Thicker Skin

After reading the commentary over at Sarah's blog in regards to Tess Gerritsen and her Edgar award nomination, I was chuffed to read Tess's own take on the subject of criticism. It was a great affirmation for me, because I have noticed a strange personal development over the last year or so.

My skin's got thinner.

I honestly used to not give too much of a shit about what people thought of me. Which is not to say I've been a horrible person, it's just that my particular take on life is not one that falls into general acceptance by the masses. Even the weirdos worry about me.

First I got all thoughtful and introspective about my place in the mystery universe, then an unknown person commented on one of my stories. My initial reaction was that the story was better than that, but then I shifted into thinking about how to improve it.

Do I get rid of this character and spend more time on this one? How can I change the dialogue so that it rings a little less cliched?

What it comes down to is this: as writers, we have to be our own first line of criticism. To write well, we must constantly analyse and tear apart our work, with the goal of putting it back together in a better shape. This becomes a habit, and it's very easy for that habit to spill over into who we are as a person. We tend to become more critical in general, and this is easily extended to self criticism.

On top of that, since I started writing seriously, I've noticed my speech patterns change. Because of this constant revision, I find myself thinking about three possible sentences every time I speak. The result of this confusion is: "Sen ... tence a doesn't any that sense make." Happens to me all the time.

So since I decided to become a writer I have turned into an uncertain, self-conscious, gibbering mess of a man.

And I love it.

Murder Around The Corner

I'm still completely absorbed in a recent bookish acquisition, City Of Shadows.

The photo is of a previously law-abiding man, George Whitehall. On a Thursday afternoon in 1922, he went to Newtown Police Station and announced, "I've done something I should not have done," and handed in a key to his place in Pleasant Street, Erskineville.

Around the corner from where I am right now.

He'd lived there for 15 years, but that afternoon, he murdered his daughter with an axe, after having an argument with her and her mother. Whitehall had no recollection of what happened until he found himself with the axe in his hand and his daughter on the ground.

The photo was taken behind Newtown Police Station days before George Whitehall was hanged.

I feel all skin-crawly and goose-pimply after reading this. To think that it happened 84 years ago, just around the corner, and this man is staring back at me through history.

Repetition, Repetition, Variation

Maybe it's because I make my living as a programmer, or maybe it's just the obsessive-compulsive in all of us, but repetition in writing fascinates me.

It crops up in so many ways. The first word of a paragraph, the first word of a sentence, repeating words throughout the same sentence. Most of the time, you want these repetitions to be absent--they tend to take the reader out of the story. As the Taoists say, "[an] author leaves no trace of himself in his work."

Repetition can have the same unwanted effect on a larger scale. I noticed this while working on my second draft. The word 'threatened' popped up only a total of three times, but I still remembered it.

It's not all bad: repetition can be used for good. It can give rhythm to a sentence, or add a poetic spin to your prose. It's easy to overdo, so be careful he says, as he touches his nose.

Variation.

I just threw that word in because I was sick of 'repetition'.

Back It Up

Usually a post like this would start off with a horror story. You know the kind: guy spends half his life writing the Great Novel Of The Universe on an ancient stone laptop, only to forget to hit 'save', then offers himself up for ritual sacrifice.

No horror stories here, though. And that's the point.

Back up your work before it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Ways to do it:

• USB flash disk: you don't need a big one because novels don't take up much space. Even a 32MB disk bought from your local convenience store will do. They're cheap, and any computer bought in the last few years should have no trouble using them.
• Blank CDs / DVDs: you really should be finding ways to backup your entire system, so if your hard drive crashes you can get up and running within minutes, not days. Stick your writing on these too. Norton Ghost is something worth looking into in terms of system backup if you use Windows.
  
• Email: get a gmail account. Send your novel to your other email address. If you're worried about privacy, zip the files up and add a password. Yes, these things can be cracked, but not without a considerable effort.
• Other computers: if you use more than one computer, carry that flash disk around and leave copies everywhere. You do have a flash disk, don't you?
  
• External hard disk: It's easy to buy a cheap external case that connects through USB or Firewire. Stick a hard drive in there that's the same size as the one you have, or find some backup software that compresses your work. Lacie and Maxtor have a range of these to suit, but I prefer the cheap ones from the local computer store.
  

I took care of the last option today. A friend of mine sold me his external case for twenty bucks and I happened to have a spare hard drive lying around to fill it with. It's the same size as the hard drive in my laptop, and I use a very simple program called SuperDuper! (Mac only) to back it up. It makes an exact duplicate of my laptop's data on the external hard drive, and I can even boot from it if the hard disk in my laptop fails.

These are all solutions designed to prevent loss of your work. The work you sweated blood, tears and other bodily fluids over.

But that won't help if you don't back it up. Do it every day, or when you hit a milestone. At the very least, once a week. Back up dated versions of all the files in your writing folder every so often, and keep them. That way if something has stuffed up a couple of weeks ago, you still have a way of resurrecting the work done before.

Sing it with me, children:

BACK IT UP.

City Of Shadows Exhibition Write-up

Four days off work has been good for me. It started off with a peaceful Australia Day and it's ending in much the same way. The cats are out on the balcony and I'm wasting electricity by having the windows open while the air-conditioning is on.

I dragged my favourite Demon Goddess along to the City Of Shadows exhibition running at the Justice and Police Museum at Circular Quay. Thanks to the magical powers of a new digital camera in our family, I bring to you a decidedly different write-up of our day out.

City Of Shadows

Australia Day

Today is Australia Day, the day where everyone in this sunburnt (ie covered in skin cancer) country has a day off work to get together and have a barbie. Like Christmas, this is all about mass consumption of food and drink, most often snags and beer.

TRANSLATION: Australia Day = barbeque = sausages on bread with tomato sauce + beer

Or failing that, take the family out to Darling Harbour or Circular Quay and watch the Jamaican guy with the big smile and the steel drums do battle with the silver-painted Statue Of Liberty impersonator.

For me, it's all about sleeping in. An hour or so extra can make all the difference. Then, because a public holiday is a great excuse to do things you don't have time for during a work day, I think I'll go shopping. Buy some things I don't really need.

Maybe ...

• a gold plated blank DVD
  
• shaggy red drink coasters with built-in hot plates
  
• hybrid fuel cell/electric Converse high top sneakers
• a bicycle helmet with pictures of other bicycle helmets
  
• an imitation fur covered cordless laser mouse with real feet
• a granite hacky sack
• sandpaper tissues (I'm thinking wet & dry No. 45)

I'll shut up now.

Happy Australia Day!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Time for the Down In The Hole town crier's news update:

• There's a new CrimeSpot in town, with your's truly added to the fantasmagoric smorgasbord of fellow crime bloggers. It's a great way to keep up to date with your faves, and to find new ones as well.
  
• A new short story, Dollars And Sense, has been added to my fiction pages. But you've probably already read it.
  
• All my stories are now available in PDF format for your downloading and printing pleasure.
• You may have noticed changes to the way comments are handled: now you don't have to load another page to read them, they just appear out of nowhere when you click.

It's all FREE, so grab it now, for an unlimited time only!

Poodle Girl In The Gutter

Some of you may have read my story POODLE GIRL before, but Tribe has given it a new lease of life by publishing it on his new flash fiction website, Flashing In The Gutters.

Click away below to read the new incarnation.

POODLE GIRL

The Heist Is Over

Inkslinger's Amored Car & Kid's Clothing story contest is officially over.

The votes have been totalled and here are the results:

1st place: GUARD YOUR TREASURE - written by Clair Lamb
2nd: THE STAIN - written by James Lincoln Warren
3rd: KID GLOVES - written by Bryon Quertermous

You can read all about it here.

I didn't place, but my story, Dollars & Sense, did get a mention, as well as a couple of first place votes.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to read and vote.

Owner Reunited With Car

Following my last post, a dollop of serendipity came my way. Here's the kind of crime story that really tickles me:


Owner Reunited With Car

See? There's like this old guy in it, and he's like, smiling.

Compulsions & Conformity

WARNING: Writery Wanking Dead Ahead. Wrong Way, Go Back

I feel compelled to completely rewrite my novel. Just ditch the whole thing and start again.

Word around town is that every novel for every writer creates the same kind of soul sucking doubt. In my case, while I do have doubts about the novel itself, my doubts lie more in the direction I'm heading.

What's changing that direction?

