Charlie Williams's Blog, page 15

GUEST BLOGGER: Royston Blake - Blakey on tour Part One

Like I says, I ain't been in jail. Mangel jail is a place for proper scum, not community pillars like me who sometimes fall a bit foul when they cut a corner in the name of doing the right thing. No, what I thought I'd do, following the success of my campaign wossname and in celebration of my forthcoming memoir, is go on a nice holiday. And by that I don't mean camping in Hurk Wood - I mean a proper, fucking expensive holiday.

In a caravan.

I had it all sorted as well, had me eye on a decent caravan and everything. Nice white one it were, only one previous owner so far as I knew and he were still owning it at the time. What's more, he were always out all day during the week and I knew how to pick the type of padlock he had on the gate, meaning I didn't even have to pay for it. All I needed were summat to pull it with, and we all know the best type of caravan pulling motor, don't we? That's right - your 1983 Ford Granada MkIII hearse. And it just so happened I knowed where they had one.

To be fucking continued...

Guest post: Royston Blake

Like I says, I ain't been in jail. Mangel jail is a place for proper scum, not community pillars like me who sometimes fall a bit foul when they cut a corner in the name of doing the right thing. No, what I thought I'd do, following the success of my campaign wossname and in celebration of my forthcoming memoir, is go on a nice holiday. And by that I don't mean camping in Hurk Wood - I mean a proper, fucking expensive holiday.

In a caravan.

I had it all sorted as well, had me eye on a decent caravan and everything. Nice white one it were, only one previous owner so far as I knew and he were still owning it at the time. What's more, he were always out all day during the week and I knew how to pick the type of padlock he had on the gate, meaning I didn't even have to pay for it. All I needed were summat to pull it with, and we all know the best type of caravan pulling motor, don't we? That's right - your 1983 Ford Granada MkIII hearse. And it just so happened I knowed where they had one.

To be fucking continued...

A local event for local people

Did a signing for Graven Image yesterday at Waterstones in Worcester, my local bookshop. Having done a couple of these before, I can say that hand selling does not come naturally to me. Unless you are already v.popular and have means of publicising the event beforehand, you're basically a cold caller. You have to approach people (or snag them with eye contact as they go past) and convince them that your book is something they want, even though they came in for something completely different, like the latest cook book. I can't really do that. I don't respond to people when they try that on me, so why should I expect others to?

Because they want the book but don't rsealise it, perhaps?

Well, do they? However compelling Graven Image may or may not be, it is a short, hardboiled book about a brothel bouncer. There is some fruity language in there, and while I think the cover is just great, some would find it forbidding. I'm sure there are people out there who would love all that stuff, but am I going to find enough amongst the general population of Worcester (not the most culturally happening town) to warrant me trying to cold sell to them?

No.

However...

That doesn't mean there won't be a whole bunch of local people who would want to read my book, just that not many of them are going to frequent a high street bookshop on a Saturday lunch time, which is when my slot was. They also might be turned off by some big lunk of a stranger invading their space, trying to flog a book they never heard of.

OK, so you're having a good old whinge here, Charlie. Here's a thought: no one is putting a gun to your head. If you don't like the signings, don't do 'em. Make like Zammo and just say no

Not that I do many, but I wouldn't want to stop them entirely. When a bookshop offers me their support, I'm going to grab it. But I think things could be done in a different way that is geared towards finding those readers who might be into noir/hardboiled/whacked-out-cross-genre/whatever. Obviously we already have this nationally with genre festivals and conventions, but I'd like to get something going on a smaller scale, and that still involves the bookshop. There are a few of these kind of things going on here and there in other places, and I'm going to be taking part in a very cool one myself soon (TBA), so hopefully I'll be able to get more of an idea of what I'm driving at, rather than waffling aimlesly on a Sunday afternoon, with the sun shining outside, two dogs pining for a walk and a couple of kids who want to chuck a ball around.

That said, I sold ten yesterday. To those ten, my thanks and applause. Whether you like the book or not, at least you gave it a shot, rather than brushing me off like a High Street charity hustler (which is what I would have done).

Graven Image signing and TOP freebies

Anyone in or near Worcester should come down to Waterstones in the Shambles this Saturday (April 9th). I will be there from 11am-2pm signing copies of GRAVEN IMAGE. Also I've got 10 ARCs of the new edition of DEADFOLK for the first 10 who buy Graven. Already read Deadfolk? Not a problem for this guy. Simply come down on the day, give me the answer to the magic question and hey presto, I'll present you with an ARC of Royston Blake's comeback special: ONE DEAD HEN.

How flipping generous am I?

But that is not the magic question. The magic question is:

What does Royston Blake spend most of Deadfolk trying to find?

Details here.

California Graven'

V.nice review of my GRAVEN IMAGE and Raymond "gaming chair" Banks' CALIFORNIA in Big Issue Scotland, courtesy of Doug "Smokeheads" Johnstone. Check it out here. Many thanks to Doug.

Give it away y'all

The prize draw for DEADFOLK has been closed and five lucky winners have a copy winging its way across the pond towards them. That's right - I made it open to readers in US, Can and UK but Goodreads selects the winners, and they all came up in the colonies. Interestingly, four were Canada and only one US, perhaps reflecting the weighting of the entrants. A big cheer for Canada - you're either getting behind Royston Blake big time or you really, really like getting stuff without paying. Either way is cool.

1032 people entered to win a copy of Deadfolk, so I'm putting up a copy of GRAVEN IMAGE too. If I can get as many people aware of that book, that's a good return. And it's lighter than Deadfolk, so hopefully I won't be bankrupted when someone from North America inevitably wins.

