David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 26

W is for Writer by Compulsion

I wrote my first novel fifty years ago. I’d be about thirteen or about fourteen the time and this 5,000 word-epic, handwritten in a notebook, was a truncated adaptation of Fleming’s Moonraker. I say adaptation; what I really mean is rip off, retelling the story the way I saw it through a schoolboy’s eyes.

I’ve always had this compulsion to write. People ask what drives me, why I do it, and the answer is, I can’t not do it… well, I can, but I’d probably end up even crazier than I am now.

I have a prodigious rate of productivity, but there’s no real secret to that. I do little else with my sad life other than write, and when you use it to fill many waking hours, the number of words you write goes up. My all-time record was about 16,000 words in a day. Boy, I slept well that night.

The missus and I are off on holiday next week, and even there I will have my netbook. I may do nothing more than make a few diary notes every day, or scribble down some comic incident, but I will write.

Do you recall the old Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut advert where Frank Muir left his lawnmower running across the garden because he’d just had an idea? The punch was, “As a writer, you never know when an idea will strike, so it’s important to get it written down.” And it’s right. I’ve been known to pull over while out driving because I’ve just had an idea and I needed to make a note of it before I forgot.

And when I get out of bed on a morning, there’s a system in place. I pass through the kitchen, knock the kettle on as I go by, make my way into the front room and switch the computer on so it’s ready to begin writing. Only then will I let the dog out and open the curtains to let the daylight in.

Will I ever stop?

Don’t think so. Even when it ceases to be fun, which it does now and then, and becomes, instead, a drudge, I still can’t get through a day without putting virtual pen to virtual paper and scribbling out a few words.

V is for Voices

I’m probably best known for my light-hearted whodunits, the STAC Mysteries and my cynically grumpy and LOL alter-ego, Flatcap (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BZZXCAO or http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0053D127E or http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IURHH2O ).

But I also turn out more serious and often more frightening work, and one such example is (IMHO) probably the finest work I ever produced. It’s:

Voices

A difficult book to accurately categorise, it’s been described as akin to the works of James Herbert. I’m a fan of James Herbert and I found that quite flattering.

It has a remarkable pedigree. The first draft of 120,000 words was written in 33 days over Christmas and January 2008/2009. The final draft of 109,000 words took a further two years to develop, revise, polish and prepare for publication. It finally saw the light of day two years ago, on May 4th, 2012.

It attracts few reviews, because, as regular readers will be aware, I don’t solicit reader reviews, but those that it has are consistent. Five stars across the board.

In writing it, I imposed every limitation a writer could think of upon myself. It’s written first person, and that automatically restricts point of view. To get around some of the issues arising, I wrote the end of every section third person, which involved ensuring the reader could readily identify the third person narrative without me being blatantly obvious about it. In addition to robbing the protagonist, Chris Deacon, of his hearing, I also took away his voice, which meant I had to develop some means of communication between him and others. And finally, as well as tying up all the loose threads, I had to find a convincing means of defeating an enemy which has the hallmarks of invincibility.

Did it work?

You’ll have to read it for yourself to judge.

Voices: You cannot escape what is in your head.

Check out Voices at:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Or if you prefer paperback visit your favourite online bookstore and search for the ISBN 9781908910424 (but do watch of for sites like ebay where some sellers are offering second-hand copies at more than the price of brand new.)

U is for Unbelievable

In the UK we have this thing called the NHS. Despite the present government’s lies about their intentions, and their thinly veiled best efforts to dismantle it, it’s a life saver. It doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you don’t have, you get medical treatment.

It’s rare in the extreme that you will hear me criticise it, but here’s that rarity.

I recently had a polyp removed from the roof of my mouth and all it cost me was time and discomfort. That’s the NHS.

I need a follow-up appointment to make sure everything is tickety-boo, which according to me, it is. The appointment was arranged for April 29th, next Tuesday. No problem. I can do that.

Two days ago, I had repeated phone calls asking me to confirm that I will attend that appointment. Irritating, but again, it took only a few minutes, and who am I to complain? I confirmed that I would be there.

This morning I’ve received a letter telling me that the appointment has been cancelled because the consultant is not available. It’s put back to July 29th.

Fair enough. The guy (or gal) may be sick (or pregnant).

What was the point of the fucking phone calls then? Is such frigging about the best use of NHS resources? Is such pratting about the best use of my time and their time?