There's a subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle undercurrent that runs through most of the blogs I read. Hardboiled, hardass noir is good; cozies are bad. And I can completely see the reason for this. Crime affects people, and it doesn't do this in cute and funny ways. It's a wrenching. To have your property stolen, to lose someone close to you, to lose one of your own limbs is not a fluff-filled experience.

It hurts.

As my novel stands, I have the feeling that it comes across as something slightly more than fluff.

Danny Hawaii is the type of guy you'd want to get together with at a pub, shoot some pool, tell some jokes. He's finding his way through the world of the PI by trial and error, and his general viewpoint is decidedly not serious. There are moments of tension, but there's plenty of fart-arsing around in between.

My vision for the novel, and probably one of the running themes in all of my writing, is to find a healthy balance between comedy and tension. Start off silly, and as things fall apart, get serious.

But the more crime fiction and non-fiction I read, the more I feel like what I'm doing is pissing up the wrong tree. I feel a pressure to write more about the alcohol and drug-fuelled, introspective hard ass, than a young and stupid PI with an off-centre view of the world.

When it comes down to it though, I'm not a hardened, jaded kind of guy. I'm a rampant optimist that finds the quirky side of human nature the most interesting. Crime fiction for me is probably more of a vehicle to explore these kinds of characters.

Now I come to the end of this self-directed rant and find myself back where I started. I'll just finish what I'm doing and see where I go next. In the end, I don't think I could sustain an output of dark, soul crushing art.

I'm just here for the fun of it. Beats programming poker machines, that's for sure.

Vote For Me

About a month ago, Paul Guyot of Inkslinger fame, issued a storytelling challenge to the blogging world: write a short story that included at least a mention of both an armored car and kids clothing. I prefer armoured, but that didn't stop me entering the contest.

There's eleven stories, one of which is mine, but I won't tell you which. If I win this thing, it's going to be legit. So rush over, read all the stories, and send your votes in. You have till the 24th of Jan.

Here are the relevant links:

The Background

The Contest

EDIT: Some of you reported problems with accessing the site. Try again, it's all hunky-dory now.

How To Make A Bestseller

It's all in the title. Jamie Ford clued me in on this strange tool for analysing the probability of a novel being a bestseller, based entirely on its title.

Lulu Titlescorer.

My result?

The title Loving The Law has a 44.2% chance of being a bestselling title!

What's great about this is that it matches another book out there that's reportedly doing quite well.

The title A Million Little Pieces has a 44.2% chance of being a bestselling title!

Now all I have to do is figure out a way to pass it off as non-fiction. Which should be easy, seeing as it's written in first person already.

Search, replace. Danny = Daniel, Hawaii = Hatadi.

Quarter Pounder P.I.

As you may or may not know, I've been doing a P.I. course, more correctly known as Certificate III in Investigative Services.

At least, I was doing it. I dropped out after only a couple of months, but I now have some novel-relevant education behind me, as well as an academic record. For some strange reason, this makes me feel like I'm sixteen.

As a way of making it real, here is the transcript of my results:

Practical law for investigators: Distinction
Planning an investigation: Pass
Prepare and give evidence in court: Credit
Law for an investigation practice: Pass

It's a two semester course, but I only ever planned on completing the first semester. I really don't need to know about occupational health and safety issues to write a novel.

I hope.

Speaking of hope, I have a vague plan to finish the course, just so I can say I saw it through. But for now, I'm only about a quarter of the way, a Quarter Pounder P.I.

It's Pimpin' Time!

Chances are you've already read this about five times today. But here goes:

Bryon Quertermous and Dave White have banged their heads together to produce the bastard son of Plots With Guns, and it's called:

DEMOLITION



(image stolen from David Terrenoire)

They've kicked it off with a four story issue from previous Plots With Guns talent. Think of it as the battleground where literary fiction and pulp fiction fight to the death.

I think pulp will have the advantage, because it's already beaten to a ...

Too Much Blogging?

Oh, man. This is bad.

But first:

I'm happy to say I've made it past the half way mark of the second draft. It's unclear whether it's still half way or not, but the point is that I got to the section where things are picking up. Danny Hawaii's being more active, doing things rather than letting them happen. The pace picks up and that means more fun. Cause that's what I'm really about. Fun.

Also, the second half of the novel was written after I'd learnt a whole lot about writing and it shows. So I'm glad I'm through that. The rest of the novel should be much more of a joy to work with.

Now back to the bad. It's short, but worrying.

I was typing the word 'blob'. That was my plan. It didn't come out as I expected, though.

Can you guess what I typed instead?

What's In A Title?

A title has to grab you from the get-go. If you're walking past a book store and you've just broken up with your lover who's dying from cancer because they have a fetish for sex with uranium exhaust pipes, the title has to make you turn your head and bump into someone walking the other way.

I've been using LOVING THE LAW as a working title because it suits the story and is alliterative. But it's somewhat dull.

Lately I've been thinking about a new title, one that can be extended into a distinctive series title. Sue Grafton's alphabet novels and Janet Evanovich's number novels come to mind as good examples.

I thought of going the whole hog and naming the novel something like DANNY: VOLUME 1, and that got me onto the possibility of including the word DANNY in every title of the series. The story is something of a balance between comedy and tension, so I think this could work.

Or I could just write a children's mystery series.

Here's some titles I came up with, some of which would be more suitable for later novels in the series:

1. NOBODY LOVES DANNY
2. DANNY: THE P.I. THAT SMILES BACK
3. DANNY HAWAII: P.I. IN TRAINING
   
4. BETTER LIVING THROUGH DANNY
5. GET SERIOUS. GET DANNY.
6. DID SOMEBODY SAY DANNY?
7. WOULDN'T YOU RATHER BE DANNY?
8. DANNY GOES STRAIGHT TO YOUR HEAD
9. DANNY WITH A SILENT D
10. DANNY DROPS ONE

If anyone has a fave, leave me a comment and I'll tally up the total of three votes I get.

Second Drafts

Second drafts. Could be from the air conditioning. Or maybe that was dinner.

No one tells you when you finish the first draft of your first novel how hard the second draft is going to be. I've read a couple of handfuls of books on writing and it's not something that's touched on in any kind of detail. I suppose that each writer has their own personal way of going about writing, their own process. Covering that in a text is like trying to explain the entire human mind in one chapter.

It's a slog, that second draft. I'm about half way through it, maybe less, judging by my notes.

After I finished the first draft I went at it with a big red pen, noting minor and major problems. As I read, I also kept a short list of the major structural elements I planned on changing when I plunged into the next part of the process.

That list keeps growing.

At first it was a page of numbered items. Then I added a few plot points at the bottom as notes. As I worked, I kept thinking of extra things that really do need to be done. Location changes, character changes, plot changes. Research.

Now I have three full pages of numbered issues to sort out.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and feel tired just thinking about it. About how much work I have to do.

That's a problem that's easy to solve, though. You put your blinkers on (not like a car, like a horse) and focus on the task at hand. Break it down into small points.

If you can knock off a couple of those in a day, you're well on your way. If you can edit a couple of chapters tonight, everything's gonna be alright.

That's enough singing. Back to work.

A Million Words

If I ever think I'm not working hard enough, I want this here as a reminder of what can be achieved when it comes to writing.

Rough Edges (James Reasoner): The Wrap Up

Over on the writing front, I wrote 5524 pages of fiction, my all-time high. This translates into 14 books, and a little over 1.1 million words, the first time I've hit the old pulpster level of a million words a year.

The Great Linkage Experiment

That wacky and zany writer of alcoholic adventures, J. A. Konrath told the world to Get Off Your Ass And Do Something. In the last few days, I've taken the message to heart, especially the bit about internet presence.

Over the last year I was spreading my energies too thinly. I had a Danny Hawaii blog and a food photo experiment called Food What I Ate. Don't bother looking for them because they've both been deleted. Now I've cut down to one blog, and if people are going to read it, I need to get them here. This is what's happened so far in that regard:

• I asked for a link exchange with Konrath himself. And he did it. He's a man of his word.
• I also figured if Rickards links to me, why can't his American counterpart, Bryon? I mean, they're almost exactly the same, except one likes weasels and banana paste and the other likes rubber chickens with peanut butter. Bryon was up for it too.
• Tribe went ahead and linked to me without my asking. So did Jennifer. Now there's a polite bloke and blokette.
  
