365 days until publication

 

In exactly one year’s time you, yes I mean you, oh blessed reader-of-impeccable-taste, will be able to pop into your local bookshop and buy a copy of my debut novel, THE DEFENCE, published by the good people at Orion Books.

With a year to go there is still much to be done to the book. It still has to be copy-edited, proof-read, blessed by a dozen priests, washed, combed, de-loused and have a bat-shit-crazy-cool cover slapped on it before it can be released into the expectant world.

Will it survive when it is released from captivity? That is up to you, lovely reader (you’re looking’ so well, by the way) and it’s up to all the lovely readers out there (you’ve lost weight, haven’t you) who dwell in lovely reader land. Between now and publication day there will be more details released about the novel and the series. Yes, THE DEFENCE is the first in a series of novels featuring former con-artist, turned trial lawyer, Eddie Flynn.

The book is a legal thriller, but not in the way you might expect.

Genre is a funny thing. And sub-genre is an even funnier thing.

For example, John Grisham and Scott Turow are both classified, in the main, as writers in the Legal Thriller genre. Yet their work could hardly be more different.

Scott’s books could be better described as courtroom procedurals. Whereas Grisham mainly writes thrillers which feature lawyers and some of his more popular novels don’t involve court cases at all, eg. The Firm.

When I was writing THE DEFENCE I came across an interview with another one of my favourite writers, Jeffrey Deaver. Jeff used to be lawyer, and a damn good one at that, but he really wanted to be a writer. During his long commute on the train he would write on one of the early laptops (by all accounts a huge, unwieldy device which weighed upwards of 20lbs). One of Jeff’s earlier books was a legal thriller, but he found writing the book very difficult.

For those of you who aren’t completely familiar with Jeff’s work (and why not?) he created the Lincoln Rhyme series and is widely regarded as a master thriller writer who plots out his novels with extensive outlines before writing a single word of prose. Every Deaver fan knows exactly what they’re going to get with one of Jeff’s novels – it will move like lightning, all of the action will take place over a short space of time, there will be intricately plotted twists and turns that dazzle the reader and keep them guessing until they get to the surprise ending, and then the next surprise ending, followed, for good measure, by a third surprise ending.

In the article I found, Jeff said that the type of book he likes to write (fast-moving, ticking-clock novels filled with great action and nail-biting tension) do not lend themselves easily to a legal thriller.

When I read that, I realised that I was writing the book that Jeffrey Deaver thought would be very difficult to write. Jeffrey Deaver. The man. Damn.

A lot of coffee, alcohol, and head scratching commenced. However, I decided to stick with it because while Jeff said writing a novel like that would be difficult, he didn’t say it would be impossible. And, to be honest, I wasn’t terribly worried about the book being accepted by a publisher, at that time I just wanted to write the book.

What I set out to do with THE DEFENCE, was to create a nail-biting, ticking-clock, courtroom thriller that kicks off like a Shelby Mustang and accelerates for 400 pages. Now, to say that that was my plan is a bit of misnomer in that it wasn’t exactly planned. In fact, planning didn’t come into it. It just sort of happened that way. Because that was the book that I wanted to write.

So I was very pleased when my Dutch Editor described the book as -  24 with Jack Bauer in the courtroom.

So mark your calendars please, lovely reader, in 365 days it will be released in the UK and Ireland, followed by Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Japan and more territories to follow, I'm sure.

And do come back in the meantime – there will be competitions and giveaways between now and then. And probably some more ramblings from me.

If you’re feeling generous, don’t hesitate to pre-order on Amazon, or support your local bookshop by giving them a ring and ask them to order it for you.

And so it was.

I’m away now.

And when I return, I shall come back.

@SSCav

 

 

 

BELFAST NOIR

It's been a busy old time here. 

As some of you may know, late last year I was invited to contribute a short story for Belfast Noir. This is the latest from the award-winning Akashic Books city noir series. 

It was with some surprise that I got an email from the Stuart Neville, who had apparently been talking to the Adrian McKinty, and in what I can only imagine to have been a beer-fuelled decision, they'd agreed that it would be a good idea to include a story from me in the Anthology. To say that I was honoured, shocked and delighted, just doesn't get close. I duly emailed the Stuart Neville immediately (before he sobered up) and told him that I would certainly write a story. 

We spoke that night and discussed the basis for my story. He explained that the story should be crime based, and set in Belfast, other than that, it was up to me. Before talking it over, I'd had a look on the internet and discovered who else was contributing; Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Claire McGowan, Brian McGilloway, Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Gerard Brennan, Garbhan Downey, Ian McDonald, Sam Millar, Lucy Caldwell, Arlene Hunt and Ruth Dudley Edwards. 

And now me. 

I gulped. 

That's a lot of talent. Some of my favourite writers. 

