Zoofari

After all that talk on blogging, promotion and keeping a distance, I figure it's time to rebel against myself and share my recent weekend away to Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. I'd set up the projector if I had a theatre, but looking at the photos will have to do instead.

Dubbo is a place I'd never thought of as a weekend getaway. Close to being smack bang in the middle of New South Wales, the city houses Australia's second most famous zoo after Taronga. The main difference being the abundance of African animals, living in something close to their natural habitat.

We went all out and decided to travel by plane, a Qantas 36-seater each way. While we watched the land below transition from populated to green to a dry and dusty brown, the air hostess booked a cab to pick us up from the airport. Once we arrived we were treated to an hour and a half wait before check in, but this was easily filled with a very welcome cold beer and food.

Our lodge was somewhere between a tent and a motel room, a four star tent if you will (if it had air conditioning I would have given it a five). Strong waterproof fabric made up the walls, stretched tight around a thick steel frame, over a tiled floor. We were told that the tiles could be heated during winter, but the hot air was heat enough.

It wasn't long before we went on our first behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo. The thunderstorm that had threatened us on arrival promptly broke and rained down around our mini-bus, muddying the red earth as we made our way to see the African elephants. They stood politely in huge steel cages, waiting for our eager hands to give them bread, oblivious to the setting's resemblance to the movie Jurassic Park.

Other animal highlights included the wild African dogs, whose voices reminded me of evil children in Aphex Twin video clips; the Siamang monkeys that performed a complicated dance accompanied by the booming from their throat sacs; and the lions in their night pen. But my absolute favourite animal of the trip was the baby Bongo, the sweetest deer-like creature on this earth. And yes, there really is an animal called the Bongo.

After a three course dinner at the beautifully air-conditioned Main House, we settled in for an early sleep, followed by an early rise (not my best time of day, but still worth it). Sunrise over the Savannah and hand feeding of the giraffes was followed up with a buffet breakfast to provide us with energy for the hot day ahead.

Neither of us had a driving license so we couldn't use the zebra striped electric carts, instead settling for bicycles for our own day tour of the zoo. Riding around the six kilometre circuit was made easier with rest pauses in the shade and capped off nicely with more beer and food.

After doing battle with rhinoceros statues, racing Galapagos tortoises, and more rest pauses and beer, we bid farewell to the city we never saw and flew back to Sydney.

Zoofari. Not quite a zoo, not quite a safari, but a perfect combination of the two.

The Distance Of Promotion

There's often talk around the blogosphere on how much promotion is enough or too much, how writers should be spending their time writing and leaving the promotion to someone more qualified, and there's even more talk without a lot of figures about the need to have an author blog in the first place.

Like many of the writers in my neck of the sphere, my blog isn't much of a promotional tool other than encouraging some brand recognition of my name. Its main purpose is to help me connect with like-minded writers and learn about the publishing industry. Maybe along the way, people who read my stories will ask me to contribute to anthologies or other projects, and that can only lead to more reasons to write.

Thing is, if I ever get to a point where I have a few novels behind me and I'm starting to see Steven King, Michael Connolly or even John Connolly sized sales numbers, I doubt that I would keep this blog in the same format.

Unless I'm out there providing a service like J. A. Konrath or Sarah Weinman, the only reason for maintaining a blog like this would be to provide a connection for my readers. The personal side of my internet presence would shift over to community forums and email. With large numbers of readers, I think a forum would be a better fit, kitted out with an 'ask the author' section. Main news would be shifted to the front page of the author website (okay, enough fantasising already). Part of the reason for a change like this would be privacy and security related (I'm just so tired of all these nymphomaniac stalkers), but the other reason would have more to do with image.

And professionalism.

I desperately hope I don't offend any of my fellow bloggers with this comment, but I don't see it as extremely professional for a big name author to be detailing personal issues in a public forum, unless it happens to relate to their status as an author.

Different methods work for different authors. Michael Connelly has his forum as does Mark Billingham and Steven King. All of these authors are blogless. Janet Evanovich has her own questions and answers page, and as far as I can tell, maintains her entire website herself. Tess Gerritsen is one author who I think gets the balance just right. She blogs enough to stay in touch with her fans, gets out there and promotes, but is always aware of the writing.

I find the idea of a reclusive and enigmatic author rather appealing: it lends an air of mystery to their work and lets them stand on that work alone. I recognise their name because it's already plastered all over their book, and when they bring a new novel out I have a good idea of what it will be like, based on their previous work.

All that being said, the flipside is that I've found more than a handful of authors through their blogs, looked into their work, and decided I want to read more.

I love the crime and writing blogging community. Without it, I wouldn't be tackling a writing career with anywhere near the dedication I have now. I'd still be floundering on my own, probably turning up to writer's groups composed of fellow flounderers, and learning the ropes through an unnecessary amount of trial and error.

But if I make it big, you'll probably see me keeping just a little distance.

Remembering The Gutter

For those of you that were there when The Gutter (Tribe's Flashing In The Gutters) was in full swing, it was a sight (and a site) to be relished like a dog in a bun.

It housed the best collection of flash fiction under 700 words, mostly with a crime bent, but no other rules restricting submissions. Along with Olen Steinhauer, Duane Szwierczynski and a few others, I happened to be one of the first to submit, the story being Poodle Girl.

My sentimental Australian abbreviation, The Gutter, caught on some. Tribe even referenced it himself. In my country, you know you've made it when you've been abbreviated. Although sometimes that abbreviation is more like an extension ... AC/DC = Acker Dacker.

Here are three of my stories from those wild and crazy heydays. For those of you that may remember, one of them is missing. It's doing the rounds in an extended version, so I won't spoil the fun when it comes.

Jesse's Lucky Knife (PDF)
Inspired by Blind Willie McTell's 'The Dying Crapshooter's Blues'.

Down In The Hole (PDF)
It's not easy being careful when you're that damned drunk.

Poodle Girl (PDF)
Playing in the park doesn't always turn out as expected.

Duende

A couple of years ago, I came across the Spanish word, duende. At the time I took it to translate into something like: "the presence of the dark understanding of death." This concept stuck with me, and it's something I've been trying to achieve in my writing ever since.

Looking through the notes on my current novel, I saw this quote again and decided to look it up. Almost like the word 'noir' it is not quite definable and yet we all seem to know instinctively whether something is 'noir' or not.

From Wikipedia, "Duende is either a mythological character, or difficult-to-define phrase used in the Spanish arts, including performing arts." The mythological character sometimes appears as a fairy or goblin, like the grumbly fellow in the picture, but I'm more interested in the other definition.

Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish artist of a number of disciplines, gave a lecture in 1934 called Theory and Play of the Duende. If you follow the link and read the text, you'll find that even his understanding of this term seems somewhat vague.

Why am I interested in duende?

Art is such an inexplicable thing that I cannot help wanting to find some structure or method behind it, with the hope that there must be more to the seemingly random process of creativity. What makes great art? Various people over the centuries have come up with their own definitions and attributes, but I think that art can be defined like this:

"Goethe, who, in effect, defined the duende when he said, speaking of Paganini: 'A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain.'"

Which of course doesn't help me or any other artist when it comes to our struggle. I use the word struggle because, for me, pulling out every word of every story is exactly that. Lorca's lecture used it as well: "The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept."

Sometimes I look at concepts like duende as mentors, guides in the process of creating art. In the isolating world of the writer, it can be hard to find a real-life mentor, and of all the arts it seems to be the one in which we must all walk the path alone. Sometimes, though, a kind word from a respected peer or a line of inspiration can give the learning process a gentle shove.