(UK people, don't let it happen! You're 5-0 down at the moment but you can pull one back. all you have to do is enter.)

This one runs all through April, so if you're not planning on buying a copy of Graven Image, you might as well enter. The winner gets to read the story of brothel bouncer Leon, who takes you, as the Nerd of Noir put it, "on a journey through both the dark alleys of his hometown and those of his diseased brain. Granted, Leon's gonna give you a laugh now and then, but mostly he's just making sure this intense crazy train never slows for a fucking second lest he get a horrifying moment to reflect"

Guest blog: Russel D McLean

A REAL CHARACTER
Russel D McLean

With thanks to Royston Blake and Charlie Williams – but in particular, and because he's bigger, Royston –for allowing me to guest blog here today.

My name is Russel D McLean, and I'm sure you'll have heard me say some nice things about Williams and Blakey before. Neither of them paid me any money, I assure you. Neither of them has any money to pay me. I am, if you can't tell by the accent, Scottish, and right now I'm pimping the US release of my second novel THE LOST SISTER by running rampant on the blogs of some of my favourite authors.

But don't worry. While I hope you do buy either the US or the UK editions of either one of me books, I'm not going to shove it down your throat by saying how good they are. Instead I'm going to talk about something that interests me.

Character.

See, Blakey and Williams have an interesting author/character dynamic. In that Blakey seems able to exist almost independently of the man who chronicles his life (hence why Blakey once invaded my blogging day over at the multi-author blog, DO SOME DAMAGE).

This kind of character independence doesn't happen that often, and so far I'm glad it hasn't happened to me. After all, J McNee – who features in both THE GOOD SON and THE LOST SISTER – seems to have a habit of bringing doom to those around him. Not his fault, at least not all the time, but in some sense he's a lightning rod for bad news. Which is maybe good news for readers. At least those, like me, who like to see their fictional characters tormented and tested.

But while I don't usually allow McNee to roam free of his own accord or have his own facebook page, it doesn't mean that he feels purely fictional to me. Its an odd part of a writer's psyche, I guess, that we can feel our characters as real people, that we can know the way they speak and react in much the same way (and maybe more so) that we know the way in which our friends and relatives will behave in certain situations. And its even stranger that I can know so much about a man who doesn't want to talk about his past.

When McNee first came into my head, when I first started hearing that voice, his rhythms and patterns, I started to ask who this man was and who he had been. I knew he'd been a cop. From the outset it was clear that his fiancée was recently deceased and that he'd quit the police force after an "incident" with a superior officer. But he made me work for all that and seemed to be making a concerted effort to hide certain aspects of his past. I'm still not sure about his family, other than odd references to parents (are they still alive? He talks about them in the past tense) and maybe his gran (but then, he could just be having me on). He was a reticient fellow and yet every so often he'd let something slip. A hint. A clue. An idea. A half truth.

It was enough to keep me fascinated. After all, I've a history, as a reader, of loving characters who don't reveal all about themselves. Richard Stark's thief Parker only ever existed on the job. The Nameless detective was… nameless. And the copper in Derek Raymond's factory novels gave away as little of himself as possible. And yet there was enough in all of these characters to give you a sense of who they were.

And that was what attracted me to McNee. He revealed himself in momentary glimpses. Letting him talk was like letting a stranger tell you a story and hoping by the end of that story you might know this man better. In short, I found his voice fascinating. Getting to know a character becomes like getting to know a friend. I suppose it's the grown up version of the invisible friend you had as a child.

Except if you said he was an invisible friend and you were over the age of sixteen, you'd likely be locked up. Or maybe drugged by a friendly GP. So what you do is you say that he's a character and you become a writer so that you have a legitimate reason for getting to know this non existent person.

The truth of the matter is, McNee fascinates me as a person. He's an angry, bitter bastard and yet beneath that there lurks the heart of someone who just wants to do the right thing, who wants a kind of justice in the world and yet has been trained not to expect it. He's a man of contradictions and bad habits. He infuriates you and fascinates you at the same time. One of my favourite reviews ever said, "You don't know whether to hug him or punch him" And I'd absolutely agree with that.

As authors, we can let our invisible friends out so that other people can get to know them as well as we do.

And the best part?

We can't be called insane for doing so.


[image error]

Russel's The Lost Sister is out from Minotaur Books in the USA this month. It is published in the UK by Five Leaves Press. Check out his website and his Friday bloggings over at Do Some Damage. He once took the night bus from Dundee to Bristol and lived to tell the tale.

Guest Russel

Check out this blog tomorrow for a taste of top writer and all-round Scottish person Russel D McLean, who will be doing a stint here. This guy is in the midst of a blog tour at the minute and he is on fire. Catch him before his hair ignites!

Everything going Jackanory

[image error]
Do you like books? Do you have ears? Are you interested in brothel bouncers who cannot control their temper, and find themselves maiming sadistic VIP punters who batter the girls and then having to pay the price for that misplaced chivalry? Me too.

And boy, are we in for a treat!

GRAVEN IMAGE is going to be an audiobook, narrated by Ben Onwukwe and stretching to 3 CDs. Read it and weep. Or listen to it and weep, rather.

Watch out for it in libraries and the above website from April. Or listen out for it, rather.

Goodreads Deadfolk Freebie

On Goodreads? Fancy a chance to win an advance copy of the all-new edition of DEADFOLK (which is out in May)? Sign up here. And dance.