David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 61

Lucky Seven: The Handshaker

 

I was tagged by Tom Gillespie for a Lucky Seven excerpt.

 

 

The rules are simple:

1. Go to page 77 in your current manuscript

2. Go to line 7

3. Copy down the next seven lines as they are – no cheating

4. Tag 7 other authors (Done on Facebook)

The following extract is from my cureent self-published novel, The Handshaker.

Normally when couples were fucking, the vehicles would jiggle on their suspension, so maybe it was someone who had pulled in to take a leak or make a phone call.

An alarm bell rang in his head. Suppose the driver had recognised The Handshaker's Ford Fiesta? That car – not his regular vehicle, obviously – had been used for every abduction and hanging, and was the most wanted vehicle in the northwest.

A clever idea, Tom, and thanks for tagging me.

Following up a Number 1 Bestseller

About thirty years ago, I took a writing course. Amongst the basic questions I had to answer was, "What do you hope to achieve as a writer?" Arrogant as ever, I wrote, "I want to write a bestselling novel."

It wasn't merely arrogant, it was completely off the wall. At that time, I'd never actually written a full novel, and for years afterwards, I continued to turn out essays, articles and short stories.

Earlier this week, however, I did it. I had a book at number one in an Amazon chart.

There's some licence with the term "bestselling" because I wasn't selling The Handshaker over the weekend, I was giving it away. It's a part of the Amazon KDP Select program, whereby the book is exclusive to Amazon for a period of 90 days and during that time, the author is permitted to make the book free for five days.

For a comparative unknown like me, it's a useful exercise in raising visibility. Over the weekend The Handshaker took almost 1,000 downloads. It was even downloaded by readers in Germany and Italy.

And on Sunday, The Handshaker came in at number one in the UK free hard boiled thriller chart.

The promotion only ended two days ago, and it's too early to say whether it has had the desired effect, but the book continues to sell, and as I write (Wednesday morning) it is now in the Kindle UK paid thriller chart, sitting at number 75, and it's also at number 83, in the same UK chart for books.

Can I maintain the momentum? Well, I hope so, but there is another secret to bestselling books. Write another one.

And that's exactly what I'm doing.

The Executioner sees Alex Croft in trouble again, but this time someone is lopping the heads off the good people of Scarbeck. A direct sequel to The Handshaker, The Executioner will see the reappearance of many of the same characters on both sides of good/evil fence, and one or two will disappear forever. It will ask the same basic question as The Handshaker did. How far can a master hypnotist take his skills? Tinged with paranormal overtones, littered with cryptic clues, The Executioner will tax Croft's courage and tenacity once more. Will he come through?

Well I don't know do I? I've only just started writing it.

The Executioner is a good six months, perhaps a year away from publication, but watch this space for further news.

In the meantime, The Handshaker is available for the Kindle from Amazon UK, and Amazon Worldwide.

***

The Handshaker: he takes them, he uses them, he murders them.

Location, Location, Location

When I first decided I wanted to write a series of cosy murder mysteries, it had more to do with needing a break from the dark, psychological thrillers I was working on at the time.

I never dreamt they could be so enjoyable to write. I don't have to think about strong sex scenes because there are none in the books, I don't have to consider grisly descriptions or bad language because, again there is none of either in the books. It's all character and logical deduction, even if some of that logic is a bit shaky now and then.

I do, however, have to consider location. In most of my work the location is either fictitious (The Handshaker, Spookies, The Dead Web) or a combination of fictitious and unnamed (Voices [currently unavailable]).

The town of Sanford is also fictitious and loosely based on the Castleford area of West Yorkshire, but for the most of the time, even though the hotels and street names may be fictitious, the Sanford 3rd Age Club stay in real towns and cities; places I've visited, places with which I have a particular affinity

 

Filey, is named in the title of the first novel, The Filey Connection, and I've written enough about it for everyone to know how much my wife and I enjoy that part of the Yorkshire Coast.

