F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 21
March 4, 2018
Sunday Double Header
Obviously, DIANA CHRISTMAS, is out in a couple of weeks.
To celebrate, both my first novel, THE WANNABES, and my short story, CONFINED SPACES, are FREE today on Amazon Kindle.
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Just click here and here and you’ll be taken straight to them.
Enjoy!
March 2, 2018
Me, Giving a Monthly Update, in 2018
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I realised that it was a year ago this week (the 27th February, in fact) that I started writing properly again.
That was the first day I sat on the train in the morning and willed myself to write something in that seemingly unpromising surround. The sketch I produced that morning soon became a novel and I was suddenly on my way to becoming an indie author.
Without wanting to sound too melodramatic, it was like I found my destiny.
(That book, to be fair, I’ve got into a typed draft but haven’t finished yet. It’s the first part of a trilogy and I want to have written the second part and made headway on the third by the time I publish it. I’ve blocked off the second half of this year for that, so expect me to talk more about this in 2019).
It seems fitting that a year to the day after I first started down this new writing path, I finished the second typed draft of my new novel. This is the follow up to DIANA CHRISTMAS (which is, of course, out later this month and the first three chapters are available now on Instafreebie). It’s the second in my ‘Screen Siren Noir’ series.
I’m giving myself six weeks-ish to do the rewriting before I hand it over to the editor, yet right now I feel quite happy with it. Obviously, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but I’m quite pleased with how it’s shaping up.
Without a doubt, in a few weeks’ time I’ll have my furrowed brow in my hands as I tell myself that it’s the worst thing ever written by anybody and is pretty much unsalvageable, but for now let me have my moment.
So that’s the second ‘Screen Siren Noir’ novel coming to fruition, while in the mornings and evenings I’m now working on the third instalment.
This one though is much a case of history repeating itself. Much like DIANA CHRISTMAS, I originally envisaged it as a 20,000-word novella and, like DIANA CHRISTMAS it turned out that it’s going to need more than double that to tell the tale.
So, another new novel then. But that’s good. I’m creating, I’m getting stuff out there, I’m slowly finding my readers and in my dark minded and pessimistic way, I’m even a little optimistic about the future
A year ago, I was only just starting out, and now – even though I’m not close to where I want to be yet – I feel like I’m making strides in the right direction. There’s still a long way to go, and yet – you know what? – I’m going to stand back and say I’m pretty pleased with how far I’ve come.
[image error]First three chapters available now!
February 28, 2018
Why I had to write Diana Christmas
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It started when I was young: when I was a slightly out of step little boy in South Wales with a Bogart fixation and a love of old films.
A craving for noir and femmes fatales that I cemented by my reading, then re-reading and re-reading again of all Raymond Chandler’s novels. (Well, I only read PLAYBACK the once, but it would be the rare person who read that numerous times.) In addition I read Dashiell Hammet, Jim Thompson and James Cain, but Chandler was the one I always returned to.
As I grew up I discovered James Ellroy and Megan Abbott, and their brand of Hollywood stories. Then there was a period when I read showbiz biography after showbiz biography – Orson Welles, Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Billy Wilder, Lana Turner, Alfred Hitchcock – and loved them all. I loved the prying back of the glamour and finding something sadder and more commonplace underneath. Or, in the case of the Hollywood novels, finding something sordid and scandalous underneath.
In recent years I have got heavily into Karina Longworth’s superb YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS podcast, which is factual, but has given me some incredible stories I have mostly never heard before.
And yes, before you ask, I greatly enjoyed FEUD.
So, I’ve always had a love for tales of salaciousness behind the Hollywood glamour, but the problem I had with writing such a story myself was that I’m not American; I’ve only been to Los Angeles once and not for a long enough period that I can remotely say I know it. It’s not my city, it’s not my world and for me to try and insert myself into that milieu as a resident of south-west London, would just expose my ignorance.
But there was of course a British film industry.