• I've been linking to an excellent website called the Australian Crime Fiction Database for a while now. The creator himself emailed me to thank me for linking, and he's returned the favour. So now I'm between the sheets with authors like Peter Corris and Gabrielle Lord (with Tara Moss in the corner, watching us).

Thanks to all of you for the linkage.

EDIT: Aldo, Gerald, and Tania have joined the hordes. Cheers, guys.

Where Next?

I've been reading the Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. It covers the history of the genre from its beginnings in the 18th century to the modern thriller, with every category in between. At least that's what I believe, because I'm still a wide-eyed lunatic when it comes to crime. It started me thinking about the different types of crime story and where crime was heading.

One side of crime fiction is detective and police fiction, where the good tries to catch the bad, even if the border between blurs. The other side is that of the criminal. In these stories, we learn to empathise with someone that we'd normally have nothing to do with. A serial killer, a stand-over man, a shylock, a robber, a rapist. You can break it down into sub-genres and sub-sub-genres, but to me this is the core of it. Two sides of the same crooked coin.

So how do you write a new type of crime fiction? What else is there?

My brain was powered by lack of sleep and an excess of caffeine in the form of black liquid with bubbles. It worked away at the connections between police, detectives, criminals, spies, sleuths and the like.

And I came up with an idea.

Instead of trying to solve a crime or commit it, I could have a character that just wanted to be part of it. A crime chaser.

A man with a lack of social skills. An observer in life: too gutless to steal or kill; just as unlikely to become a hero. He wants to find a way to live, to feel the rush of something, anything, through his veins. Isn't that why we read crime?

But what kind of person would chase crime, without being a criminal or a hunter of criminals? A taxi driver or a journalist maybe, but I think I prefer the idea of someone who doesn't chase crime in a professional sense. Something more along the lines of an obsession.

Not sure if there's anything concrete here, but I'll see where the idea takes me.

Workspace

Over at Lee Goldberg's blog, there's a post on where we write. It's spreading like smooth peanut butter across the writing blogosphere, so being the tribal animal I am, here's my contribution:



Do I need two computers to write? No. One is for games and music, hence those pretty purple cones. Yes, I'm having breakfast, and yes, Mr. Potato Head is always watching over me, making sure I'm keeping it clean and drug-free for the kiddies.

My room's somewhat cramped, so a panaromic view isn't possible, which means my bookshelf and rack of guitars need special attention. The piles of paper on top of books combine to make up the first draft of my novel.



And for the final piece we have Workspace: The Noir Years (see if you can spot the rubber chicken).

Which Hero Are You?

Big Boo-tay!


Which B-Movie Badass Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Goodbye, 2005

This was the year of Things That Didn't Happen.

I didn't get retrenched. I didn't get published. I didn't move house, finish my PI course, win any competition I entered, finish my novel, learn to drive, buy a car, clear my debts, fix my speakers, pay off my laptop, or throw out my old clothes.

All this is not depressing to me at all, because this has been the year that I worked towards goals. I'm not there yet, but I'm well along the path. So some things did happen.

• Finished the first draft of my first novel. Sent it off to the Debut Daggers and although it wasn't shortlisted, it made it to the unofficial top 25. That's a vote of confidence in my writing.
• Wrote a review of a Diamanda Galas concert and she emailed me to ask permission to put it on her website. Another vote for my writing.
• Finished the first Danny Hawaii short story. We'll see what happens with that.
• Spent a few months in the course that all PIs in NSW have to complete, and ended up with tons of notes and textbooks that should provide me with plenty of details for writing.
  
• Created www.danielhatadi.com which of course includes this here blog.

2006 will be the year that Things Happen.

• It will be the year I get published, one way or another, even if it's a short story in a reputable online zine.
  
• I'll get my driver's license and a car too.
  
• The laptop will be paid off and I'll make a significant dent in my debts.
• And of course I'll finish The Damn Novel, as well as keeping on the path of The Five Year Plan.
  

Most importantly, I'll keep at it. I'll keep writing till my eyes bleed and my fingers excrete a warm, yellow fluid. My back will curve in on itself and I'll become a perpetual digestion machine of hideous design. Might need a plastic keyboard protector for all that.

For the final send off to the year, I'm going to make damn sure I don't do what I did last New Year's Eve. Recovery time will be measured in hours, not days.

*waves drink at 2005*

Book Meme

Every now and then, we must fall prey to these viral internet concoctions.

Stolen from Tribe.

Book Meme: 123.5 is supposed to work as follows:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

And my sentence is from THE EMPTY BEACH by Peter Corris.

"I thought very seriously about the packet of cigarettes on the table next to the flagon, but decided on more wine instead."

Police Photos

Xmas is over and what have I done? Ate and drank, rested, ate and drank and ... shopped.

The eating and drinking involved going over to The Not Wife's parents' turkey farm. No, they don't plant turkey seeds and water them until they turn into turkeys. Instead, like normal turkey farmers, they have three huge sheds with gas heaters and feeding equipment. Can you guess what we ate?

Turkeys.

Slices of turkey meat, turkey stew, turkey pie, turkey and potatoes, turkey ice cream, turkey cordial, the list goes on.

After recovering from all that heavy resting, with Xmas cashola in hand, we powered our way into the city. This was extremely masochistic of us, but much like a Wendy's hot dog, we thought it would all turn out fine. Of course, we ended up feeling sick. The city was chockers, which means filled with people, not chocolates. Stocktake sales had begun and the escalators in stores were so full that security guards had become makeshift escalator traffic cops.

One happy outcome from our misadventure was the purchase of books. After looking in every other bookstore in the city, Abbey's came through for me again.

Got hold of Kaminsky & Roberts' Behind The Mystery, an excellent collection of interviews and photos of everyone's favourite mystery writers. The other purchase was a huge book of Sydney police photos from 1912-1948.



The photos have an other-worldy quality that crawls over your skin, creating a feeling of dread which only increases as you turn the pages. I'm planning on checking out the related exhibition at the Justice & Police Museum in Circular Quay.

Xmas Spirit, New York Style

I don't usually do this, but I have an intense need to share a short video with everyone. It's a 2Mb WMV, which should play fine on most computers.

Of course, I can't take credit for making it, and even though Alfred E. Langley is in the credits, I don't know where it's from. Could be a MAD Magazine reference ...

But hey, it's all in the spirit of Xmas.

Santa & The Cops

What Happened to Kerouac?

If you've ever read Jack Kerouac's On The Road, then you should already have a burning desire to see the DVD I bought on the weekend, What Happened to Kerouac?

Keroauc was, along with Allan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, the creator of the Beats. Not because of a conscious desire to do so, they were just interested in writing and experimentation. With drugs, with sex, with life.

With his writing, Keroauc espoused a new form of spontaneity, where the first draft is the final draft. In reality, there was editing involved with his work, but because he wrote for long stretches at a time, his work has a flowing rhythm to it that I think is more like music than poetry.

In his own time, Keroauc was equally adored and abhored, popular for reasons that he did not agree with. People wanted a piece of him all to themselves: more for the wild-man image that was created by the media, rather than the obvious love he had for everyone, a love that came through like crystal in his writing.

If you're a fan, watching the video is a sit-in-your-chair-bolt-upright experience. The man himself recites some of his prose and poetry, sometimes to live musical accompaniment. I think his writing worked best this way, because that was how it was conceived to begin with.

Don't know anything about Keroauc? Rush off and borrow, buy or five-finger-discount anything and everything by the great man.

Drunk and Feeling Like Kicking Out The Jams

Just the jams?

Not sure about that: I'm thinking more about wielding the hammer of the gods right about now.

Yes, I'm drunk.

To set the mood before I go on, have a read of the lyrics from the song I'm listening to, another Tom Waits toon called 'Shore Leave'. If you can listen to the song, even better. If not, imagine a man who's been drinking shoe polish strained through bread for most of his adult life, howling out an ode to his wife, a woman at home while he's at war.

Mood set? Good.

I've just been to an end-of-year work function, although 'function' is probably the wrong word to use, as it was never an official event. Just the boys getting together with the aim of eating our entire body weight in curry.

And I think I did.

We went to a not plush, but excellent little Indian restaurant in Annandale called 'Surjits', right on Parramatta Road. The place was cramped, and the decor was only impressive in that there was a Shrine To The Gods Of Cricket in the corner; the centrepiece of which was a sculpture of a cricket bat combined with someone like Imran Khan. But I don't really know cricket, so don't count on that being right.

