When Will It Stop?

Today I learned the value of going to work. Somewhat like fasting to appreciate food, or travelling to appreciate home, I am now appreciating the benefits of a workplace. Sure, I have to get up early and I have to put up with flaky air-conditioning and co-workers, but at least my brain isn't drilled into.

Let me explain.

Thinking that I'd be able to sleep in today, I stayed up till about 1am last night, playing on the good old Xbox. My partner in crime gets up at around 6am, so that means I temporarily wake up at the same time.

This is fine by me. I can handle it. What I can't handle is heavy knocking on the door about two hours later.

I'm not sure what happened. Someone banged on the door and woke me up, but before I got out of bed, they'd already closed the front gate. Across the road, I could see the perpetrator knocking on someone else's door. Unlike me, they answered, so I stuck my ear against the window and tried to listen in. From what I could tell, the door knocker was a gardening disposal person and was offering some kind of tree trunk destruction. I thought about it. Should I open the door, rush across the road and say, count me in?

No. I don't have any tree trunks.

I checked all around the house. Under the sink, in the fridge, under the bed. Nope. No tree trunks. No large pieces of wood. I knocked on my skull, just to see if that was made of wood. Maybe I could get them to shove my head into their Truck Of Mass Destruction. I mean, they're already figuratively destroying it. Why not go the whole hog and murder me in a bloody bath of gardening?

And it's still going. They've been mulching or shredding or whatever it is they do for the last three hours, non-stop. Add the usual Tuesday morning garbage pickup into the mix and my head is seriously sore.

Everything's quiet now. I think it just stopped. So this is what the life of a writer in the inner city is like.

Now, back to procrastinating.

The Next Chapter

It's been a while since I've blogged while drunk, and considering tonight's consumption of vodka with lemonade, vodka with Red Bull, and vodka with vodka, I think it's time I did it again.

Drinking a multi-vegetable, multi-fruit juice in a concerted attempt to sober up so I can sleep, it's time to reflect on the evening that was my going-away party.

First up, the exploration of the meaning behind my gifts.

Exhibit One is, to be on the safe side, currently un-nameable due to marketing restrictions, but I can say with all certainty that it is a nightmare personified in fabric. The last major poker machine game I worked on, the one that made me go through many hours of unpaid overtime (one of the joys of being on a salary), has been immortalised in the form of a matching blue-and-yellow cap and t-shirt. My plan is to wait for a full moon; pick a nice, dark, hilltop and burn them.

Exhibit Two is a copy of Robert G. Barrett's Leaving Bondi, with a 'doctored' cover.



Highlights of the evening include:

• Buying dinner and two drinks. The rest was all a gift, although my liver may not agree.
• Watching my boss try to sell a determined couple on the idea of a baby.
• Having someone laugh up a puddle of Irish Car Bomb (a cocktail involving a depth charge in Guinness), onto my new book.
• Listening to all the drunken truths that came out. It's amazing what people will tell you once you are leaving.
• Being told that I'll be missed, by a number of people. Makes for a bittersweet end to it all.
• Hearing someone referred to as 'Mr. Blindo.'
• Coming home to a box full of yummy, all natural lollies.
• Having the evening end without falling asleep in the garden. It appears I have grown up after all.

Goodnight to IGT, and good luck.

It's been great working with all of you.

And once the family obligations of Easter are over, the next chapter truly begins.

Yes!

Murphy's Law Of The Flu

The dreaded Lurgy has flown from office to office and decided to get to know me better before it moves on.

Lurgy chose a brilliant time to visit: my last week at the current job. Nothing quite like the ridicule one receives when 'chucking a sickie' in the last week. It's been laughing faces and pointing fingers all morning. Being the mature and rational adult I am, my entirely appropriate response was communicated to the perpetrators with the use of my middle finger.

