F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 20

Diana Christmas – What next?

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DIANA CHRISTMAS is its own self-contained story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.

I promise I won’t ever irritate my readers by leaving a novel on a ‘duh-duh-duuuuh’ cliff-hanger.

However, even though it has an ending. I have included a big clue for what I’m doing next.

In the opening chapters (indeed so close to the start of the book, it’s in one of the chapters currently on Instafreebie) there’s a passing reference – amidst real actors and actresses who actually plied their trade in the British film industry – to a one-time film star named, Eden St. Michel and the scandal which engulfed her.

Now seems as perfect a time as any to announce that EDEN ST. MICHEL will be my next novel. The second in my ‘Screen Siren Noir’ series.

It’s a different story to DIANA CHRISTMAS, but it’s most definitely in the same world and shares a great number of the same themes. I think if you enjoy DIANA CHRISTMAS, then you’ll definitely enjoy EDEN St. MICHEL too.

It will be out later this summer and I will of course keep you, the lovely readers of this blog, posted.

For now though, DIANA CHRISTMAS is published in two days’ time and I hope that you’re getting as excited about it as I am. It’s a novel I am immensely proud of, the best piece of work I’ve ever done, and I can’t wait for people to have the chance to read it.

Do you like sharp edged noir thrillers with lots of unexpected twists and turns? Do you want to hear what happened to the glamourous film star who disappeared?  Find out the hidden secrets which derailed her life?

Intrigued?

Then DIANA CHRISTMAS could be the book for you!

DIANA CHRISTMAS is available for pre-order now. You can reserve your copy here!

Death at the Seaside – free this weekend!

Do you want a ghostly chiller set in an English seaside town?

To celebrate this week’s publication of DIANA CHRISTMAS, my novella – DEATH AT THE SEASIDE – is free on Amazon Kindle this weekend.

Click here to get your FREE copy now!

[image error]Free this weekend!

How to Write Quickly – part 6: Quality vs Quantity

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Quantity instead of quality.

That’s the worry you’re going to have again and again if you try to write quickly.

That you’re sacrificing actual good writing in the pursuit of speed.

It’s probably a criticism you’re going to hear more than once, as well. That by charging on, and hammering away, you are removing the beauty and art of novels. They’re supposed to be something you suffer over, which are delicately put together with some blood, some sweat and most definitely some tears. And you, by producing work at such speed, are trampling what is great about the artform and creating – to put it indelicately – utter shit.

And yes, it would be lovely to sit back and write at your own sweet speed. To occasionally take month after month off when inspiration fails to strike – and maybe, if you’re lucky – produce an actual masterpiece every three years, or five years, or seven years. Or maybe one great work in your life and call it quits.

But, if you want to be successful as an indie author, that isn’t an option. If you want to make a career out of writing, you’re going to have to produce books.

Here’s the thing, though. I think that by writing faster I’m improving my actual craft. All the practice I’m getting, the near ceaseless dedication, is making me a much better writer. I feel I have a stronger sense of plot and structure, I am getting a quicker hold of my characters, and even my prose is getting better in the first draft. It still needs a hell of a lot of work, of course, but I know when I pick up the first rough draft now there is more good stuff there than there ever used to be.

Of course, there are points when it all turns to rubbish, but I’m getting good at recognising them. When I’m tired and my imagination goes flat so that I can’t find the words, then I pull back. But I make sure after I recharge my batteries, I’m ready to charge at it again.

Maybe there are only so many words I can write in my life and maybe I am depleting them by writing so fast. But, at the moment, that’s not how I feel. Right now, I believe that writing quickly is honing my craft, and that I’m improving every day.

My new novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS, is published on Wednesday. To reserve your copy click here:

[image error]Order now!

Why DIANA CHRISTMAS changes everything for me!

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DIANA CHRISTMAS wasn’t meant to be a novel.

It was meant to be a long short story, a novella. It was a challenge I made to myself last August: to write and have out a new novella by Christmas.

My attempt, valiant though it was, failed when I realised I just had too much story and too many ideas – there were too many themes to explore – for it to be anything other than a novel. Not the longest novel in the world, admittedly, but a novel nonetheless.