 

 

I set A Halloween Homicide outside York, mainly because I wanted a supposed haunted hotel in the middle of nowhere, but York is another place we  really enjoy. Whether it's for the St Nicholas Fayre coming up to Christmas, or a day visit on a sparkling summer Saturday, we love the great variety of shopping in modern, air-conditioned malls or ambling through the nooks and crannies of the older buildings in the area around the minster.

 

 

In A Murder for Christmas, The Sanford 3rd Age Club passed the festive season in Leeds. I was born and raised in Leeds and even if it has changed all out of proportion to my young days, I wanted to capture the atmosphere of Briggate, Vicar Lane and Kirkgate markets before embroiling Joe and his chums in another murder mystery.

 

 

 

 

In the near future, I have two more locations to add. For the I-spy Murders I chose Chester. Crooked {Cat} Publishing have this title under consideration and I'm hoping it will be accepted as the next in the series. I opted for Chester because, first, I didn't want another seaside location so soon, and secondly because like York, Chester is a wonderful, varied city, with a history dating back to Roman times. It combines the vibrancy of the modern without losing its sense of the past.

 

Finally, in the not too distant future, we'll see the gang shoot off to Lincoln for Murder on the Murder Mystery Weekend. This is a tough one to write. I have to have a play within a play, with an 'imaginary' murder, and then confront Joe, Sheila and Brenda with the 'real' murder. Two separate plots in one book. So why Lincoln? Because, again, like York and Chester, it harks back to the time of the Roman invasion. Lincoln cathedral is a magnificent building, certainly on a par with York and Westminster. The only problem I ever had with Lincoln, was getting up that hill to the Minster. I took a bus. I haven't yet worked out how Joe's gonna do it.

In the future, I'd like to see the Sanford 3rd Age Club shoot off to Cornwall for a week on a caravan park, spend a few days in Torquay, pass a weekend in Whitby, visit the Canary Islands and take a ferry to Amsterdam, but for now I'm content to see them trawl through the grand cities of the North of England and the East Midlands.

***

The Filey Connection, a Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, is published by Crooked {Cat} Publishing and available for the Kindle at Amazon UK and Amazon Worldwide and in all other formats from Smashwords.

Another Giveaway

As part of the KDP Select program, I'm allowed to give away enrolled titles free for five days out of the 90. There were three days left on The Handshaker, and they're happening this weekend.

The promotion begins at about midnight Pacific Standard Time, which is about 7 a.m. here in Great Britain. That, too, can a bit wayward. It may not become free on the dot of the hour. However, from some time after seven tomorrow morning, The Handshaker will be free until approximately the same time on Monday morning.

The Handshaker is written under my real name, David Robinson. When the Select program ends, on April 26th, it's likely to be withdrawn and republished under my David Shaw pen name.

The Handshaker tells the tale a serial rapist and murdered terrorising the small, Pennine town of Scarbeck. Intelligent, adaptable, quick witted, The Handshaker has eluded capture, but when he kidnaps Patricia Sinclair, girlfriend of millionaire hypnotist, Alex Croft, the game begins to change. Teased taunted, harassed by both The Handshaker and the police, Croft is relentless in his pursuit of this maniac, leading to cliffhanger climax.

This book contains scenes of graphic sex and violence and is not suitable for minors.

You can find The Handshaker on Amazon UK and Amazon.com

1958 and the Day I Cleaned up the Beach

It's a memory that has stayed with me for over half a century.

Coming to the end of the school year and 70 children, all aged about eight, crowded onto a bus for a 70-mile journey to the coast. I made sure I was sat with my best pal, Stubbsy. No use asking me where we sat on the bus, because I don't remember. But I'll never forget our destination: Filey.

Carr Naze & Filey Brigg

Mother had prepared me well. I had a duffel bag packed with boiled egg sandwiches a bottle of fizzy drink, sweets, and packet of potato crisps; the old-fashioned kind with the salt in a tiny blue, twist bag.

