Rob Boffard's Blog, page 5

The 11 best action movie deaths of all time

I’m obsessed with action movies.

As a kid, I actively tried to recruit kids from my school to form an Action Movie Viewing Club, where we’d all chip in and go see the latest Steven Seagal movie (or whatever). I lived for explosions, cheered on fight scenes, kept count of the number of kills in movies – what can I say, I was a weird kid. And while I no longer conduct such morbid statistical analyses, I do have an appreciation for the good action movie death scene.

And why the hell not? Big, explosive deaths allow us to exercise the vicious part of our imaginations, the part that never gets to come out in everyday life. It’s fun to imagine a villain, a real nasty piece of work, and watch them get what’s coming to them in the most gruesome way possible. When it’s a climax to an action flick, and it’s done right, it’s one of the coolest things you can see onscreen. Morbid and twisted, but still cool.

Here’s my top eleven. What, I can’t have eleven? Screw you. It’s my blog. Also, I wanted to include Lena Headey. Most of them are villains, with the odd hero thrown in. And it goes without saying:

 

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

 

11. Samuel L Jackson – Deep Blue Sea

I never saw this coming.

I mean, come on, it’s Samuel L.! The coolest motherfucker in movies! An ice-cold survivor, always ready with a one-liner, not to be messed with. Three genetically engineered sharks? A group of humans trapped in a sub-sea research facility? Pfft. No problem. Not even when they start to fight. Jackson, whose Dr. Franklin once survived an avalanche, tells them to chill.

“You think water moves fast? You should see ice. It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder. After the avalanche, it took us a week to climb out. Now, I don’t know exactly when we turned on each other, but I know that seven of us survived the slide… and only five made it out. Now we took an oath, that I’m breaking now. We said we’d say it was the snow that killed the other two, but it wasn’t. Nature can be lethal but it doesn’t hold a candle to man. Now you’ve seen how bad things can get, and how quick they can get that way. Well, they can get a whole lot worse. So we’re not going to fight anymore! We’re going to pull together, and we’re going to find a way to get outta here. First, we’re gonna seal off this fl – “

BAM. Shark. Through floor. Chomp. Dead.

HOLY FUCK SHIT YOU KILLED SAMUEL L JESUS CHRIST NOW I AM TERRIFIED

 

 

10. Major T.J. “King” Kong – Dr Strangelove

I’ve tried to avoid really old movies here. Usually, the directors just didn’t get the concept of a good death. A gunshot, a staggering baddie, blood seeping onto a shirt, “You got me!”, thud. Meh.

But Dr. Strangelove? Hell yes. You have the greatest movie about nuclear war ever made, and you end it with Major T.J. “King” Kong literally riding a bomb as it plummets to the ground. Of course, the circumstances for this happening are completely insane, but who cares. He’s riding. A bomb.

 

9. The Predator

It’s an almost perfect ending.

Arnie versus the biggest, baddest bastard in the universe. One on one, mano-a-mano. A jungle battle to the death. A total explosion of unadulterated 80s masculinity and muscles. It’s passe now, but in the early 90s, when I saw it, it was the coolest thing ever.

And they couldn’t just have Arnie kill the big guy. Oh no. He’d never go out like that. Once he knew he was beaten, Preds activated his wrist-mounted super-bomb. It’s a masterfully-shot scene, beautifully written, with nothing but the ticking timer and that long, hideously human laugh to send us home. Bang. A perfect ending to a terrifying movie.

8. Brick Top – Snatch

Snatch is the single greatest gangster film of all time.

That’s an absolute. Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, Pulp Fiction…all good. All classics. None of them hold a candle to Snatch. It’s as sharp and lethal as a shank to the liver, bursting with incredible characters. Some friends and I once spent an entire evening talking in nothing but Snatch quotes. It’s that good.

And it has the best villain: Brick Top. A pint-sized, ancient ghoul in thick, horn-rimmed glasses, fond of suffocating his enemies and then feeding them to pigs. Alan Ford plays him with zero sentiment, a titanic performance that redefines onscreen presence.

His end comes after a boxing match gone wrong, when the gypsy whose caravan he burned (with his mum still inside) gets bloody, booming revenge. To the tune of Oasis’ Fuckin’ In The Bushes, Brick Top has to first listen to his men being slaughtered, then gets taken out by a shotgun blast to the face. Ford’s look of stunned incomprehension deserved an Oscar.

BONUS BRICK TOP STORY: My friend was once lost in London, and walked up to an old geezer on the corner to ask directions. The man turned around, and it was Alan Ford, dressed remarkably like Brick Top. My mate nearly shat himself. As would I. As would you.

7. Agent Smith – The Matrix

The video above is from The Matrix Revolutions – I couldn’t find Agent Smith’s original death scene on Youtube, for some reason. But his end in the first movie ranks with the best.

It’s up here because when he dies, Smith thinks he’s won. He’s killed Neo. He finished it. And then, against all odds, his nemesis rises up – not just back, but more powerful than ever before. He enters Smith, exploding him from the inside, and like Brick Top, Smith’s incomprehension is just majestic. Nothing is more gut-wrenching than seeing a villain die without understanding why. You might hate them, but it hurts to watch such a terrifying figure finally figure out that they’ve lost.

Smith was back, of course. And his death in TMR was nothing compared to his first good-bye. Still, a wonderful way to go.

5. Cyrus The Virus – Con Air

Oh, your bad guy got shot? Stabbed? Eaten by a shark.

Please.

That shit is amateur hour. Jerry Bruckheimer is no amateur. He does not fuck around. When he wants to eliminate John Malkovich’s Cyrus The Virus in the majestically stupid Con Air, he goes all out. First he has Cyrus get pinned to the ladder of a firetruck. Then he crashes him through a bridge. And finally, he launches the guy onto a set of powerlines. Just to make sure.

All of this, by the way, happens after a plane crash. In Vegas. Because Vegas.

5. Castor Troy – Face/Off

Another one I couldn’t find on YouTube. You’ll have to be content with “Let’s just kill each other.”

Very few villain deaths are satisfying as the spear gun John Travolta receives to the stomach, after a massive boat chase followed by him trying to cut off his own face to spite Nicolas Cage’s Sean Archer. Throughout the entire film, he has been a scenery-chewing nasty, a dangerous lunatic who thinks nothing of wrecking lives. He’s the closest thing to the The Joker without actually being The Joker, and John Travolta nails him.