T is for Travel Trouble

This post is another last-minute change from the one I had planned.

I spent forty years of my working life travelling the roads of England, Scotland and Wales. There are only a few small areas I haven’t visited. For this reason, the majority of my work is set in this country, and even if many of the locations are fictitious, they’re based on real places.

There is one exception. It’s STAC Mystery #9, Costa del Murder. It’s set almost entirely in Torremolinos, on Spain’s southern coast.

It picked up a four-star review on Amazon UK a few days ago. The reader liked it. (S)he wouldn’t have given it four stars otherwise. But there’s a little snippet in it which attracted my attention.

“… Local knowledge a bit ropey…”

Now before you get to thinking, hey up here’s another author with a bruised ego, you’re wrong. The reviewer says he/she is just nitpicking, but I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

And that’s the problem when you set novels in locations which you don’t know like the back of your hand.

I know Torremolinos, but I know it as a tourist. I know what the seafront is like, I know how well you can see the aeroplanes coming into land at Malaga just up the road. I know the perfume shop on Calle San Miguel, and I know the bar where Joe meets some of the little Englanders (but it’s not called Wiley’s).

That knowledge is superficial. I can’t tell you how often the buses run up and down outside Apartmentos Ingles, I really don’t know what kind of shifts the locals work in their chosen industries, I don’t know anything of the local political, administrative or legal troubles the town suffers, or taxation issues, and I certainly don’t know about the local TV channels or the press for the simple reason it’s all in Spanish and as I said on a post a few days ago, I speak very little.

These may not appear to be huge factors in storytelling, but if you compare Costa del Murder to, say, Death in Distribution, the latest STAC Mystery, you’ll see where they fit in to add colour and depth to the tale. And I just didn’t fit enough of it into Costa.

Having said all that, the mystery stands up well, and even my friendly, albeit anonymous reviewer said so.

S is for… Well, S, Really

Why is it such a significant letter in my life?

My first wife’s name is Sheila. These days I live near Saddleworth but I’m just as close to the town of Shaw, and many years ago, when I first became a trucker, I worked for a man named Shaw. It was probably the latter two coincidences that encouraged me to choose the pen name David Shaw for some of my early work.

This bias towards the nineteenth letter of the alphabet is just as evident in my written work. Joe Murray and his pals live in the fictitious town of Sanford, and because STAC is the acronym for the Sanford 3rd Age Club, the STAC Mysteries begin with an “S”. The Lady Concepta Rand-Epping is the central character in my forthcoming series, the Spookies Mysteries. As a child, she could not pronounce the name Concepta, so it was shortened to Cepta, and it became Sceptre. That initial, along with those of Pete and Kevin give us the name Spookies.

I still dabble with sci-fi and I had this short series of comedies, Space Truckers. I also have another, half finished work, a contender for its own series, the eponymous hero of which is Sharn.

It’s not like I do this intentionally. It just seems to work out that way.

Maybe it’s a subconscious wish fulfilment. Maybe I secretly wish I’d been christened Sam Sorenson.

R is for Robinson

There are a lot of us about, but the particular Robinson I’m concentrating on is Peter Robinson, creator of DCI Banks.

It’s surprising how many similarities there are between us. I was born in January 1950 in Holbeck, Leeds. He was born two months later in Armley, about a mile up the road from me. He went on to study at the university of York and Leeds and I went on to study at the Gas Board and the Bookies. Peter emigrated to Canada in 1974, presumably for a better life, and not long after that I emigrated to Manchester to put some distance between me and the first wife.

And of course, we both write crime fiction.

This is where you might spot a slight disparity. He created the incredibly successful Alan Banks, I created the mildly popular Joe Murray. His books are runaway bestsellers, mine are stable sellers in an overcrowded market. His characters are on TV, mine are on the computer.

Am I envious?

To be truthful, no. In fact I will raise a glass to the success of a fellow Leodensian (it means someone from Leeds) and when it comes to Banks, I enjoy the books more than the TV series.

The STAC Mysteries bear little resemblance to the murky world of DCI Banks, a world I could never recreate even if I wanted to. I may like reading Banks but I wouldn’t want to write one. The research alone would put me off for life.

And as for the disparity in our lives, well no one is to blame for that, but me. At about the time Peter Banks was contemplating further education, I was discovering the joys of girls and Tetley Bitter, a fine ale from Leeds, and for both I needed to be earning not learning.