There were no motorways back then, and the journey would take anything up to three hours, including a half hour toilet stop on the outskirts of York. For a gang of eight-year-olds, three hours on a bus passed surprisingly quickly. All anyone could talk about was the sea. Other than in books, on TV or postcards, most of us had never seen it, or if we had we were too young to recall. Some of the lucky ones, Stubbsy included, had been on caravan holidays and they'd seen it, they knew the thrill of playing on the sands, of looking out over the gleaming blue waters of the North Sea. I drooled at the prospect.

Mr Gaunt was the teacher in charge, and Mrs Garrett was his 2IC. First priority when we got to Filey, was another toilet call, then get the kids on the sands, their backs against the rough stone of the sea wall and call it lunchtime. I sat with Stubbsy, chewing on my boiled egg butties, looking out across the sands and an undulating slab of grey which stretched for as far as we could see. Like everyone else, I couldn't understand why we all painted the sea a rich blue, and anticipated it in blue, when in reality it was such the same bland colour as my short trousers.

It was the subject of much discussion and I became so distracted by it that I dropped one of my carefully cut sandwiches and it literally got filled with sand. So I threw it away.

Bad move.

Mr Gaunt came down on me with the wrath of God. "Robinson, do you imagine that the good people of Filey have nothing better to do than tidy up their beach after clots like you?"

A suitably contrite response. "No, sir."

"When we're all finished, you will clean up."

Staring around, I was terror struck. The beach was miles long. It would take months to clean it all up. Was he just going to abandon me there while everyone else went back to Leeds? Where would I sleep? What would my mother say?

It was some relief to learn from Mrs Garrett that he only mean that part we had populated and polluted. You'd be surprised how much mess two classes of kids could produce in half an hour, and to this day, that lesson stays with me. I never litter the pavements, I always use the bins.

From the beach we moved on through Coble Landing where Mr Gaunt and Mrs Garrett spent some time explaining the fishing industry, and then we walked out along Filey Brigg, the spit of land that juts out into the sea from the end of Carr Naze cliff. It was a slippery path littered with rock pools which were magnetic attraction. They teemed with marine life: aquatic plants and other creatures. We even saw tiny crabs, scuttling away to hide from our prying eyes.

Rockpools on Filey Brigg

Then it was back to the bus for the journey home, bursting with stories for my mother, father and brother of the things I'd seen, the places we'd visited (but I never told them about being made to clean up the beach). And, of course, back at school the following day there was the inevitable essay to write: A Day Out in Filey.

That was the start of a lifelong love affair with this pretty little town. I met my wife there in 1979, and we still go back at least once a year. Small wonder that when I chose to write cosy detective fiction, the first title was The Filey Connection.

That wasn't the only school trip I went on. In the 10 years that followed, up until I left school, there were many more, but Filey sticks in my mind. Every time I walk along the promenade, I can still see the eight-year-old boy throwing away a boiled egg sandwich, and then cleaning up the beach.

Goodreads Solved

 

When things go wrong, it's part and parcel of growing old disgracefully to blame everyone and everything but yourself, and that includes your inability to fathom out the intricacies of websites.

Bearing that in mind, when I joined Goodreads about a year ago, and things began to go wrong from day one, I naturally blamed them. The site was complicated, there were missing links here there and everywhere, the font was too small for me to read, and even when it did work, it was only half-arsed. I even played hell with the GR CEO on a blog post the other day.

Then things changed.

I've mentioned Maureen Vincent-Northam before. This lady pokes her nose in all over the place, and as result, quite often saves my hide. She did it again yesterday, and after an exchange of emails, I now know what I'm doing with Goodreads. It wasn't the site to blame at all. It was the Gas Board. (Well you didn't imagine I was gonna take responsibility did you?)

As a result of Mo's intervention, all my fiction output, including my magnum opus The Filey Connection (plug, plug) is now on the Goodreads database.