The final thud when Cage fires the spear gun is nothing short of epic. I loved this film, and I don’t understand why it isn’t as revered as it should be. It’s John Woo at his absolute best, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ve missed out.

4. Alonzo Harris – Training Day

Denzel Washington deserved his Oscar for this, Antoine Fuqua’s paean to the streets of Los Angeles. Unrealistic it may be, but you can’t look away from Detective Alonzo Harris, the whip-smart, sociopathic detective who slowly traps Ethan Hawke’s rookie Jake Hoyt in a web of criminal activity.

When Alonzo finally meets his match, at the hands of the Russian mafia hitmen he’s been trying to outrun, it’s in ignominious fashion: under an overpass, hemmed in, gunned down by automatic weapons. And he knows. He knows as he pulls up that it’s all over. He’s finally done. And yet, he’s still thinking. Is there a way out? A palm to grease, a job to take, a favour to do? Someone he could –

No. Harris gets everything coming to him, and right up until the final volley, he thinks he can get out of it. By the time he slumps on the tarmac, bleeding out, you almost want him to make it.

Denzel. Deserved. His. Oscar.

3. Koobus Venter – District 9

Apologies for the video quality. Only one I could find.

I have a real love for this film. Of course I do – I’m South African. That’s my city being blown to smithereens and infested by aliens. To my mind, this is one of the great scifi films: a scary, all-too-real vision of Apartheid gone even more wrong than it already was.

David James plays Koobus Venter, a government agent charged with hunting down the mutating Wikus Van Der Merwe. He is a prime example of a man who starts out doing a job and becomes obsessed. By the time the final battle rolls around, he is completely locked-in, thirsting for blood, not just keen to finish the job but personally wanting to put a bullet in Wikus’ skull, his hatred for the Prawns focused into one burning point.

And then just as he’s about to do the deed, he’s ambushed by the very Prawns he hates so much. And they take him apart. His death occurs in seconds, and is a reminder that when it comes down it, obsession won’t protect him. He’s still a man. He is mortal. He can be killed. He is no better, or worse, than anyone else.

It’s a masterpiece of film-making, a triumph for James and for director Neill Blomkamp. You gotta see it.

2. MaMa – Dredd

Can death be beautiful?

In real life, never. In movies? Sure. After all, if we are to confront death, we need to remove it of its power – and why not do that by giving it beauty? By making it calm, measured, contemplative. Even when it comes at terminal velocity after a fall from the top of a tower block.

That’s the fate of Lena Headey’s MaMa, gang warlord and controller of Mega City One’s Peachtree’s tower block. Judge Dredd wants her, and what Dredd wants, Dredd gets. She does everything to take him and his partner, Judge Anderson, down, but to no avail. Dredd finds her. And because Dredd is about justice, he does the one thing that would make sense.

MaMa’s product of choice is SloMo, a drug that reduces time to 1% of its speed. Dredd shoots her full of it, and tosses her off the top balcony. Cue a long, delicious, kaleidoscopic fall that ranks as one of the best death scenes ever. By the time MaMa hits the floor – slowly, oh so slowly – we almost believe she welcomes it. It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, and gorgeous.

Watch in full HD, on the biggest TV you can find, with sound turned up to eleven.

1. Hans Gruber – Die Hard

God, I miss Alan Rickman.

2016 has taken a lot from us. Of course, no celebrity death can ever overshadow the horrors in France, in Syria, in Turkey, in the US. But celebrity deaths have been a feature of this year, and for me, Rickman’s death hurt the most. He was a titan.

The death of his Die Hard character Hans Gruber is perhaps his greatest moment. And it’s his greatest moment because he wasn’t acting.

As The Independent reported earlier this year, Rickman’s priceless expression when Hans Gruber finally falls to his death wasn’t faked. Director John McTiernan told the stunt crew to drop him on one, not zero. Twenty-five feet onto an airbag. He is genuinely stunned. But – and it’s a big but – it fits perfectly. Throughout the movie, Rickman portrays Gruber as calm, in control, never ruffled, never perturbed. If you were Gruber, and you fell, wouldn’t you meet it with disbelief? With a sheer refusal to accept the facts?

This isn’t a sympathy nomination. Rickman has always been number one for me. His death, as far as action movies go, is perfect. It is the final, crystal moment of catharsis we need, a release of tension that to this day is unmatched.

BONUS ALAN RICKMAN STORY: I flew to LA the other day for a mini-break. On the way back, I caught a movie called Eye In The Sky, about a drone warfare operation. It has a surprisingly amazing cast: Helen Mirren, Barkhad Abdi, Aaron Paul…and Alan Rickman, as the acerbic British general Frank Benson, overseeing a strike on a terrorist cell in Nairobi.

Spoiler alert. Big time.

Throughout the movie, Benson is gunning for the strike to go ahead, despite the presence of a child at the target. He pushes for it. Hard. The strike goes ahead, the kid doesn’t make it, and as the assembled ministers and secretaries leave the room, Monica Dolan’s Undersecretary of State for Africa Angela Northman tells Benson that he’s a disgrace. That he just killed someone from the comfort of his office chair.

Slowly, Benson turns. He tells Northman that he has personally attended the aftermath of five suicide bombings. And then, with perfect Rickman steel, with a face so cold it raises goosebumps on your arms, he says, “Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.”

The scene was so good I rewound to watch it again. Eye In The Sky was seen by almost no-one, and that’s a crying shame. Watch it. It’s incredible.

Go well, Alan. We’ll miss you.

TRACER is out now (Amazon / B&N / Indigo Chapters)

Other stores: iBooks / Google Play / Waterstones / WHSmith / Loot / Exclusives / Booktopia

Our planet is in ruins. Three hundred miles above its scarred surface orbits Outer Earth: a space station with a million souls on board. They are all that remain of the human race.

Darnell is the head of the station’s biotech lab. He’s also a man with dark secrets. And he has ambitions for Outer Earth that no one will see coming.

Prakesh is a scientist, and he has no idea what his boss Darnell is capable of. He’ll have to move fast if he doesn’t want to end up dead.