Aside from the inconvenience of Lurgy's visit, the feeling I have at work this week is a surreal one. Five years in the same job and it all ends this Thursday. When you spend eight hours a day with a group of people, you can't help but form a close bond with them, even if this is due to a common enemy known as 'Work'.

Luckily, that close bond will now be broken. My underwear will be cleaner for it.

Bye, bye, guys.

Hello, world!

The Fun And Games Continue

The writing is going slow at the moment, probably because I'm not actually writing. Aside from the hours being sucked up by my new toy, I'm trying to get to know my main character better.

Reading Jeff Lindsay's DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER and watching WONDERFALLS (as well as processing feedback from Steven & Stephen), has made me get back to the basics of my main character. I'm trying to nail down who he really is in a few sentences, and also fleshing out about five pages of notes.

Dexter is all about a strong first-person voice, with plenty of internal monologue (perhaps a little too much). As Stephen told me, this is something that seems to be missing in my writing so far. I don't want to add the amount of reflection that Dexter has, but as it stands now, my novel makes Danny come across as somewhat distant. It's the other characters that shine instead.

And I'm going to have plenty of time to really nail the whole thing, once I leave my current job.

Yes, I gave notice a couple of weeks ago, so I'll be running away from the exciting world of poker maching programming come Easter. I have a few months' savings to keep me writing full time, as well as the support of a top-notch lass in the form of Mary.

I have a four-to-six tier plan, with numerous offside-contingencies, fail-safe backup systems, as well as other hyphenated-strategic-dollops-of-bullshit.

With one of these tiers, if all goes well, my entry to the Debut Dagger awards will get me a nomination, which will prompt my credit cards to battle it out over who's going to pay for my trip to London. At this point I plan to have a completed novel in my pocket (I'll make sure to wear very baggy pants), and a lucrative publishing deal will spring into my lap, even while I suffer from jet lag.

Next rung down the ladder of tiers will be the St. Martin's Best PI Novel competition, assuming they even go ahead with it this year.

And then?

If I can scrounge together enough moxy to get hold of a driver's license, I suppose I'll become a pizza delivery driver. More likely, I'll re-enter the world of Poker Machine Programming, hopefully with a megabuck-size increase in remuneration.

Failing all of this, I will become an Xbox.

Please Forgive Me

Blogging hasn't been on my mind over the last week. Lots of exciting personal stuff going on. Some of which includes regressing into the me that was me from fifteen years ago. Thanks to the wonders of interest-free purchasing plans, I am now the proud owner of an uber-geeky toy known as the Xbox 360.

How does this fit in with crime writing?

Funny you ask, because I downloaded a demo of a game called CONDEMNED: CRIMINAL ORIGINS. In it you play the role of an FBI agent that--apart from having the job of beating up everyone into a bloody pulp--is in the possession of 'forensic investigation tools'. One of them is a UV light, and the other is some kind of 'laser' device. Your agent gets to use these tools on gruesome crime scenes where people have been murdered over a game of chess. You run the 'tool' over 'evidence' and that gets 'sent back' to 'headquarters'.

Or something like that. Anyway, it's got something to do with crime.

But the real reason I haven't been blogging is because of this:



I'm hooked. THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION is one of the most amazing computer games ever made. It's as geeky as you can get: a single player RPG (Role Playing Game). Yes, lots of lonely nights of sweaty hands and blurry vision, with not a single second of social interaction.

So I'm lost in this world. I'm coming home after work and playing it, resting, then playing again.

Hopefully I'll come back soon. And blog about that exciting personal stuff that's going on.

Until then, Mary, please forgive me. All is not lost.

Stairway To Heaven

I've been working on a story called Meditation Cell for a few months now, on and off. I don't know why, but this one seems to be a really hard slog, so much so that I was thinking of trashing it.

But no, I'm not a quitter! They'll never catch me alive! I swear the chicken wasn't mine!

In other words, I've pared the story down and re-tooled it for Flashing In The Gutters. Go have a read of Stairway To Heaven and see what you think.