And about bloody time, too

Everything is on there, including this blog, and the only outstanding problem is learning how to import videos to the site. But that'll have to wait until I've had words with the phone company. It must be their fault.

***

If you'd like to pop over to Goodreads, I'm happy to indulge you as a friend or follower.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Chatting with my good friend, editor, counsellor and motivator Maureen Vincent-Northam over the ether this morning and I came to certain conclusions. People, especially those in my age group, just don't seem to get enough fun out of life anymore, which is a shame. I spend my whole life having fun, usually at someone else's expense.

My wife is a wonderful woman, but like so many people in her sixties, she's too serious. Most of the time it's "What will others think?" Personally, I never gave much of a toss what other people thought of me, and these days I don't care at all. Let the world think of me what it will, cos while they're having a pop at me, they're leaving someone else alone.

With this notion in mind, I've decided to turn agony aunt and put out a general title on how to Grow Old Disgracefully or How to Have Fun in Your Sixties.

I checked on Amazon and they already have a few titles on the same theme. One of them can be yours for the princely sum of £64 (about $100). SIXTY FOUR POUNDS!!!!!! I only paid £65 for my first car. Last weeks shopping in Tesco's didn't come to that much.

There are hundreds of ways in which crumblies like me can make life fun. For instance, I was in Tenerife and at one restaurant, they advertised Roast Beef, Yorkshire Puding (sic) & Real Bisto Gravy. When I told the waiter I don't like Bisto and asked if he had Oxo instead, his puzzlement brought a ripple of sheer delight to my ageing frame.

Y'see, you can have a giggle. It's subversive, for sure, but the pleasure is almost orgasmic… well, maybe not, but it is good fun. And it doesn't cost much, which is more than can be said for the Roast Beef, Yorkshire Puding & Real Bisto Gravy.

So stay tuned to this channel for more information on this volume which will be packed with ideas on how to Grow Old Disgracefully

Next Time Get A Man In

Over the last two days I've done more work than over the last two years, and don't I know about it?

There was a time when painting three walls, one ceiling and laying a carpet would have taken a day and half and I'd still have had time to knock out couple of blog posts and outline a novel. Not now.

The carpet got laid yesterday, which is just as well because nothing and no one else did (couldn't resist it again). But what a bloody toil cutting, trimming, stretching the carpet. I spent most of the afternoon laid on the carpet, cutting it to fit. No problem with my knees but now my back and shoulders are screaming in agony. Fortunately, I speak the language fluently.

And now that it's finished? I score the whole job at five out of ten, which by my standards is not good enough. I could always make 8-9 and where the bedroom carpet was concerned, I rated a perfect 10.

So I had a bit of a heart to heart with Her Indoors yesterday and told her, "Next time you get a man in."

Arthritis and other problems of middle age are no excuse where the missus is concerned. Instead she seemed to think it was all down to laziness, and she screamed, "Maybe I should get a man in to see to your other duties too."

I picked up the inflection in her voice and with cost very much at the forefront of my mind, I told her, "Just make sure he doesn't charge you too much."

And for me? I'll go back to writing novels and blog posts, and keeping an eye on the progress of my various works. At least when I write myself into them, I'm still young and fitter than any butcher's dog.

***

You can find my titles on my Amazon page and if you don't own a Kindle don't worry, you can download them in any format from my Smashwords storefront.

My Other Life

You may have noticed that I was AWOL for most of the day yesterday. On the other hand, you may have thought, "Thank god for that. A bit of peace and quiet."

It's a strange tale, but I suspect many husbands will identify with it.

A few days ago, Her Indoors decided to tidy up the living room carpet, which was looking a bit threadbare in places. So she took out the carpet knife and set to work and with her usual panache, made a complete and utter balls of the job, as a result of which we needed a new carpet.