And then there’s Riley. She’s a tracer – a courier. For her, speed is everything. But with her latest cargo, she’s taken on more than she bargained for. 

A chilling conspiracy connects them all. The countdown has begun for Outer Earth – and for mankind.

I’ve discovered the secret to publishing success!

I’m going to share with you the most important tool any writer can have. Seriously, you can’t be a writer without it. Wanna finish that novel? Become a bestseller? Get that big-ass publishing contract? DO YOU? Then you need this. It’s absolutely essential.

Now, you’ll get a lot of writers saying advice is trash, that you should never go in for quick schemes, that there’s no easy way. Well I say: WRONG! They’re all wrong! Every one of them. If you’re a writer, then you should pay attention. Or maybe you’re not a writer. Maybe you’re a POSER. Maybe you’re a limp-wristed, namby-pamby quitter. If so, then turn around and walk your ass on out of here! If not, stick around. I’m about to break down the secret to publishing success…

A really good pair of shoes.

These are mine.

They are a pair of Air Jordan Deluxe basketball sneakers. Leather trim, high-top, mesh tongue, webbed lace loops and, according to Nike, an Air Max Cushioning Unit in the heel. They are comfortable and commodious and the secret to success. I couldn’t write without them, and I thank every little starving sweatshop kid who made the damn things. Top job, you little scamps.

Now, you don’t have to have a pair of Air Jordans. Your shoes could be any shoes, as long as they’re comfortable. But you gotta have them. I don’t care how much of a barefoot-tree-huggin’-peace-lovin’-beatnik-hippy you are. Get your ass to a Foot Locker.

The reason you need them is to lubricate your mind. Too often, I find myself staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking, daring me to start and knowing I won’t. Even more often, I’ll find that I’ve written two characters into a corner: they need to be at point B, but they’re at point A, and they only have thirty minutes to make the trip, and one of them has no legs, and also there’s a nuclear war being fought by velociraptors and ninjas. To fix that problem – the characters, not the nuclear war, I like nuclear war, it’s good for the plot – I put on my shoes, and go walking.

You would not believe just how effective this is. The act of standing up, going outside and pounding the pavement is like squirting mental WD40 into the sticky hinges of my brain. Sometimes, I’ll have a solution before I’ve even reached the elevator in my building. But I go for a walk anyway, because I like it.

I do my writing in the morning, usually starting before the coffee has really kicked in, and so there are very few days when I don’t get my ass outdoors. It’s a comfortable, reassuring way to start work. And to do it effectively, you can’t be worrying about bunions. Sore ankles? Ingrown toenails? Kill that noise. Your shoes are more important than your computer, your notebooks, your coffee budget, your pens, your hipster jeans, your pricey script-writing program. They are everything. You think Hemingway had bad shoes? Ha! Hemingway had bad-ass hiking boots made from the skin of yetis and whales*, and he walked them motherfuckers FLAT.

*This may not have actually happened

I use the shoes for other things of course. Not just for playing basketball badly, but for working at my standing desk. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the whole SITTING IS KILLING US ALL schpiel, but I’m a convert. I stand for an hour or two every day at my desk, and believe me, a comfortable pair of kicks is pretty essential.

Key to publishing success, bruh. Believe me. Next time you’re stuck writing something, go outside. You’ll never look back.

(Actually, remember to look back now and then, especially if you hear someone coming up behind you).

OK. Time for some news bits!

TRACER turns 1!

So there’s this thing called a book birthday. I didn’t know it was actually a thing, but there you go. When your book has been out for a year, you’re supposed to celebrate with 10 Things I’ve Learned blog posts and Tweets of you holding a birthday card and a slice of cake and…look, I can’t be arsed, OK? TRACER is one year old, it’s fucking awesome, it got great reviews and sold well and I’m super happy with it. Plus:

ZERO-G is out in under two weeks!

Holy yak balls, Batman. ZERO-G (the paperback) is finally coming to North American bookstores. I am out-of-my-mind excited. To celebrate, check out the story about the time we actually sent a copy into space.

LA visit

I’m doing a quick Los Angeles visit this weekend. There is a chance I MAY be heading over to The Last Bookstore to sign some stock. If I do, I’ll tweet about it. Come say hi!

Nineworlds

The UK’s foremost geeky convention is happening in London, 12-14 August, and you best believe your boy’s gonna be there. I haven’t got my panel assignments yet, but you can see the kind of thing I’ll be blathering about right here. Plus, I’ll be signing books, doing readings, falling over after one too many beers, and hanging out with the other great authors and creators at the con. Come say hi!

#ImpactDay

I still can’t quite believe we’ve reached the end.

The journey we started with TRACER is finally coming to its explosive, nailbiting conclusion. In the third book of the Outer Earth trilogy – pictured left in all its burnt-orange glory – Riley Hale has crash-landed on Earth, hundreds of miles from her friends, alone in a hostile wilderness. But she isn’t going to let that stop her from finding Prakesh and Carver…and reaching a reckoning with her old nemesis, Janice Okwembu.

I’m so excited for this. You’re going to love this book. You can preorder it here – and by the way, if you’re on Twitter or Facebook, the hashtag for this one is #ImpactDay.

Here’s why you need to be watching Dark Matter

I love the fact that space-based TV is enjoying a resurgence at the moment. I don’t pretend to know enough about the TV industry to know how trends work, or why things are as they are, but I love where they are now. In the past year, we’ve had some terrific series: Killjoys, The Expanse, Ascension. 2016 might be the year of the suck, as far as things like politics and police officers and pollsters are concerned, but when it comes to spacey TV, this is one of the best years yet.

And yes, I know a lot of these shows began (and in Acension’s case, ended) in 2015, but the ones that are still here have only managed to get bigger and better. And as far as I’m concerned, Dark Matter is the best of the bunch. It is ridiculous, hokey, far-fetched, often low-budget…and absolutely brilliant.

Season 2 has just started. Being that I’m a Netflix guy – hey, I’m a writer, you expect me to have the money to shell out for cable? – I’ve only see Season 1. Still convinced it’s the mustard. Here’s why.

That first episode

 

The debut of the series was the trashiest shit I’d ever seen.

