David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 36

Flatcap Shops & Scans

Savepennies, our local supermarket, has instituted a new system. It’s called shop & scan. Basically, as you go round the store, you scan your goods, put them in carrier bags, and then pay at special tills on the way out. Well, that’s the theory.

This morning, they collared me and asked if I’d like to have a go. Always eager to try new toys, I said yes, and then learned I had to register to take a scanner round the shop.

I had to give them my name, address, postcode, two referees (I gave them Howard Webb and Dicky Bird. I know Dicky was technically an umpire, but hey, what do these kids know?) In addition, I had to give them parents’ names as guarantors. “Do you want the name of the cemetery thye’re buried in, too?” I asked as I signed the registration form.

In return, I was given a scanner, a tiny little infrared torch that you flash at the barcode. Her Indoors insisted I should be good at this because I’m always flashing tiny things at barmaids. I told her to leave my dentures out of it.

Off we tootled round the store and I was impressed. You can watch your bill mount up as you go along. The one thing I would say is, if you’re wearing clothing you bought from that store five years ago, as I was, make sure you’ve removed the label with the barcode on it. We’d hardly got as far as fresh bananas and I’d already added my jacket to the bill three times. After getting one of the staff to remove the entries for me, I confidently expected the bill to go back down to £11.37, but it stuck at £35.65. Her Indoors had been stood near the Slimfast display with her hand on the scan button and totalled up eight tins of vanilla flavoured milk shake which she wasn’t buying anyway. She hates vanilla.

Cheese was a bit problematic. I don’t know who packed it, but the barcode went round the corner, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the light to bend. One of the staff told me, “You have to smooth out the package so the scanner can read it.” Note to self: next time, bring a steam iron if you want some cheese.

We didn’t risk fresh vegetables. You have to weigh and scan those, and I was worried we might end up with irradiated turnips.

It didn’t save us much time as we were going round. We still had the same arguments over whether to buy smoked or unsmoked bacon, and whether frozen kippers were good value at thirty bob a box. But it was when we go to the checkout that shop & scan proved a winner. All I had to do was aim the scanner that computer, and pay for it. Saved me the usual wait in line at the checkouts.

Or it would have done if we hadn’t been pulled for a random search.

I get this all the time. Her Indoors says it’s because of my obstructive attitude.

The lad who searched the bags explained it to me. “We’re just making sure you’ve scanned everything in your bags, sir.”

I took instant offence. “Do I look like the kind of bloke who’d try to sneak off with an extra tin of pineapple chunks?”

He looked at me and said, “Quite frankly, yes.”

I think it’s back to queuing at the checkouts next week.

***

For more of Flatcap’s sledgehammer wit, try Flatcap’s Guide to UK Holidays. Exclusive to Amazon.

Upward Chart Movement

The Handshaker leapt overnight from nowhere to about number 45,000 in the Amazon rankings. It doesn’t need to sell many copies to do that.

I follow the rankings quite closely. I believe most authors do. What was significant about The Handshaker movement this morning was a similar, but much smaller jump in one of the STAC titles: My Deadly Valentine.

It’s the weakest selling STAC Mystery. The Summer Wedding Murder has only been on sale for five weeks and its already outsold Valentine, and yet, as I write, Valentine is suddenly ranked third highest behind Summer Wedding and The Filey Connection.

I hesitate to draw comparisons between My Deadly Valentine and The Handshaker. The one is a light-hearted whodunit and The Handshaker a hard-bitten, gritty novel, overcast with an increasing sense of threat.

And yet, the stories are quite similar. Both involve the central protagonist, Joe in the case of Valentine, Felix Croft in The Handshaker, personally. Both hinge upon quite brutal, serial killings. Valentine is written more like an episode of Midsomer Murders, while The Handshaker takes us deeper into the mind of a deranged killer, and both books end in a climactic confrontation.

It’s interesting to draw this kind of broad comparison. It’s not a stunt I could pull off with any regularity. Croft is, by nature, one of the world’s heroes, Joe isn’t. He’s too old and he works on the principle that most heroes are in the cemetery. That’s something Superintendent Ernie Shannon points out to Croft in the forthcoming sequel to The Handshaker, The Deep Secret. But while Joe would have listened, Croft is more likely to ignore the advice.