The reason I originally saw it as a shorter work was that it wasn’t quite on brand. I’ve always seen myself as an author of supernatural thrillers. It felt that my calling was writing tense scary stories where things don’t only go bump on the wooden floorboards, they rip off the protagonist’s toes.

But none of that describes DIANA CHRISTMAS. This book is a straight noir thriller with nothing eerie or uncanny at all.

And now that it’s about to be published, I find it’s a book and a world, which refuses to let go of me.

Not only did DIANA CHRISTMAS grow, but I realised – as I finished it – that there was more than one book there.  Even before I got to the final full stop, I was already missing her world and knew there had to be a follow-up.

In fact, I started writing the follow-up nearly straight away. The third book is also making great progress in my notepads, and I have a cracking idea for the fourth.

Suddenly the kind of books I write has taken a real shift. And I’m absolutely fine with that.

I am no longer exclusively an author of supernatural thrillers which border the edge of horror, I now also write straight thrillers about strong, but wronged, glamourous women.

And maybe this will confuse someone who delves casually into my work, wondering how the one thing relates to the other (or maybe I’m underestimating how connected all my books are, no matter where they might fall on the supernatural spectrum). Perhaps there will be one group of people who like one set of books and another group which prefers the other.

I honestly don’t know how it will play out or how my writing career will progress now that I’ve diversified. All I can say is that I’m really happy with how DIANA CHRISTMAS has turned out. No doubt that’s easy to see as I’m still so inspired by it. And hopefully I can persuade people who’ve read my previous stuff to read it, even though nothing goes bump in the night (or takes anyone’s toes off).

Once upon a time, I read a piece about Philip Roth, who asked if he didn’t write his books, who would? And that’s how I feel about DIANA CHRISTMAS. It’s a damn good book which has roared its way into existence, and – despite the fact it’s a departure for me – it’s a book only I could have written and I’m immensely proud of it.

I hope you enjoy!

Diana Christmas is published next week, and is available now for pre-order here.

London Falling by Paul Connell

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Well, this isn’t quite what I was expecting.

LONDON FALLING is a tale of the London Metropolitan Police becoming embroiled in a shadow, other world which both exists alongside and is entwined with ours, and whereas there is a certain playfulness to it, it’s a book which is proud to be gritty. A novel which doesn’t use the inherent magic of its scenario to soften the death and danger lurking within.

The death of a London crime boss in mysterious circumstances leads to the formation of a small crime squad looking at a new kind of criminal underworld, one that actually exists under reality as we know it. Before long they find themselves investigating a homicidal West Ham F.C. fan (and witch) who might be London’s most prolific serial killer. And discovering a particularly cruel quirk of her M.O. that’s the kind of concept which will bring cold sweats to any parents of small children.

In short, this is a gripping and terrifying tale of the unexpected.

On picking it up I thought it would tread closely in the footsteps of Ben Aaronovitch’s RIVERS OF LONDON series (both Connell and Aaronovitch are former DOCTOR WHO scribes). As much as I enjoy that series, they have a light tread and a casual stride. LONDON FALLING is a whole other beast. It approaches the material in a darker and more unyielding way. With the result that it’s a proper horror novel and a damn fine one.

 

My new novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS, is published on Amazon next week. But if you’d like to take a gander at the first few chapters now, they’re available here:

[image error]Available now!

Just a reminder…

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but my new novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS, is on sale in ten days time.

If you’re can’t wait that long to find out more about it, then good news! The first three chapters are still available for free download on Instafreebie. Just click here, and they’re yours.

[image error]Available Now!

Find out THE STRANGE FATE OF LORD BRUTON

My short tale of the gothic is FREE this weekend on Amazon!

I did write a long post back in the day about how it came into being, but suffice to say that it lived in my head for a long time.

If you’d like to check it out on your Kindle, just click here!

[image error]Free this weekend!

How to Write Quickly, part 5 (or ‘Me, Chasing Myself in a Circle, in 2018’)

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Let’s say that, like me, you’ve made the most of your commute and are managing to write 1,500 to 2,000 words a day on your way into and way out of work. And let’s say like me that you’re making the most of your lunchtimes and getting another 1,500 and 2,000 words down. Before long you’ll have yourself a good-sized book. Four weeks of doing that every day (and that’s ignoring any time you’ve managed to steal back at the weekends) could yield you a book that’s 80,000 words in length.