My wife and I are constantly on the hunt for new series on Netflix. We watch them over dinner most nights, which is apparently the new version of staring at each other over a table and moaning about your day (suits me fine, frankly). We went for Dark Matter on a whim, and within about ten minutes I thought we’d need to start our search again.

Six people wake up on a spaceship. OK. Lost memories. Fine. Except, they remember some things. The pint-sized Five can fix the ship. Four is lethal with about any weapon you can name. Three remembers how to be a psychopathic prick. Whatever. I’m looking forward to finding out how they all came together, and the inevitable conflicts that –

“There’s an android that wanted to kill us but is now our friend!” Huh?

“Let’s go down to this planet we are in orbit around!” Wait, what?

“Let’s help the colonists defend against the seven foot tall aliens that are apparently coming to kill them!” Um OK, just hang on a se –

“Let’s introduce a host of peripheral characters who we are apparently supposed to care about because six mysterious people onboard a ship wasn’t enough!”

Yeaaaaaaah. Honey, can we find something else to watch?

Except then, the first episode dumps a twist on you. I’m not going to spoil it, except it made me forgive them everything. And the thing is, Dark Matter kept doing this: hokey, credibility-stretching episodes with moments of scattered brilliance that made you want to keep watching. It was extraordinary.

The performances

 

I don’t think the people who made Dark Matter expected their actors to be this good.

After all, this is a vaguely-Firefly-like space opera show with pretensions. They could have hired Adam Sandler, and nobody would have cared much. But they didn’t. The actors who play the ship’s crew knock it out the fucking park.

There’s Melissa O’Neil as Two, the nominal leader of the group. She is stoic, ruthless, decisive…but always manages to look as if she’s only just holding it together. She is fully in control of her sexuality and her choices, and point-blank refuses to play second-fiddle to any of the male cast. The Jamaican-Canadian actor Roger Cross nails Six, a hulking bruiser who is utterly bewildered at his new circumstances, and who has a strong moral compass that gets tested again and again. Five (Jodelle Ferland) could have been so annoying – she’s a Kaylee ripoff with exciting hair – but she manages to be both fragile and endearing.

Top marks, though? Zoie Palmer, who plays the ship’s android. Her performance is a masterclass. The control she has of her body, of her gestures, of the tiniest facial expressions, is just mindblowing. She is always upright and polished, her speech clipped, entirely believable as a benign synthetic organism – and yet, she still shows jealousy, confusion, delight, often in the tiniest movement of her mouth and eyes.

Admittedly, Marc BenDavid and Anthony Lemke as One and Three are little one-note (boring and angry, respectively) but they’re in the minority. For the most part, the actors in Dark Matter are a lot better than they have any right to be.

The World-building

 

Or rather, universe-building.

I can’t quite put my finger on why it works. On the surface, it’s workmanlike, often opaque, sometimes frustratingly incomplete. For fans of more in-depth fare like Firefly or The Expanse, it probably feels like the producers didn’t know what they were doing.

And yet…

Despite a few missteps, the universe the crew exist in feels right. They never exist in isolation. The more time you spend with them, the more it feels like they are one story in a whole galaxy of stories, that the people they meet will go on with their lives when the Dark Matter ship cruises away. It builds gradually, but before you know it, you’re suddenly wondering what the Mikkei Combine will think of their latest move, or whether the person they just met is real, or a temporary clone, waiting to transfer its new memories back to its waiting host. What are the people hunting Four up to right now, and what on earth is Wil Wheaton doing here? (Being slimy and sinister, mostly)

Dark Matter gets a lot wrong – but it also nails a lot of the important stuff. And it makes you give a shit. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it worms its way inside your mind.

The twists

 

The first season was packed with twists, betrayals, revelations. Sometimes it felt like every episode was going to do a big reveal. But you know what? The twists made sense. Each one was earned, each one felt important, and each one added to the bigger story.

Predictably, the season ended with the biggest twist of all. I can’t wait for Season 2 to appear on Netflix. Until then, trust me: go watch. This show is fucking badass.

Still need to read TRACER? (Amazon /B&N / Indigo Chapters)

Other stores: iBooks / Google Play / Waterstones / WHSmith / Loot / Exclusives / Booktopia

Our planet is in ruins. Three hundred miles above its scarred surface orbits Outer Earth: a space station with a million souls on board. They are all that remain of the human race.

Darnell is the head of the station’s biotech lab. He’s also a man with dark secrets. And he has ambitions for Outer Earth that no one will see coming.

Prakesh is a scientist, and he has no idea what his boss Darnell is capable of. He’ll have to move fast if he doesn’t want to end up dead.

And then there’s Riley. She’s a tracer – a courier. For her, speed is everything. But with her latest cargo, she’s taken on more than she bargained for. 

A chilling conspiracy connects them all. The countdown has begun for Outer Earth – and for mankind.

The 5 dumbest things people ask about writing

Every time I mention that I’m a published author (which I try to do as little as possible, because it makes me feel like I’m covered in an icky film of self-promotion), people get this look on their face. Part awe, part confusion, as if I’d just demonstrated to them that I can sprout fluffy fairy wings.

At this point, the conversation can go one of two ways. Either they’ll nod and smile and make a bland enquiry to be polite, and then get the hell out of there as fast as they can before I can sell them my books, or they’ll ask one of the following questions. Next time they do, I’m going to respond by bringing up this blog on my phone, and handing it to them. Maybe I’ll even carry laminated copies with me. Anything would be better than having to deal with this much dumb.

Here are the top five dumbest things I’ve been asked.

1. “How much did you pay them?”

I get this one a lot. I don’t know why. It’s never said in a malicious way – as in, how much did you pay them to publish that piece of garbage? – but more a kind of confused idea that authors have to pay money to get their books published.

Bwuh?

I have no idea why so many people believe this. It falls apart as soon as you look at it for more than two seconds. Why on earth should I have to put hours and days and months of effort into a book, and then have to dig up a sum of money to have someone publish it? If that’s what went down, it means my book was a shoddy shinola shitstorm, and the only way for me to get it released would be to plunk down bundles of my own money. Maybe I look like someone who would do that. Who knows?