In October 2005, I wrote a review of a concert by Diamanda Galas. She stumbled across it and asked me for permission to use the review as promotional material. We emailed back and forth some, and one thing she said struck something within me, something linked to duende.

She said: "Fear is your business."

At the time, it wasn't. At least I didn't think so. I was having fun writing a self-indulgent, silly romp through my own corner of the P.I. universe. But that phrase stuck in the soil of my mind and spread its thin tendrils throughout my views on writing and art.

There's one last component of my personal definition of duende that comes from the review I wrote: "The old bluesman, Skip James ... would tell the audience that his music existed solely to inspire dread. It was not for dancing." I've seen a video of Skip James in action and you can see this in the faces of the people standing around him, watching him belt out his most famous tune, Devil Got My Woman.

Duende, like all words that attempt to define the indefinable, is for me a combination of fear, dread, and death. But even that seems to me to be too thin a definition. I can only hope that, in the future, duende will come across in my writing and that will be explanation enough.

Training His Eyes To See Black

My sister has a whole pile of baby clothes in pastel greens, yellows, and blues. Her house is decked out in similar colours, with a splash of red and dark wood here and there.

This means that aside from the night itself, my nephew has very little exposure to the colour black. He's only six weeks old and this is a crucial stage in his visual development. His eyes need to learn to differentiate all the colours of the visible light spectrum, including the one colour that isn't part of it.

Black.

Just a small part of my uncular duties. I'll wait a few more years before exposing the little tike to all the wonderful trappings of the world of crime.

Me And Monica

The Internet has that very special ability to keep track of every single thing you say to it, even if it lasts for only a short time and you change your mind and revise.

The other day I wrote a post titled 'The Long And Winding Road'. Because I was in a hard-arse crime writing mood, the original title was 'The Fucking Long And Winding Road'. When I wrote it like that, it wasn't coming from any kind of angst place. I just liked the sound of the phrase.

Next morning, I looked at it and realised that just like in real life, whenever I swear it sounds like I'm an old fart that isn't hip to the lingo of the kids today. I was brought up not to swear and agreed with it in full, at least until I was old enough to indulge in guns, drugs, and hookers.

Then I found that a little swearing can go a long way.

But in this case, that post's title didn't work, so I took the word 'fucking' out. It's the same process I use in some of my short stories. Put lots of 'fucking' in, then take the extras out in the edit.

The absolutely funny thing about this is that for the short time the post had the word 'fucking' in it, a dodgy Taiwanese search engine picked it up and autoblogged it. And for some reason, attached 'Monica Bellucci nuda' on the end.

There's nothing wrong with being attached to a naked Monica Bellucci, so I offer this post up as fodder to all the other dodgy Taiwanese search engines out there.

Here's hoping it ruins my future career in politics.

NEWS: Ruttan. Bruen. Steinhauer. Bagley.

Bombshells and grenades are dropping all around the world of crime fiction. None of this 'order a personal rocket launcher and have it delivered to a house in the suburbs within a few days'. No, this is all above board. And the news is brilliant.

SANDRA RUTTAN AND KEN BRUEN TO VERY QUITE POSSIBLY (AND THEY BETTER BLOODY WELL) COLLABORATE ON A NOVEL.

PATRICK SHAWN-BAGLEY TO CO-EDIT MYSTERY ANTHOLOGY.

OLEN STEINHAUER NOMINATED FOR AN EDGAR AWARD.

And that's not all:

CORNELIA READ, CHARLES ARDAI, BILL CRIDER AND MANY MORE NOMINATED FOR EDGAR AWARDS AS WELL.

Bloody hell. What a week in the world of crime fiction news. It's going to be a great year all round.

(Editor's note: the order of all items is chosen randomly and without favouritism, except for the bit about Bruen, which is just too fucking cool.)

Thrillerfest Will Have To Wait

After weeks of thinking and budgeting and planning and talking (but mostly just thinking), I've decided not to go to Thrillerfest this year. And it's pretty much a financial decision. Unfortunately, July is too soon to get the cash together to turn the Thrillerfest event into a full-blown holiday.

I could use credit and I could go on my own, but I have a bucketload of debts that really need a chunk taken out of. The thought of adding to that debt is enough to make veins burst in my forehead, like popcorn in a saucepan.

While my main reason for going to Thrillerfest would be to meet all the fine people that I've only known through words, I can't financially justify spending thousands of dollars to do so, at least this year. The way I would do that would be with a novel that's worked over and ready to show to agents or, better still, a novel out or on the verge of being published.

That's just not going to happen in the next six months.

My first novel is my chance to make a name for myself and I want to make sure I do it right. Debut authors have that chance simply because they are debut authors, filled with the promise of even better and bigger books to come. New kids on the chopping block, rebels without a pause, underdogs to root (or barrack) for.

I know I've said I would come to Thrillerfest, but I was always a little iffy about it. I hope no one will cry if I don't show up.

Just remember, there's always next year!

The Long And Winding Road

Paul Guyot is back in full force over at Murderati, and this time it's personal.

Just today (or tomorrow, I never know with all these bloody time zones), he put up an excellent post on the head games that us writers put ourselves through. Paul tackles subjects such as I'm Not Good Enough, I Can't Do This, and This Is How Those Other Guys Did It So I Have To As Well.

Putting it this way makes these mistakes seem ball-crushingly obvious, but it's amazing how many years it takes to work through the issues and come to those light-bulb-moment realisations that allow you to Get Back To Work, Write What You Want To Write, and Do It Your Way.

I suppose he doesn't need to be reminded that it took him four years to figure this out.

My long and winding road has been somewhat different, but also similar. I spent two years writing the first draft of a PI novel that had maybe only one good idea in it. I'd gone so far against the idea of writing to market that I'd written an entire novel that doesn't even interest me. And I know this because I've written five versions of a blurb for it.

The novel was also set up as a series and as I crawled towards those bittersweet words, THE END, I realised I didn't want to write a series at all. I tend to completely absorb myself in my latest interest and when that's over, I'm not happy until I've moved onto the next obsession. I'm sort of a serial monogamist that way. This kind of thinking doesn't lend itself to the idea of writing a series. That's just too much time spent on the same thing.

Having gone through the process of writing a novel and letting it go, I'm now far more aware of the time and effort it takes, and the path all that work follows. I'm half way through the first draft of another novel, one whose blurb would entice me to read it, and I have an idea for a follow-up. Something in the same vein, but completely unrelated.

I'm still a big baby in this world of writing, partly because I've spent so many years concentrating on music, forgetting all my voracious gobbling up of books in my childhood. The last two years have seen me correcting this and, at the same time, falling heavily for the world of crime fiction.

In that time, I've also taken off my crime fiction blinkers and opened my eyes to the worlds of the supernatural and (as Tribe puts it) the New Weird, worlds that have always attracted me. Thanks to writers like John Connolly, Sara Gran, Anne Frasier, Neil Gaiman, Charlie Huston, and Alexandra Sokoloff, I now have the courage to follow my desire.

And because it's what I really want to do, everything I write will be set in Australia, regardless of what anyone thinks the market wants. I'd rather contribute to the body of work here than be just another drop in the pond over the other side of the pond.

Yes, it's a long and winding road, but I'm loving every minute of it.

How To Write It Much More Betterer

This year I'm making it a point to improve the quality of my writing, so I decided to rewrite my Clarity Of Night contest entry as a learning exercise. It's easy to do this on something short, and it helps that it's been out there in the real world.