Notwithstanding being up to my neck in muck, bullets, and trying to get The Filey Connection into the Kindle top 100, I had to abandon ship and go out for said carpet. We ordered it, and it arrives this morning (Friday). I shall be laying it myself. I'm good at laying things. Just ask my first wife (apologies: couldn't resist it.)

So there we are sitting at home, drumming fingers, waiting for the arrival of the carpet and the launch of Frances di Plino's Bad Moon Rising, when shock, horror: we realised the ceiling and walls need a coat of paint before the new carpet arrives.

No problemo. Out we go, pick up paint, brushes and rollers, back home, shift out as much of the furniture as we can, dig out dustsheets for the remaining items and at one o'clock yesterday afternoon we made a start.

Our living room is huge. 24 feet by 10 and a half. I don't know what that is in metres, centimetres or kilowatts, so I'll stick to imperial measurements. In the days of yore, such a vast ceiling and walls (you have to have walls, too. They hold the ceiling up) would present no trouble to Robinson and his roller.

Seven non-stop hours later, I finished the job. Just in time to watch United give Athletico Bilbao a lesson in how to lose a game of footy on your home turf. My back and neck ached, my arms hurt, there was as much paint on me as there was on the ceiling and the job was, essentially, crap (the paint job, not United losing at home).

Whatever skills I once had in decorating have gone the way of my plumbing, carpentry and mechanicking skills: lost to the vagaries of arthritis and middle-age. And to make matters worse, I have a carpet to lay today. And the floor is the same size as the ceiling. (Note: this is essential otherwise you'd end up with a room shaped like something from a Stephen Hawking theory.) This means I shall be spending a lot of time on my knees, both of which are worn out, largely as a result of that first wife and the damp grass of 1968 behind the Thorpe Hotel

The room still looks like the after-effects of a tornado, I'm working in a corner on a netbook, and extrapolating the coming day, I can see that by the time the re-run of Midsomer Murders hits the telly at four o'clock this afternoon, I shall probably have to be carried up the stairs and forced to rest for the weekend.

So if you'll forgive me, I know it's early in the day but I'm off to the launch of Bad Moon Rising to see if I can scrounge a few beers to fortify my crumbling body.

Bad Moon Rising

With The Filey Connection now sailing the wild seas of publication, it's time to turn our attention to the next release from Crooked {Cat}: Bad Moon Rising by Frances di Plino.

FDP (you don't seriously expect me to type it out in full again, do you?) is the pen name of Lorraine Mace. How she came by the pseudonym is the subject of a major BBC documentary. (Only joking. The Beeb couldn't afford it.)

Lo is an old friend. Not that she's ancient or anything like that, but we've known each other a long time. Lo is a columnist for Writing Magazine, one of the editorial team on Words With Jam, a tutor with the Writer's Bureau, so you may be tempted to ask what is she doing befriending a half-arsed hack like me? The general consensus is she felt sorry for me (all go "aww").

Anyway, a few years back when the world wide web was no more than a pair of fishnet tights, we were working on similar projects and we played a game of "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours". Lo sent me the opening chapters of Bad Moon Rising. I almost tore up my effort. No way could I compete with this.

Bad Moon Rising tells the tale of a senior cop with more personal problems than you can shake a stick at, a priest fighting down his urges and a Maltese pimp all thrown into a mix in an effort to stop a serial killer with a downer on prostitutes. And that's only for starters.

Lo is a busy lady. With many strings to her bow, a host of writing and tutoring commitments to meet, and I know she's a perfectionist. So it's taken her quite some time to bring this novel to publication, but it's been worth the wait. I knew when I read the early drafts that this would be a winner, and it has all the ingredients needed for a first class, hard boiled thriller.

As you would expect from someone who teaches the craft of writing, pace and construction are perfect, the background and characters are detailed, and there are enough false trails to leave you gasping for the ending. It is un-put-downable. You miss it at your peril.

***

Bad Moon Rising by Frances Di Plino is published by Crooked {Cat} Publishing this Friday March 9th, 2012.