Important note: I’m not talking about self publishing. Self publishing does require a bit of money, for things like editing, and a cover that doesn’t look like a rainbow fucked the Papyrus font file on your computer, but you keep almost all of the profits. They go directly to you. People do this all the time. What I’m talking about is called vanity publishing, and in that case, you’re sharing your profits (which will probably be a number with a lot of zeros on the wrong side) with a third party, and it’s an arrangement that you have already paid money to be a part of. If that’s the case, you’re a moron.

Let me dispel this right now. If an established house wishes to publish my book, they’re paying me money for the privilege. Some upfront, some later, dependent on sales. I am expected to devote my expertise, writing ability (such as it is), time and energy to making the book and its reception the best they can possibly be, but I am not expected to open my wallet, at all, ever. Please stop thinking that this is the case. It makes you look like a bumbling, rosy-cheeked rube, fresh off the train from Hicksville.

Wait, apparently there actually is a Hicksville. Good day, Hicksvillians! I meant no offence. May I interest you in this fine book…?

2. “So did you write the book first?”

Nah. I sit in the publisher’s office with my feet up on his desk and use my beguiling voice and hypnotic eyes to con him into writing a large cheque.

Of course you write the damn book first. Publishers are in the business of making money, and they want a fairly good idea of what they’re buying before they actually buy it. As would you, in their shoes. The book doesn’t have to be perfect, or as polished as it will be when it comes out, but it’s got to be pretty damn close.

The one exception to this is a series, when a publisher buys several books without all of them having been written. This happened with the Outer Earth series. When Orbit’s Tim Holman delivered his stamp of approval on the deal in 2014, I’d only written two books in the trilogy. He was taking a gamble that I wouldn’t stiff him for the third. But there was no way I was even getting in the same room as Tim without something to bring to the table.

OK, occasionally publishers buy a book based on an idea, but it’s always from an established, famous author with a track record. Which brings me onto my next misconception…

3. “Do they send you on book tours?”

Fuck no. Nor is there any good reason for them to…yet.

The formula for whether or not to send an author on a book tour looks something like this:

(Projected direct sales at signings and appearances) + (Sales online from people seeing that an Author is Somewhere doing Something) + (Sales from any press coverage) – (Money spent on hotels, flights, food, transfers and blue M&Ms for author)

I can tell you this right now: the number that pops out of that little equation is almost always less than zero, and if that’s the case, forget it. Hotels and flights and whatever are expensive. You would have to sell a whole whack of books to make it worthwhile, and every sale, of course, is subject to friction like venue fees and advertising and royalties and tax. Add that to the fact that you’re probably going to have to do a staggering amount of publicity just to get the number of people at an event into double figures, if you’re a new author, there’s just no way. It’s not happening.

If you’re Salman Rushdie or Stephen King, then sure. You’re an established quantity, and it’s a good bet that a lot of people are going to appear to hear you speak. Even if they don’t buy a book, they’ll almost certainly be willing to pay money for a ticket.

But for me? Little old me with my debut trilogy? I’m not good at maths, but even I know how that equation ends up. Book tours for new authors don’t work. What does work, a lot of the time, is an author appearing at a convention, where he or she will have a captive audience and lots of people to talk to. Publishers don’t usually shell out for any fees, but they can help you along with some of their marketing budget, as Orbit have graciously done for me in the past.

4. “Why didn’t you self-publish like everyone else?”

I hate this question. It’s usually asked by someone with a permanent sneer on their face, someone who has either been rejected by a traditional publishing house(s) or has simply decided to be contrarian because they think it makes them look cool. Someone I want to dunk head-first in a vat of acid.

I need to say right away: I respect people who self publish. It’s bloody hard. It involves doing things that I can’t even begin to get my head around, and a level of self-confidence that is just awe-inspiring. To do it, and to do it well, is a real skill.

I didn’t self publish because I didn’t want to acquire that skill. I wanted to do one thing, which was write. I accepted that there would probably be a lot more to it than that, and so it has proven, but I knew that having a traditional publisher behind me would give me a little more freedom, as well as guarantee me a certain amount of money in the bank. Of course, simply deciding that I wanted to be traditionally published and actually making it so was a very long process. It was so long and discouraging that I revisited my initial decision to self publish, and only a few sharp words from a friend made me stay the course. It worked.

The real reason why I didn’t self publish, the core of this particular argument, is that TRACER simply wouldn’t have been good enough if I did. By going with Orbit, I got to work with one of the best editors in the business, who polished the book to a mirror sheen. To me, that was worth any amount of money I might lose out on with royalties. Maybe self publishing would have made me more money, I don’t know, but what I do know is that I wouldn’t have been nearly as proud of the finished product

And what works for me may not work for you. Self publishing and traditional publishing can exist in the same space. Just because someone buys my book doesn’t mean they’re going to turn their nose up at yours.

5. “Why haven’t I heard of you?”

I don’t fucking know! Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Do you spend time online? Do you hang out in the scifi section of your local bookstore? Actually, a more pertinent question: are you personally aware of every single author on the planet? If you are, you should be doing something more useful with your time, like going on Stephen Colbert and trying to name them all before he can eat a burrito.

This question has its root in the idea that anyone who publishes a book is instantly world-famous. It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that in any industry. Making sure an idiot like you has heard of me can take years. Decades, if you’re particularly stupid.

I’m kidding. I love you, really.

Still need to read TRACER? (Amazon / B&N / Indigo Chapters)

Other stores: iBooks / Google Play / Waterstones / WHSmith / Loot / Exclusives / Booktopia

Our planet is in ruins. Three hundred miles above its scarred surface orbits Outer Earth: a space station with a million souls on board. They are all that remain of the human race.

Darnell is the head of the station’s biotech lab. He’s also a man with dark secrets. And he has ambitions for Outer Earth that no one will see coming.

Prakesh is a scientist, and he has no idea what his boss Darnell is capable of. He’ll have to move fast if he doesn’t want to end up dead.

And then there’s Riley. She’s a tracer – a courier. For her, speed is everything. But with her latest cargo, she’s taken on more than she bargained for. 

A chilling conspiracy connects them all. The countdown has begun for Outer Earth – and for mankind.

For authors, America is still magic. Here’s why.

Yesterday, I did something that, ten years ago, I wouldn’t even have thought was possible. I walked into a North American bookstore, and asked if they had a copy of my book, TRACER.