M. G. Tarquini sent me an email giving me feedback on the story, suggesting a way to improve it. If you read the original, it becomes obvious that the wordy science lesson at the beginning drags. It serves the purpose of setting a tone and mood, but what's the point if it doesn't keep the reader interested? Mindy's suggestion was to work this information into the rest of the story, starting it a little later in the piece, the point where it kicks into gear.

Here's the revised version:

THE NATURE OF DECAY

In the alley next to the wall I wait.

Among the garbage and the flies, the smells of long-spoiled foods, the mould-covered carcass wedged between the rubble up against the wall.

The mould feeds on the moisture and the warmth, its spores crawl up the wall in a speckled pattern, random and chaotic in its beauty. I watch the wall and I wait.

I wait for those that make the alley their home, surrounding themselves with fortresses of cardboard boxes. As if this would offer them protection.

I wait for one whose hair is matted and grey, face riddled with liver spots, whose life is not far from its end.

I wait until he sleeps.

The spores flee my body like wasps from a nest. They fly towards the old one and seep into his tattered clothes until his decaying skin is covered completely. He will wake and he will scream, but who would care for him in the dead of night, in this sewer of an alley?

No one to help him, but he will help me. He will sustain me.

And when the work is done, I will wait in the alley, next to the wall.

I Made "The Outfit" Hoot

That well-known collection of Chicago-based crime writers over at The Outfit recently held a competition to come up with the best last line to a novel. The kind of line that makes you want to read everything that came before it.

Here's my entry, which received an honourable mention, putting me at the same level as Victor Gischler's entry:

"Even though the final design looked more like a Lamborghini than a Ferrari, Dennis swore that for the rest of his life – no matter what anyone said – he would wear his condom with pride."

Now tell me you don't want to read absolutely everything that led up to that.

"Silent Grey" Short Fiction Contest

Jason Evans over at Clarity of Night runs a semi-regular short fiction contest. I haven't entered before, but this contest--inspired by the photo shown--caught my eye during a free lunch hour, so I pumped out my entry and off it went.

Have a read of THE NATURE OF DECAY and check out all the other entries while you're at it. Tell me what you think, and tell the others too.

But don't try to enter, because you've already missed the moonlit boat.

Released: SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES by Sandra Ruttan

Since I met Sandra at the now defunct Mystery Circus, I knew she would be a force to be reckoned with. Like all Canadian leprechauns, she's shorter than me, but I still have to say that I look up to her.

She puts in so much time and energy into her work and the promotions for it, and yet she still goes round to all the blogs and gives people gentle and optimistic pushes. I've said before that I can't wait for her novel to come out and now that day has finally arrived.

Credit card, prepare yourself.

Here are all the details:

A suspicious death. A missing baby. A corrupt police department.

When a man shows up in reporter Lara Kelly's office with a video that appears to show a woman falling to her death, Lara is intrigued but suspicious. The man claims he went to the police, but that they refused to investigate.

Under pressure from her editor to use the video to build a story about the incompetence of the local police captain, Lara gathers enough evidence to print a story about a suspected suicide.

Detective Tymen Farraday, the newest cop in a precinct plagued by scandal, is ordered to investigate and discredit the reporter if necessary. When potential evidence is stolen and Lara is attacked, Farraday is forced to put his grudge against reporters aside and work with the journalist to solve the murder while trying to protect her from the killer.

Just when they think they have the evidence to arrest a suspect, two more murders turn the investigation in an unexpected direction.

The guilty have already shown that they'll stop at nothing to protect their secrets.

In a town where one person holds all the power, not even the police can be trusted.

And the prime suspect isn't the only person Lara and Farraday need to worry about.

"SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES has to be one of the most satisfying mysteries going that grips the reader from beginning to end."
- Clive Cussler

"..there is never a dull moment. It's a hard book to put down."
- Tony Hillerman

"Here is the new voice, and what a voice! Eloquent, sassy, compassionate and written with a style so assured it’s hard to believe it’s a debut... This is talent writ huge."
- Ken Bruen

Buy the book at:

Amazon
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

Moving To The Future

If you haven't dropped by here in a while, that makes perfect sense: neither have I.

In honour of ringing in the New Year and all, I've moved to the 'new and improved' Blogger. Expect a few changes around here until I get the hang of it. Once it's all sorted I'll do a catch up post.

Woah. The future is, like, now.

Thank You For Crimespot

When Graham Powell came up with the idea for Crimespot, it was one of those ideas that you made you jump and say, "Yes, count me in!"

The plan was to "round up crime and mystery fiction blogs from all over the Internet and summarize them in an easy-to-read format."

He launched the service on Friday, January 20, 2006. Aside from a few computer related ups and downs, it's been a rock solid method for quickly sifting through everyone's favourite crime blogs, and a first port of call for many writers and readers alike.

The amazing thing is that Graham put together the service and kept it running for a whole year out of his own pocket and time.

On behalf of all crime bloggers and readers out there, I'd like to say thank you, Graham. Your efforts are very much appreciated.

Uncle Dan

Let me try that again: Uncle Dan.

That's what you can call me from now on. All because this little fella that goes by the last name of Ortado was born to my sister Laura and her husband Michael at 5.40pm on Monday 18 December, 2006.

I suppose this means I'll have to make sure I can get him good, clean drugs, weapons that are untraceable, and computers that are virus free.

That's what uncles do, right?

Right?

Standouts Of The Year: 2006

Much like the effect of a good thick ale on the brain cells, the holiday season is winding down my writing. The novel is moving along at the rate of paragraphs a day and I haven't posted in a whole week.

My writing may have slowed down but my reading has picked up. Something I started doing early last year is keeping track of every book I read. Seeing all the titles in a list helps me to pick what type of book I feel like reading next.

Last year I read a total of 22 books, but this year I made a more concerted effort to raise that figure. Regular reading has probably improved my reading speed as well and the total of 38 books this year attests to that.

Plenty of those books were well written and worthy of praise, but some gelled with me more than the others. I can put myself back into their worlds with the simple reminder of a character's name or a scene or title.

And here they are.

Peter Temple: THE BROKEN SHORE

Although I prefer Temple's Jack Irish novels, there's something about this one that resonates. I can picture myself in Port Munro as Detective Senior Sergeant Joe Cashin, living with two dogs and working on my property, trying to resurrect one of its buildings. Temple's spare prose perfectly captures the laconic rhythm of speech and mood from the smaller parts of Australia.

Ken Bruen: THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS

As an aspiring crime writer, it's dangerous for me to read Bruen's work, but I make sure to savour it at regular intervals. This Jack Taylor novel had a better mix of humour and hardness than THE GUARDS. The ending absolutely blew me away. Luckily I have quite a few Bruen novels to catch up with before I get to the stage where I have to wait to read more. I want to be Bruen when I grow up.

Charles Willeford: THE SHARK-INFESTED CUSTARD

Willeford's writing style is something I haven't seen anywhere else. He gets into my head, feeding off my thoughts, presenting the story of four Miami boys getting into serious trouble in a way that makes me feel part of the action. And that title. Just try to tell me you've heard one better.

Jim Thompson: THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Tribe slapped me upside the head to make sure I got off my arse and rescued this from a teetering pile of books-in-waiting. Tribe was right, Kubrick was right ("Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered."), and Thompson was right on the money with this cold piece of work.

Richard Aleas: LITTLE GIRL LOST

Hard Case Crime's cunningly disguised Charles Ardai wrote this spot-on example of how a PI novel can still work in our day and age. Holding the little paperback and smelling its pages while reading was a modern retro joy. And the story was so good I wrote a one sentence summary of each scene so I could see how the whole thing flowed.