Yes, you. The one reading this. The one I have complete control over.

The one that is now reading this sentence.

See?

Mystery Around The Corner

What are those little white things? Who drank the Coke?

Oh, my God! Who left the baby there?

The Great Re-Plotting

The last few days have seen me outlining my novel, one sentence for each scene. I threw it all into a spreadsheet with chapter numbers, page numbers and a timeline, all in separate columns.

I've always heard of the screenwriter's technique of using index cards to work out a plot, so I decided to do the same. Thanks to Microsoft Word's Mail Merge feature, I took the data in my spreadsheet, formatted it to fit onto business cards and printed them.

Witness my creation:



I should have vacuumed before I put the cards down: there's cat hair everywhere. But even with this seemingly catastrophic encumbrance, I find it easier to shift the cards around on the carpet than to do it in the computer.

So far I've pulled out one of the major subplots, as well as a minor one, and I can already see that the story will be stronger for it. I'll have to add in a few scenes to smooth things, but one of the biggest problems so far is that the pace is too fast. Removing a couple of unneccessary locations and characters should help me flesh out what I already have and slow the pace down at points.

And if I don't like it, I'll just deal the deck out again.

Will I ever finish this damn novel? Tune in every day or so at random intervals to find out!

Great MacBride And Terrenoire, Batman!

Not one, but two fine bloggers of ill repute (in other words, on my blog links) have been announced as finalists for Best First Novel by the International Thriller Writers.

One of these is sitting on my bookshelf, calling desperately to me to be read, and the other is either somewhere over the Atlantic or tucked away in a container in Sydney Harbour.

A big round of congratumalations to Stuart MacBride and David Terrenoire.

Dirty Old Book

That's what I'm reading right now. No, not something of questionable taste with pages stuck together, just something old and yellowing. It's got that musty smell and it's a hardback, not something that's common in new novels in our sunburnt country.

The book looks sunburnt, too. Take off the tacky cover with the author photo of Peter Corris sporting equally tacky shades and you have a plain, brown cover. You also have Corris' first book, The Dying Trade.

I've read a couple of much later Cliff Hardy novels, but this is the first in the series that now totals twenty-six, with the latest book only out a couple of months ago.

It's easy to see that like many PI authors, Corris was heavily influenced by Chandler and the like, but it's filtered through Corris' own Australian eyes. A little heavy on the description for my taste, and maybe that's a side effect of it having been written exactly twenty-six years ago. Yes, Corris has written one book a year in the Cliff Hardy series, not to mention Browning, PI and some non-fiction work.

When I started writing my novel, I became obsessed with reading first books of PI series, and this was one that I had a lot of trouble tracking down. Eventually found it online, through a local bookseller of second hand and collector's editions. Fifty pages in, and I'm hooked. Corris always knew what he was doing.

Excuse me, I have to get back to being musty. It gets me all excitable.

Hmm. I feel a strong urge to wash my hands right about now.

Fixing Problems

And now it's time for the monthly Thinking About The Novel Out Loud. Move along, nothing to see here if it ain't your bag. This one's gonna be long.

Steven's been kind enough to look at a couple more chapters, and thankfully I made sure my writing was more polished this time, so he only scratched out a few redundant words.

He's a cluey man and quickly spotted all the logical flaws. Made me realise I simply don't know enough about what I'm doing. But that's how it goes. The first draft is shit (and the second in my case) and you've gotta trawl through the shit to find the nuggets. Of gold. Not poo.

Timed nicely with Steven's crit, a friend grilled me over dinner last night (there's a metaphor for ya). Who is this Danny Hawaii guy? What motivates him? My friend rambled on, enjoying the sound of his own voice, talking about internal conflicts in characters and the like, and it got me thinking.

Who is Danny Hawaii?

There are a few pages of notes filled with snippets that I added along the way, stretching back to the first days, when the novel was more of a Blues Brothers/Demolition Man/Magnum/Crododile Dundee crossover. The background tidbits on Danny are a little contradictory, and looking through my novel, it shows.