As it happened, they didn’t – not because I’m super-obscure, or because of some oversight by the publisher, but simply because they were a small outpost of a big chain and hadn’t yet received copies from their warehouse. That’s kind of how this shit works. In any case, I wasn’t too bummed out: their system showed that the book was available at plenty of their other stores. It was also on the shelves of their rivals, both major and independent, across the entirety of the United States (and Canada – I know I shouldn’t conflate the countries, especially since I live there now, but I’m going to do so for the duration. Sorry.)

Man, this tripped me out.

It shouldn’t, really. My book has been available across the world for about a year now. I was in the UK when it debuted in 2015, visited multiple bookshops, saw dozens of copies stacked up at Forbidden Planet in London. I’ve had people tweet me photos of copies bought from airport bookstores in Australia and hole-in-the-wall places in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The damn thing has been translated into German. It’s an audiobook. America and Canada should have just been another stop on the tour.

But for some reason, it felt different.

Before I get into why, I need to explain that this isn’t a congratulatory post. I may have written the thing, but I am not entirely or even mostly responsible for its dissemination. A whole chain of people, from my agent to my editor to the promotions and marketing folk to the booksellers themselves, have all conspired to get me in front of the reading public with something that didn’t read like an orang-utan had been banging on a broken typewriter. I really can’t emphasise enough that none of it would have happened without them.

That doesn’t stop the fact that someone I’ve never heard of from Peoria, Iowa or London, Ontario or Tulsa, Oklahoma could walk into a bookstore and pick up something I wrote. To some extent, no matter how normal most of it is, despite the fact that I’ve actually visited around 28 states and three Canadian provinces, despite Trump and his ilk doing their best to shit all over it, America (and Canada to a large extent) still have some magic.

Breaking America

AA Gill, the British travel journalist, once wrote about Los Angeles that it is the most important non-capital city in the world, a place where “up to 90% all the world’s culture comes from: movies, television, recorded music, pornography, and all their myriad spinoff industries.” I’d extend that to the entire continent. Whether we like it or not, all of us have, in some way, been influenced by this part of the world.

If you’re a scifi reader, as I am, then America and Canada are even more important. These are countries that spawned Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Robert J Sawyer, John Scalzi, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K LeGuin. (And by the way, seeing my name next to Bradbury’s on the shelf is enough to make me dizzy – mostly because we shouldn’t even be on the same planet, let alone under the same letter of the alphabet. I’m many things, but the next Ray Bradbury is not one of them).

Believe me, being a part of that culture, even a small part, means something. For any writer lucky enough to be published in the US, you’re both part of a great tradition, and in for the toughest fight of your life. This is still, in many ways, the hardest market to crack. I’ve just started throwing punches, and I need to land quite a few before I break this bad boy wide open.

The dedication at the front of TRACER reads: To M.O.R. It comes from my grandfather, Ralph, who was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up there in the 1920s and 30s, driving a cab to make money. He spent his childhood surrounded by early mob figures, and he told me that they referred to each other by various terms, including Man Of Honor and Man Of Respect. It became our in-joke: I was M.O.H, and he was M.O.R.

My grandfather’s life was long, chaotic, and wonderful. He served as a commander in the U.S. Navy, received an Order of the British Empire – one of only four Americans to do so – and ran a sizeable media company in Johannesburg. He always, always encouraged me to write, was absolutely delighted when I took up journalism, enthusiastically critiqued my early efforts. He died in 2007, and now, there’s a copy of my book in the town when he was born.

I’d give anything, literally anything, to walk into a Newark bookstore, buy a copy of TRACER, and hand it to him.

Sage advice

For one thing, he would have told me to shove my current bout of Imposter Syndrome right up my ass. This is a well-known state of mind among writers – among most professionals, actually. Briefly, it’s when you think: I shouldn’t be here, I’m going to get found out, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a skinny Jewish kid from Joburg with an overactive imagination, and I have absolutely no business being anywhere on that shelf. Again, this is absolutely not meant to sound self-congratulatory, even though it probably will, but when I moved to London after university, my first job was picking cigarettes off the floor of a pub.

Back then, although I believed otherwise, I couldn’t write worth a damn. At least at that time, I hadn’t yet decided to write a novel. There is, thank gods, no tatty manuscript in my past which is too terrible to find a publisher. I wasn’t really concerned about that. All I wanted was get a job that didn’t involve saying “Excuse me,” and then having someone slop beer on the back of my neck.

I’m not going to talk about how I got from that pub to here. It would bore me, let alone you. But I do want to say how grateful I am. Grateful to all the editors who gave me a chance to exercise my writing muscles over the years. Grateful to the publishing folk who took a chance on me. Grateful to the friends who put up with my bad first drafts, and my followers on Twitter and Facebook who tolerate my garbled attempts at self-promotion. Grateful, most of all, to anybody who reads what I write. Whether you love it, or hate it: thank you for reading it.

The crazy thing is, because of the way American retail works, the two sequels to TRACER will release in July and August. By the time Labour Day rolls around, I will have a full, completed trilogy on the shelves. I’m told by People Who Know Things that a full series is easier to shift than an uncompleted one, so I’m looking forward to that immensely. I’m looking forward to people discovering the world that I put together, to living in it like I lived in it. I have no idea what the outcome of all of this is going to be. I just know that I’m extremely happy to be here.

Hey America. I’m Rob. I’ve got a story to tell you.

Still need to read TRACER? (Amazon / B&N / Indigo Chapters)

Other stores: iBooks / Google Play / Waterstones / WHSmith / Loot / Exclusives / Booktopia

Our planet is in ruins. Three hundred miles above its scarred surface orbits Outer Earth: a space station with a million souls on board. They are all that remain of the human race.

Darnell is the head of the station’s biotech lab. He’s also a man with dark secrets. And he has ambitions for Outer Earth that no one will see coming.

Prakesh is a scientist, and he has no idea what his boss Darnell is capable of. He’ll have to move fast if he doesn’t want to end up dead.

And then there’s Riley. She’s a tracer – a courier. For her, speed is everything. But with her latest cargo, she’s taken on more than she bargained for. 

A chilling conspiracy connects them all. The countdown has begun for Outer Earth – and for mankind.

What the hell is TRACER? 8 things you need to know

I am out-of-my-mind excited right now.