Malcolm Gladwell: THE TIPPING POINT

Some great ideas in this, although I'd come across many of them in James Gleick's CHAOS. Here they're transplanted onto people and marketing in clear prose in a small book. Since I've read it, I can't help classifying people as Mavens or Collectors ... read the book and you'll understand.

Jeff Lindsay: DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER

While some of the internal monologue is repetitive, the whole idea and execution of Dexter, the good-guy serial killer is just plain fun. And now there's a TV series of the show that's even better.

Sara Gran: COME CLOSER

This is the book that inspired me to include the supernatural in my next novel. As the story progresses it becomes more and more uncomfortable and eerie, with a noir sensibility throughout. With one book I've become a Sara Gran fan for life. I'll get crucified for this, but I think it's even better than her following novel, DOPE.

Steven Torres: THE CONCRETE MAZE

I've written my own review of this already, so I won't repeat any of that here. But I will say that it's the very real emotional impact of this book that has made it stick with me.

Charlie Huston: ALREADY DEAD

Finished this one only last week and it's one of the few books that had me moving through at least fifty pages without being aware of time or hunger. The combination of vampire and PI novel is something that completely tickles my fancy. But then, I am half Romanian. The sequel for this one is out very soon so my credit card is ramped up and ready to go.

Is Your Mobile Bugging You?

What better way to return to my normally NaNo-free scheduled blogging than to link to something someone else has written.

Gary Hughes has an article up over at his Gotcha blog filled with potential plot fodder for a techno-thriller, if that's your kind of bag. If it isn't, you're probably paranoid and want to know more about it anyway.

"Counter-surveillance consultant and former US government electronic intelligence officer James Atkinson told CNET that software, which would remotely activate a phone’s microphone and turn it into a bug, could be downloaded on to a mobile without the owner being aware. “They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,” he said. “You can do that without having physical access to the phone."

NaNoWriMo: THE END

Thank Goat it's over.

But I'm not stopping.

NaNoWriMo: The Interview

The power of the internet is fickle and indiscriminate, so much so that even failure can bring fame. Less than a week before the end of NaNoWriMo, and I've already been interviewed.

You can read the roasting put together by the deft keyboard fingers of Sean Lindsay, over at 101 Reasons To Stop Writing. He sucked me in by calling me ruggedly handsome (I think he saw the picture of a robot mailbox) and then put up my answers to his questions unedited.

In honour of him finding out my darkest and worst kept secret (the one about my Danny Hawaii series only having one story), I've now updated my biography and removed the offending evidence from my entire website.

That oughta show him.

NaNoWriMo: The Final Week Begins

Last weekend I had the quite sensible plan of catching up on the 5K I needed to get back on target. Saturday went alright--I wrote a few hundred extra words, but on Sunday I didn't even fulfill the day's minimum quota. I just stopped writing. And I haven't written a word since.

The reason? I'm writing a novel, not trying to hit a word target. The whole NaNoWriMo thing was something that both Stephen and I were using to get our arses moving on our WIPs. That's why I had no qualms about using words I'd written before November (which aren't part of my NaNo-count). And that's why I've spent the last few days plotting out the next few chapters.

The thing about me and plotting is that I need time to percolate my ideas. I'll always end up with something better when it's had at least a few days of tweaking. The slow process of sprinkling the plot with details helps make it richer.

My last week is going to be a leisurely stroll. I'll be dropping my pace down to something more reasonable and I'll be taking days off. Even if I only hit 35K by the end of the month, that will still be 35K of a novel that I probably wouldn't have written for another few months.

If there's one thing I've learned about this whole process, it's that I can write faster than I thought. But that doesn't mean I have to.

Review: Tom Waits - Orphans

Once every few years, along comes an album that I rush out to buy, regardless of any current gambling or international-scale drug debts. I need to own the original packaging, hold the physical artwork in my hands, and if I'm lucky enough to have liner notes to read, I'll pore over them with a jeweler's eyepiece until I go blind in one eye.

This weekend, one of those albums came along.

At $AUD84.95, it's a hefty tug on the old purse strings, but it's worth every single cent. The deluxe edition of Tom Waits' Orphans comes in its own CD-sized hardcover book, with the pages consisting of lyrics on a ye-olde worlde background and a pseudo photo album. At the back are the three CDs. Yes, three.

They're called, in order, Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. The Brawlers are junkhouse, roadhouse, bang-them-over-the-head-with-a-house raunchy blues and gospel numbers as only Tom Waits can do them. The Bawlers are yank on your heart strings ballads, and the Bastards are a psychotic menagerie of aural experiments and spoken word pieces whose parents were never fully legit.

Right off the bat, the first four songs on Brawlers are ones I've never heard before. They got me jumping up and standing on my chair, banging my head against the wall in glee. Tracks on this CD include a Ramones tribute, a song from the movie Dead Man Walking, and a new version of a track that Tom did with his old buddy, Chuck E. Weiss. Anyone remember the song Chuck E's In Love by Rickie Lee Jones?

When Tom does soppy, he can pull a tear from a gland-less eyeball with a single full-throated moan, and when he does it he'll call the song something like Little Drop Of Poison. Which came from the Shrek 2 soundtrack of all places. I vaguely remember a scene with a drunken horse on the piano in a bar. I'm guessing that was supposed to be Tom.

The last CD is Bastards, and this is where I've had a couple of disappointments. I know, someone's bound to hit me with a brick for saying that Tom is capable of wrong, but I'm not too happy about the overdubbed harmonica on a few of these, or the muffling of the banjo courtesy of Primus in On The Road, a song about Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. But the spoken word pieces over musical soundscapes are eery and effective, especially when mixed with older recordings of Tom, before he drank shoe polish strained through bread.

One last track I'll mention from Bastards is Dog Door, a wild, crunchy scratched-falsetto number that almost resembles the kind of R'n'B a zombified version of Tom would holler. I hesitate to use the words R'n'B and Tom in the same sentence, but the production values behind this track are firmly in the now. Sonically inspiring stuff.

Something that struck me about the album, and this is only after a full day of listening, is that Tom Waits won't be making music forever. I don't know if it was the lack of alcohol talking, but he ain't getting any younger, and this almost feels like a career retrospective.

But as Tom might say, there's nothing wrong with me that a hundred dollars won't fix.

For further illuminating reading, leg it on over to the Tom Waits Supplement, a very handy research tool for the history of all the tracks on Orphans.

NaNoWriMo: An Excerpt

Even I'm starting to be more than a little disturbed by the last post. In the interest of moving on from it, here's a silly little snippet of a scene I wrote today:

They walk over to the table in the corner, Jules hanging back a little as he watches Louise move with apparent purpose.

She sits next to the man with the pipe and says in an exaggerated English accent, “Hello Martin or Edward, or whatever your name might be. Would you happen to know a Reggie Cooper, someone that frequents this fine drinking establishment?” She flicks her hair behind her shoulders and looks directly at the man.

“Would you mind love? I’m trying to study the form,” he says, his accent completely unlike Louise’s affected one. He picks the newspaper up from the table and shakes it out, blocking his face from view.

Louise pulls the top edge of the paper down with one finger. “Reggie? Cooper? You sure you don’t know him?”

“If I did know him, I wouldn’t be arsed telling the likes of you. Now rack off. Race is about to start.” He puts his hand up to his ear and that’s when Jules notices a white cable trailing down the side of the man’s tweed jacket, disappearing into the pocket.

The old man at the bar chuckles and coughs.

Louise ignores this, stands up and says, “That went well.” She points to the other side of the room at a man with a football jumper, tilts her head, cracking her neck as if she’s about to start a fight.

“I might just try again.”