I had this idea that Danny hates his name because his father gave it to him, and wants to become a PI to spite his now-dead father in some overly-complex way. At various points Danny reflects on this, but it doesn't really relate to the story. It's tacked on. Call it my equivalent of the unnecessary Vietnam flashback.

The whole father angle was something I threw in when I first started writing because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. But it doesn't suit the character, or the story. The novel is not supposed to be the most serious thing in the world, so the character should be consistent with that. Danny is not someone who thinks things through, so the character arc can show him learning something of the realities of what he's doing.

So who is Danny Hawaii? He's young, lives rent-free in a property that his parents own (they're overseas and aren't really a part of Danny's life). He started a PI course because it was the cheapest on offer and he thought there'd be babes and guns. Once he found out he didn't have to finish the course to get the job, he dropped out. The internal conflict with Danny is between his poorly-researched idea of what a PI should be, and the dull reality of the actual work.

Danny likes his name, because he's the one that got it legally changed. Just the kind of thing a spoiled kid would do. And it sounds a little catchier than Davor Wozniak.

Because Danny's current background is tacked on, it should make it easier to fit in the changes. And because they're more consistent with what Danny actually does in the story, I think it will work better.

Speaking of work, I've got lots to do now.

69'er

Wrote this for Konrath's mini-comp:

They stagger back to the cabin, stomachs filled with wine, decide to get a little silly. He’s on the bottom, tongue poking out. She’s on top, mouth open wide. They wriggle and twist, moaning, rolling around on the springs. The bed creaks. Looks like it’s about to tip. Tired now, they lie on their backs, arms behind their heads. The top and bottom bunks of a double bunk bed.

Word count: 69

The Tipping Point

Just finished reading this excellent book by Malcolm Gladwell. For once, it's not fiction and it's not crime. It's a cross between marketing, psychology and chaos mathematics, although there's not an equation or mathematical concept in sight.

James Gleick's Chaos was an in-depth study of the mathematics and the history behind chaos, the simple idea that little things can make a big difference. The Tipping Point is a more easily understandable and practical exploration of the same idea.

The difference between the two books is similar to the difference between learning about computers and learning how to use them.

Gladwell deals with subjects like teenage suicide and smoking, crime in New York, Sesame Street and, of course, shoes. Somehow it manages to tie all of these together under the umbrella of epidemics. The idea that little things can make a big difference is gently hammered home by each case study.

But this is no dry book at all. It's very well written and the words glide off the page. By the end of it you can't help thinking about everyone and everything around you in a slightly different light.

Which person is a Maven? Or a Salesman, or a Connector?

What's the context, what's the stickiness factor?

What am I talking about?

Go and read the book. It's one of the few essential texts on popular science that doesn't read like a textbook at all.

Seriously. Read it. Be Tipped.

Yes, I Have Plenty To Do

Back In The Gutter Again

It's been on my website for a while now, but the story needed a fresh whiff of not-so-fresh air.

Go and witness the super-cut-down version of Down In The Hole, a story written in honour of this here blog. I like it so much, I've replaced the original.

Courtesy of Tribe's fantabulous Flashing In The Gutters.

Obscure Songs From The 80s

Unlike most people my age, I hate the 80s. Too much reverb, tacky synths, cheesy robotic weirdness. Being a guitar and harmonica player, I prefer the old, old blues of the 30s through to the 50s. Music that is a soul wailing, not a plastic pop contrivance.

That being said, like any decade, the 80s had plenty of damn good songs. It's easy to look at the charts now and feel that the quality has dropped, but chances are that when we listen again in the decades to come, we'll find a treasure trove of standouts amongst the garbage.

Why am I writing about all this?

In the last few weeks I've had strong musically nostalgic urges, so I've used that energy to track down a couple of fistfuls of tunes that tickled my nether regions back then, when they were very easily tickled.