The chairs with small and dull brass bells hanging from the back, decked out to look like the Taj Mahal, those chairs were tight. Tight so you couldn't spread your arms to get the curry or rice into your bowl, tight so you couldn't gesticulate about the topic of choice when you'd had too much Indian beer and Black Label Johnnie Walker.

But that didn't stop us yelling and screaming our way through the meal, also known as the Maharaja's Banquet. All you can eat, and I mean it.

After this barbaric feast, a few pitiful stragglers--including yours truly--wandered down to the only place I knew nearby, The Empire. Usually it's a blues joint, but tonight it was host to 'The Dolly Rockers'.

We didn't end up staying for the headline act, but the support was plunking out suitably cheesy Ramones-style riffs on their passably distorted guitars. We drank Heinekens from tap, which tasted more like Toohey's New. The clientele was mostly of the biker variety with the odd university feral thrown in.

I bummed a lift off one of the guys whose pregnant wife with a new license came by to pick us up. We didn't finish the beer. It just plain couldn't fit.

Damn finite stomachs.

Now I'm home, listening to the same song on repeat because it's setting a drunken and pitiful and glorious mood that I want to hang on to, but can't. I'm getting sober as I type, and as I edit, and as I drink this damn green cordial.

I think it's time I row down on Cuban heels to the blood bank and shoot billiards with a midget until the rain stops.

Peter Temple: Bad Debts

I talked about reading Peter Temple's 'Bad Debts' the other day and I wasn't exactly sure if I liked it. I've changed my mind. The book is bloody good. I say 'bloody' because I'm not sure if I should say 'fucking'.

Not being a fan of horse racing, woodwork, or footy held me back from enjoying it because these are the interests of the main character, Jack Irish. But now that I've finished the whole book--which included not being able to tear my eyes away from the last fifty pages--I can say that even those parts of it held my interest. After I acclimatised to Jack Irish's world I found myself caring about everything that happened to him.

The Australian flavour of the book, in this case Melbournian, was completely convincing. No, it was real. The feeling of each street, suburb, and location was perfectly rendered by a few choice descriptions at each point. I never felt like I didn't know where I was in Irish's world. And none of the Australianisms made me cringe. They were all spot-on. Even the romance in the book worked for me, and it often doesn't in crime novels. I found myself rooting for Jack and his female interest.

Rooting. That's funny.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Temple's work. His writing is something that is worth aspiring to.

Down In The Hole

You may be wondering about the recent title changes to this blog.

I decided that Daniel Hatadi - Crime Writer was just plain boring, and Crime Writer Down Under was too self-consciously Australian and generic.

So I thought about picking a song title from my favourite artist of all time, Tom Waits.

I remember turning the telly to SBS one lonely Saturday night, only to be confronted by a madman preacher, shouting what could have been obscenities into a megaphone. The song, I found out weeks later, was called Way Down In The Hole. From that moment on, I was hooked.

Removing 'Way' makes the title catchier, and saves me from legal issues. Down In The Hole also has the added benefit of a subliminal link to Australia, the Land Down Under.

To mark the naming of the blog, I wrote a short ode to Tom Waits, called (you guessed it), Down In The Hole. It's over in the fiction section.

Give it a read and tell me what you think.

EDIT: I've changed the names and some of the lines in the story to make it my own. I seriously respect copyright, and I realised I was basically stealing someone else's characters. Not good. So, it's fixed.

Computer Game Heaven: Darwinia

When I was a wee-wee laddie, I was even younger than when I wanted to be a musician. My plan at that stage of my life was to be a computer games programmer. I even had some limited success with a near-finished puzzle game. Limited in that it never got published, but I did get interest from a major company at the time.

That was about ten years ago.

Fast forward to ten hours ago when I just finished playing one of the most amazing computer games I've had the chance to hurl my mouse at. It's called Darwinia.

It's a strange combination of strategy, action, and psychedelia. The story that drives it works in tandem with the musical soundtrack to create an experience that is unlike any other game I've come across before. The sounds are also excellent, and in the credits it says that the voices of the Darwinians (the little green men) are done by Maddie The Cat.



I won't even try to describe it in any more detail. If you're into this kind of thing, you'll check out the site and probably buy it. The game is that good.

See ... sniff ... I'm gettin all emotional now, rememberin the times when I was a lad. Scuse me, I have to go find some tissues.

The True Nature Of Love

I go downstairs for a drink and see that The Not-Wife is about to watch a romantic comedy with J-Lo in it. Not her usual taste in movies by a long shot. But it's Sunday, and with a week of work ahead of both of us, I consider watching the movie with her.

Sitting on the couch next to her, I notice a new candle of her's burning away with a decent sized flame. The candle is big and green and on a tasteful wooden stand. What's out of place is that it's early in the afternoon and there is plenty of sun streaming into the lounge room.

I decide against watching the movie--even though Jane Fonda is in it--and I tell The Not-Wife I'm going upstairs to write. Before I go, I ask her why she lit the candle.

She says: "To symbolise your death."

And that is the true nature of love.

Locality

I'm reading Peter Temple's 'Bad Debts' and mostly enjoying it. Mostly. The characters sing, the prose is clipped tight, and I like the way there are no chapters: just scene breaks or page breaks. It feels very real.

The problem is that I'm not sure I like it.

It's set in Australia, Melbourne to be exact; in racetracks, pubs, and poor housing areas. These are all places I don't really want to be spending time in. They are the parts of Australia that I don't like.

If it was set in America or England I would probably find it more interesting. I could get caught up in the local flavour of grime without getting too close to reality. Which is the main problem, really. I read to escape. I don't want reality, I already have that. I want some element of fantasy, whether that is through location, style, or just plain imagination.

Still, it is a ripping yarn, and I'm powering through it. At the very least, I can learn about the writing, if not the locale.

Length

I think the last few posts have been too long. This one's shorter.

Bone Up On History

There are two opposing schools of thought in art that I've always struggled with. I'll call them Isolation and Immersion. And I'll put capitals in front of them to make them Sound Really Important.

Being an artist in Isolation is just that. You avoid exposure to any art that could taint your work. The idea is that to be truly original you have to remain untouched, virginal. Immersion is just as obvious. Expose yourself to everything you can get your grubby hands on. Lose your virginity. Bone up on history. Absorb as much new work as you do old.

I used to be a firm believer in the School Of Isolation, but it was Kurt Vonnegut that changed my mind. His first book, Player Piano, was a straightforward sci-fi with hints of satire. It wasn't until Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five that Vonnegut started messing around with form and structure, finding his unique voice.

When I started my first novel I thought about trying to revolutionise writing as we know it, but it was Vonnegut's career that inspired me to be less ambitious the first time out. When I'm good enough, I can try my hand at playing with the form.

But I don't think that's possible without knowing what came before. So I decided to immerse myself in my chosen genre.

Authors I've read over the last year include Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Janet Evanovich, Peter Corris, Michael Connelly, Barry Eisler, Eric Garcia, Ken Bruen, Jonathan Lethem, Dennis Lehane, Robert Crais, and James Ellroy. Mostly one from each and a few from some.

It's not just novels that influence crime writing. Film and comics, or graphic novels, are all intersecting like different cultures trading goods. Artists in all of these formats are borrowing techniques from each other and it's pretty exciting. It's been a long time since comics have made me feel this way, but I'm a babe in these new dark woods. I'm doing my best to catch up on the classics before I delve in further. I'll yap some more on my graphic adventures later.

I really want to end this post with another reference to bones and virgins, but I'll leave that to my readers.

Because they really know what they're talking about.

Compression In Writing

Being a programmer, I have a fair understanding of what compression is when it comes to computers. I'm only going to bore you with a few techy-type paragraphs before I get onto how this relates to writing.

A computer image is a grid of coloured dots. The dots are so small you don't see them, you just see the picture. All these dots have to be stored in the computer and that takes space.

Now, if this image has a large area that's a single colour--let's say black--that area takes up a lot of space for no good reason.

Compression is a way of making information take up less space.

A simple way of doing this is to use an instruction. Instead of storing all those black dots separately, we have an instruction that says something like 'this many black dots'. The instruction is small, taking up much less space than thousands of black dots would.

Back to writing.