U For Uncanny

Hey, the blog can't be totally about NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo: Half Way There

Fifteen days into it, I've made it past the 20K word mark, but I'm falling behind target. At 1667 words per day, by the end of last night I should have reached half way, or 25K words. Didn't quite get there, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up this weekend, which is blissfully free of familial birthday ceremonies.

What have I learned so far?

• Writing at this pace is isolating. I'm using up almost all of my lunch hour by making sure I only spend five minutes microwaving food and eating it. People in my office went for a $5 steak lunch yesterday and I had to say no. Thinking about it now makes my mouth water: I could really use a steak and I'm probably lacking in iron and protein.
• It's also tiring. I've been getting into odd sleeping habits like two hour naps when I get home. My sleep is fitful because I often spend the hour before lying on the couch or in bed coming up with new plot points.
• Speaking of plotting, I can safely say that my first fortnight's worth of writing went far more smoothly than the rest is shaping up to be. This is because I'd spent a few months cooking up the beginning and had good notes on the first part of the novel, roughly fifty pages. This whole process is panning out much the same as it did with my first novel, where I knew what would happen at the beginning and the end and very little idea about the whole middle chunk.
• In two weeks I have produced over 20,000 words, roughly 80 pages. That's almost a third of an entire novel. In two weeks. And it seems to be of better quality than previous efforts. I suppose I've learned a lot about writing over the last two years and that certainly helps. Also having been through the process before, I'm aware of some of my work habits and where they lead.
• I'm still excited about this novel. Some of the scenes I've written are pushing me to new limits: I've been experimenting with dreamlike sequences set in the past, seen by my main character, Jules Nolan, through the eyes of someone living in 1910s Australia. I'm using techniques I've come across in thrillers--techniques I've shunned in the past--and I'm using them with good reason: they suit the story.
• Music has helped get me into character for particular scenes. It's really helped me to maintain the voice I want for the writing. I'm shooting for prose that has a deadening feel. Words that remove the smile from your face. I desperately hope this novel will inspire feelings of dread and I think that after the revision process, there's a good chance it will.

P.J. Parrish is going to be putting my novel's current opening through the wringer as part of her Booky Noise series. I'm fully expecting to cringe at some of my mistakes, but I'm also hoping to learn something. I've never had feedback on a novel at this early a stage, so it should be interesting and eye opening.

When it comes around, I'll post about it here. Feel free to join in and tell me exactly what parts of my head are up my arse.

Now, back to 'bum on chair, fingers on keyboard'.

The Concrete Maze by Steven Torres

Steven Torres was kind enough to send me a pre-ARC of his upcoming novel, THE CONCRETE MAZE, due out by Dorchester Publishing in July 2007. He did this after taking a look at one of my short stories. This is how nice Steven is: after he does you a favour, all he asks is that you allow him to do you another.

He may be nice, but the subject matter of THE CONCRETE MAZE isn't. More and more, it seems to be the novel that everyone wanted him to write. Darker and more concentrated than his PRECINCT PUERTO RICO series, the new novel is set in the Bronx, New York. Like his other books, it still revolves around a Puerto Rican community, but in this case it centers on a single family.

Seen through the eyes of young Marc Ramos, it starts off as a search for his cousin, led by ex-Vietnam uncle, Tio Luis ('Tio' means 'uncle'). Marc is dragged along, losing plenty of sleep, as Tio Luis searches for his daughter Jasmine, who it seems has got herself mixed up with the wrong crowd. Not a hard thing to do in the Bronx.

I told you the novel was darker, so don't be surprised when things turn from frustrating to tragic as the novel progresses. Without spoiling it for you, a particular scene about half way through had me physically choking up with emotion. I can't think of a novel that's made me feel this strongly in a long time.

Issues of racism and prostitution underpin the story, but at its core, the novel is about family.

Torres has an innate grasp of what it is to be part of a family. The loyalty and determination of the main characters, the nurturing mothers, the extension of cousins, aunties and uncles, all of this is easy to relate to. Especially if, like me, you have grown up in a European family. The values seem the same, and while this novel gave me a better appreciation of Puerto Rican culture, Steven's talent here is to make it universal.

Steven worries that he wrote one of his other novels, MISSING IN PRECINCT PUERTO RICO, with anger, and that this may not be the best way to get a message across. If that novel is his angry one, I can't wait to read it.

That scene will stay with me for a long time.

NaNoWriMo: Music

I've been building playlists to keep me company through the month of November, and I thought I'd share a few select tracks. I gave myself a limit of one song per artist because I am nothing without some form of denial.

MUSIC TO WAKE UP TO

Rage Against The Machine: War Within A Breath
P.J. Harvey: Me-Jane
The Black Keys: Just Got To Be
Gogol Bordello: Not A Crime
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings: Got A Thing On My Mind

RATM and Gogol Bordello are great songs for the shower, although you have to watch out not to bang the shower head. Sharon Jones never fails to make me move my ass. Usually that means a trip to get more coffee, but hey, at least it's movement.

MUSIC TO WRITE TO

Portishead: Elysium
Radiohead: Remyxomatosis (Cristian Vogel Remix)
Martina Topley-Bird: Too Tough To Die
Tom Waits: Make It Rain
Skip James: Devil Got My Woman

Elysium is the song that sets the mood I'm trying to achieve for the entire novel, while Devil Got My Woman helps me get all old-timey for my 'dream sequences' set in the past.

MUSIC TO WIND DOWN TO

The Kinks: This Time Tomorrow
Las Pesadillas: Everybody Died But Me
Mouse On Mars: Papa, Antoine
Moloko: Being Is Bewildering
The Finn Brothers: Gentle Hum

When you've got a billion ideas swirling around in your brain, there's nothing like some chill-out tunes to slow down the pace. Papa, Antoine's the clear winner for me: It's like the closing hours of a Tiki bar on a space station.

NaNoWriMo: The Drug Wars

Working full time and doing my best to fit in the requisite amount of NaNo-writing per day is leaving me a little worse for wear. Generally, I'm a terrible sleeper so this isn't so much of an issue, but when I'm trying to think carefully about a number of things at once, after already spending the whole day doing the same ... I need help.

The kind of help only drugs can give.

Here are my drug-related tips for anyone crazy enough to spend a month writing their arse off:

• Whiskey: Only to be used in short bursts, and only if the dreaded Inner Editor is stronger than usual. The drop in inhibitions and judgement is offset by the danger of falling asleep at the computer.
• Coffee: For most, this will be the poison of choice. Whether cafe style, plunger or instant, the caffeine hit is sure to get the synapses firing on overtime, if only for a short burst. And that's where the problem with coffee lies: for me, the ups-and-downs are too erratic. Best used to simply wake up with every day.
• Coke: Ah, the good old Dynamic Ribbon of sugar and cocaine. Doesn't work quite like that these days, but the sugar gives you just enough energy while you wait for the caffeine to hit. Vanilla Coke is my favourite, because I'm a sucker for anything that I'm told is 'intriguing.' For the amount you have to drink to get the brain chugging, the sheer quantity of sugar will immediately bring about total weight gain. Best not to use too often, like I do.
• Pepsi Max: The most useful competitor to Coke, this version of Pepsi supposedly has maximum taste without the sugar. The taste of anything using artificial sweeteners is questionable at best, but the amount of caffeine in this drink is eminently useful for late-night writing sessions. All this, without the weight gain.
• Red Bull: I've picked this as the leader of the energy drinks because it's the most well known. Like V and Columbian Cola, this can give serious jitters, leaving you awake and non-functional as writer for long after consumption. Best drunk at nightclubs if you can't afford anything illegal.