1. Captain Sensible: Wot
   A one hit wonder, it's hard to believe this guy is actually in The Damned.
2. Belle Stars: Iko, Iko
   This one's on the Rain Man soundtrack, but back then it was all about the hats.
3. Monte Video and the Cassettes: Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma Wang Dang
   The 80s truly was the decade of the one hit wonder. This one made it to number one in New Zealand alone.
4. Queen: Princes Of The Universe
   Even with the over-the-top guitar, Queen made me believe there could be only one.
5. Oingo Boingo: Weird Science
   Proof that making your own robot woman is a recipe for Trouble.
6. Thomas Dolby: She Blinded Me With Science
   See? You can go blind if you do it too often.
7. Cyndi Lauper: What A Thrill
   The flipside of The Goonies single, this still rocks hard.
8. The Style Council: (When You) Call Me
   I can't help getting all misty eyed when I hear this, even though I don't know why.
9. Glenn Fry: The Heat Is On
   One of the most misheard lyrics in the universe, from when they knew how to do Axel F properly.
10. Taco: Puttin' On The Ritz
    Excellent for tap dancing, I used to listen to this on my huge, portable FM headphones.

Anyone else have some particular favourites that aren't on the standard 80s compilations?

What Is My Novel Trying To Be?

My third draft, once done, is the one that I'll be sending out for feedback. It's been in my mind and my laptop for far too long now, time to let it out into the real world. And there's an especially good reason for this.

There's comedy in it.

Yes, as well as trying to write a mystery, I try to write it so it's funny. Hopefully some of it works. And that's the difficulty with writing comedy. It has to work.

Sure there are guidelines to help you split people's sides: exaggeration, fish-out-of-water, understatement, contrasts, surprises. That's all well and good, but the only way to see if comedy is working is to test it. On people.

Soon, it will be time to do this. Yes, soon.

And now I must run off into the distance, cackling like a human vampire cross-bred with a hyena in the dead of night.

The cackling gets quieter with each step.

Quieter.

Until I fall.

And whimper.

Then I get back up and launch in to self-deprecating laughter.

Much like Chevy Chase used to.

The Third Draft Begins

By the time I get to my tenth novel, the beginning of the third draft will probably be just another day at work. Until then, it feels like something momentous, an occasion worthy of marking.

The manuscript was hidden in the corner of my room for the better part of a month. I contented myself with trudging through a short story I've been working on for a while, as well as playing around with possible back cover blurbs.

Over the last week, I thought a lot about the next steps to take.

I strongly felt the need for external input and it was important that the input be from a voice of experience. I really wasn't sure where that voice would come from, but I was lucky enough to have the talented and multi-published author, Steven Torres of Precinct Puerto Rico fame, look over a few chapters of my work.

He tore it to shreds.

Okay, that's being dramatic. But I definitely had a sense of the need to bring my work up to the next level, and this was just the push I needed. It felt good to be looking at the earlier chapters again, reading them out loud to get the flow right, removing as many uses of the word 'I' as ... I can, tweaking, trimming, and killing.

Debut Dagger, here I come.

Proof That Einstein Knew EVERYTHING

From hetemeel.com

When The Writer Is Seen At Work, The Writing Doesn't Work

Gary Provost wrote this in a chapter on subtlety. It's excellent advise. Here's something else he wrote:

Consider first the spell cast by reading. You're alone as you read, yet you hear my voice. You don't know me. I don't know you. But we're both acting as if the other were a real individual composed of flesh and bones. The words that I'm addressing to you aren't being uttered now. They were recorded months ago, perhaps years ago. I might be thousands of miles away. I might be dead.

Gary succumbed to a heart attack on May 10th, 1995.

Who Wants To Buy A PI Novel?

Don't get the impression I'm asking you to buy mine, at least not till it's done. I'm just linking to a great post on the topic, over at the Weinman tropical bar, where spanking is as regular as excess consumption of muesli.