The Handshaker is published by Crooked Cat Books and is available as an ebook download from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (all formats)

Crooked Cat Books (EPUB, MOBI, PDF)

And in paperback from:

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide

My Deadly Valentine, STAC Mystery #6 is published by Crooked Cat Books and is available as an ebook download from

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (All formats)

Crooked Cat Books (EPUB, MOBI, PDF)

And in paperback from:

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide

Do We Ever Forget?

No one knows better than Felix Croft, ubiquitous hero of The Handshaker trilogy, just how tricky memory can be.

We’ve just come through a hot spell of seriously hot weather. It ended here in Manchester with a violent thunderstorm between six and seven this morning, and it reminded me of a similar event 50-odd years ago.

It was the long hot summer of 1959, and I recall being a nine-year-old boy, playing cricket out in the street and watching dark clouds gathering to the south. An hour or so later, they arrived with a vengeance, thunder, lightning, torrential rain. End of cricket.

It is my only recollection of 1959. Nottingham Forest beat Luton Town 2-1 in the FA Cup Final, but I have no memory of that match. The Hovercraft was launched and so was the Mini. The Conservatives won their third successive General Election, and the first section of the M1 was open. I have a feeling I had to take action to stop young Fellows bullying me at school, but I can’t be sure it was in 1959.

Most of the above wouldn’t have registered on the consciousness of a nine-year-old, and yet, according to popular myth, it’s all there, locked deep in my mind where even I can’t get at it.

Is it accessible under hypnosis?

That’s the premise of hypnotic regression. The theory is that every tiny bit of data coming in through our five senses is never lost. It’s all there. We just have to access it.

For Croft, particularly in the first two books his hypnotic skills are called upon rather less than his analytical mind, but in the third part of the trilogy… watch this space.

***

The Handshaker is published by Crooked Cat Books and is available as an ebook download from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (all formats)

Crooked Cat Books (EPUB, MOBI, PDF)

And in paperback from:

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide

A Sequel from the Dark Side

If he were still with us, my younger brother would be 62 today. It’s a fitting moment to announce the publication of The Deep Secret, sequel to my dark novel, The Handshaker.

The success of the STAC Mysteries tends to divert attention from the dark side of my writing, and yet I actually began with these grim and gritty tales of brutal murder.

The Handshaker is designed to shock. Not only is the killer completely ambivalent about taking the life of another, but he actually gets off on killing. It’s not an entirely new angle, but I had serious qualms on the matter when it was first suggested to me. That suggestion came from a publishing professional, so I figured the lady knew what she was talking about.

It’s easy to draw comparisons with Bad Moon Rising, by my fellow Crooked Cat author, Frances di Plino, whose killer has similar obsessions with sex and death, albeit from a different perspective.

Once The Handshaker was finished and published, I realised that the story was not complete. It’s taken over year, but the second part of the tale is now with my publisher, and although a publication date is still under consideration, it’s looking like October.

The Deep Secret takes the story on, but not without revisiting the catalyst for The Handshaker, The Heidelberg Case. In the new novel, I include fictionalised accounts of the dark beginnings of The Handshaker in pre war Germany, in order to show how the idea of murder by hypnosis came to Great Britain.

Just before I post up a sample from the book, there’s one last thing. This is not the end. There will be a third part, but don’t hold your breath. By my best guesstimate, it’s a year away.

***

In the extract which follows, Franz Walter, using the fake identity of Franz Bergen, is travelling on a train from Karlsruhe to Heidelberg when he encounters Anna, the woman who would become his next victim.

The Deep Secret

The train trundled into the suburbs of Graben-Neudorf and Walter frowned. Outside, a temperate spring day lifted the despondency of political turmoil in Germany, casting a balm on the Black Forest countryside, lifting, cheering the spirit, expunging thoughts of the in-fighting between Herr Hitler’s National Socialists and von Hindenburg’s moribund administration.

Across the compartment sat a teenage girl. Dressed in a cloche hat, her pageboy haircut tucked under it, Walter noticed the brim of the hat sat a little too far forward to be truly fashionable and the toes of her buckle shoes were scuffed. She was, he decided, a farmer’s daughter. She had boarded the train at Friedrichstal, a small town, not much more than a village really, a few kilometres back down the line. He had watched her from behind the discreet screen of his newspaper. A pretty girl, with dark hair, china blue eyes, a heavy bosom. Occasionally she would wince in pain and clutch at her tummy.