If you read the list in detail, the clear winner is Pepsi Max. I tested it last night when I was feeling particularly tired and it gave me the writing boost I needed to stay on target. I'd be worried about drinking it on a constant basis, due to the artificial sweeteners, but overall, it gets the NaNo-ThumbsUp from me.

NaNoWriMo: Procrastination

WATER BALLOON RECORD



April 2006, Coogee Beach, Sydney, Australia: the venue for a water balloon fight that broke a world record. 2,849 participants threw 55,000 water balloons.

I was one of them. Got seriously soaked. Loved it.

Now, back to work.

P.S: Happy 60th birthday to my mum, and best of luck to Stuart MacBride on this day of dread.

NaNoWriMo: Statistics

This post was only going to include the image above, but what kind of procrastinator could I call myself if that was all I wrote?

82,052,496. That's how many words NaNoWriters have produced in just three days. There are about 70,000 entrants this year, but that figure won't be settled until the very end I suppose. That makes for an average of 1172 words per person.

Which makes me wonder about the number of words produced by the human race per day. How many millions are we talking about? I have no idea, but if NaNo'ers are spitting out a rough 25 million a day, the mind starts to go a little haywire just trying to imagine it.

So many words most of us will not be able to read in our lifetime. No wonder the publishing industry is so tough to break into and stay in. Really gives me much more of an appreciation for marketing, and a realisation of its necessity.

One other statistic I'll bore you with before finding other, less public, ways of procrastinating is the NaNo counter broken down into genres. In the lead at 17 million, almost twice the closest competitor, the top genre for this year's NaNoWriMo is ...

Fantasy.

Who woulda thunk it?

NaNoWriMo: I am NOT cheating!

(Cue music of self-justification)

Day three lunch and I'm on target once again. How I reached it, though, has now become slightly more complicated.

See, before Stephen Blackmoore challenged me to this wacky carnival race of words, I'd already been planning my second novel, and I'd also written about 5000 words as a test run. My plan for NaNoWriMo was to continue from there, only counting completely new words.

Instead, I rewrote the beginning from scratch with renamed and reworked characters, and a different ordering of scenes. The counter on the main page of this blog shows how many of these new words I've written.

Now we get to the self-justification.

Last night I reached a scene that I knew I'd already written and didn't want to throw away. It took an hour and a half to incorporate this old version of the story into the new one, rewriting so it would fit. The next scene I wrote from scratch with an all-new character, then the same thing happened again.

So I cheated. For the second time.

In total, I added about 3000 words to my NaNo-novel. 3000 words I wrote before November. But there's nothing to worry about here, move along people, no trouble at all. This guy is not a criminal.

My promise to everyone out there in NaNo-land is that whenever I update my counter, I will mentally subtract those 3000 extra words.

Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

NaNoWriMo: The First Day

2033 words in one day, while still working a full time job. It's a definite record for me, as I don't think I've ever hit over 1500, even on a weekend. A good day is generally around the 500 word mark for me.

To hit the target I microwaved some pasta for lunch and wolfed it, then spent a good fifty minutes getting down around 700 words. Another three hours or so at home brought me up to the 2000 mark, and I even had time to read a few pages of PALE IMMORTAL before my eyes went blurry and I absolutely had to sleep.

The amazing thing about this is that those words are similar in quality to my usual first drafts. It's good to know that a certain amount of focus and fear can create this kind of output.

One tip I have so far is to make sure you have a number of pre-built names for characters, including spares. If you have a list of names that you know will suit your story, it's very easy to pick one and keep the words moving forward.

The NaNo philosophy doesn't recommend you doing any sort of revision, but that's too much of a habit for me and I've already gone back and fixed mistakes and tweaked for flow. It's a risky manuever, but I've put up a longer excerpt on my NaNo profile page. Here's the non-flash version, which isn't as pretty but loads a lot faster.

Can I do another 2000 today? We'll see.

NaNoWriMo: BEGINS!

Midnight ticked over last night and I was unfortunately still awake. For Australians doing NaNoWriMo, we started off anything from ten to sixteen hours ahead of the largest proportion (I have no figures on this, but I'm probably not wrong) of NaNoWriMo'ers: the Merkins. Whoops, I meant The Americans.

I wrote a couple of quick paragraphs so that my mind wouldn't start buzzing with ideas designed to keep me awake. Going against all NaNoAdvice-O, I will now share with you the opening two paragraphs from my 'masterpiece-in-the-making':

IN THE OUTER

Jules Nolan turns the steering wheel and reaches down to press a button, never taking his eyes from the road. The window separating the driver’s cab from the rear of the limousine slides down, silencing the couple arguing in the back. Jules lets out a breath. They’d been at it for the last ten minutes and the words had melded together to become a constant flow of nothing.

He blinks at the high beam of a car passing on the other side of William Street. The limousine dips into the road. Jules turns his head a fraction to catch a glimpse of a lone hooker dressed in scraps of leopard print fabric and fishnets, standing under the fluorescent lights of an all night convenience store.

And so begins this crazy month of 1667 words per day. Good luck to us all and may the caffeine be with you.

NaNoWriMo Planning & Plotting

Coming up with story ideas can burn some serious calories. During the last week I've dedicated my lunches and evenings to concentrated bouts of brainstorming which have often resulted in cracking headaches. An accompanying bottle of Tooheys Extra Dry Platinum can also be blamed, but firing all my synapses at once is an intense experience.

Hemingway said that a writer should guard his writing carefully, but I'll break his rule and share some of my work so far.

Character names I've come up with include: Jules Nolan, Walter Fitch, Mick Riley, Reggie Cooper, Louise Cooper, Anaru 'Ernie' Tominga, Edward De Gracy, Frank Dalton, and Patrick Ellis. I have trouble imagining a character without a suitable name attached, but once it is, I have a feel for them without even describing what they look like.

This next novel of mine is much more serious and far more ambitious than my previous effort (which I do plan to finish one of these days, if only for the experience). I have some broad plot points with a few scenes sorted out, but I'm crossing my fingers in the possibly mistaken hope that my story is somewhat modular. The reason is that there are two stories running in parallel: one set around 1910, the other in the present day, in Sydney and Melbourne. The scenes in the past are semi-flashbacks that the main character (Jules Nolan) experiences through the viewpoint of someone from the past (Patrick Ellis).

The link between the two timelines is a supernatural one, and I'm going to work very hard to make sure it's an integral part of the story. I've only written some flash fiction that used supernatural elements in the past, so that part of my novel is going to be quite a challenge. I can't say I've read a lot of horror in my time, but I think I have enough of an understanding of the use of fear to pull it off.

The plot will still revolve around crime as I'm drawing inspiration from the underworld 'wars' of Melbourne in the late 90s, as well as an exhibition of police photographs from early 20th century Sydney.

If for some strange reason you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, pop over here to find out. If you don't like clicking, I'll give it to you right now: the goal is to write 50,000 words in one month, the month being November 2006. I've installed a counter in the sidebar where you can track my progress, and I'll possibly post up excerpts that you can read by clicking on the thermometer. Writing involves a fair amount of procrastination, so expect semi-regular reports on my efforts.

Wish me luck!

The Meaning Of Life

It could lie somewhere in this article:

From The Australian:

JAMES Gleeson believes that art is society's strongest link between the past, the present and the future.

And to ensure the grand tradition of Australian art continues well into the 21st century, the painter is putting all of his money - $16 million of it - where his mouth is.

In what is by far the biggest monetary donation received by the Art Gallery of NSW in its 104-year history, Gleeson has pledged his entire estate to the Sydney landmark.

"I thought about it quite seriously for a long time, and I decided that it was the logical thing for me to do," said the 91-year-old, who is considered Australia's pre-eminent surrealist painter.

