season to be busy, tra-la-la-la-lah, etc. So, rather than write full posts, here’s a few Weinmanesque Irish crime fic link-type smatterings that have popped up over the last week or so …

Gerard Brennan’s MYTHS AND MOBSTERS sounds like a terrific idea.

Colm Keegan interviews Kevin Power at Uiscebot.

Yet more good news for Stuart Neville …

… and here’s Stuart on AMERICAN TABLOID.

Who knew Ali Karim had a blog?

John McFetridge is still on his meta-fiction crime spree at Bouchercon.

Finally, the Irish Sentinel prints the truth in the news. Ish.

100,000 Not Out

Given that Crime Always Pays came into being to celebrate (mostly) Irish fiction as a platform to promote our humble offering THE BIG O, it’s appropriate that the stats passed the 100,000 mark for page impressions while I was away in the States on a Toronto-Baltimore road-trip designed to mark the publication of said tome in the U.S. Now, 100,000 page impressions in 18 months isn’t exactly the kind of stat to set the interweb aflame, but by the same token – as Twenty Major once pointed out – a blog dedicated to Irish crime fiction is a niche-niche-niche sell, particularly when you’re not actually selling anything.
  Anyhoos, I’m quietly pleased at having reached that mark, not least because many of CAP’s regular visitors have become good mates. I’d been warned by some Bouchercon veterans that the first experience can be overwhelming, given the scale of the operation and the numbers of people there, but when John McFetridge and I finally pulled into Baltimore, the experience was more akin to a reunion.
  Peter Rozovsky I’d met before, during his sojourn to Ireland, and it would have been nice to hook up with him again even if he hadn’t sweated blood organising the Philly leg of John and Dec’s Most Excellent Adventure. Peter? Now that you’re au fait with ‘shite’ and ‘gobshite’, I really must introduce you to ‘shitehawking’ the next time.
  I’d met Donna Moore before too, at Bristol Fest, and it was smashing to meet up with her again, partly because I’d read her terrific GO TO HELENA HANDBASKET in the interim, but mainly because I want her to play Diane Lane when they come to make the movie of my life. There’s nothing like a hug from a flame-haired beauty to make you feel like you belong in Baltimore. Apart from the daily hugs (“Oi, I haven’t had my hug today!”), the best part of seeing the poker maven again was the news that her follow-up novel is currently with her agent, and that she’s mailing me a copy as soon as I sign up for Bristol Fest 2009. Yon Donna Moore, she drives a hard bargain …
  It was nice to meet Jen Jordan, too, my first experience of whom was having my shoulder nuzzled by some random hottie in the convention’s main thoroughfare. But lo! It wasn’t a random hottie, it was Jen Jordan. Nice …
  Sarah Weinman was something of a disappointment, given that I was expecting her to be a matronly ball-breaker of indeterminate age. Dang my britches if she’s not cute as a junebug, and prone to enveloping a man in a hug even before he’s been properly introduced. Nice …
  Back to Bouchercon, which I’ve actually been reluctant to write about this week, on the basis that the experience was something of a bubble I’ve been afraid to puncture. Friendly people willing and eager to talk books all day and all night – sounds like hell, I know, but you get used to anything after a while. Readers, reviewers, bloggers, writers, editors, publicists, publishers and – crucially – booksellers, all mingling freely. Anyone who hasn’t yet grasped how the chaos of minute particles colliding at random at the quantum level can translate into a solid object or force at the macro level should get along to the next Bouchercon in Indianapolis.
  I suppose it helped that I had a foot in a few camps. I was there as a reader, of course, but also as a writer and a blogger / reviewer; and technically speaking, given that THE BIG O was originally a co-publication with Hag’s Head Press, I also had a foot in the publishing / publicity / distribution / selling side of things. So there were a lot of people I was hoping to see.
  Jeff Pierce was one, and it was nice to hang out with him on a couple of occasions. Glenn Harper was another, although we didn’t actually get to sit down and talk books – next time, Glenn, hopefully. I also got to meet Angie Johnson-Schmidt, who was kind enough to help me try to find tobacco in late-night Baltimore, as was Dana King, albeit in vain. It was cool to meet Brian Lindemuth and Sandra Ruttan too – Sandra’s another blogger with a foot in more than one camp. And then there was the effervescent and damn near omniscient Ali Karim, and Clair Lamb, and Janet Rudolph … The inimitable Joe Long came down from New York, to greet me with the words, “So where’s the other prick, Hughes?” And it was terrific to hook up with Jon Jordan and be able to say thanks in person for all the support he’s given me ever since way back when, aka the publication of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. Jon? You’re a gent, squire.
  Greg Gillespie of Philly’s Port Richmond Books came down to Baltimore on the Saturday, and nice it was to make his acquaintance again, given that he’d brought the troops out in force to Wednesday night’s Noir at the Bar at Fergie’s. Greg was supposed to sleep on the floor of our hotel room that night, but with an 8.30am panel on Sunday morning looming, I cracked around 2am and went to bed, and haven’t seen him since. Can anyone confirm that Greg is okay?
  Incidentally, McFetridge was great company on the road-trip, apart from his insistence in talking up the Toronto Blue Leafs, which plays some weird hybrid of hockey, football and baseball. Well, that and the fact that the Y he booked us into in New York had the noisiest bunk-beds ever made, and that one of the three communal showers was festooned with crime scene-style tape. Other than that, though, he was no more boring than you’d imagine a Canadian writer to be. We may even road-trip again, one day.
  As for the rest, well, this post is already too long – suffice to say that Bouchercon 2008 was a tremendous experience. Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik deserve all the credit going, and more.
  It did occur to me at one point that the attendees as a group were heavily skewed towards an older demographic, although that’s easily enough explained when you consider the cost of travelling to a four-day convention that’s a sheer indulgence. And you could also say that crime fiction is a conservative genre, concerned for the most part with upholding the status quo, and that older generations are more likely to be of a conservative bent.
  But here’s the thing – I’ve never had anyone say to me, “Yeah, I got into crime fiction in my fifties.” I was a teenager when the crime bug bit, and I thought I was pretty radical back then, as most teenagers tend to do. Maybe it’s because it’s the most popular kind of writing, and therefore the most accessible, and because the world of gats, molls and grift has a certain surface cool that appeals to the impressionable mind. But once it gets you hooked, it doesn’t let go. It’s odd, especially when you consider that you don’t listen to the same kind of music twenty, thirty or forty years on from your teens, or watch the same kind of movies, or like the same artists, etc. But when I read Ray Chandler today, I enjoy him even more than I did twenty years ago.
  The Big Question: any theories as to why crime fiction takes such a compelling grip as to last you an entire lifetime? Over to you, people ...