My feelings of elation gradually diminished into abject fear. Yes, I've got a great book deal with a big publisher; yes the old debut has been popular with foreign publishers, but there is still that overriding fear that you are an eejit who is simply waiting to be found out. I'm a lawyer during the day (I miraculously morph into human form around 5.30pm every evening) and even whilst lawyering, I still have that feeling that at any moment a man in a white coat may arrive, tell me I've had a good run but unfortunately it's all over now and then gather me up in a big net and take me away. 

The withering looks I sometimes get from posh lawyers in big firms doesn't help either. Although I console myself by knowing that I usually get these looks after the posh lawyer in the bespoke suit has just written my client a rather large cheque.

Lawyering, and writering, it's not good for the old self confidence.

Anyway, I worked away on the short story and I have to say, I'm pleased with it. It was a great opportunity to write something in a different style, with a different voice, and finally write something which contains some swearing. In my novels (one written, one in progress) there is precious little swearing and what there is of it wouldn't be enough to send a ripple through your granny's Horlicks. This was a deliberate decision on my part as I didn't want to put anybody off the book and, in fairness, there's very little swearing in most legal thrillers. So when I had the opportunity to write in the more gritty, noir style, I took the opportunity to let my language be a little more colourful and inject a healthy dollop of humour, while I was at it.

I also wanted to write about Belfast. I grew up in the Holy Lands; a small part of the city where you'll find Jerusalem Street, Palestine Street, Cairo Street etc. As an aside, if you ever visit Belfast do pay attention to the street names. There are various parts of the city with interesting street names. For example, an area of East Belfast (where I also lived for a time) is entirely named after Derby winners. Joy Street, in the city centre, is Belfast's very own red light district. To our eternal shame, before it was foolishly renamed, we had a street called Squeeze-gut Entry. In case you didn't know, we don't have alleys, we have entries, and surely Squeeze-gut Entry had to have been the Prince among entries.

 This Anthology is very important to me, and I know it's important to every single writer that's contributed to it, purely because it has that title - BELFAST noir. When you write about Belfast, for me anyway, there is a certain responsibility.

 Let me explain.

 The BBC series The Fall, was very popular and I can for one can tell you that it is great TV. A fine crime series and no mistake. And we're getting series 2, brilliant!

 The Fall is set in contemporary Belfast. I know that because I can see it on the screen.
But if you took the story out of Belfast and set it in, say, Glasgow, would it lose anything?

 No.

It would still be a great crime series. And good TV.

 But can you imagine Cracker not being in Manchester? or Morse being taken out of Oxford? or Wallander exiting Sweden?

 No. You would lose everything. You would still have a crime series, but it would be very different and arguably nowhere near as good.

 I suppose what I'm trying to say is that although it's brilliant that TV shows are being filmed in Northern Ireland, and the more the merrier, if you're going to set a big budget crime drama in Belfast with a major star then you have a brilliant opportunity there to create something remarkable. The city is on the screen. But it's not a character. And there is no sense of Belfast, or it's people.

 What is that sense? I wondered about that before I wrote my short story. Then I was reminded of it last year.

 A bomb was planted in the middle of the Cathedral Quarter just a week or so before Christmas. People were out doing their Christmas shopping, the bars and restaurants were packed with folks who had come out for their Christmas party, the city was packed.

 Then the bomb scare went up. Now, if this happened in London, Boston, New York, frankly anywhere in the world, Sky News would have a fit, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here would be interrupted with breaking news, there would be a media frenzy, panic in the streets, reporters running mad. A viable bomb planted in any other city centre in Europe would be global headline news and the city itself would descend into chaos.

 Not Belfast.

 Sure, people were scared. There's no doubt about that.

 But quite a lot of people who were out that night thought of it as more of a mild inconvenience. Instead of stampeding out of the restaurants, desperate to get to safety, guys meandered behind the police cordon still holding their plates full of Turkey and Ham, refusing to let terrorists interrupt their Christmas dinner. Within a short time of the bomb being dealt with, the pubs began to fill up and a tweet went out - 'the only bombs we're interested in are Jager bombs!! YEEOOOOO!!!'

Only in Belfast.

So, as much as I could, I tried to inject some of that unique Belfast 'stuff' into my story. Whether there's enough of it, or if it comes across, I leave to you to find out, dear reader.  I can tell you that the Stuart Neville and the Adrian McKinty both said they were happy with my wee story and made very gratifying comments about aspects of it. That made me less nervous, after all, when you look at that list above, I am very much the baby of the group. Albeit a six foot two, two-hundred and fifty pound baby, but a baby nonetheless (and to prove it, I don't have any hair and I will often manage to get more of my dinner on my shirt, walls and ceiling than into my mouth).

 So do please look out for Belfast Noir later in the year - around November. Check out the Adrian McKinty's blog, for finer crafted, more up to date news, written with fewer spelling mistakes and much more intelligence than you'll find here - Adrian McKinty

And if you are desperate for a Belfast Noir fix before November this year, check out Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy Trilogy, Stuart Neville's Belfast books such as The Twelve, or Gerard Brennan's work such as The Point, or the brilliant - Wee Rockets. 