Shabbier and more provincial, it was nevertheless a place I could write my stories, in the city which is now my home. The kind of tales to capture my love of Raymond Chandler, Megan Abbott and Jim Thompson, but in a British setting. To take all this showbiz nonsense that’s been bubbling away in my head for the last thirty years, marry it to my darker ideas and create a story which is part of a smaller and more parochial film industry, but is still suffused with glamour nonetheless.
Thus, my ‘Silver Screen Noir’ series.
And the first novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS.
A book infused with my youthful passions, and exactly the kind of tense and unpredictable tale I’ve always wanted to tell. Right now it feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life to write this novel; it’s a culmination of so many things that have been going around in my head for years…
The opening three chapters of DIANA CHRISTMAS are available for all to read on Instafreebie right now; while if you want to just leap in and pre-order the book, it’s available on Amazon.
February 26, 2018
Toxic by Vena Cork
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My word, this book is grim.
How grim is it?
If Ken Loach were planning to make a movie version he’d think it should be livened up with a few musical numbers. The late Ingmar Bergman would have scribbled jokes in the margins.
It’s endless grimness with no relief at all. The worst of human behaviour rolled out seemingly endlessly in a way which is tortuously unremitting. In life I generally identify as a pessimist, but I feel that even the most sunny optimist – after flicking through these pages – will want to crawl into a dark cupboard and weep for a while.
A demanding middle class mother and her two adult daughters move into a tower block in Willesden. Around them are all walks of human life – from faded rock stars, to new immigrants, to middle class teachers. What really interests this writer though are the more unsavoury ends of society: the bullies, the arsonists, the would-be rapists, those who keep single mothers and their babies hostage to torture them. Very swiftly it becomes a catalogue of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things, and boy, is it wearying.
The book it most reminded me of is Martin Amis’s LIONEL ASBO, although if memory serves he did at least manage to get jokes in there. There’s the same sense of a middle class author constructing their view of the under class from the more tawdry headlines of The Daily Mail, and never getting any closer than those tawdry headlines for fear of getting their hands dirty.
That being said, it did manage to grip me. Even though I found it unremitting, I did want to know how it ended and pushed myself to the end, I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed the experience, but I don’t regret the hours I spent within its pages.
Fancy reading some free dark (although not grim) fiction by my hand, my short story collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES is free now.
[image error]Free Today
February 24, 2018
An excerpt from Diana Christmas by F.R. Jameson
An excerpt from my forthcoming novel, DIANA CHRISTMAS (the first three chapters!) is available on Instafreebie from today. It’s a book I’m really proud of – the first in my ‘Screen Siren Noir’ series – and can’t wait for people to read. I’ll have a lot more about the writing of this book in the coming weeks, but if you’d like to make a start on actually reading it, just click here.
[image error]Available now!
February 23, 2018
Me, not sleeping, in 2018
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This week I was going to write about how I ended up rolling together my writing and rewriting, so I’m doing both in the same day and how that intensity helps me not only work faster but also improve the quality of what I’m writing. However, I’m now going to do that next week now (or maybe the week after, I’m thinking an update of what I’ve been up to might be good next Friday), as this week I want to write a shorter post about a side effect all this intensity might bring you. Well, a side effect that’s come to me.
The last three mornings I have been wide awake at 4.30. Not through my daughter crying out – no, she’s been sound asleep – or any other external source. Instead I’ve been up and thinking of the book I’m currently writing; thinking of the final bit of work I have to do at the weekend to get DIANA CHRISTMAS ready for the end of March. My mind churning and churning, ticking off all I have to do, even conjuring up sentences for the day ahead. Some of my plans, some of the sentences, might prove useful, but the fact remains that I didn’t get a good night’s sleep.
To be fair I’ve suffered from periods of insomnia right through my life. But now, with the amount of pressure I’m putting on myself, and how much I’ve geared myself to concentrate on thinking about my writing every spare moment, it does mean that in the early hours – if I do find myself suddenly awake – I have a load to think about and can’t get anywhere close to sleep.