A sentence or a paragraph can take up more space than it needs to. Here's an example:

Winifred raised her eyebrows, looking perplexed. "This is most perplexing!" she exclaimed as she walked across the black and white spotted rug that was covered in light grey cat hair. She bent down slowly with her knees and reached her hand up to pat the one year old Blue Russian cat on its head, and as she did so, she thought about the problem on the rug. Below, next to her left foot, a red pool of blood was slowly spreading out into a circle around her brown leather shoes. Looking down at the blood, shaking her head, then raising it again to look at her cat, she also raised her voice, and exclaimed, "I will not have a dead body on my favourite rug, which was given to me by my long dead grandmother when I was too young to remember, only to be told this years later by the very same man who is lying here on the rug, dead, and in a pool of his own blood, my father!" she complained, exasperated.

This is an extreme example of overwriting. Notice how a lot of information is repeated. Winifred raises her eyebrows, looks perplexed, then tells us she is perplexed by exclaiming it. There is also a lot of unnecessary detail about the scene in front of her. Do we need to know so much about the rug or the cat? No. What is important is that her father is dead.

Winifred walked across the room and stepped over the body. Her shoe splashed into a pool of blood, which her cat was lapping up. She backhanded the cat across the room and said, "Who the fuck killed my dad?"

It amounts to the same information. There's a dead body on the rug and a pool of blood. Winifred walks across the room and is obviously distressed about the situation. But here she says one line which tells us she is feeling both upset and confused. I took some character liberties with the revised version and even included some action on the part of the cat, allowing Winifred to vent her frustration. I'm also not repeating information by telling you how Winifred feels, then letting her tell you, then showing you.

It's all compressed into a few actions and a line of dialogue.

Compression. Fascinating stuff.

The Details

The Lord of The Rings occupied an entire school holiday when I was but a wee lad. Friends would visit and want to go to the beach, but I turned them down because I wanted to finish those bloody books.

I'm pretty fast, but I'm not a speed reader. I like to hear the sound of the words and sentences unfold, and that's probably because I've played guitar for half my life.

Tolkien uses so much detail that you know the colour of the shadow that falls on that particular worn part of the leaf in question, where a tiny insect flutters its even tinier wings. You then learn the shape of the patterns on those wings, and that goes on for almost another whole volume.

During that fateful school holiday, I devised a tactic for getting through.

Skip the boring bits.

Just like at a party when someone switches into a tone of voice that makes you feel trapped, it's easy to sense when Tolkien switches into his descriptive voice. Unlike being at a party, escape is easy. Just turn the page.

That's what I did. And I don't think I missed the essence of the story at all. I loved those books to death. Years later I read them again and had the same level of enjoyment.

If you haven't already skipped this post, if you've made the journey all the way to the end, like Frodo did, I will now reward you with the point.

I like those boring bits.

Even if I don't read them, I get a feeling that what is happening is real, that the author knows what they're talking about, and it helps me get caught up in the rest of the story.

Now will you just throw that bloody ring in the mountain and go home, Frodo?

Snippet

I'm bored, so here's a couple of paragraphs from a random page of my novel:

"My brain was knocking on the side of my skull and whatever was in my stomach was trying to do the same. I'd woken up with a hangover that stopped just short of having to pray at the great white altar. My tolerance for booze was at an all time low.

It was only an interview for a fake job, but I was already thinking about taking time off. A quick shower, shave, a strong coffee, some pills, and the mirror told me lies about how I felt."

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To ...

"... a waitress slapped the back of my hand."

I'm rewriting a very early scene in the novel. The characters are clearer to me now that I've spent so much time with them, so I need to make sure the first half of the novel rings true for each of them.

The words above are the ones I meant to type, but after re-reading the last page or two, they came out a bit different in the word processor:

"... a waitress slapped the back of my mind."

I would love to see that happen, out in the real world, or better still, I'd like to feel it myself.

Would it hurt? Would my thoughts become all messed up? Would I forget my PIN number? Or worse, would I accidentally transfer all of my money to someone else?

*shrug*

Crime And Comedy

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now. Ever since I got an email from a lady that takes her art seriously.

Can I really joke about crime?

I wonder if I'm being true to my characters if I do. They've taken on a shape of their own, a life beyond the page and the words I have laid before them. They have feelings, desires, and reasons for both. When they commit a crime, there is a dark force inside them, driving them to an extreme version of themselves, a version capable of murder.

How did they end up there? Did they think about who they were becoming along the way, did they question themselves as they walked along the road to damnation?

Would they be pissed off if I made a joke at their expense, just to get a laugh out of my readers?

My life has been unblemished by such dire circumstances. I've been in a protective bubble for most of my upbringing. It wasn't until I moved out on my own that I went out to see what those mean streets are for myself. And I certainly didn't get involved in anything approaching violent crime. But the more research I do, the worse I feel about writing crime comedy. I feel like I'm taking advantage of a situation for my own personal gain.

There is another side to all of this. There's the Mel Brooks version of comedy.

If I cut my finger, that's a tragedy, but if someone else falls into an open manhole and dies, that's comedy.

Comedy brings happiness to people's lives and laughter is scientifically proven to be good for your health. If I meditate on that, I can do something good for other people. Maybe make them feel a bit better about themselves and their life. Maybe even stop them from committing a crime.

So I'm back at the start now. Didn't take long. I don't think I've been particularly rigorous about my exploration of the question, but I do have an answer.

Yes. I can do whatever the hell I please. Hopefully no one will beat me up for it.

How Do I Do It? How Do I Keep Writing?

Someone recently asked me these questions and I thought it was worth putting my answer here.

How do I do it?

I just do it. I make sure I write something every day, and an hour a day is far better than cramming in a weekend of writing once a month.

Do what you can to minimise distractions: attach the keys permanently to your husband (you can choose where), tell the kids to leave you alone during your special 'writing time', set up a desk in a room where you won't be disturbed, or maybe even get hold of a laptop and sit out in the backyard. Get the rest of your family to walk the dog every night for an hour.

That's the practical side. I'd say the other side was emotional.

What is stopping you from getting past chapter 2?

It's not time, because you can make time if you truly want to. So I'd say it's something like your 'inner critic'. Tell that voice that keeps telling you the writing isn't good enough to shut up. Ignore it. Write silly, stupid things just for the fun of it. As Hemingway said, the first draft of anything is shit. The real sweat is the revision process. But before you can get to that you need to let your inspiration flow uninhibited. Have a glass of wine if it helps. Even if all you do is write a sentence every day, you'll find that your writing muscles start getting stronger. Keep at it.

When you're not writing, think about writing. Watch people and look for the little details that make them who they are. Notice everything around you and start thinking how you could turn everything into a story. Do that for a couple of weeks and your brain will be overflowing with ideas. Write them down in a special notebook.

I can also recommend to you all the books I have on my website. I've read them all and they've all helped. I'm almost addicted to reading books on writing.

What else can I say? I love bookshops, but you don't have to. Just love books. Read them and try to figure out why they made you stay up all night even though you have to get up early in the morning so you can get the kids ready for school.

Writing groups? I'm too chicken to go myself. I've been meaning to join a Thursday night group but haven't. All I've done is paid for a year's membership with the NSW Writer's Centre. That way I can say I'm a member. And I get a newsletter, and 10% off books at various stores.

I may not be a member of a writing group, but I have found something that's just as good. The Mystery Writer's Forum. It's specialised of course, but the feedback I've had from other writers has been invaluable. Maybe you can find something on the net that suits whatever writing you find the most interesting. There's lots out there.

Now, start writing. And keep writing!

Me, I'm going back to bed. I'm sick. Sniffle.

Not Just A Fiction Writer

Writing is not so much something you do as something you are.

When I came home from a Diamanda Galas concert recently, I absolutely had to write about my experience. I sweated in front of my laptop until I had written what turned out to be a review of the concert. I put it up on this site and left it at that. It was just something I had to do.

A month later, I received an email from the woman herself, asking for permission to use my review on her site. I paced around the room, leaving trails in the carpet, wondering whether I should let her. I had to weigh up the pros and cons of the situation before I went ahead with it.

Can you tell I'm lying?

You can read all about it in the recent press section of the Diamanda Galas website, and here's the direct link.

It's a very satisfying feeling to find out that a piece of writing you had to do also had the ability to touch someone else.

Especially when that person is the one you wrote about.

Debut Dagger Delights

Can't hold out. Any. Longer. Must. Blog about. Unofficial encouragement.