Not bad going. Pat yourself on the back.

The problem is though that it’s a first draft scribbled down in notepads. Scrawled no doubt, as you’re writing so quickly.

There’ll be parts of it that you want to go back and completely change, new plot strands you’ll want to introduce, new themes you’ll want to explore, characters whose essence has been altered so much as the book has progressed that they’re unrecognisable as the same people.

You might be three quarters of the way through and still charging on with your scribbling, but you know that there’s still a lot of work ahead and that can be disheartening.

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I understand that completely, and the next stage was one I struggled with.

How the hell was I going to find the time to type everything I’d done up? Obviously, it had to be typed up to get published, but how was I going to do it?

Was I really going to buy a laptop bag and hump the whole thing into work every day, so I could type up in my lunchtimes at the café?

The answer to that last question was yes, I would do that. Because it needed to be done, I bought a laptop sleeve and a backpack big enough to carry it and now wander around London as if I’m on manoeuvres.

But I also – and this is the important part of this post – made an interesting discovery about my work process.

The notion I initially had was that I should write the first draft long-hand in a notepad and then take a break so that it could breathe. Then after a bit of space, I’d rewrite it as I typed it up. But once I had the sleeve and the laptop bag, I thought why wait and so started typing and rewriting my book as soon as I possibly could. In fact, I was typing and rewriting it so soon that I hadn’t even finished the first draft.

In the morning I’d be scribbling away furiously on the final third of the book; while in lunchtimes and evenings, I would be typing up the first third.

And the thing is, it gave my process an intensity which undoubtedly benefitted my writing enormously.

It meant that the opening chapters of the book, which I was rewriting, were being informed by the later chapters that I was then actually writing, and of course vice versa. To some it might seem too all consuming, to some it would undoubtedly be like a dog chasing its tail, but for me it meant that the story was constantly in my head. That every aspect of it was being improved at once.

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Good ideas I had about the ending could be foreshadowed in the beginning, character moments I inserted into my rewrite were easily picked up in later sections. The whole became this wonderful circle that I was spinning around and around.

Constantly working on it, and working on different parts and different stages simultaneously, made for a much better book. Hitherto the rewriting was where I struggled, where I became bogged down, but because what I was writing in the morning was new and fresh and exciting, a lot of that thrill carried into the rewriting as well and resulted in work I’m really proud of.

DIANA CHRISTMAS is published the week after next. But if you feel like reading the first few chapters early, they’re available now.

 

Who is Diana Christmas?

Who is Diana Christmas?

Good question.

Who is she and why does she have a whole book named after her?

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Back in the 1950s, Diana Christmas was a really big star in British films. A gorgeous, vivacious, red-headed star; Britain’s answer to Rita Hayworth.

Undeniably she was glamourous, undeniably she was sexy, but she was funny as well. Few actresses working anywhere had as expert comic timing as Diana Christmas. She could deliver a line – even one not particularly funny – and do it so perfectly she’d make an audience guffaw. There was just a way she could raise her eyebrow when confronted by some piece of idiocy or nonsense, that just had them rolling in the aisles.

As her career progressed, she moved more and more into comedies and light fayre, but at the beginning of her career she was the young and beautiful damsel in a number of dramas. However, she was never quite an ingenue. There was always something too knowing in her on-screen demeanour for her to be cast as the pure snow white innocent. She was too obviously sexy for that.

Her screen debut was in THE LAST ROGUE, when she was seventeen years old, when her whole part was to make Dirk Bogarde feel uncomfortable. She’s one of a trio of girls who tempts him, but it’s the kiss she blows to him – from her full and plump lips – which seems to make the sweat burst onto his brow. It’s a great first performance, and one that announces a vivacious presence whose sensuality seems to dominate the screen.

The parts got bigger, she proved herself in drama and comedy and found herself on the cusp of Hollywood stardom.

Bob Hope came to London to make a Technicolor comedy called THE LONG LOST LORD BUTTONS, where she’s his love interest-cum-foil. Absolutely she looks fabulous, rarely had she ever looked sexier than in the low-cut green dress she wore in the race course scene. It was her first colour film and no one’s red hair had ever been as captured as beautifully as hers was.

What’s more she’s brilliant in it.