And if you disagree with me about The Fall, that's fine, I'm willing to discuss it with an open mind.

 And in the meantime, if you click on the new page above entitled THE DEFENCE, you'll find some early cover blurb for my debut novel.

I'll have more news soon. But you knew that already.

 Follow me on twitter if you like, you don't have to, it might be nice, and I'll like it if you follow me, I might even follow you back, but I'm not promising anything, just in case you're an axe murderer.

 @SSCav

 

Harry Bosch From Page to Screen: The Long Hello

Adapting a beloved crime series for TV or film is fraught with danger. Of the writers that have had many of their works adapted for the screen, they will say the best way to handle the process is to meet the producer in a parking lot, the producer throws the writer a suitcase full of money and the writer tosses over the book in exchange and never the two shall meet again. If the writer tries to control the adaptation inevitably conflict arises and the project is destined for disaster.


Well, if there were a rule book for screen adaptations, Michael Connelly just tore it up. And in style. In so doing, he has created one of the most compelling and unique police dramas yet seen on our television screens. Don't be put off by the fact that you will watch this first episode of Bosch on Amazon or LOVEFiLM. The quality of the personnel involved and the freedom enjoyed by Michael Connelly in bringing his most famous creation to life has resulted in a slick, addictive, intelligent and emotionally mature cop drama that, for me at least, stands easily beside some of the best episodes of The Wire or The Sopranos.


Michael Connelly's most enduring character is LAPD Homicide Detective, Harry Bosch. Through twenty years of bestselling novels Connelly has crafted a body of work which tracks not only the life of a Detective but chronicles the history of Los Angeles. The Edgar Award winning writer and critic, Patrick Anderson, of the Washington Post, said the Harry Bosch series is the finest crime series ever written by an American author. When you consider that Connelly sits in that category alongside the likes of Chandler, Hammett, Ross McDonald, Parker and others, it's perhaps easier to see the sheer weight of that statement.


So how do you write the perfect crime series?


To answer that question you have to go back to the late seventies and a young Michael Connelly studying at Florida University. Several years after its initial release, Robert Altman's 'The Long Goodbye' played for one night only in a local movie theatre and Connelly caught that screening. He went out the next day and bought the book by Raymond Chandler, discovered it was very different from the movie he'd watched the night before, and then binged on Chandler over a weekend. During that weekend he decided he wanted to be a writer and changed his major to journalism.


It was this journalistic background that would eventually serve Connelly well as a novelist. He wrote two novels that never saw the light of day, because he knew something was missing from them. A week shadowing a homicide squad gave the reporter that missing element. During that week Connelly attended at three murder scenes and saw something unique and unexpected at each one; Sergeant Hurt (who was Connelly's liaison and minder for the week) knelt down beside the body of each victim, removed his glasses and placed the ear piece into his mouth. He remained that way for a few moments, his glasses in his mouth, as if he were communing with the victim. Sergeant Hurt never revealed to the young reporter exactly what he was doing. At the end of a tiring week, Connelly observed Hurt removing his glasses and throwing them onto the table. While Hurt rubbed his tired eyes, Connelly noticed the frames of those glasses had a deep notch, where the cop had bit down on the arm of the frame during his silent communion with victim after victim. Connelly knew then the Sergeant hand been clenching his teeth, hiding his quiet rage at another senseless death. That was the missing element in Connelly first two novels; the heart and the emotion immortalised by the groove in Sergeant Hurt's glasses.


Over 20 Harry Bosch novels the reader can see Harry's progression through the dark tunnel presented by violent crime in Los Angeles. To place even a small element of that character's journey onto the small screen would be an achievement if it was done over the course of a series. Michael Connelly has somehow accomplished this in a single episode.


The TV Pilot opens with Harry Bosch and his partner trailing a suspected serial killer, whom Harry corners and fatally shoots in a dark alley which results in Harry being sued by the family for wrongful death. The viewer questions whether Harry planted the gun on the body after he fired the shot or if the suspect was indeed armed and reached for a gun giving Bosch no alternative but to fire. Instead of lying low during the trial, Harry stumbles upon the possible homicide of a thirteen-year old boy, whose bones are found in the Los Angeles hills. And so the first episode establishes these twin stories (taken from the novels - The Concrete Blonde and City of Bones) and combines the two with new material. Instead of a sixty-year old Bosch, Connelly gives us a younger version of the character and roots the story in contemporary LA. Altman pulled off a similar trick with The Long Goodbye, updating Chandler's Marlowe from the 50's to the 70's, adding new story elements and focusing on the more sensitive and emotionally resonant aspects of Marlowe's character.


But here, the parallels between the two adaptations diverge. Where Altman deliberately shaded Marlowe in a more favourable light with Elliot Gould, Michael Connelly perfectly distils the heart of his character onto the screen through Titus Welliver. At first I thought there was merely a physical resemblance between the Gould of the early seventies and Welliver's Bosch, but then it became clear that the similarity lies within their astonishing skill as actors as they capture the humanity and compassion of their characters. In almost every scene you can see Bosch struggling with the burden of empathy and the righteous anger that threatens to overwhelm him, taking him closer to being enveloped by the dark abyss through which he must travel.


All the exciting technical and procedural police elements are here, as they are in a lot of police shows. The dark, funny and healthy cop humour is here too, but the show is really a character study as well as a riveting police drama and this is testament to the actors and to Michael Connelly who created, produced and co-wrote the series with Eric Overmyer (The Wire).


So go and watch Bosch, for free, vote to see the whole series, pray that Amazon picks it up and then go buy a Harry Bosch book while you're waiting for the next instalment.

I saw the spark of something special and unique in Bosch. I saw the beginnings of what could be the finest American crime drama ever produced for television. I saw an actor embody Michael Connelly's Bosch and during some of those quieter moments, behind Welliver's eyes, I saw Sergeant Hurt's glasses. A Bosch fan cannot ask for more.


This blog post originally appeared on Orion's Murder Room. 

Check it out!

 

http://www.themurderroom.com/

From Disaster to a Dream Come True Part 2 - Getting a Publisher

In Part 1 I talked about what it was like to be accepted by a leading literary agent and the waiting, hoping and nail-biting inevitably involved when you’re searching for a literary agent. I know what it’s like to be on that search, to have that goal. Once I’d achieved it I thought I’d got it made and the worrying would be over.

I was wrong.

The fear doesn’t go away. If anything the anxious anticipation just gets worse.  

Before your book goes out on submission to publishers your agent will probably want you to do some work on it. For me there wasn’t that much. I was really just tidying up. How much or how little you do is up to you but invariably most of the advice you get at this stage from your agent is probably spot on. The advice I received certainly hit the mark. So after you’ve revised the book, proof read again and again and you send it off, you feel pretty good about the book. For me this feeling lasted right up until the book went out on submission. Then I felt about as confident as an MP submitting his Parliamentary expenses. However much you’ve sweated, lost sleep and swept from the peaks of blissful optimism to the crushing reality of rejection during your search for literary representation – trust me, this is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the near constant nerve-shredding anxiety that you will go through when you know that your agent has sent your book out on submission to publishers. What if they hate it? What if it doesn’t sell? What if all those rejections I received were right and my agent is wrong? Will my agent drop me? Will they find out I claimed seventy-five thousand pounds for toilet roll and digestive biscuits? (sorry, getting confused with the MP.)

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m aware that a lot of writers have said that this stage was by far the worst and I can only suppose that it very much depends on what type of person you are and how you deal with it. If you do an internet search you won’t find nearly as much out there on what it’s like to have a book on submission. I suspect that the  reason you don’t read so much about this stage of the process is down to one very simple truth - Sadly, most aspiring writers will not get a literary agent. If you blog or write about how nervous you are whilst your book is out on submission to publishers you will not only sound ungrateful for what’ve you’ve already achieved but you will garner no sympathy from the host of aspiring writers who would sell their grandmother to be in your shoes. So you don’t complain, you don’t bitch about it – you can’t because you are so lucky to have an agent that loves your book enough to put their name and their reputation behind it.

The only thing to do is suck it up.

The best advice I’ve read about how to deal with this agonizing waiting game is to simply write something else. I didn’t want to do that. My novel, The Defence, is the first in a series and I knew that the next book I wanted to write was the next book in that series. I didn’t want to do that in case I couldn’t sell the first book. Incidentally, even though my books are a series, you will be able to read them in any order. So I couldn’t write something else. Instead I would have to resign myself to checking my email every five minutes.

So how long does this process last? It can take years. It can take months. It can take re-writes and re-submissions. There are plenty of fabulous writers that have taken a long time to get accepted by a publishing house and some very talented writers (people with a lot more talent than me) that never get their work through the traditional publishing model. I was one of the lucky ones – for me it took about a week.

It took all the will power I had not to phone my agent, or email him to ask what was going on. He’d told me that he would let me know. Of course he would. On the Friday of that week, about 6.30pm I got an email from my agent. I was standing in my hall. I saw the little email icon on my phone. It was an email from Euan. My first thought was that this is an email to tell me not to worry, that there had been no offers but he would be trying the next round of publishers.

Again, I was wrong. The email thanked me for being so patient. Then it said there had been an offer for The Defence. In fact, four publishers wanted the book. Each of the four publishers were from respected publishing houses. Each of the publishers not only wanted The Defence, they wanted the next two books in the series. I had plenty of ideas for the series but at that stage hadn’t managed a single word of prose for any of them. Euan was going to hold an auction. The sums of money involved were life-changing. I almost dropped the phone. My wife was ecstatic. What did I feel? I can’t really describe it. I still feel it. Relief is one part of it.