She writes:

Which is the bottom line. No hook, no money, and most people --especially women -- who are making their debuts as crime writers seem to want to find their hooks elsewhere, not within the PI subgenre.

Still, I'd say the PI novel isn't dead, just resting -- and there are up-and-comers interested in writing stories and even novels featuring that patented PI. But the subgenre is a hell of a lot deader than procedurals or "ordinary/extraordinary" thrillers or paranormal tales or chick lit mysteries or cozies.

What will this mean for Danny Hawaii, PI-in-training?

It means that as his author, I've been hired to find his hook. The hook.

Stay tuned.

On The Killing Floor

Having just finished Lee Child's Killing Floor, I thought I'd throw up a few reactions to it. Not a review, just some things I noticed.

Jack Reacher is a smart guy. He's so smart that everyone around him--even those who have twenty years experience in police work--defer to his opinion. He's great at problem solving, but as the novel wears on, the logic he uses is increasingly suspect.

Jack Reacher is an amazing driver. In the one novel, he skirted, accelerated, nosed, lurched, swung, blasted, slowed, spun the wheel, turned, pulled up, threaded, wafted, parked, reversed, rolled, jinked, wallowed and drove whatever car he could lay his hands on.

The first hundred pages had me smiling at the quality of the writing, the depth of the character, and the excitement of the action.

The last hundred pages had me smiling at the abundance of coincidence, the sheer proportion of the events, and the John Woo-like slo-mo sequences.

Even though I suddenly have a hankering for some Barry Eisler, will I read more Jack Reacher novels?

Definitely.

Proofreading & Perspective

Catching errors is part of my job as a programmer, and even more so of late, so it's not a surprise that I think of editing and proofreading in a similar way.

Reading on computers is still something that people have trouble with, even though most writers use a word processor. People still print documents out on paper, especially if it's a manual, or if they're trying to fix problems in the documents themselves.

I'm lucky enough to be a child of the computer age, not quite as Playstationed and Xboxed as those a decade after me, but still capable of reading on a computer screen. I've even been able to read entire novels that way, courtesy of my Pocket PC.

When it comes to proofreading though, I still trust real paper.

For one, it's easy to make quick notes in the margins, it gives me a feeling for how long my novel is, and most importantly, I catch errors I miss on the computer.

I've been trying to figure out why that is the case. Why can't I see mistakes on the screen while typing?

When I'm writing, there are certain parts of my brain doing the work, some of which are taken up by the simple mechanical process of typing. When I'm proofreading on paper, other parts take over. I'm not thinking about what to type and I can devote all of my attention to simply seeing what is there, right in front of me, as it is.

It's a change of perspective.

So I tried an experiment based on this idea. I exported one of my short stories to PDF so I could read it on screen, but couldn't modify it. I found myself catching errors that I had completely missed, just like I would on paper. I printed out one of the later drafts as a final check, but I'm of the opinion that there was no reason for me to move the document outside the computer at all.

I might try it on the novel next.

Taurus The Bull

My star sign, and even though I don't believe in horoscopes one eensy-weensy bit, the sign I most identify with.

Stubbornness, patience, practicality, creativity. The Bull, full of ... bull.

I got this tattoo done about five months ago, so it's nice and settled now, part of the landscape of the forest on my arms.

Instead of showing a plain old picture of my tattoo as it is, here's a picture of the image left behind on the bandage I wore while the tatt healed.


Geez, us crime writer types, always making unnecessary references to blood.

Senses

Work is doing its best to suck all of the creative juices out of me, but I've still scrabbled together some energy for Provost's wacky and zany exercises. Actually, they're not wacky. They're very sensible.

Here are my attempts at using all of the senses to describe a scene:

A coffee shop.

Johnny’s Coffee Stop was brown. Mud brown, chocolate brown, coffee brown. The signage on the window, even the text. Brown. When I stepped inside, the grinding of beans hit my ears and the sharp aroma of it knifed into my flaring nostrils. I ordered a caramel latte, sat in the splintering stool and waited. When the coffee came, I caressed the cup, letting the warmth seep into my shaking hands.