Obviously, Bob Hope’s many scriptwriters make sure he had virtually all the funny lines, but she more than holds her own. Giving alternatively askance and knowing looks which are just hilarious, while wringing all the laughs she can get from every good line she’s given.

The film isn’t great, but she is magnificent in it. It should have led to great things, it should have led to her being a star in Hollywood.

Billy Wilder wanted her for his next film, Hitchcock was allegedly talking to her for a serious role.

But instead she just disappeared.

From being a big star ready to take the mantle of international fame, she suddenly stopped appearing in films, just seemed to disappear out of the industry.

No one knew what had happened to Diana Christmas, that is until a young film journalist knocked her door one December morning in 1979 for an interview…

Anxious to know more? The first three chapters are available on Instafreebie now.

[image error]Download the first three chapters today!

Necroscope by Brian Lumley

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Whenever I’ve come across a Brian Lumley short story, in one of Stephen Jones’s annual compilations or elsewhere, I’ve been hugely impressed. It’s fair to say that Lumley writes Lovecraftian better than Lovecraft does, as he gets to the eldritch horror of it whilst actually being able to write decent, readable prose. As such for the last ten or fifteen years I’ve been meaning to read NECROSCOPE, his most famous novel and the one I always used to see in W.H. Smith when I was kid. Now ten or fifteen years may seem like a ridiculous amount of time to want to read something and not actually get around to reading it and absolutely I agree with you. What can I say? I’m just incompetent and easily distracted.

The biggest surprise for me on picking up NECROSCOPE is how un-Lovecraftian it actually is. Yes, there are faint traces of Lovecraft, but there are always faint traces of Lovecraft in every modern horror. Even if the writer hasn’t themselves read H.P. Lovecraft they will certainly have read writers that have, and so the whole thing gets passed on by osmosis. But no, the biggest influence here is – of all people – John Le Carré. This is the taut, charged and exciting cold war horror novel, with espionage games fought by those with paranormal abilities.

What on earth have I been doing over the last ten/fifteen years? I feel like I’ve missed out.

In the north of England, Harry Keogh is growing up, a strange and withdrawn young boy who spends a lot of time hanging around graveyards and who seems to have knowledge beyond his years. He is the necroscope of the title, a young man who is able to communicate with the dead. In Russia though there is a man with similar abilities – Boris Dragosani – only he is a necromancer and his ways of communing with the dead are a lot less pleasant than Keogh’s. Both countries have ultra-secret government departments designed to fight the enemy through supernatural means, so it’s not long before both are known to their respective agencies and on a course to confront each other.

It’s not hard to imagine this been scribbled down by Lumley’s right hand, while a well-thumbed edition of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY rested by his left, but first and foremost this is a horror novel. Believe me, if you don’t have a strong stomach then this is not for you. The opening chapter finds Boris Dragosani demonstrating his skills below a château near Moscow and it is one of the most impressively gory things I’ve read in a long while. That’s not to say the whole book is written in that blood stained vein, Lumley knows that a little bit of gore goes a long way, but he also knows that the audience for a book called NECROSCOPE doesn’t want him to skimp on it.

There’s also a lot of sex, which actually gave me something of a nostalgic glow. British horror writers of a 1970s/1980s vintage were always guaranteed to throw in a good few gratuitous sex scenes. I knew as an adolescent that I always more likely to get that kind of thing from a James Herbert than a Stephen King. Reading this not only made me yearn for my mis-spent youth, but it set me pondering: trying to figure out why it was that British horror was so adamant on combining heavy gore with detailed sex scenes. My best guess is that the British authors of this vintage were just over-exposed to Hammer Horror movies and the buxom, blonde wenches who populated them. Certainly that seems to be the case of NECROSCOPE, as the sex sequence with a blonde serving girl in an inn couldn’t have been written any more obviously with Ingrid Pitt in mind if Lumley had included a still from THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD.

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It’s not a perfect book by any means, the powers our protagonist and antagonist develop just become more and more ludicrous even within the framework of the book, while the confrontation between the two is oddly rushed. But if you were looking for a good British horror novel of the 80s – with all that sub genre’s interest in gore, sex, flawed heroes and drizzle – then NECROSCOPE would be a definite top recommendation.

Fancy some dark fiction that is almost certainly by osmosis inspired by H.P. Lovecraft? Then my collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is free now!