This can’t be healthy.
As I said the other week, we do have to have the conversation at some point about pulling back (though Lord know what I’m going to say, as I’m not very good at that). But if you are going to follow this very intense programme I’m setting out in these Friday blog posts, then remember – in amidst the hard work we all have to do as writers – to try and look after yourselves.
Fancy reading some short stories I probably worried over in the small hours? My collection, SOMETHING WENT WRONG & OTHER STRANGE TALES, is available for free now.
[image error]Free now!
February 21, 2018
Dracula by Bram Stoker
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I’ll be honest, I’ve only actually read DRACULA once before – when I was twenty or so – and didn’t really think much of it. Jonathan Harker’s opening narrative seemed to me, then, slow and uninvolving and I believe I thought the rest of the book not much of an improvement. One of the joys of art – be it books, films or music – is that you can come back to something with fresh eyes at a later point in your life and appreciate it in a whole different way. DRACULA this time around, has been a fantastically entertaining surprise. So much so that I wish I could go back to my twenty year old self, peel back his skull and try to work out what the Hell he was thinking.
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Written in 1897, the book can be seen as very much part of the English ‘fin de siècle’; art created at the end of the glorious Victorian age which nevertheless reveals anxiety about the world around it. DRACULA actually sees the old and the new come together, with a member of the aristocracy working hand in hand with gentlemen of the professions (doctors, a lawyer), as well as an American, to stop a threat facing London. The Upper Classes and the new Middle Classes joining so harmoniously together without comment on their distinctions, is something quite modern for the Victorian novel. (The Working Classes also put in an appearance, although they are pretty much illiterate and drunk, however they do recognise their betters. Other writers would create books for them.) There are also new fangled inventions like the phonograph, and the great wonders of transport created in the Victorian age are put to great use.
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And yet, there is a constant threat of the unknown. A visitor from a country at the far edge of Europe reaches in and disrupts the harmony of this secure world. He is something beyond the great achievements of science, a creature who is old and bloody and threatens to take this civilised and ordered world back to the dark ages. He is also decadently sensual, having no respect for the morals of vulnerable young women. Evidently this is the type of monster who needs to be stopped, but can even the greatness of the Victorian age stamp him out?
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Undoubtedly Stoker did his research into Victorian folklore, as his knowledge is smeared across the pages. Indeed, there are numerous scenes of gore and violence which stand up even now (particularly the fate of Lucy in the graveyard) and it all builds to a genuinely exciting chase sequence. Like FRANKENSTEIN, it isn’t perfect: the character of Dracula himself vanishes to the background a little too much; some of the melding together of the differing narratives is extremely clunky; and, once Mina is chosen by Dracula for his prey, would these people really not suspect what was happening? However, I will write every one of those off as quibbles.
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My twenty year old self was wrong, DRACULA is a scary and thrilling read, which still deserves to stand as the Daddy of vampire fiction.
Fancy some 21st century dark fiction, then enter onto my mailing list where I can keep you abreast of my forthcoming fiction. Just click here to sign up and receive my short story collection, ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’.
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February 19, 2018
The Long Firm by Jake Arnott
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I’m writing a lot about London in the 1960s at the moment, and so to read both London and 1960s set THE LONG FIRM was an absolute treat. A treat which made me turn puce with envious thoughts, but a treat nonetheless. This is really a superb example of how to conjure up a period. Just through little details, catching the era and the idiom and taking the reader on a trip back in time as if we’ve been given our very own Tardis.
We have here the story of Harry Starks, London crime boss and contemporary of The Krays. It’s a gangster piece, it has all the trappings of a dirty under the fingernails crime novel, but it’s also – and probably above all else – a character study. And what a character! Charming, intense and ruthless, Arnott gives us an incredibly vivid and charismatic protagonist.
The decision to split it up into six sections, each narrated by a different person in contact with Starks, could have rebounded – giving more of a distancing effect than something which grabs the reader. But instead we get a novel with depth and heft. One that grips and repulses and tantalises all at the same time.
I’ve been meaning to read THE LONG FIRM since it came out, which I now see was nearly an incredible two decades ago. I don’t know what I’ve been doing these last 20 years, but clearly I’ve been missing out.
Fancy some FREE dark fiction, as well as semi-regular updates on the exciting books I’ll be publishing this year? Then my collection ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ and the chance to join my mailing list is here.
[image error]Available Now!
February 17, 2018
Free this weekend – Confined Spaces
My short story collection, Confined Spaces is free on Amazon Kindle this weekend. If you get chance, please do check it out.
It’s 7 rooms, 7 individuals, 7 terrifying tales….
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If you read it and enjoy it, please do leave a review on Amazon. Reviews are the lifeblood for indie authors like myself, and it will be greatly appreciated.
[image error]Free this weekend!
February 16, 2018
How to Write Quickly – part 4
This is a post for people like me who write their first drafts in pen.
Back in the day I used to write my first drafts on the computer, but I’ve found as I got older that I like it more in pen. I find it easier to control the chapter or segment that I’m writing.
I’m talking about writing fast in these posts, and I appreciate that some of you might just be typing straight into a laptop or tablet. More power to you. You’re probably getting things done faster than I currently am.
But for now I’m a pen or notepad kind of guy and for now I’m happy with that, and so this is a post (on a blog that people will read on their computers and phones over the internet) which is for analogue-minded people like me.
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So, I had my pen and notepad and I’d written in just over a month a draft of a new novel. The first new novel I’d got to the end of in any form for years. I was proud of myself, proud to have this accomplishment that had largely been pulled off on train journeys and in lunchtimes.
There was a problem though.
How the bloody hell was I going to get this book out of this notepad and onto a computer? Onto a computer where it could be rewritten and edited and proofed and finally find its way onto Amazon?
I couldn’t just type it up in the evenings or on weekend afternoons, I’d never get it done fast enough.
There was no point learning to write fast if I was going to hit a logjam like this.
It was a problem, but one I was determined to overcome. It just required more investment of time and some investment of money too.
Knowing I couldn’t write as fast as I wanted at home, I invested in a laptop bag, one that would allow me to lug my computer around with me. That I could have the option in the day to start it up anywhere and start typing.
My first thought was that I’d be one of those people balancing a laptop on my lap on the train, but such is the length of my commute it wouldn’t make sense to go through the process of starting up the computer, opening Word and starting to type. Unlike in the films it doesn’t just come on in an instant and so I’d lose too much time waiting for it to fire up. No, the commute was better spent with my notepad, which I could open immediately and make swift progress on.
Instead I took my computer and each lunchtime went to the nearest coffee shop (a Prêt à Manger, if you’re interested) where I bought myself a soft drink and typed as furiously as I could. It’s taken a while to get my speed up, but in the forty-five minutes I have down there I can generally get to just over 1500 words, that combined with another 500-750 words in the evening means I can get over 2000 words a day.
[image error] A Prêt, yesterday.
That’s 2000 words a day, pretty much everyday (I have been known to give myself Friday lunchtimes off, we’re eventually going to have to talk about when you’re pushing yourself too hard). 2000 words a day on the weekdays, combined with whatever I can do at the weekends (on a good burst, 5000 words plus) means I can frequently hit 15,000 words a week. If I’m writing a short novel, I can get the whole thing typed up in a month. Even an epic tale won’t take me much more than two months.
If you can get fast with your fingers then even an extra hour or so stolen back from your day can get you a huge way to making your dream of the book a reality. If you can have your computer or tablet with you, so you can get down to work when the chance arises, then before long a real and substantial book will be created beneath your fingertips.
Next week, how to live and breathe the book to make it the best product possible.
Fancy some free dark fiction? My excellent (if I do say so myself) collection of short stories, ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available now!
[image error]Free Right Now!