A fruit stand.

I ran my fingers over the darkening pineapples, the spikes almost scraping off my fingerprints. My blood dripped into the cart. I dragged my hand past the apples, the kiwifruit, the mangoes. The heady perfume of the fruits combined with my loss of blood and I swayed from side to side, staring at the fruit stand owner’s huge moustache. He yelled at me to keep my hands off. I licked my fingers. It was like licking chains.

A truck stop.

Compression breaks squealed and eighteen huge wheels ground to a halt, sending dust and dirt into Derek’s face. He coughed and sputtered, blew the dust out his nose. The driver oozed out of the truck, knelt down and touched the earth. His face was caked with dirt and sweat, but his eyes pierced into Derek. Derek thought, these donuts better be good. The doors opened. Derek could smell the icing, taste the dough, even though all he could see were rows and rows of white cardboard boxes.

Cliches

I'm reading Gary Provost's "Make Your Words Work" as a way of distancing myself from the manuscript, with the hopeful bonus of learning more about writing. The book is a pleasure to read and the exercises can be damned entertaining.

One exercise was to think of cliche replacements. Like these:

He could sell a fridge to an Eskimo.
He could sell leather boots to a vegan.
He could sell a flamethrower to a fireman.
He could sell a pentagram to a nun.

Sly as a fox.
Sly as a kid with brussel sprouts in his pockets.
Sly as a student with porn in a classroom.
Sly as Stallone.

Behind the eight ball.
Naked at a spelling bee.
Feet behind the head.
Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

Out from the frying pan into the fire.
After the queue come the forms.
In prison: out of the showers and into the toilets.
Out from under the bulldozer, into the morgue.

He left no stone unturned.
He left no email unread.
He checked inside every box of cereal.
He lifted every veil in the harem.

I'm sure y'all can do better.

The Importance Of Editing

100th Post: A Weekday In The Life

I threw this one together on the Mystery Circus, but seeing as it's my 100th post and all, it seems fitting to duplicate it here.

This one goes out to the three other people that didn't read it at the Circus.

8am: My alarm goes off. Wake up, go downstairs, feed cats, assemble cup of tea and bowl of muesli.
8:15am: Eat breakfast, wait for tea to brew, check email/Bloglines/MWF/Circus
8:20am: Drink tea, controlled dosage of caffeine enters system, fart around on the net some more. Almost awake now.
8:40am: Shit, shower, shave. Wakefulness achieved.
9:00am: Get on bicycle, ride to work.
9:20am: Arrive at work, net-ercise some more, figure out what work I have to do.
9:40am-12pm: Program them damn poker machines. This does not involve the use of a Poker Utility Belt.
12pm-1pm: Grab some lunch from downstairs, open laptop, write for an hour or so. Failing that, stare at outline of novel or short story until I give up. Yes, I outline my shorts.
1pm-5:30pm: Do more poker machine programming. Fit in some net fun along the way whenever I have to wait a few minutes for something to finish.
5:30pm: Ride home. Try not to get run over.
5:55pm: Tell the microwave to cook dinner, or call up a Thai restaurant to do the same, then eat.
6:30pm: Neighbours is on--I find absolutely anything else to do.
7pm-9pm: Muck around. Seriously.
9pm-10:30pm: Try that whole writing thing again, or read cool, hard-ass noirish shit, like Jim Thompson or one of the Peters (Corris, Temple, Doyle).
11pm-1am: Try to sleep.

Weekends that don't involve social obligations are similar, but work is replaced by shopping, there's no writing done at lunch, and time is usually found for a movie.

Far too much of this is done under the influence of sleep deprivation.

Reason? I don't sleep so good. :(

Roll Up, Roll Up!

The circus has come to town! It's a forum, it's an ezine, it's yet another hub in the dark world of mystery.