***

Friend and fellow Crooked Cat author Miriam Drori is running an unusual blog for her A-Z Challenge by asking writers about others who share at least an initial letter, and the links between the two. Peter Robinson is my contribution to her blog which you can find at http://miriamdrori.com/

Q is for Que

It’s Spanish for “What?”

The British attitude towards learning foreign languages is, frankly, appalling. Harking back to the days of empire, we arrogantly assume that everyone in the world should speak English, but we don’t have to worry about learning their language(s).

I’m not much better. I speak a little French, a tiny bit of German and some Spanish, but it’s barely enough to say “hello” and order food and drink. Even then, I prefer a menu so I can point out what I want.

My wife is even worse. Her French amounts to “thank you”, usually pronounced “mercy bow coo” and her Spanish is limited to “grassy arse.”

And yet, we enjoy travelling all over Europe, especially the sunny Spanish resorts. We’re off again in a couple of weeks going back to Benidorm. It’ll be a week of roaring drunkenness and debauchery. I’ve tried telling the missus to behave herself, but I might as well talk to the dog.

We’ve been together almost 35 years (the wife and I, not me and the dog) and our last trip to Benidorm demonstrated just how much Her Indoors knows about me. She was astonished that I could order tea and toast in Spanish. I had no choice. The poor girl serving us didn’t speak a word of English.

Contrast our haphazard approach with that of my good friend Lorraine Mace (aka Frances di Plino). Lorraine admits to being a gypsy having lived in many parts of the world before settling first in France and now in Spain. I know for a fact that she speaks excellent French and I’m certain she is now learning to speak excellent Spanish. If we lived in Spain, the locals would have to get used to Pidgin Spanish spoken with a broad Yorkshire or Lancashire accent.

And now for the inevitable plug. Considering our travels to the Canary Islands, the Balearics, and mainland Spain, it was only natural to send Joe and Co from the Sanford 3rd Age Club to one of these resorts. It’s entitled Costa del Murder, and it’s a fun read. More importantly,it demonstrates that even Joe speaks better Spanish than me, for which I thank several people, including the Inestimable Nik Morton, for their help.

P is for Paranormal

For the second time in this year’s Blogging from A-Z Challenge, the post is a day late. Domestic matters got in the way yesterday. Q is for Que will follow this afternoon to get me back on schedule.

I have a new series which debuts on June 10th when Crooked Cat Books will release the first Spookies Mysteries, The Haunting of Melmerby Manor.

First released in the United States in 2007, it has been re-edited, and prepped for re-release on a worldwide audience, but this time it’s with a series in mind.

Essentially, the Spookies Mysteries are whodunits, with a paranormal twist. Team leader is the Lady Concepta Rand-Epping, Countess of Marston, ably assisted by her faithful butler, Albert Fishwick.

Like many British aristocrats, Sceptre, as she is known to her friends, has fallen on hard times. The last of the Rand-Eppings, there is little left of the family fortune, and she earns her living teaching history at Ashdale Technical College. And she is a paranormal investigator.

It doesn’t end there, because she has two other helpers: the sceptical Pete Brennan, a disgraced ex-cop who is tougher than your average block of reinforced concrete, and who helps keep s Sceptre’s feet firmly in this world, and wheeler-dealer, super-salesman and not-so sceptical Kevin Keeley, an electronics wizard and a man who can talk himself into the most dodgy situations and usually needs either Pete or Sceptre or both to get him out of them.

Oh, and did I mention that Fishwick was killed on the first day of the Somme in 1916? Yes, Fishwick is a ghost. Channelling only through Sceptre, he helps out with investigations, both real and ethereal, from the Spirit Plane.

The content is a little stronger than the STAC Mysteries. There’s a little more violence, and while there is no graphic sex, there’s more than a modicum of innuendo. They’re also longer than the STAC Mysteries. Each will run to 80,000-90,000 words. Second and third titles in the series are already in production.

To whet your appetite, here’s a little snippet from The Haunting of Melmerby Manor.

Investigating strange goings on at Melmerby Manor, the team are settled in the cafeteria when Sceptre declares it’s time to take a second tour of the house. As they set out, she hears a noise.