“You Dropped Something, Sir. It Appears To Be A Name.”

“It’s always nice to step outside your life for a few days, and Bristol Crime Fest 2008 brought together your humble host’s (right) idea of a perfect storm of good people, strong drink and books. Highlights included:

Peter Guttridge playing The Who’s Substitute during his interview of Ian Rankin, which was fascinating not for Rankin’s insights on Rebus, particularly, but for his willingness to explore the narrative form in opera, comic book, novella, along with an upcoming standalone non-Rebus novel;
  Meeting – all too briefly, sadly – Tony Black, Nick Stone and Martyn Waites in the same fifteen-minute period as they hailed taxis while your humble host was lurking outside the Royal Marriott. Three cheers for the smoking ban, eh?
  Losing out to Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Last Laugh Award during the gala dinner, if only because it allowed us to see the erstwhile Iron Woman of Irish journalism moist-eyed in the aftermath;
  Talking faith and reason with The Hardest Working Man in Crime Fiction™, aka Ali Karim, over a couple of smokes on the banqueting hall’s terrace. Three cheers for the smoking ban, eh?
  Being regaled with entirely inappropriate Celtic FC football songs by Declan Hughes in the ‘Champagne Cocktail Lounge’ at 2am;
  Meeting the effortlessly suave and self-effacing Martin Edwards via the good works of Maxine Clarke, only to discover days later that the modest bugger had a book being launched this week, WATERLOO SUNSET;
  Discovering I was at the same table, during the gala dinner, with the radiant Ruth Downie, who appeared to be on a one-woman mission to rehabilitate the little black number cocktail dress, and succeeding handsomely;
  Receiving, at some blurred point in Saturday’s proceedings, an email via text message that began, “Dear Declan Hughes, I read and enjoyed your PI novel THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD …”
  Sharing a panel, moderated by Peter Guttridge, with Len Tyler, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Allan Guthrie in which the topic under discussion was comedy in crime fiction (seriously, people: comedy on a Sunday morning with the mother-in-law of all hangovers?) in which your humble host managed to insult the Irish ex-taoiseach, Ian Rankin and right-thinking people of good taste everywhere. Like, how’s a man supposed to concentrate with Donna Moore sitting in the third row?
  Scoffing Sunday morning champagne in the company of Ruth Dudley Edwards and Declan Hughes (right, pic courtesy of Rhian), Ms ‘It’s A Crime!’ herself, the lovely Pat and Ruth’s equally lovely agent, who listened very politely, but with the kind of expression you might wear gazing upon a chimp juggling chainsaws, at the story behind THE BIG O’s co-publication with Hag’s Head Press.

  “There were many other brief encounters over the weekend but really Bristol Crime Fest wasn’t about names or particular conversations or panels or insights into the craft and skill of blackening pages. Rather it was the easy ambience, the taking for granted that what you did required no justification or explanation, and knowing that you were highly unlikely to hear the dreaded question, “So – have you any plans to write a proper novel?” It was the delicious indulgence of being able to step sideways out of your life for two or three days and allow yourself to believe that you’re a real writer, not some chancing wastrel who – when lucky – manages to scrape together a couple of hours of words that take so long to hack into some kind of readability that you might as well be using chisel and stone. It was the camaraderie of fellow story-tellers, very few of whom were overly concerned with telling you how wonderful they were, mainly because everyone seemed to think everyone else was pretty wonderful. And if all that sounds a little sickly-sweet and sentimental, then so be it – life just ain’t that way for most writers, and who can blame anyone for wanting to live the dream for one paltry weekend?
  “In fact, the only downside to the entire weekend was being away from Mrs Girl, aka Lilyput (right, with her new best friend, Taff, courtesy of the good works of Rhian), and wondering all the while whether she’d remember her dad when he got back from gallivanting around Bristol. But even that, in hindsight, proved the most positive thing about the entire exercise – one, that I can survive without her for short periods if required, and she me; and two, as of last weekend, that that ‘if’ is a very, very big ‘if’ indeed. Books are wonderful things, as you already know; but they’re no Lilyput. Peace, out.”