Walter would dearly love to clutch at more than her tummy, but he knew these rural types well. If, as he suspected, her father was a farmer, she would have been brought up ‘properly’, taught not to speak to strange men unless she had been formal introduced, warned to guard her ‘honour’, save herself for the farm boy to whom she was betrothed.

Walter almost sniggered at the idea. Farm girls found sex all around them when the bull was brought to the cow, the boar to the sow, and despite the safeguards parents put in place, many of these strong young women lost their virginity in the hay loft long before they were marched down the aisle.

The train braked suddenly. She clutched once more at her tummy and her bag, a heavy, leather affair resting on her lap, fell to the floor, spilling a compact and lipstick. She made to pick it up, but Walter moved quicker, gathered up the pieces, tucked them back in her bag, and handed the lot back to her with a smile.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Fraulein. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Franz Bergen. A doctor. I couldn’t help noticing that you appear to be in some pain.”

“A minor ailment,” she concurred. “I am on my way to Heidelberg, to the university, where I must find a doctor to help with the problem.”

Walter gave her a diffident smile. “One is hesitant to blow one’s own trumpet, but disorders of the gastric system are one of my specialities. I have a weekly clinic at the hospital. In fact, I’m on my way there right now. Perhaps I could take you in my cab, when we get there, and leave you with my nurse.”

“That would be kind of you, doctor.”

Once more he fished into the waistcoat, the other pocket this time, and withdrew a business card, passing to her. She made a study of it, and tucked it into her bag.

The train slowed even further, until it was crawling along past houses and factories, until it reached the ornate and rusty awning above Graben-Neudorf station where it ground to a jerky halt.

Walter got to his feet. “The train will stand here for about forty minutes while the engine takes on coal and water. Forgive me, Fraulein, but I do not know your name.”

She smiled shyly. “Anna Haller.”

He clicked his heels smartly together and half bowed in a display of chivalry. “Franz Bergen. If you will excuse me, Fräulein Haller, I will visit the buffet and take coffee.” He made for the door and paused. He turned and put on an effective display of bumbling reserve. “Er … perhaps you would care to join me.”

***

The Handshaker is published by Crooked Cat Books and is available as a download and in paperback.

Bad Moon Rising, by Frances di Plino is published by Crooked Cat Books and is available as a download or in paperback.

The Deep Secret will be published by Crooked Cat Books later this year as a download and in paperback.

Quite a Weekend

This is Monday’s post turning up a day late. Wasn’t feeling too well yesterday, possibly as a result of the weekend’s excitement.

The final draft of STAC Mystery #9, Costa del Murder, went off to Crooked Cat at the end of last week. We’ll see Joe suffering a suspected heart attack, struggling to give up smoking, and taking a week’s well-earned rest in the company of Sheila and Brenda on the Costa del Sol.

Joe being Joe, STAC Mysteries being STAC Mysteries, not much goes according to plan, then one of the permanent residents of Apartmentos Ingles turns up in the swimming pool… dead.

What’s behind it all, how does Joe crack the mystery? Well you’ll have to wait until Friday 6th September to find out, but you can book your slot at the Facebook launch party now.

With that out of the way, on Sunday, I had a date with a very special young lady. Ava Rose Robinson-Fairs is just eight weeks old, my ??? (I’ve lost count) granddaughter, the first child of my eldest son, David, and his partner Sarah. A beautiful (yes I’m biased) and placid little girl who, unlike her father, did not scream the place down when I first picked her up.

Here she is in her rocker swing, and with her parents.

That’s the “Aww” factor out of the way.

Finally, a year and a half ago, I quit self-publishing to sign up with Crooked Cat Publishing. Several months down the line I read a slightly scathing report on them. “Newcomers. Spreading themselves too thin across genres. It’ll all end in tears,” or words to that effect.

The truth is Steph and Laurence Patterson, the husband and wife team behind Crooked Cat, know exactly what they’re doing. They’re friendly, approachable, supportive, willing to listen to the author, and quite frankly, signing up with them is not a decision I’ve had cause to regret.

But you don’t need to ask me for a reference.

Earlier this year, Amy Elliot-Smith’s Guide to Becoming Distinctly Average won the Beryl Bainbridge Award for a first time author in the People’s Book Prize, and Tom Gillespie’s Painting by Numbers was also short-listed. We were recently told that two more titles have been nominated for the summer awards, and a further two for the autumn. These will be announced by Crooked Cat at the appropriate time.