You see, I didn’t write The Defence for money. I wrote it because I had to write it. Now that might sound a little strange and quite pretentious. I’m not saying that I was compelled, through the sheer power of my own genius to write this book. No, nothing like it.

I wrote this book for my mother, knowing that she would never read it.

The only reason I’m a writer today is because of her. When I was a kid my Dad would take us to Harry Hall’s second-hand book shop on Gresham Street in the heart of Belfast. My Mum and I would pass a morning choosing our 5p paperbacks. When we didn’t have enough money for the bookshop, we went to the Library. When I started to write in my teens she was the person who gave me encouragement. I stopped writing before I turned twenty. At that stage I was writing screenplays, I’d gotten an agent but I could never sell anything. So I decided I was never going to make it as a writer and I stopped writing for the next 15 years.

In 2011 my Mum passed away, suddenly, after a quick and devastating illness. She was the one person in my life who had told me I should write. So I decided that life was too short, I was going to give this another shot and this time it would work. This time, I would write a book and I would get it published. I did this for her. To show her that I wasn’t a failure. I suppose, losing myself in my book helped me push away the pain for a few hours while I worked away on a small, Compaq notebook that I used to write my first draft. While writing the book I was escaping into a different world, a world that I could control.

At that moment in September 2013, standing in my hallway, with the knowledge that my book would be published, I felt massive relief.

The next days and weeks went by in a blur. I would have been lucky and honoured to sign with any of the four publishers that offered and I eventually signed with Jemima Forrester and Jon Wood of Orion. Two great professionals and two thoroughly warm, generous and funny people who have been a joy to work with. I landed on my feet there.  Following a German auction, a pre-empt for Dutch Rights within hours of submission and a pre-empt for Italian Rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I felt like a lottery winner.

And it just gets more and more surreal – well known Hollywood Production companies are interested in the film rights, the book will be going out to more and more territories.

I’ve been very lucky so far.  

I hope you will be too.

Steve.

 

Rules of Writing via Nazis, Kafka and Peter Sellers

 

If anyone reading this post has not read Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing, stop now, do a Google search (other search engines are available but they’re not as good and the FBI won’t get to read your history – seems a shame to keep them out in the cold) and enjoy. Oh, and do come back won’t you. I’ll be here…

 

I’m not a great believer in rules when it comes to most things. Testing boundaries, stretching them even, produces the best from everyone.  There are of course some of Elmore Leonard’s rules that should not be broken, ever. For me, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘cutting out the parts that readers skip,’ is an absolute. Quite a few of the other rules can be bent. ‘Don’t open with the weather,’ - lots of books open with the weather and some great books at that. Before we go any further, I would like to state that Elmore Leonard didn’t mean to have his rules be hard and fast deal breakers. He meant it more as a guide, to be used or not, as the case may be, however, a lot of what he says is good advice. Then you have the vast amount on the internet that is concerned with ‘rules’ of writing.

 If you read enough ‘advice’ articles on the net you feel as though there’s a rule book of writing. I’ve read a number of these articles and they all seem to have a common theme.

(1) Your protagonist (hero) has to be likeable. I’ve no idea where this came from but you see it time and again.

(2) The antagonist (villain) has to be in direct opposition to the protagonist.

(3) The protagonist has to have a strong moral motivation that the reader can really get behind i.e. the protagonist’s goal should be a noble one.

Bear these three in mind.

Because it’s possible to have an incredible story by breaking all three of these rules which come up often in writing advice articles.

To illustrate, for a moment, let’s pretend that the world is a darker and lonelier place. We are imagining a world without the movie ‘The Producers.’ For the next part of this blog post, strike that movie from your mind; it does not exist.

Now imagine a young writer is calling his agent, today, January 2014, to pitch him an idea for a movie. I stress, this is not my agent – who is a very nice man indeed.

Agent: So what’s this great movie idea you want to pitch? I can’t wait to hear it.

Writer: Okay, so the movie opens in a run-down apartment building where we find the office of Max Bialystock, Broadway Producer. He’s fending off a sex-crazed octogenarian. Max leeches money from this little old lady to finance his terrible plays. In exchange for cash Max indulges in sex games with the old lady…

Agent: Wow! Great villain.

Writer: Villain? No, no, no… you don’t understand, he’s one of the heroes.

Agent: What? So who’s the villain?

Writer: There isn’t one. Not really.  

Agent: No villain? So Max is a hero, okay, who’s the other hero?

Writer: Well the other hero is about to enter the story. Leo Bloom is a neurotic accountant who has just arrived to inspect Max’s books.

Agent: Hang on…so there are two heroes in this movie: Max - a pervert who exploits the elderly, and Leo, a neurotic accountant?

Writer: Yeah. So, while doing the books Leo notices that the last play Max put on was over financed. He’d raised more money than it cost to produce. But the play closed after a week and didn’t make any money. The IRS won’t audit that play. Nobody is interested in a flop so Max could keep the extra money that he didn’t use to stage the play. That’s when Leo has an idea – technically it would be possible for a Broadway producer to make more money with a flop than a hit. They would just need to raise a lot more money than they needed to produce the play. Max thinks this is genius and persuades Leo to join him in a scam.  

Agent: Tax fraud? This is a movie about a sex maniac and an accountant defaulting on their taxes?

Writer: No, not at all. The fraud is on the little old ladies that Max persuades to finance the play with their life savings by promising them sexual favours in return for the cash.

Agent: That might be…problematic. Let’s move on - why do they need the money? What’s their real motivation? Does a kid need a life-saving operation? Or maybe they’re raising the money to save the local orphanage?

Writer: No, nothing like that. They want to go to Rio.

Agent: Rio. So the two heroes in this movie are on a quest to scam a whole bunch of little old ladies out of their life savings so they can move to Rio?

Writer: Yeah, well, actually no. The move is really about gay Nazis.

Telephone falls to the floor.

Agent: Sorry, what? I dropped the damn phone. For a second there I thought you said the movie was really about gay Nazis.

Writer: (pause) it is really about gay Nazis, well super-camp Nazis. You see, Leo and Max have to put on a play that is a sure-fire stinker, a guaranteed loser that will close on opening night because it’s so bad. So they find this play which is basically a love letter to Hitler.

Agent: Hitler, as in Adolf Hitler?

Writer: You know another Hitler?

Agent: I’m not sure this is such a good…

Writer: So they find this awful, offensive play and they hire the worst director in the county who’s going to turn it into a fabulously camp musical. Then they employ this permanently-stoned actor to play Hitler…

Agent: A drug addict Hitler?

Writer: Sure. The play has beautiful women in SS uniforms dancing in swastika formations and tanks and the lead tenor is dressed as a member of the Gestapo. It’s just spectacular and the actor playing Hitler is so bombed and the songs about invading Europe are so camp and gay that the audience actually thinks it’s a satire. So instead of the audience hating it, the play becomes a surprise hit. Of course, the Nazi playwright isn't happy and he tries to blow up the theatre...

Agent: So in the finale, how do they get away with the money and fly to Rio?

Writer: They don’t. They all get caught and end up in prison. I’m going to call the movie ‘Springtime for Hitler: A Gay romp with Adolf and Eva,’ or ‘The Producers.’ I haven’t quite decided yet.  

Silence.

Writer: Hello? Hello…you still there?

If I pitched the same project to my agent, he’d tell me it was a great idea, superb, wonderful. He’d hang up the phone and call my wife and tell her that I’d had some kind of mental breakdown and she should call the doctor (I told you he was a nice man).

What astounds me is that The Producers ever got made. I’m not sure if it were to be pitched as an original idea today that it would stand a chance of getting the green light. It’s amazing that this movie went into production just 15 years after the end of the Second World War.  Upon release the critics hated it but it went on to win an Oscar for Mel Brooks for his screenplay and has since been recognised by the American Film institute along with the Library of Congress preserving the film in its archives due to its cultural significance. That brilliant screenplay and the performances were the key to the film’s success. It’s funny, it’s original and despite Leo and Max’s motivations, you’re with them all the way. You want them to get the money and fly away to Rio but you’re not sure why – you just fall in love with them. If you analyse the film, it’s easy to see that the play within the movie actually serves as a metaphor for the film as a whole; in the film, the play ‘Springtime for Hitler’, shouldn't work, but, in spite of everything, it does work and it’s genius. Same with the film itself – on paper it should not work, it should in fact be one of the worst films ever made. Instead, it’s amazing.

As an aside here's a couple of little facts: 1) The character of Max Bialystock is based on a real Broadway producer that Mel Brooks worked with but has stoically refused to name (2) Peter Sellers was supposed to play the part of Leo Bloom (3) Dustin Hoffman was cast as the Nazi playwright Liebkind, but begged Mel Brooks for permission to audition for a lead part in another movie. Mel knew this part was a lead alongside his then partner Anne Bancroft and didn't think Hoffman stood a chance of getting the role so he let him audition. Against all odds Hoffman got the lead role opposite Bancroft in The Graduate and pulled out of the Producers.

This film breaks all the rules of taste, commercial appeal and story arc together with every one of those basic 3 rules of writing quoted above.

 

Lots of other artistic works broke all the rules.

When Leo and Max are sifting through scripts looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads aloud a first line – “I woke up one morning to discover I had transformed into a giant cockroach. No, too good.”

That’s a line from Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. An existential story that also broke the rules. Kafka didn’t have any real success as a writer during his lifetime but is now thought of as one of the most influential writers of the last hundred years. Interestingly, while doing a little research on Kafka I found out that he never managed to become a full time writer. His day job was practicing as a personal injury lawyer. I knew he was a lawyer but I didn’t know that he devoted most of his working life to representing employees in accident at work claims. He went on to open an Asbestos factory. Somebody reading this who is smarter than me can probably tell if that is merely ironic or veritably Kafkaesque.

Anyway, even though the critics hated The Producers and it didn’t do great business in the US, it is now regarded as a classic. One of the great endorsements it received at the time was from Peter Sellers, who took out a full page ad in Variety and called The Producers the greatest comedy ever made.

I suppose the real lesson here is not to stick too closely to the rules. If we all wrote according to what we thought agents or publishers or the market was looking for, or if we listened to every single advice article and shaped our characters to a demographic, we wouldn’t have great pieces of art like The Producers. And the world would be a darker place for it.

By all means, write something commercial, write something that everyone will love. It can still be original. Break the rules or stick to them. The trick is believing in what you write. If you want to write a love story between a golden retriever and a hooker with an artificial leg who enters a bowling tournament in order to win a lifetime’s supply of hair gel, then go right ahead. As long as you have talent you might be able to pull it off. And that is the one thing that agents and publishers are looking for – talent. Not badly written, but likeable characters on a noble quest that they’ve read hundreds of times before.

A great character doesn’t have to be a likeable character. In reality, there are no rules. Write whatever you want. Sometimes crazy can be good; if it’s good-crazy.

To illustrate good-crazy, and for one final little joke, we return to Peter Sellers.

It’s the early Seventies, Peter Sellers is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. It’s three o’clock in the morning and Seller’s best friend, Spike Milligan, is awakened by a loud and insistent knocking on his front door. A bleary-eyed Spike puts on his robe, goes downstairs and opens the door to his London home. Standing before him is a completely naked Peter Sellers who simply says, ‘Do you know a good tailor?’

To me, that’s crazy, but isn’t it good crazy?

Steve.

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Be good.

 

  

Write What You Know: Rebus, Bosch, Cannibals and Kebabs.

 

 When I first started writing again in 2011, after a break of 15 years, I heard people use the phrase – ‘write what you know,’ and until recently I don’t think I ever fully understood it. I do now, but the real meaning behind that nugget of writing advice is better put another way;

          To be a good writer you should practice cannibalism.

Let’s take Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and John Grisham.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these writers are cannibals, but not in the modern, everyday sense of the word. Nor do I mean it to be a derogatory term – in fact I consider it to be one of the finest qualities of a writer.

I do want to be clear about this ‘cannibal’ business. So I should say, straight away, that neither Michael Connelly nor John Grisham have ever consumed human flesh. There is simply no evidence to suggest such a terrible thing.

Unfortunately I cannot say the same thing for Ian Rankin. In Mr. Rankin’s case, and indeed my own case, neither of us has ever KNOWINGLY consumed human flesh. I feel compelled to add this caveat in light of the recent horse meat scandal and one further factual set of circumstances that applies both to Mr. Rankin and myself (and a good many others I might add). Those circumstances are well known. We’re both Celts (Northern Irish and Scots share a common heritage), both of us have been known to enjoy the occasional beer, both of us have been known to sample the particular culinary delights so unfairly labeled ‘junk food.’ So picture the scene – it’s late, Mr. Rankin leaves the Oxford Bar suitably refreshed, I leave the Crown Bar in a similar state of refreshment, we both find ourselves in our home cities with an abundance of fast food outlets and, by contrast, not a single taxi in sight. Well, you don’t need me to draw you a picture. Suffice to say that I feel the majority of cannibalistic peril derives from the humble kebab. I mean, what is it? It’s supposed to be lamb; it could easily be elephant, it could be processed mongoose or, for all we know, the succulent ingredient could in fact be a sixty-two year old, retired civil servant named Geoff.  I have to confess that as long as it’s covered in garlic sauce I try not to think about it too much.

Incidentally, if you're a kebab shop owner, I love you and your lovely kebabs and I know, they do have a high quality 100% lamb content. I was only jokin 

So, what do I mean by cannibalism in the context of writing?

I suppose that I really mean cannibalisation – the removal or utilisation of a part of something to create a new entity. In this case, the new entity is a novel and a damn good one at that if it comes from either Messrs Rankin, Connelly or Grisham.

What Ian Rankin has achieved, in his best works, is to take a bite out of the arse of Edinburgh; a bite that includes sex trafficking, drugs, alcoholism, a little bit of religion, the oil industry, Scottish nationalism and to chew it up and remake it on the page. To give it an arc, a shape, as he says himself. When I say a bite, it is often a polite nibble as Edinburgh has prospered and grown proud of the Cardenden lad whose portrayal of the city is tinged with genuine affection and yet, he can take a scalpel to every social class of the city with his most famous creation, Rebus, a detective whose work can let Ian Rankin loose on every cultural, social and political facet of Scotland. At the heart of every Rebus book is a crime, a mystery to be solved, and yet because Ian Rankin has the ability to take his surroundings, his people, his hates, his loves and inject that reality into the novel it adds immeasurably to the weight and importance of the work. And not just what’s going on in the wider picture. Ian Rankin gives much of himself to his work. In his breakthrough novel, Black and Blue, Rebus becomes his creator’s punch bag and the punishment that Rebus is subjected to in the book is mirrored in the difficult time that the writer experienced in his own life during the writing process. It doesn’t have to be an outpouring of joy or pain in every work, even the most subtle of life’s daily influences can be writing gold.

If you get a chance to watch the fantastic arena programme – ‘Ian Rankin and the Case of the Disappearing Detective,’ you will get a brilliant insight into the creative process of one of the worlds most talented authors. When Mr. Rankin is talking to Alan Yentob about writing the opening scene of ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ he recounts that he had very recently attended a funeral. The opening scene of the book is of course a funeral, with mourners watching the coffin being lowered into the grave and one of those mourners, who doesn’t want to get too close to the grave, is Rebus. This scene marks the return of one of the most popular characters in crime fiction and what a way to do it! The juxtaposition of the formality, inevitability and ritual of death next to a very much alive and kicking (and gasping for a cigarette) Rebus is about as perfect and potent a re-introduction/resurrection as one could imagine.

Write what you know, for me, is to be able not only to cannibalise the conflicts and issues of society but to cannibalise your own past. Just ask Michael Connelly. When he was a kid he often played near a storm drain that in effect looked just like a big dark tunnel to the neighbourhood boys. Connelly describes it as a ‘right of passage’ for kids to go into the tunnel and crawl through to the other side. He never did it and developed something of a phobia. As the went through High School, kids a few years older than him got caught in the Vietnam draft. Some never came back. Of the men that did come back, a former Tunnel Rat, who wore a long beard to hide his scars, worked with Connelly's father in construction. Is it any wonder then that Harry Bosch was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, that the crime at the heart of Connelly’s debut (The Black Echo – thought by many to be the best crime debut ever) revolves around a gang of bank robbers tunnelling beneath a vault containing safety deposit boxes and, is it any wonder that the overreaching arc of the Bosch character, across the books, is a personal journey through the darkness, towards the light. He used his life experience to give depth to his work. Michael Connelly wanted to be a writer from the first moment he picked up a Raymond Chandler novel. He didn’t exactly have the tools to be a cop, so he became a crime journalist, and through that career he came into ‘the know,’ working alongside detectives, many of whom were veterans of Vietnam. But not everything can be planned. Probably over ten years ago now, Michael Connelly sat at a baseball game and got talking to the guy beside him. The guy said he was a lawyer. Mr. Connelly asked where the guy’s office was located. He said he didn’t have an office, per se, that his office was in the back of his Lincoln town car. Five years later The Lincoln Lawyer began what, in my opinion, is the best series of legal thrillers ever written.

Fate had a large hand in the destiny of the foremost legal thriller writer of our time – John Grisham. As a small town lawyer he wasn’t making much money and sometimes didn’t have a lot of work on. While sitting in court one day, he became a spectator in a rape trial and heard a little girl describe her horrific ordeal. Grisham recounts that moment as one of the most harrowing and inspiring he ever witnessed. The details were harrowing, the grace and dignity with which the victim gave her evidence was inspiring. He got thinking what he might do to a man who had perpetrated such an act on his own daughter. How far would he go? He thought he might kill them. He thought a good many people might think the same thing. Without ever having a desire to write before that moment, he took a few years and bashed out what became ‘A Time to Kill.’ You know the story, it was accepted by a small publisher who went bankrupt pretty soon after Grisham’s debut was published and he ended up selling copies of the book out of the trunk of his car. His next book was The Firm. That book spent 47 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List and sold 7 million copies.

 So writing what you know can be writing what you feel, what you understand and want to say about something. Just don’t get caught on a soap box.

I should just say, that this cannibalisation of yourself and your surroundings isn’t unique to modern writers. Dickens explored the social strata and the pain of poverty before most other popular writers. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was inspired by the reports of the sinking of The Essex. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is believed to be inspired in part by stories of a famous ship sinking at sea and the crew finding themselves marooned on an island. In addition, the use of marriage in the play as a political weapon reflected the machinations in the Royal Court at the time.

One of the central characters in The Tempest is of course Caliban.

 An anagram of ‘Canibal.’ The old translation from the French - Canniballes.

Which brings us neatly back to kebabs. Now, how do I work a kebab into my narrative?

Hhhmm….

Is there a little of me in my work? Of course. There should be. You should put something of yourself into everything you write.

Just don’t put yourself into a kebab.

Best,

Steve.

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