I entered the Debut Dagger awards a number of months ago, didn't make the short list, and stopped thinking about it. Last week, I received this email:

Dear Daniel,

First of all, thank-you for entering this year's Debut Dagger. As you've probably seen from the mailing list or the website by now, I'm afraid you didn't make the shortlist. One of the difficulties of entering a competion like this is that if you don't reach the shortlist, it's hard to get a sense of where you stand, so I wanted to write and let you know that you were a whole lot closer to the top than to the bottom. In the process of compiling the shortlist, we ended up with an informal longlist of about 25 entries from which the final 13 were chosen: Loving the Law was one of the 25.

I appreciate that it's a mixed blessing to know you came so close, but I hope the positives outweigh the negatives and you take this as a big vote of confidence in your writing. Just reaching the final 25 is no small accomplishment. At that stage, the differences between entries can be wafer thin, and the judgements we have to make are very finely balanced. I hope you take encouragement from the achievement, and wish you the very best of luck with your future writing. If you're still eligible for next year's competition and have some new or improved material, I for one would be very keen to read it.

It's not official, but it is the first feedback I've had from the world of writing. Printed out on extra bright white paper, this is now stuck on the wall behind my writing desk. It's there for whenever I start losing hope.

But I'm stupid, so that hasn't happened yet.

New Danny Hawaii Website

Just to tease the hell out of all of you (and myself), I've cobbled together a new Danny Hawaii website.

Don't get your knickers in a knot about it though. It's pretty bare. I just want it to be a placeholder for when the novel does come out. The previous version of the Danny Hawaii website was a mixed up, confused mess of all my creative interests. Now I'm focussing in on the writing.

There's an email list, which happens to be the same as the one I've put in the contacts section. The idea is that if you don't want to be a regular visitor to my blog, but you do want to read the novel, sign up to the email list and I'll keep you informed.

Daniel Hatadi OUT

Windup Laptop

"Free wind-up laptops for world's poor" from news.com.au

Great.

Let's save those poor heathens from their technology-free Hell. They must be so depressed, not being able to afford a laptop of their own. Soon their lives will be free of disease and health problems. Is there anything a windup laptop can't do?

I dunno. How about windup FOOD?

The Stars Tell All

Stolen from The Onion:

Taurus April 20 - May 20

Your long-held belief that the pen is mightier than the sword will be put to the test this week when you sign up for a combination fencing/calligraphy class co-taught by an angry Spaniard and a weary sensei.

Danny Hawaii Toons

Music has been on my mind lately.

I've had my first brush with fame with an artist I truly respect. And it got me thinking about my own music career. The one I decided to leave behind.

If you've read my previous blog, you may know that before I used Danny Hawaii as a character in my novel, I was doing music under the name. My idea was to combine blues and beats, in a future retro style.

I was getting somewhere, but I came to the realisation that I didn't think I was a good enough singer. And I wanted to be, because damn it if I was going to write music for someone else again.

So I left it all behind, replacing my music with writing. And the writing bug has hit me hard. I seem to get the same satisfaction out of it, without the downside. With writing, I don't have to carry around heavy amps and guitars, or worry about endless metres of cabling, sound levels, tuning, or the lack of dedication and ability of the other members in the band.

Because there is no band. It's just me.

In a fit of nostalgic goodness, I now present to you a link to four of the better tracks I did under the Danny Hawaii name.



Danny Hawaii Toons

Care For Your Characters

I've put this here because I think it may be one of the most important issues in a crime novel. And I don't want to forget it.

***

From Ms Snark, literary agent:

I think the thing that's missing in most of the novels I reject is that the characters don't seem to grow or change enough. I read a lot of mystery and thriller submissions and it's like dead bodies are leaves on the ground: no impact. Even in cozies, there has to be some sense that this isn't quite normal and will mean something to the characters.

***

I know I'm already guilty of this mistake with some of my flatter characters. So this one goes (puts on harsh Aussie accent) ... straight to the trophy room.

What Kind Of Writer Are You?

You're a Dialogue/Character Writer!


What kind of writer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is probably the only online quiz I've ever taken that revealed something about me that I didn't already know.

Now, back to the plotting ...

Little Words

My brain hurts.

My eyes have assaulted it with a pair of garden shears, and on top of that, they inserted a lobster directly into my cerebral cortex.

Translation: I spent a good few hours rushing through my ms to get together an overview. The point of this exercise, aside from turning my brains into soft noodles, was to give me the chance to step back and think about the purpose of each scene in terms of the whole story.

I didn't mean for the writing to look so small, or to have the word 'Danny' appear so often, but here it is in techicolour glory:



In other news: while writing the novel, whenever I thought of a catchphrase I snuck it away into a secret file, with the hope of using it ... someday.

* Peter Corris goes clubbing with Janet Evanovich.

* Danny Hawaii wants to be a PI. Only his lack of ability is stopping him.

* Toilet training can be fun. So can training to become a PI.

Try making up your own and send them to me. If I like them, I'll remember you, and I'll send you a copy of the novel when it comes out. I promise.

Danny Hawaii. Loving The Law. Read it. When it's finished.

Manuscript Megalomania

It's all about me. The me, me, me talk just dang well never stops around these here parts.

Today's talk on Me is all about errors. Errors that creep into writing, so's you don't even notice them. Little errors, like 'them' instead of 'the', or 'bard' instead of 'bad'.

Then bigger errors like, 'pacing too fast' or 'this part sucks dead dog's b***z'.

Four days of intense shoulder hunching and red pen wielding have given me this masterpiece of errors, shown below for your viewing pleasure.



Note to self: Read it and weep.

Things Mean Things To Me

Years ago, I said this to someone and it sounded so silly it stuck. It's been trapped in my skull ever since, and whenever I find myself getting too Deep & Meaningful, I use this sentence to take a step back.

Things mean things to me.

Which leads me right into yapping about these pictures. I took advantage of my day job to print out the whole damn novel, and then I got all emotional and took some snaps of it.

Of the manuscript, the MS.



As a computer professional, I'm used to dealing with words on the screen. I wrote the whole novel on computers. The images don't convey how weighty the thing feels when my hands are wrapped around it, but there's something very tangible and awe inspiring about a printed tome. At 283 pages, tome isn't the right word, but being my first novel, it feels that way to me.

I'm going to buy a special red marker, one that sings in my hand like a magical weapon, and then I'm going to take a couple of days to attack my manuscript.

That's when the work truly begins.

Study Time

I took a break from working on the novel to get some perspective, so that my head is clear for the second draft. For the last six weeks, I've been working up to printing that thick wad of manuscript and going at it with a red marker. Now I'm raring to go.

So what do I do instead? I procrastinate. Just like any good writer should(n't). Just like I knew I would.

(cue James Brown dance moves)

Two books on writing are winging their way across the globe, courtesy of Amazon. I've ploughed through two other books already. On top of that, I'm reading Neil Gaiman's latest and I've enrolled in a one day course on publishing.

It's a full day on Saturday and I'm pretty sure my mind will be successfully blown away. Eight hours of intensive study in anything is a great way to burn brain calories.

Here's a link to the course: Demystifying Book Publishing

And now back to work (yeah, sure, Dan).

Eat My Shorts

My last month was spent in a frantic and ill-advised attempt at spitting out two short stories. One was to be 3000 words for a local competition called the 'Queen Of Crime', the other would have been 4000 words for a Writer's Digest short story comp.

One is a Danny Hawaii story, set a couple of months before the novel. He's still finding his feet, but he does his best to help a shop owner track down a vandal--by making the vandal come to her.

The other story is a more ambitious piece. I've been reading a book called Destructive Emotions. It's an account of a series of talks held in the year 2000 involving the Dalai Lama, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. One of the speakers mentions how prisons have been experimenting with Buddhist meditation classes for the inmates. He talks a bit about the successes ... and the failures.

Obviously the story I was trying to write is about one of the failures. How else could I call it a crime story?

I had two deadlines to work to, both days apart, both at the end of the month. 7000 quality words encompassing two stories in that short a time was something I found impossible.

So I gave up.

What I did do was concentrate on the story that was more important to me. The Danny Hawaii one. To get it up to speed, I did a lot of back and forth with various 'critters', one who I'm sure will comment here.

Hi, M!

I'm pretty happy with the story I sent. It's the first decent sized short story I've written and it's been a hell of an education. I've heard short stories compared to small sports cars, whereas novels are more like trucks.