***

With the total blackness of a foggy night on the outside and the meagre lighting on the inside, the hall had taken on a new, more sinister aura. Faces on portraits lining the grand staircase had developed a Baskervillian air, as if they were ready to leap from their frames and tear out the living hearts of anyone foolhardy enough to pass. At the top of the curving staircase, distant lamps cast elongated shadows of banister rails, like the grotesque bars of a supernatural prison that held unspeakable horrors for the unwary inmate. Silence hung in the tense air: a spine-chilling stillness, broken only by the cry of the moorland wind and the sound of whalesong from Kevin’s CD player.

Then, into the night came a distant bump that might have been a rumble of thunder or the movement of furniture closer to home.

Pete strained his ears. “Will you shut that row up?”

“I haven’t said anything,” Kevin protested.

“Not you; that crap on your CD player.”

The immensity of the entrance hall, its age, grandeur and dark corners (particularly its dark corners) gave Kevin the jitters. Glad to be out of it, he hurried back into the cafeteria, and made for the CD player. He was halfway there when the machine ejected the CD and threw it across the room at him like a razor-edged discus, its polished surface glittering in the half-light of the room.

“Aargh!”

“Now what?” asked Pete as he and Sceptre hurried back in.

They found Kevin cowering near the cash register at the end of the service counter.

“What’s up?” asked Sceptre.

“Th-the C-C-CD. It came out of the machine and nearly cut my head off.”

Pete picked up the disc. “Well you always said that machine was a bit iffy.”

“I was nowhere near it,” Kevin cried. “It was as if someone picked it up and threw it at me like a Frisbee.”

Sceptre was delighted. “Sir Henry! The poltergeist!”

***

Is it Sir Henry? Is it merely their imagination? You’ll have to wait until June 10th to find out. In the meantime, there’s a Facebook launch event already set up, and you’re welcome to come along.

O is for Oh What Joy

With the untimely passing of Sue Townsend on April 10th, I’ve spent my free time over the last week re-reading The Secret diary of Adrian Mole and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and both books are sheer delight.

I’m blessed with an excellent memory, and some of young Mole’s attitudes and conclusions strike a resounding chord with me. I cringe when I recall those same attitudes, those same naïve assumptions in my younger self. And yet, Ms Townsend imbued them with a wit that was neither demonising, patronising nor cringeworthy.

I write humour (sometimes). My comedy is observational: the world viewed through the sour and absurd eye of a grumpy third-ager, but I can’t compete with the likes of “I’ve never seen a dead body or a real female nipple. This is what comes of living in a cul-de-sac.”

On her passing last week my old mate Trevor Belshaw, who produced the gloriously funny Tracy’s Hot Mail, said without Mole there would have been no Bridget Jones and no Tracy.

Your work, Ms Townsend was a positive joy to read, and wherever you are, I hope you still have them rolling in the aisles with laughter.

N is for a New Direction

A day or two back, I put up a post proselytising in favour of my publisher, Crooked Cat Books. I don’t apologise for that. But I was surprised by the post’s popularity.

This blog has been running for just over three years. It’s never been mega-popular, and if there was ever a theme to it, it was to promote my written work. But a quick skim through the site stats tell me that click-throughs to Crooked Cat are the third most popular after Amazon UK and Facebook.

This, in turn, indicates that there are an awful lot of wannabes out there, looking for a home for their work.

There’s nothing new about this. It’s not linked to the e-book explosion of the last few years. There have always been more writers/novelists than there are publishers willing to give a home to their work. Just ask any of the big six about the size of their slush pile. I remember meeting with a commissioning editor at a major UK TV company in 1996, and his office floor was littered with scripts all stacked six high. Every man and his wife has always wanted to be a writer.

And as if to reinforce this, the most popular post on this blog (after the home page, which is the landing page anyway) is one entitled “Rules for Writing Whodunits” which first appeared in February 2012. It’s taken 8 hits this week.

It all points in one direction; a new direction. We’re slightly over midway through the Blogging from A-Z Challenge and I won’t change my current plans, but once we get into May, and I’m back from my next Spanish jaunt, this blog will concentrate on the art or craft of writing, publishing, self-publishing, and so on.

Am I qualified to give such advice? Maybe, maybe not. I can tell you what I do, and it’s worked for me. I’m not a household name, but my books do move in substantial numbers. That’s not to say my methods will work for you, but you may pick up some worthwhile tips and wrinkles.

So stick around for the new direction, coming to this blog soon.