True Romance

Awe inspiring. From Longmire Does Romance Novels.

A Whole Novel In One Month?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

If you think that sounds crazy, you're right. It is. But so am I. I'm also susceptible to dares of the 'what are you, a yellow-bellied coward?' type. When Stephen Blackmoore challenged me to join this insane collection of writing maniacs, I raged internally against the idea for a couple of days, but then he put up a bottle of 12 yr old Springbank.

I couldn't say no to that.

Since I'm only five thousand words into a novel, I've decided to make it my project for this wild gig. But don't worry, I won't include what I've already written.

If you're interested in tracking my progress through November, here's my NaNoWriMo profile. I'll probably throw up a word counter on this blog too, but hey, if I link to the profile it makes this whole damn ballgame real.

NaNoWriMo. It's so crazy, it just might work.

Twanging In The Gutters

Thanks to Tribe, the snazziest suit-wearer in the crime fiction world, we can now enjoy the fruits of his latest project: Twanging In The Gutters.

For the last two weeks of October, Flashing In The Gutters will only be publishing stories that have something to do with a country song. With authors like Lori G. Armstrong, Patrick Shawn Bagley, Patricia Abbott, Stephen Blackmoore, Margaret B. Davidson, and myself, you're sure to be in for a helluva party.

So grab a big old bottle of corn liquor, take your laptop out on the porch and suck down a gallon of all them tasty words.

My story, JESSE'S LUCKY KNIFE, is based on the song called The Dying Crapshooter's Blues by Blind Willie McTell (as pictured above). It's more of a country blues song than plain country, but hell, life is chaos out on the range.

Hope y'all enjoy it now, cuss n' tarnation dang nab it.

Catch Up

Haven't been posting much here of late. Looking back over the last few months, the frequency of my posts has been erratic, with plenty of week-long breaks. I'm well overdue for a decent ramble.

So. What have I been doing?

The new job is taking up a fair amount of mental processing power. I'm still on a learning curve but enjoying it greatly and muchly. It's good to stretch my programming muscles again. I'm afraid that's all I can really go into here. It is the gambling industry after all, and if I tell you much more I shall have to kill you.

My passion for computer games has been resurrected thanks to the Xbox 360. I've been racing exotic cars, riding horses across medieval lands and, most importantly, killing zombies. Truckloads of them. Entire shopping malls full of them. Lots of good, clean, bloody gruesome fun. Which might explain the following.

I seem to be continually exposed of late to the ominous and looming presence of those little people called 'children'. Went to my first first birthday (two firsts in a row, what an achievement!) and spent it lazing around with a bunch of adults that were, well, tired a lot. The kids weren't, and they pranced and frollicked around in the sun, finding entertainment in the shape of balls, cupcakes, grass, each other. And I swear to my dying day that the birthday boy is an actual zombie. The eyes, the shambling, the strangely high pitched groans ...

Work, the threat of kids, computer games. None of these has been enough to stop me writing. Lunchtime is proving to be nicely productive and I'm finding my second novel taking shape slowly but surely under my calloused fingers. I hit five thousand words yesterday and that's not including the few thousand worth of notes. But I promised not to do a wordcount report this time, so I'll leave it at that.

I've also polished off a story called BUDDHA BEHIND BARS which is probably the most spiritual piece of crime fiction I've ever attempted, based on a snippet of a paragraph from a book called DESTRUCTIVE EMOTIONS. The book is an account of a series of talks between the Dalai Lama, philosophers, neuropsychologists, and a swath of other brainy types. It's a serious attempt by some of the world's greatest minds to come up with ways of improving life, and from what I have read, it seems that it was a success. The plan is to send this one off to Murdaland, if they'll have me, indeed if they'll have anyone (where did the submission guidelines page go?).

Another piece of flash fiction is percolating in my hard drive, waiting for the right moment to fire it off to Tribe's Flashing In The Gutters Country Extravaganza. We'll see how that one goes, then.

Me eyes is gettin' tired now and I must be off to sleepy-na-na-land.

Please do enjoy my latest post of rambling goodness. May I wake up tomorrow morning and not be embarrassed at the crapness of it.

G'night!

EDIT: A murder of crows told me that the Murdaland website is on the verge of an update, which will include the submission guidelines. May I never be accused of slander.

Inside The Mind

Everyone on the 'upper' side of the crime blogosphere has been drinking, spanking, and snorkeling their merry way through Bouchercon, so I haven't had much to say lately, other than to repeat under my breath, over and over again, "Why couldn't I go to Bouchercon? Why, why, why?"

This obsessional trait does not bode well for my future sanity, especially in terms of the potential for violent, explosive crime. I say this because of a recent posting in an Australian newspaper's crime blog that goes by the catchy name of Gotcha. It's an excellent true crime blog run by Gary Hughes, a long time crime journo based in Melbourne, where most of the action is in Oz.

But back to my worries.

The post in question includes a list of attributes of serial killers put together by a Professor Paul Mullen, who is the director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health. The list is referenced in relation to the latest headline serial killer, Charles Carl Roberts, the man responsible for the Amish school massacre.

But the really worrying thing is how many writers this list describes.

Here it is then:

• Male.
• Under 40 years of age.
• Socially isolated without intimate or close relationships.
• Unemployed, or in casual or marginal work.
• Bullied and/or isolated as a child.
• Fascinated with weapons and usually a collector of guns.
• Have no history antisocial, criminal, and specifically interpersonal violence.
• Have no prior contact with the mental health services or a diagnosis of serious mental disorder.
• Make no threats, or overt or covert statements that they intend to commit a massacre.
• Have no significant history of substance abuse.
• Show rigidity and/or marked obsessional traits.
• Are suspicious and may have think they have been persecuted.
• Have a tendency to resentment with intrusive ruminations about previous experiences of humiliation and injury.
• Prone to daydreaming, particularly about acts of individual, and usually murderous, heroism and of revenge against a rejecting and uncaring world.
• Have narcissistic and grandiose traits, which emerge in a profound sense of entitlement and over-weaning self-righteousness.
• Intend to kill as many people as possible then to die among their victims.
• Adopt an existing script for murder suicide that they have acquired from reading about or seeing it in news and dramas.

Try reading the list from the perspective of a writer and you'll see that most of us are constantly on the verge of blowing our stacks.

Must remember to have a social life. Must remember to stop daydreaming. Must remember to build a history of interpersonal violence.

No wait, that's a story I was thinking about. That's not reality.

Must remember the difference between reality and fantasy.

Must stop this obsessive need to remember a list of things I must do.

World Peace

Damn it. I was supposed to post something really silly today. Instead I wrote this half-baked 'Save The World' poem in a fit of self-righteousness, prompted by the complete lack of media coverage for the International Day Of Peace, which I also happened to ignore.

APATHY

I don't care what your religion is
As long as you
Never kill another human being

I don't care what your beliefs are
As long as you
Don't impose them on others

I don't care if you're offended
As long as you
Know you are no more important than anyone else

I don't care who you are
Come have a beer with me

How To Save The World

Religion, politics and war are all prominent topics pervading the world's media and our thoughts at this point in history. I have some strong opinions on all of these, which basically amounts to a wish that all three did not exist. But focusing on a wish like that is ignoring the reality of the problems in our world.

Today I tried three times to write a coherent explanation of my thoughts and feelings on these subjects and couldn't come up with anything that expressed the truth of what is inside me. It was almost as if an answer to everything was hiding in a corner of my mind and all I had to do was take the correct mental route to let it out into the world.

But it didn't happen and I gave up. It's all just too complicated.