Fingers crossed, I hope to become the Queen of Crime for 2005.

I'm sure I'll never live it down.

Viral Tagging

Mary tagged me.

The RULES

1. Go into your archives
2. Find your 23rd post
3. Find the fifth sentence (or the closest one to it)
4. Post the text of your sentence in your blog along with these rules
5. Tag five other people

Because my blogging is becoming more convoluted than fettucini mixed with spaghetti, I chose to use my old Danny Hawaii blog as the source, and this blog as the destination.

Here's my sentence:

"Eat food."

Which of course is a reference to my other blog: Food What I Ate.

And because I'm a rebel, I refuse to tag anyone else.

The virus stops here.

If you're a rebel too, that means you can go against my word and pretend that I've tagged you. If you do, and I strongly suggest you don't, tell me about it.

But if you do, think on this: who are you rebelling against?

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

Diamanda Galas at the Sydney State Theatre, October 21st, 2005

GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY

The lights went down and Diamanda walked out, taking her seat in front of the piano under cover of darkness. I could see this because I was in the second row, almost dead centre.

Small sounds of her adjusting the seat and microphone, then the first low notes from the piano. Powerful and percussive, hidden somewhere inside them were the blues.

Then came the voice.

From the pits of her soul, she started as low as a woman can go. A single light faded in. She moved, she writhed, her feet worked at the pedals, her face was part of the song. Anger, sadness, frustration, pain. It all showed, and it all could be heard--in her voice, in her playing, in the stamping of her foot.

No banter, no patter, nothing to appease the audience or give us a reprieve from the intensity of her art. After every song, the light would fade and she would turn away to drink water. And Diamanda needed to. Her four octave vocal range was used to full effect, tearing from the furnace of her lungs, shifting to sweet, angelic tones, then back to a chattering, scratched soundscape.

Her voice startled me at times. She would lull us into security, then rip into a screeching, banshee wail. A strobe light came on to pierce the eyes as well as the ears. Just as quickly, back to a soft touch on the keys. Back to a single red light.

There was humour among the darkness. A song she wrote with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, entitled 'Baby's Insane', started off as a ragtime tune. With choruses of 'hide all the knives, cause baby's insane', there were a few chuckles from the audience, who otherwise were simply too scared to utter a word.

Themes of guilt, death, and isolation were constant. The old bluesman, Skip James, played piano in a similarly disjointed fashion. He would tell the audience that his music existed solely to inspire dread. It was not for dancing.

After her hour long set, there was begging, chanting, and whistling for two encores. I couldn't decide whether the audience's stamping of feet on the floor was something to be pleased or embarrassed about.

Encores over, Diamanda walked to the front of the stage and bowed slightly three times, centre, left, and right. We cheered and clapped, and then she smiled and walked off stage with music in her moves, waving good-bye.

The Not So Mean Streets Of Sydney

For those of you that read this blog and don't know Sydney too well, or even for those that never venture far outside their suburb, here's a website for you.

Take a bite out of the apple (secret code for 'click on the picture').

Walk Sydney Streets
Alan, 91, walks every street in 182 suburbs of Sydney Australia - 401 photos
"Streets ahead of us, and he's 90" - The Sydney Morning Herald
"Australia's Forrest Gump" - 7 TV network's Today Tonight

Go Aussie Go!

From SarahWeinman.com:

It may be too early to call this a bona fide trend, but then again, so often we get a trend of one these days. But considering Kathryn Fox's debut MALICIOUS INTENT will be out next month in the UK (from Hodder Headline) with US publication to follow soon, and now this new deal just announced, it may be safe to say that the next group of rising stars is female, and from Australia ...

Read more: Crime Writers Down Under

Now, if only I can figure out a cheap and easy way to become female.

Abbeys: Crime Fiction Capital of Sydney

I simply cannot believe that I haven't checked this bookstore out before. Living in Sydney for most of my life made me aware of it, but I only went in once to get a language book, many moons ago.

Saturday changed everything. I now have a new favourite haunt.

Abbeys Bookshop.

It has the best collection of crime and true crime novels in Sydney I've found so far. Authors that I previously would have had to order through Amazon are right there on the shelves in front of me. They even put out a monthly 'Crime Chronicle', a newsletter with blurbs on the latest and greatest.

I stumbled around, eyes glazed over, on a bookish high. When I saw the NEW CRIME section, I felt like I'd come home.


While systematically checking each section nearby, I got a big old smile on my face at this:


Then, my fantasies started playing out. Where would my book be on the shelf? Between which two authors does my name reside?



So if you're ever in the City Of Sydney, pop on over to York Street, just behind the Queen Victoria Building, and look out for the guy with the beanie.

Just don't punch me, okay? Just because I write crime doesn't mean I'm tough.

Guitar Shred Show

In my spare time, and before the days of The Novel, I've always played guitar. So you can imagine my joy, my wonder, my ecstasy, when I stumbled across this site.

It's a strange combination of flash animation, interactive music and Zen guitar method, all passed on to you by a Zen Guitar Monk Guru, hidden in an exotic location.

And you definitely have to explore the whole site. Do the Lesson & Jam and enter into a diabolical competition with a Demon Accordian Player.

Click on him, YOU MUST.



I think it's one of the funniest things I've seen this year.

Advice

Stolen from Inkslinger:

Decide exactly where you want to go professionally, then act as if you're already there.

Five Year Plan

I've always heard of people having five year plans. It's a question that gets asked in most job interviews and it's one that I don't usually have an answer for. It's the nature of us creative types, always looking for the next Big Idea.

Rather than flounder around for the next few years, I thought I'd try coming up with a Five Year Plan myself. I'm pretty sure that if I use lots of Capital Letters, I should be able to make all of this A Reality.

The plan took about five seconds to come up with. It's pretty straightforward. Every year, write a novel, submit the previous year's novel, and make sure the novel before that gets published. I can't predict sales figures, but three novels out in the bookstores should allow me turn a living.

I hope.

And that is my goal. The goal of my Five Year Plan.

Earn a living as a writer.

THE PLAN

Year 1 (2005):
Finish first novel.

Year 2 (2006):
Finish second novel.
Get first novel on the way to publishing.

Year 3 (2007):
Finish third novel.
Publish first novel.
Get second novel on the way to publishing.

Year 4 (2008):
Finish fourth novel.
Publish second novel.
Get third novel on the way to publishing.

Year 5 (2009):
Finish fifth novel.
Publish third novel.
Get fourth novel on the way to publishing.
Become a full time writer.

Books On Writing What I Read In The Last YearPART III: THE FRIENDLY

The last of my series on shameless Amazon links to books I've read and didn't buy on Amazon.

I'll plug a local bookstore instead, because this is where I bought this book: Better Read Than Dead.

Just one little book here. Look at it, isn't it cute?

* pats book on head *

The Writer's Mentor - Ian Jackman
I like this book. Good to keep nearby for those times when you need motivation to keep going. It's a great list of quotes from writers of all walks of life. Makes you feel like you're not the only one going through the torture that is writing.

Revision: PHASE 1 COMPLETE

I finished my first draft a few weeks ago, and since then I've spent every lunch hour, evening, and weekend on doing a first pass revision of the whole damn thing.

A few minutes ago, I finished.

It's a temporary satisfaction at best, but I still feel somewhat sad. I've lived with my characters and the story for just over the last year, and now I'm telling them I'm going to leave them alone for a month. They're sad too. I will be back though, soon, and there will be lots more work to do.

It would be much easier to take a memory forgetfulness pill and get right back into it, but hey, those things aren't without side effects, so I'll do it the natural way.

By just waiting.

Doop-de-doop-de-doo.

Waiting.

Books On Writing What I Read In The Last YearPART II: THE BAD

I honestly read each and every one of the books I link to. Which is a shame, because I could have spent time reading better books than these:

Private Eyes: a writer's guide to private investigators - Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet & John Landreth
I should have listened to the reviews on Amazon. The book tries to make the PI life seem more glamorous than it is, and doesn't offer much in the way of hard facts or details. How do I know this? I'm in the middle of a PI course myself, and the two textbooks I have for it are excellent (and not available to anyone but the students).

Christopher Vogler - The Writer's Journey
Joseph Campbell did a legendary amount of research into mythology in all cultures, finding striking similarities. At one point in the history of Disney, this author wrote a one page summary of mythological structure in film. Since then, it has become the boilerplate for most Hollywood films. Worth staying away from for that reason alone.