TRACER is dropping in the US and Canada on 28 June. It’s been blowing the hell up in the UK, South Africa and Australia for the past year, and I can’t wait for you to read it.

To celebrate, here’s a little primer on the fastest, nastiest, most explosive book ever – everything you need to know to get ready. If you’re interested in the world of Outer Earth, here’s everything you need to know,

1. It’s set on a space station

A very old space station. Outer Earth is a massive ring, six miles wide, orbiting 300 miles above our planet and home to over a million people. The world below has been destroyed by climate change and nuclear war, and it’s been a long time since anyone has set foot on the ground. Outer Earth is, essentially, a giant space ghetto, where nothing works and where you can get mugged for a protein bar.

2. Its hero is the world’s most hard-core postal worker

I wish to God I’d come up with that, but I didn’t. It’s a description given to me by an interviewer named Kerstin Hall, and I have to say, it works. See, on Outer Earth, nothing works. Everything is rusted, damaged, falling apart, and that includes the public transport system. If you want to get packages and messages from place to place, you have two options.

You can either take it yourself, and risk running afoul of the gangs that roam the corridors, or you can entrust it to a tracer: a fleet-footed courier with the speed and fighting skills necessary to navigate through hostile territory.

Tracers are what the Postal Service would be if the Postal Service knew parkour and could move through tight spaces insanely quickly. And Riley, the hero of Tracer, is the fastest one there is. She’ll take your package, and get it where it’s going…for a price.

Riley isn’t supposed to look in her cargo. It’s why she gets so much work. But when she’s ambushed by a rival gang, she discovers she’s been transporting body parts. There’s no way she’s going to stand for that…

3. You wouldn’t want to mess with her crew

Tracers work in small crews, and Riley is no exception. Her crew is called the Devil Dancers, a five-person squad who live together, fight together, and run together. There’s Carver, a mechanical genius who is both annoying and annoyingly good-looking. There are the Twins, Yao Shen and Kevin O’Connell, so nicknamed because despite looking nothing alike, they’re completely inseparable. And then there’s the crew leader, Amira Al-Hassan: an ice-cold, deadly fighter who will do anything to protect her crew…

4. Everything about the station is scientifically accurate

And I mean everything. From the way it spins to generate artificial gravity, to the fusion reactor at its core, to the way excess heat is controlled and vented into space (ammonia in the pipes, since you ask) is all based on real-world technologies. One of the things I did, before I wrote the book, is head down to Kingston University in South London to talk to an actual rocket scientist. He made sure that Outer Earth was entirely possible. If we had the money and the political will, we could build tomorrow.

5. They eat bugs

Like, a lot of bugs. You can’t use meat to feed a million-person space station, and soy and tofu will only get you so far. The solution? Bugs. Silkworms, beetles, crickets…crushed to powder and cooked in the station mess halls, or fried with a little salt in the sector markets. Great source of protein. The station’s bugs are kept in a giant habitat known as the Buzz Box, but there are rumours that a few of them have escaped, vanishing into the station’s vents…

6. The book is fast

I’ll let the reviews do the talking:

“Incoming cliche’: blistering! If you like your yarns to take off at speed, this number should suit you.” – Sunday Sport

“The relentlessly fast pace gives the book strong momentum…” – SFX Magazine

“Exhilarating and guaranteed to keep you hooked until the very last page.” – Glamour Magazine

“Constant violence and escalating stakes keep the story moving forward at a bone-jarring pace, especially in the climax, where revelations and betrayals follow each other as quickly, and as dizzyingly, as Riley vaults down stairwells.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Tracer is the literary equivalent of a base jump: fast, exhilarating and unforgettable, and once you start it you can’t stop. I loved it.” – Sarah Lotz, author of The Three

“Fast-paced, well-written and well-researched, Tracer sets a new standard for all-action SF.” – Ken MacLeod, author of the Fall Revolution and Engines of Light series

7. It’s part of a trilogy

…And you won’t have to wait long to read the sequels. TRACER drops 28 June, its followup ZERO-G on 26 July, and the final instalment IMPACT on 25 August. That’s your summer reading taken care of. All books will be available in both ebook and paperback via Amazon, at your nearest B&N, Chapters, and indie.

8. You can listen to it. And read it in German.

It’s already appeared as an audiobook, with killer performances from veteran actors Sarah Borges and Jeff Harding. And if you want to read the German version, that’s available too. I wouldn’t advise it unless you speak German, though. Kind of a deal breaker, that one.

What are you waiting for? Go pick it up!
(Amazon / B&N / Indigo Chapters)

THE TRACER AUDIOBOOK IS HERE!

I am super-stoked to announce the arrival of the TRACER audiobook!

Actually, excited doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m jumping up and down right now. There may be ululating.

The two voiceovers who brought this to life absolutely smashed it. Sarah Borges (who voiced Riley’s sections) and Jeff Harding (who voiced Prakesh and Darnell) were killer choices, and I can’t wait for you to hear this.

To celebrate, I thought I’d do something fun. I got on Skype with the Seattle-born, UK-based Sarah Borges to find out about how audiobooks get put together, her process, how she got into character for Riley, and the benefits of whiskey in the voiceover business. The whole interview is below (apologies for the slightly dodgy sound quality – my original recording corrupted, unfortunately, so I had to upload my backup. It’s still totally audible, though).

MASSIVE thanks to the folks at Hachette Audio for putting this together.

The TL;DR section:

Here are the best quotes from the interview.

“I’ve done quite a lot of Mills and Boon audio books…One of the engineers at the Royal National Institute Of The Blind, Lucy, stopped me mid-recording and gave me one of the best compliments I’ve ever had, because she asked, how you doing those? Making those orgasm noises? How are you making that real? Darling! It’s fine, it’s my craft.”

“I did The Help last year. I was Skeeter in that, because I’m originally from Mississippi. Pascagoula, Mississippi. I have a recording of myself singing Popeye The Sailor Man in my Mississippi accent. I was an early talker. But we moved to Seattle, thank you parents, when I was about three. My brother was born there, so he’s a complete Seattlite. But I’m sort of this mongrel, and now I’ve been here for sixteen years.”