So instead I'll share with you a little ditty, courtesy of Zen Stories To Tell Your Neighbors.

It might be what I was really looking for.

SPIDER

A Tibetan story tells of a meditation student who, while meditating in his room, believed he saw a spider descending in front of him. Each day the menacing creature returned, growing larger and larger each time. So frightened was the student, that he went to his teacher to report his dilemma. He said he planned to place a knife in his lap during meditation, so when the spider appeared he would kill it. The teacher advised him against this plan. Instead, he suggested, bring a piece of chalk to meditation, and when the spider appeared, mark an "X" on its belly. Then report back.

The student returned to his meditation. When the spider again appeared, he resisted the urge to attack it, and instead did just what the master suggested. When he later reported back to the master, the teacher told him to lift up his shirt and look at his own belly. There was the "X".

I'm interested to see what thoughts this story triggers. Share away if you feel an inkling to. I promise to write something far sillier in my next post.

Danny Hawaii 'Live' On Thrilling Detective

3 billion years in the making, Danny Hawaii's debut adventure is up and at them in the latest issue of Thrilling Detective.

Read BREAKING IN and a slew of other fine PI material from the likes of Sarah Weinman, Kim Harrington, Russel McLean, and D.H. Reddall.

One of these days, I might even finish Mr. Hawaii's first novel.

But only if you ring in NOW, for the amazing low price of $1999.95!

Yes, you too can grab hold of the whole set of Danny Hawaii's misadventures in the ancient land of Rockabilly-nesia. Dance with the immortal Hula girls! Mix beats with the masters of funk and roll! Shamble your way through the fields with the local zombie hordes!

*needle scratches across record*

EDIT: If you're feeling a little ornery, try out the Redneck version of Danny Hawaii's debut, courtesy of the Dialectizer.

Are You Serious?

How serious a person are you? Do you spend a large part of your day stirring up trouble, streaking past office workers in your birthday suit, or playing practical jokes on innocent victims involving poo?

This is something I've been pondering lately. No, not poo, but how serious my writing is and how serious I want it to be.

After starting off a short story that will most likely become a new novel, my writing has taken a more serious tone. At first it was something I resisted, but more and more I have felt the pull away from humour.

It was the last story I wrote that really set me off in this new direction. I'm sure it will take forever to get out there into the publishing world, so I won't talk about it in too much detail, but suffice it to say that it's a story about meditation in prison. The nature of the subject matter called for it to be a serious story, and any humour in there is to lighten the somewhat heavy load.

The surprising thing about this story is that it has given me more satisfaction than anything else I have ever written.

On only a moment's reflection, it's easy to see why: the story actually meant something. There is a purpose to it other than pure entertainment. Usually, that would be enough for me, and in fact most of the time I prefer pure entertainment. I want to escape from the real world into one that doesn't necessarily teach me something about life, but simply shows me a good time.

So the next novel I'm working on is going to follow a similar path. It will definitely take a more serious direction, and I'm hoping that along the way I can find something deeper in it.

After that, it's back to making fart jokes.

Hardcover vs. Paperback

I don't like hardcover books.

I don't like the feel of them in my hands, can't be bothered carting them around, and I'm not a fan of the smell that builds up on them over the years. Yes, I know I'm contradicting something I've said before, but so be it. The mark of being human is the ability to have contradictory thoughts without exploding.

My attitude to hardcovers is the result of the publishing industry in Australia and my childhood.

I'll tackle the publishing side first.

In this fine sunburnt country, hardcover books aren't that common in bookstores. At least not in terms of current fiction releases. Our market is simply not big enough to warrant the printing of large quantities of hardcovers, except in the more high profile novels like the Harry Potter series and anything by Matthew O'Reilly. And even these are often sold at very narrow margins by the bigger retailers.

Newspapers in Australia are also quite happy to review books in paperbook form, although this is usually in the larger C-format or trade paperback size. So there's nothing stopping Australian authors getting the same kind of promotion for paperbacks that authors overseas get for hardcovers.

As a result of this, most of the books I'm exposed to are paperbacks, so I've learned to relate the smell of them to the purchase of a shiny new story, filled with the promise of many nights of curled-up-in-bed reading bliss. And that's why I love the smell of a new paperback, reeking of binding glue and whatever the hell makes the cover smell so sharp.

My name is Daniel and I am a paperback addict.

Which wins for you, hardcover or paperback?

A New Novel Begins

Danny Hawaii's non-epic, non-saga of lack of love and betrayal has been sidelined for a couple of months now. I've filled that novel-writing void with the final polishing of a short story I have high hopes for, which probably won't see the light of day for about half a year.

But it hasn't been enough.

I don't plan to completely kill Danny off, especially since (any day now) he'll be making his official entry into the world of crime fiction (ANY DAY NOW). But having spent two years working on my first novel while learning to write--and perfecting my abilities at procrastination--I feel a need to stretch my writing muscles in a different direction.

Those couple of months of Danny Hawaii-sidelining have opened my mind up to be filled with new creative obsessions, inspired in equal parts by my trip to the City Of Shadows exhibition last year, and my recent reading of a true crime book about the underworld wars in Melbourne called LEADBELLY. Add to the mix a tasty sampling of Sara Gran's COME CLOSER and various excellent short stories over at Spinetingler Magazine, and the melting pot has started to boil.

So what are we looking at here? What's Daniel Hatadi's latest idea for a novel?

Without giving too much of the game away, it's looking like a cross between Donnie Brasco and Donnie Darko, Australian-style. It won't be about time-travel or bunny rabbits, it'll be more along the lines of crime bosses, drug-coated nightclubs and disturbing voices in the head.

I'm going to spend the next month trialling my ideas in the form of a short story and, if all goes according to plan, this will be the beginning of the novel. The first five hundred words are already humming away in my laptop, eagerly awaiting the return of my fingers.

Today marks this new beginning and so does this post. A step backward, a step forward, it's all part of the dance that is writing.

PALE IMMORTAL by Anne Frasier

I am seriously psyched to read this, so that's why I'm part of the PIMP SQUAD for Anne Frasier's new vampire extravaganza of a novel, PALE IMMORTAL, which comes out today.

Read the first two chapters and learn more at the book's chilling blog:

http://paleimmortal.blogspot.com/

Here's a detailed synopsis to whet your appetite:

Welcome to Tuonela, a sleepy Wisconsin town haunted by events of 100 years ago, when a man who may have been a vampire slaughtered the town's citizens and drank their blood. Now, another murderer is killing the most vulnerable...and draining their bodies of blood.

Evan Stroud lives in darkness. The pale prisoner of a strange disease that prevents him from ever seeing the light of day, he lives in tragic solitude, taunted for being a "vampire." When troubled teenager Graham Stroud appears on Evan's doorstep, claiming to be his long-lost son, Evan's uneasy solitude is shattered. Having escaped Tuonela's mysterious pull for several years, Rachel Burton is now back in town, filling in as coroner. Even as she seeks to identify the killer, and uncover the source of the evil that seems to pervade the town, she is drawn to Evan by a power she's helpless to understand or resist....

As Graham is pulled deeper and deeper into Tuonela's depraved, vampire-obsessed underworld, Rachel and Evan team up to save him. But the force they are fighting is both powerful and elusive...and willing to take them to the very mouth of hell.

And a music video:



I'm going to find a way to get hold of this book, even if it means flying half way across the globe. Or at the very least, getting someone else to fly for me. Like, you know, the U.S. Postal service. Yeah, they'll do.

Lastly, this will probably ruin my future writing career, but here's my pimp name:

Your Pimp Name Is...

Prince Mystery

What's Your Pimp Name?