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

“This is the best first thriller I’ve read since THE DAY OF THE JACKAL,” says Wilbur Smith of Tom Cain’s THE ACCIDENT MAN, and a certain Ali Karim likes it too. Due out in paperback on January 28, the blurb runneth thusly:

Meet the Accident Man, Samuel Carver. Carver is a good guy who makes bad things happen to bad people. Drug-baron’s helicopter develops mechanical failure mid-flight: Samuel Carver. Terrorist blown-up in his own bomb factory: Samuel Carver. Ex-SAS, now freelance mercenary, he is the frontline weapon of the ‘Consortium’, a black-ops British government outfit – or is it? Carver is called to do a hit at very short notice. Do this job for us and be paid very well. Refuse and you better run and hide. He believes the target to be a high-ranking Pakistani terrorist. The job is to organise a car crash in a Paris underpass. But Carver is being set up. When he discovers the real identity of his target, and more importantly the identity of the target’s female companion, he knows one thing – his life is over. This is a secret too big to let him live, unless he can track down the real villains before they get to him. Combining the plotting of Robert Ludlum, with the pace and tension of Frederick Forsyth, Tom Cain is a major new thriller writer and THE ACCIDENT MAN is a classic in the making and launches Samuel Carver straight into the top rank of action heroes.

Hurrah! The lovely people at Bantam Press are giving away three copies, and one of them can be yours if you answer the following question:

Is Tom Cain ...?
(a) Abel’s brother.
(b) James M.’s great-grand-nephew.
(c) Neither, you moron, it’s a pseudonym.

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of THE ACCIDENT MAN, send your answer to dbrodb(at)gmail.com before noon on Wednesday January 30, putting ‘Neither, you moron’ in the subject line. Et bon chance, mes amis …

That Ken Bruen, He’s No Oil Paint … Oh.

So there the elves were, merrily surfing the interweb for elf-porn, and lo! What did they stumble across? None other than Ken Bruen, immortalised in oils on KT McCaffrey’s new interweb page thingy. Quite where Sir Kenneth of Bruen found the time to pose for the portrait is beyond us – according to the rat-face fink canaries in the aviary out back of Crime Always Pays Towers, he’s currently finishing two books to deadline. As in, simultaneously. One with the right hand, apparently, the other with the left … Seriously, though, we fully understand the rush – after all, Ken’s only published Cross and Ammunition already this year, with Slide to come next month. Word around the aviary is, he’s scheduled in some well- deserved breathing time for next Easter … Meanwhile, if you need a quick catch-up to see what Bruen novels you missed out on when you blinked last week, check out Ali Karim’s appreciation over at Shotsmag.

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of Interweb Stuff-‘N’-Such Humbly Offered For Your Delectation

A good friend of all things crime fictional, Ali Karim delivers his verdict on Ken Bruen (left) over at Shotsmag … incidentally, a little bird tells us that Sir Kenneth of the Tribes appears on LA’s answer to Leno and Letterman, Craig Ferguson, on July 6, only the third ever crime writer to do so. Fully deserved, reckon we … He may not have achieved Letterman status just yet, but Critical Mick was kind enough to interview inky-fingered urchin Declan Burke. Not only that, but he’s already nominating The Big O as one of his ‘Best of 2007’ reads – and it’s still only June! Oh, the glamour … The Denver Post gave John Connolly’s The Unquiet a major hup-ya last month by publishing the first chapter in its entirety – a marketeer’s wet dream, no less. Staying with Connolly, the Mystery Bookstore is hosting a transcript of their Connolly podcast interview … Manhunt 2 has just been awarded the dubious distinction of being the first video game to be banned in Ireland, censor John Kelleher and his trusty deputy Ger Connolly deciding it’s ‘gratuitously violent’. Erm, it’s a shoot-’em-up, chaps, what were you expecting? … The shortlist for the Theakston’s Old Perculier Crime Novel of the Year has arrived, and we heard it first from Sarah Weinman’s very fine blogging experience Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah for Benjamin Black, whose Christine Falls is up for a Macavity, aka Best Mystery Novel, whether he likes it or not … Meanwhile, Tana French’s (below) In The Woods has been getting so many raves that she’s had to start her own interweb hosting thingagummy. It is, as our sainted aunt Mathilda used to say, a good complaint to have … Finally, some Angry Alien action to round off the week, in which the bunnies do a foul-mouthed three-minute version of Pulp Fiction. Reminds us of the time Woundwort went for the dog’s throat, bless his megalomaniac hide. And that’s it for another week, folks – have a very fine weekend and y’all come back hear now, y’hear?