Robert McKee - Story
Robert McKee is passionate, opinionated, and some would say visionary. I would agree with the first two, and I would also like to add that his verbosity is out of control.

William Noble - Conflict, Action & Suspense
This book was a chore to get through, but I forced myself to do it. Why? The subject is an important one for mystery and crime novels. Some day I'd like to rewrite William Noble's book from scratch myself.

And look out for the next entry: PART III - THE FRIENDLY

Books On Writing What I Read In The Last YearPART I: THE GOOD

I've read quite a few books on writing over the last year, while working on the novel. So I thought I'd share, starting off with the books that were good.

If you're not an aspiring writer, you may want to skip to the Steven King book--it's probably the only one you'll read.

Patricia T. O'Conner - Woe Is I
I searched for this book for months in physical bookstores, finally giving up and ordering it from Amazon. After a month had passed and the other items in my order had all been shipped, I still hadn't received this book. I contacted Amazon and they sent me a new copy, free of charge, with faster air freight. It came to me within a week. A great refresher course in grammar.

Orson Scott Card - Characters & Viewpoint
Even though I'm writing crime, Orson Scott Card is my favourite author. I've been reading and re-reading his books since early high school. His writing is the definition of clarity. Which means that he has a pretty good idea on characters, viewpoint, and every other ingredient of a good story.

Orson Scott Card - How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
Has a great section on what Orson calls the MICE quotient. Milieu, Idea, Character, Events. The idea is that every story can only contain so much of each of these, and you have to decided which ones are the most important to your story.

Monica Wood - Description
I like to refresh myself on this every now and then. This book taught me to search for the telling detail - it can describe much more than what is told.

Nancy Kress - Beginnings, Middles & Ends
So far the best book I've read on structure and plot.

Steven King - On Writing
An interesting insight into one of the most successful authors' writing process, this one is more of a memoir, and that is where it is at its most compelling.

Gillian Roberts - You Can Write A Mystery
An amazingly concise and clear handbook for writing a mystery, this book gave me direction where I only had some idea of where to go.

Deadly Doses: a writer's guide to poisons - Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner
A good reference for deciding what poison a villain will use, it can be skimpy on the details. Worth it for the cross reference section, where poisons are listed by toxicity, duration, and symptoms.

Look out for the next post on THE BAD.

Covet Not Thy Cover

I'm right in the thick of my first-pass revision of the novel. The idea is to clean up the current prose so that when I come back to it after a month's break, it'll be a bearable read. Then I can look at the Big Picture and see how to improve the novel.

This can get pretty boring.

As a distraction, I've spent time dreaming of fame and fortune. One way of playing out my fantasies is to imagine what my book covers will look like. Today, instead of imagining, I tried my hand at book cover design. Here are a couple of the results:



If you want to see some examples of book covers done right, complete with critiques, have a look-see over at Most Coveted Covers.

Australians Buy 80 Million Books

No, not each of us. Even if they were a cent each, that couldn't be done. Why did you even think that? What are you, crazy?

Here are the stats (skip 'em if you hate 'em) in more detail, and for even more detail than that, you can click on the link that I ripped it all from, down the bottom of the post.

Australians bought more than 80 million new books worth almost $1.5 billion in the 2003/04 financial year. 67 per cent were through 561 bookshops, department stores - 19 per cent, supermarkets and other businesses sold 8 per cent. 98 per cent were printed books. That probably makes the 2 per cent as eBooks.

What does this mean to me?

Aussies like reading. These are new books mind you, so that doesn't count second hand sales and borrowing. That means a lot of reading. If someone happens to like one of those borrowed books, chances are they'll buy the author's next book for themselves (or their librarian-friend).

Considering how much crime tv is on the telly, I'd say a sizeable proportion of those books are crime related, whether fiction or true crime.

I reckon there's a living to be made in amongst all that.

That's what I aim to do.

Data from "Australians buy 80 million books" - AAP

Greetings

Welcome to the brand spankin' new blog, and a very special welcome to those of you who are making the transition from the Danny Hawaii blog.

Have a trawl around the website, add it to your bookmarks or favourites, go all out and make it your home page.

I won't stop you.

In these dark alleys you will find:

• Smatterings of short fiction
• News on the progress of the first novel and the trials and tribulations involved with getting it published
• The biography of me, myself, and I.

And much, much more. Well, maybe a little bit more.

Alright, there's nothing else! Get out of here, you young whippersnappers! Stay out of my rose bushes!

The First Draft

About two hours ago, after a year and six weeks, I typed in the final sentence of the first draft of my first novel.

It's called LOVING THE LAW, and its main character is Danny Hawaii, PI-in-training, on the case that will make or break his license.

Like any good writer of detective fiction, I toasted the entire universe with a big fat glass of Wild Turkey, straight. My lady friend is on shift work, so she didn't have the energy to celebrate with me. That will have to wait until Saturday.

As a present to myself I decided to walk up to King Street and have a look around for ... a present to myself from ... myself.

Walked in to Better Read Than Dead and looked around for a bookish gift. First thing I stumbled across was a trade paperback of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Flipped it over, read the blurb. Sounded good. Hmmm. Maybe something crime related is more appropriate.

Sashayed over to the blackest section in the bookstore and perused the latest and greatest. Ran my eyes over all the now-familiar authors and imagined my book up there with them. Right between Harris and Hoag.

Nah.

I didn't feel like celebrating my achievement by reading someone else who's already made it. Tonight was about me.

Then I wandered over to the reference section. Found a big fat Oxford Australian Dictionary with lots of words and a hard cover. Ooh, don't have one of those. Oh wait, there's a Collins one too. And a Macquarie. Which one to get? Shrug.

I stepped back out onto King Street and breathed in the perfumed air, designed by Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Holden.

A couple of doors down I spied a music store. I cast my eye over all the sales and new releases at the front, then headed for the back. Flicked through the music DVD section and stumbled across the DVD I'm about to watch. The Best Of The Blues Brothers. It's a collection of clips from Saturday Night Live appearances and is presented by Aykroyd himself. The Blues Brothers is a movie I grew up with, and it seemed fitting to celebrate the completion of a Danny Hawaii novel with something related.

I mean, where do you think the hat comes from?

Longer Than I Thought

The more experience I have with writing, the more I realise that it all takes longer than you expect. And ends up being longer.

I started the novel on August 2nd, 2004. That means I've been at it for just over a year now. I originally meant to finish it by April 1st, 2005.

I thought that would be funny.

Every month or so I reshuffled my rough word count targets and spread the finish date further out. My original estimate of a 65,000 word novel is panning out to be closer to 70,000, or maybe even 75,000.

Last night I unfroze Danny Hawaii and his 'friends', Piper and Bernadette. One of them was verbally cutting loose on the others. They drove off, leaving the verbal abuser at home, alone.

My next scene involves something upsetting happening to Mr. Hawaii, involving a large material possession.

Alright, that's enough teasing.

The point of this ramble is to re-iterate how excited I am. I have an outline document that I use as a reference while I'm writing, and I'm very close to the end of the outline. This means I'm close to finishing. I can't wait to find out what happens. There are still details that are somewhat up in the air, details that I can only discover through revision.

Excitement!

Word count: 65,221 (over 65K!)

Romance And Detectives

I can't help cringing when this happens.

A detective is waiting in his office, drinking the hair of the dog. A tall blonde/brunette/redhead walks in. She's tough, but vulnerable.

Legs you could climb like a mountain. A figure to use as a benchmark for fractal geometry. A nose you could pinch without feeling silly. Genitalia that's built for ...

He takes the case, she pays in small, unmarked bills. There's chemistry between her and the detective, but he keeps his distance. Later on, after some heavy, dramatic conflict, they take comfort in each others arms and legs. Ashtrays and bottles are knocked over in the frenzy on the bed. Or maybe the couch in the office.

If she's real tough, on the concrete in the back alley.

In the end, it turns out that she was playing everyone all along, especially P.I. Dick Randomski. She goes to gaol, but he still gives her one last kiss.

Get my drift?

When Bogey and Bacall did it, it was classy. When Chandler wrote about it, the same. Now it's expected and overdone. Time to move on.

My preference (after very little research) is a detective novel that doesn't have romance in it. It always feels tacky and cliched. Sheesh. It's even cliched to call it that.

Have I just revealed a clue? Yes, probably. You never know.