“I did three years of vocal training at Rose Buford. Really awesome training. Everybody who’s been there knows that the training is full on. They take your part and put you back together. It’s not psychological, it’s giving you a toolbox. I’ve also been a singer my entire life; I sing jazz or opera. Choral singing, I absolutely adore. That teaches you breath control, support, relaxation. Little tricks. You have an apple with you in studio if you get a bit claggy, pineapple is really good, because the enzymes break down any sort of gunk. Water, lots of water. I drink so much water. I try to avoid coffee, although I’m from Seattle, so I love coffee. You don’t have a big night out the night before. You have to look after your voice. I’m not a smoker, I don’t drink a lot – although I like wine, and whiskey is purely medicinal.”

What are you still doing here? Go get the audiobook! It’ll blow your damn mind.

64 Books, Three Minutes, One Epic Rap

OK, so…

I rap. Have done for years. When I was sixteen I was convinced I was going to be the biggest ever, but it only took me about two years to realise that while rapping was fun, writing was what I wanted to do.

Still, fun is fun. So I kept rapping. And the other day, I had a line going around in my head, a line referencing a scifi novel I like…

All you kids on the Nebulas that’s winning awards/ Hugo ‘head…’cos one day, I’mma win ’em all / Come home, wheel a massive case through the airport/ Put ’em on the shelf, no you can’t Touch ’em – Claire North

And it kind of ballooned from there, until I had a whole three-minute rap name-checking 64 different books, all set to Joell Ortiz’s track Battle Cry.

Here it is.

I had to drop a project, and it sucked

Today, I had to do something I’ve only done once or twice in the past. I had to look at a project – give it a long, hard, gimlet-eyed look – and put it down. Push it to one side. Put it on the backburner. Whatever metaphor you prefer, I just couldn’t keep working on it.

This sucks. I’m a freelancer, for fuck’s sake. Work is what I do. I am as capable of saying no as I am of holding my breath for a full minute. It’s entirely possible, but I am going to feel a lot of pain doing it.

But this time, I had no choice. Through a combination of hideous planning and overconfidence, I have landed myself in a situation where I am very close to burning out. I have multiple book releases this year across the planet, including an audiobook version and foreign edition of TRACER, multiple North American release, and a worldwide release of a book in August. I have not one but two fresh books currently with my agent, one of which I’ve already received feedback on and need to tweak a little before we can take it to market – something I’m really stoked about, and keen to get to work on. The second book’s feedback is due soon.

In addition, because I am the proud owner of the world’s most horrible timing, I am currently in the process of completing an immigration application for Canada that is currently at 500 pages and climbing, and which is making grey hairs pop out on my scalp at the rate of about one every nine seconds. I’m also in the throes of a massive marketing push for my books, something I’d neglected recently and want to be much better at. And, oh: I actually have to do bill-paying work every day. The Outer Earth books paid very well indeed, but it all went into savings.

I’m not complaining. This is NOT a humblebrag “Look at me, I’m so busy.” This is me going, I have been very stupid and filled up the day with a thousand different things because I am incapable of moderation.

And what did I do this week, amidst all the fun of Canadian Immigration Schedule 6A800 and edit notes for a book and freelance projects and marketing?

I started writing a completely new book. Why? Because I’m a fucking moron. That’s why.

To be fair, it’s a book I’m really, really excited about. It’s my first stand-alone novel (i.e. one that I don’t plan to make into a series), and it has a KILLER concept. I like to do a very loose plan for my books, and so on Monday I started that off, getting a very rough idea of the story beats I wanted to hit and character names and things like that.

And today, I realised that I’d gone too far. I couldn’t plan/write this book and do all the other stuff. Not if I wanted to eat, or sleep, or see my wife for more than eight minutes a day.

So last night, I made a decision. I might love this project. I might be excited about it. I might be bursting with ideas. But I can’t do it. I’ll get to it eventually, but right now, it had to go.

And it hurt like hell.

And yes, I could say, “Fuck it,” and just plunge ahead. I’m 31, in the prime of life (or so I’m told), with no kids. I am of sound mind and body, give or take a few head injuries. I could just punch it hard and get it all done. I should. I owe it to a bunch of people to work my ass off. Parents, wife, readers, agent, publisher, editor. These people have all shown great and extremely optimistic faith in me, and I try not to let them down.

Except: no. Not gonna work like that. Mostly because I’ve done it before, multiple times, and it has always, always backfired. Balls don’t get dropped, but they’re a bit dirty when they come back down. Quality starts to suffer. As does my sleep, and my neck, and my back, even for short periods. That’s a bullshit way to live, and I won’t do it.

Creative people – writers, artists, musicians, whatever – are told to always work hard. We have it drilled into our heads from a very early age that we have to completely bust ourselves to achieve what we want. And that’s true. But what we don’t get told is when to stop. Nobody teaches you how to juggle multiple projects with a healthy, active life. Sure, some people learn how to do it very successfully, but it’s not a given. And a broad-strokes message about Working Hard To Realise Your Dreams can sometimes do a lot of harm, if it doesn’t come with the asterisk’d advice to not kill yourself doing it.

And once I realised that putting a project aside for a bit doesn’t mean abandoning it completely, it was an amazing feeling of freedom. I can come back to it when I’m ready. When I don’t have a million things breathing down my neck. If I was doing this halfway into a book, it’d be an issue – I’d lose all my momentum. But now, when I’ve just started? When the thing is only just getting going? It’s cool! No worries!

Dropping a project – and if you take away one thing from this damn blog, let it be this – means you can make the other stuff fucking awesome. You won’t be as prolific, but what you put out will have the benefit of all that extra attention. It’ll be worth it. I don’t like to give advice (honest), but Christ on a unicycle, that’s one nugget worth following.

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Check out this bad-ass cover for IMPACT

It’s finally here. For the first time, I get to put all three of these beautiful bastards together.

There’s a larger version of the cover in all its bad-ass-ness below. It’s due out 25 August 2016, worldwide. That’s right, everywhere. US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mongolia, Siberia…everywhere. eBook and paperback. Fucking EVERYWHERE.

You can pre-order it (along with pick up its two prequels) right here, if you’re in North America.

If you’re in the UK, your link is here.

(Technically I could spend all day linking to the various Amazons and assorted stores, but you’re intelligent. You can find it.)