And it doesn’t end there. We’ve just been told that Amy’s book, along with Breath of Africa by Jane Bwye have both been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award 2013.

An award winner, multiple nominations, a series of whodunits taking the Amazon rankings by storm, and a range of top notch fiction to suit all tastes, it occurs to me that if it’s gonna end in tears they’ll be tears of joy.

In Conversation with Rachel Abbott

I’ve just spent a week chatting with Rachel Abbott.

Rachel’s novel, Only the Innocent, was the second best selling title of 2012, and the follow up, The Back Road, looks as if it’s going to emulate if not better that performance.

The conversation was arranged and later edited by Laurence Patterson of Crooked Cat Publishing, and consisted of a series of emails in which we compared note on our different approaches to many aspects of crime writing.

Rachel is very organised when it comes to penning her works, whereas I’m haphazard, although we do have some common ground in that we both work to a plan

The other thing we have in common is we’re both still up there in the Amazon UK Kindle British Detectives chart. Only The Innocent and The Back road are in the top three, and I have The Summer Wedding Murder right behind them, with The Filey Connection sitting further back, around the number 9/10 slot.

I’m not going to give any of it away here, but for me the experience was enjoyable and informative.

You can read the full conversation here.

Rambling Syd Rumpo and Tracy’s Hot Mail

I’ve just spent half an hour listening to an episode of Round the Horne on the BBC iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007jlnp/Round_The_Horne_Series_3_Episode_1/ [UK only]).

Almost half a century ago, I tuned in every Sunday. I would not miss Rambling Syd Rumpo’s latest offering, or Sandy and Julian’s newest business venture. And do you know, although it’s dated, it’s as funny now as it was then.

Humour has changed over the years and for each of us, it’s a personal thing. What one finds hilarious, others will find inane. In my opinion, Monty Python and Fawlty represent the pinnacle of comedy, yet one of my wife’s best friends can’t raise a chuckle.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy modern comedy. Some of it is excellent. I love Eddie Izzard, especially his Death Star canteen skit, and I find Miranda Hart quite rib tickling. But by and large, if you’re going to give me humour, give the old-fashioned stuff, like Kenneth Horne and his gang, The Goons, and the TV greats comics like Hancock, Eric Sykes, Tommy Cooper and Morecambe & Wise.

A well oiled aspect of Round the Horne is also one of the oldest comedy devices; the double entendre. The Carry On films were built on them. Even as Flatcap, I don’t make extensive use of them, but Brenda has been known to deliver them in the STAC Mysteries.

It was a double entendre that got me to the iPlayer and Round The Horne. It was in the latest instalment of Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail, by my old mate Trevor Belshaw. I won’t give the game away here. You can read it for yourself.

Trevor and I have been mates for a good few years and I was lucky in that I got to read the original Tracy’s Hot Mail when it was only a draft document. It was a very funny read, and it has the distinction of being the first book published by Crooked Cat. Since then it’s picked up no less than 22 reviews on Amazon, 19 of which are 5-star.

The new batch of emails, the celebrity emails, are even funnier because they’re more tightly focused, and along with many other people, I’m trying to encourage Trevor to get his funny bone into gear and come out with a follow up volume.

So if you fancy a chuckle, a guffaw, a LOL romp, get yourself over to Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail and when you’ve done laughing fit to bust, pop over to Amazon and pick up the original Tracy’s Hot Mail.

You know it makes sense.

A Slow and Sure Success

I keep a watchful eye on the Amazon rankings and the movement of my books. You’ve probably noticed. It’s not an obsession… well it is, but it’s not for the sake of taking any gratification. I watch them closely to ensure that nothing is dropping out of sight. When it does, I tend to move on it and remind readers that it’s still there.

And naturally, I keep records. This morning, with nothing better to do than let my new upper denture nag me, I had a scout through the records and came up with a surprise, which really shouldn’t be a surprise at all.

Except for two days in June, The Filey Connection, first of the STAC Mysteries, has never been out of the Amazon UK British Detectives Top 40 since January 12th this year. In fact, it’s been in the Top 10 ever since the beginning of July.