It cleans, it strengthens, it lengthens. It removes vomit and other household stains.

It's a shoe polish, a floor wax, an anal loosener; it's a monkey's best meal, and it comes FREE, this month only, with every vacuum cleaner bag purchased at the store.

Roll up for the Mystery Circus now!



The Circus is a gripping tale that takes you into the dark and violent heart of obsession.
- Michael Connelly

Rickards contacted me about writing a blurb for him, but I decided to go the whole hog and make my own circus. Look for it, this Fall.
- Stephen King

The Mystery Circus is a tour de force! It's a chase story, an allegory, and a brilliant riff on language. It's the future of dark entertainment.
- James Ellroy

Jaysus fuck, that ringleader has the best coke in town.
- Ken Bruen

In today’s modern world, it stands as a testament to the human ego’s triumph over commercialism that being a clown still holds the ultimate cachet. And, as John Rickards pains himself to point out, the effects of social capital can be all the more staggering for his generation, one deep in self-contemplation.
- Zadie Smith

Fuck that coke was good.
- James Frey

Don't Adverb

In all the books on writing that I've studied, one tip crops up time and time again.

Don't use adverbs. (1)

Because I only have a year or so of real writing experience under my belt, I've taken this as gospel. But I didn't really understand why until I read a post over at Flogging The Quill.

The post is all about showing and telling, and this is the line that turned the light bulb on in my head:

I believe that the use of adverbs is merely a form of telling.

That did it for me. It's something that's related to compression as well. Make the dialogue, the action, even the description show the reader what is happening. That way you don't need to repeat what you've already said. And repetition tends to dilute the writing. The idea gets spread out and ends up thinner for it.

It's totally possible to write an entire novel without a single adverb, and I think that the writing ends up stronger, because the writer is forced to think of a different way to show, and showing leads to more immediate prose.

I searched for some quotes to back me up on this, but Chip Scanlan's already done it for me. And he's taken the time to look at the issue from both sides.

In fact, if I'd stumbled across the article before I wrote this, I might have just posted a link to it.

But then I wouldn't have said it my way.

1. What's an adverb I hear you say? What, you already know? Sorry, I can't hear you.
   An adverb is an adjective that modifies a verb.
   Or ...
   An adverb is, most of the time, a word that ends in -ly.
   Slowly, quietly, righteously, glowingly, disgustingly.(2)
2. My first footnote!
   

To Be Read

On Saturday I went to a day long seminar called Demystifying Book Publishing which was a helluva lot of fun, and as far as I can tell, the best introduction to the publishing industry in Australia.

I plan to write about this in the next couple of days, but it will take a team of highly trained linguists to decipher the words in my notebook.

Until then, I give you my current TBR pile, in no particular order:

• Lee Child: Killing Floor
• Peter Corris: The Dying Trade
• Mark Billingham: Lazybones
• Peter Doyle: The Devil's Jump
• Robert Gott: A Thing Of Blood
• Jake Arnott: The Long Firm
• Steve Martin: Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
• Jim Thompson: The Killer Inside Me
• Michael Robotham: The Suspect
• Arnaldur Indridason: Jar City
• Marele Day: The Life And Crimes Of Harry Lavender
  
• Stuart Kaminsky: Behind The Mystery
• Pulp: Toni Johnson-Woods
• The Classic Era Of Crime Fiction: Peter Haining
• Richard Aleas: Little Girl Lost
• Gary Provost: Making Your Words Work
• Dwight Swain: Techniques of the Selling Writer
• Sybil Steinberg: Writers And Their Craft--Volume II
• Michael Michalko: Cracking Creativity
• Shunryu Suzuki: Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness

All this doesn't count the thirty or so titles I keep on my Amazon Wishlist, or the twenty more I have hidden away in a spreadsheet under the same title as this post.

Should I just give up and kill myself now? Or will Mary do it for me the next time she sees me buy another book?

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?