July 1st, of course, was the second day of the week-long Crooked Cat Summer Sale. It’s now over, the books have reverted to normal prices, and that’s evident from the way they’re sliding down the charts. Filey, however, has always been 77p (or thereabouts) and while other titles are slipping down, settling to more realistic sales levels, Joe’s first adventure is actually rising. It came up from #9 to #6 earlier today.

Most commentators will say that price isn’t as big a factor as you might imagine. The STAC Mysteries are priced between £1.50 and £2, which isn’t a lot to pay for a novel. I’ve paid more for secondhand paperbacks in charity shops. But price does still have an effect. According to my best estimate for the sale last week, when all Crooked Cat titles were 77p, I shifted about 1,500 books. 98% of them were STAC Mysteries.

That is a threefold increase on my normal weekly sales, and remember this is only an estimate based on Novelrank’s figures.

The latest title, The Summer Wedding Murder, came out top, but plodding along behind it, was The Filey Connection. A classic tortoise and hare situation. Like a supernova blazing into the night sky, new books rocket up the rankings and burn out in a matter of a couple of months, but Filey shines surely steadily. Downloaded over 3,000 times since its release 15 months ago, it is the bestselling STAC Mystery.

The Filey Connection, STAC Mystery #1, is available for download from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (all formats)

Crooked Cat Books (MOBI, EPUB, PDF)

And in paperback from

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide

What’s in a price?

Chart success, that’s what.

Crooked Cat Books have kept their Kindle prices at 77p ever since last Sunday/Monday, and it doesn’t half show.  Here’s a snapshot of the Amazon UK Crime/Mystery & thriller/British Detectives Top 100 from four o’clock this morning.

The Summer Wedding Murder has wobbled between number 2 and 3 all week, but it’s now joined by The Filey Connection, the very first STAC Mystery, at number 4. In terms of overall ratings, Summer Wedding is around the 250 mark, and Filey sits a little further back at 750-ish.

Here’s another snapshot of that same chart taken at the same time.

In this one we have three STAC Mysteries at numbers 10,11 and 12. In fact, ALL EIGHT STAC Mysteries were in the top 30, seven of them were in the top 20 and three in the top ten.

It’s a phenomenal performance, and it’s largely due to the reduced prices. Prior to last Monday, Summer Wedding and Filey were doing well, but the remainder were spread around the middle to lower half of the chart.

And yet, even at their full price, between £1.55 and £1.99, they still represent excellent value. A novel for less than the price of a cup of tea?

For the time being, you can buy the whole series for just over £6.00: about the price of a pack of cigarettes. A trawl through the STAC Mysteries will last a lot longer than 20 cigarettes and do you a damn sight more good.

Naturally, it’s not just the STAC Mysteries. It’s ALL Crooked Cat titles with the exception of Sarah England’s Expected, which was only released two days before the sale began.

But all good things must come to an end, and the low price bonanza is scheduled to end on Sunday night/Monday morning.

So if you fancy a bargain, get on over to Amazon and the Crooked Cat Publishing list and stock up your Kindle at these rock bottom prices while you can.

You know you want to.

Sales Blitz

Yesterday saw the beginning of the Crooked Cat Summer Sale, held every summer, which is useful because there would be something odd about hold a summer sale in the winter. Most of the 50+ Kindle books are reduced to 77p for the duration of the sale, which ends tomorrow.

The STAC Mysteries tend to do well during the sales, and yesterday was no exception. The reduced prices pushed the titles up until, at one stage last night, all eight were in the Amazon Kindle, UK British Detectives top 40. Five of them were in the top 20, and two were in the top 10.

At the same time, sales of The Summer Wedding Murder, the latest in the series, helped lift it into the next level charts, the Crime, Thriller & Mystery/Mystery top 2100, where it reached a peak position of #72 first thing this morning. Here it’s mingling with books from the likes of Lee Child, James Patterson, Stieg Larsson and Mark Billingham.

In the overall rankings, The Summer Wedding Murder has reached as high as #353. That sets a new record for a STAC title.

Pleased? You bet. It could be seriously intimidating, too, if I weren’t such a bull-headed numpty. The word from the Lazy Luncheonette is that Joe’s slightly chuffed, too. He’s been giving away free brown sauce with the bacon sandwiches.

Now that, I can’t believe.

The Summer Wedding Murder STAC Mystery #8 is available for download from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (all formats)

Crooked Cat Books (MOBI, EPUB, PDF)

And in paperback from

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide