Neil Howarth's Blog: The Story So Far

Dan Brown meets Robert Ludlum – Quote from my editor.

When I started my thriller novel, The Simeon Scroll, I had no idea about The Armageddon Trilogy. I didn’t even have any thoughts about Joe Fagan as a serial character. In fact, the Simeon Scroll had a rather checkered start. When I sent the first draft to my editor, he was less than complimentary.

‘Why would anyone want to write another Dan Brown book?’

Sam Llewellyn, my editor (and best-selling author), can be brutally honest. But the most painful part is he is usually right (Sam would say always ). Which was frustrating for me as I had not set out to do that.

One of the things that I realized as I studied his detailed comments, the story that was in my head, was not the one on the page (which to this day is something I am constantly working on). I went through a major redevelopment and rewrite, and discovered what I really wanted the story to be. I resubmitted it to Sam, my editor. His response made me smile (in fact, it made me jump up and down).

‘This is more like it. It starts out like a Dan Brown, but it rapidly becomes Robert Ludlum.’

By the time I had finished the Simeon Scroll, The Armageddon Trilogy was in my head, and so was the idea of the Joe Fagan series. Which also prompted me to write the prequel, The Journey.

Interestingly, it was on this journey, I discovered the two personas, Joe Fagan and Father Joseph Fagan. Rather than just backstory, this became the theme of what this character was all about, and is a struggle that Fagan has to deal with throughout all his books.

So the Simeon Scroll and the complete Armageddon Trilogy came to life. I’m not trying to be like any other writer in my books, but I do write the kind of books I would like to read. As I say on the homepage of my website.

I love stories.

You know, the kind that hooks you in from the first page and carries you on into another world. A world full of threats and intrigue.

A world full of secrets.

Yes that’s me. If you like that kind of story check out The Armageddon Trilogy. You can get the prequel, The Journey for FREE (click on the link to get it), but as I point out in quite a few places, if you don’t like spoilers, I recommend you read The Simeon Scroll first (it’s only 99c on Amazon), then read The Journey, which fills in all the pieces, then move on to The Final Pontiff, and from there to the final book in the trilogy, The Day of Wrath.

If your a binge reader, you can get the whole Armageddon Trilogy, plus the prequel, in a boxset at a discounted price (which is still a good deal even if you bought The Simeon Scroll).

Of course I became bitten by Joe Fagan’s character and though the Armageddon Trilogy came to an end, Joe Fagan continued and can now be seen in The Jade Mountain Queen. I’m planning a new story for Joe Fagan later this year but in between I’m working on a new story with a new character. I’m calling it January’s Child. It’s still a thriller but this one is more of a spy story. If you join my Readers’ Group you’ll get updates on my progress.

The World Beyond my Window

This is the view out of my window. I live in southern Spain, up in the mountains, but still only about twenty minutes from the coast.

Every day the view is subtly different. Some days the mountain is shrouded in cloud, not visible at all, other days a thin veil of mist is draped across it, giving it a more  distant, faraway look, adding a layer of mystery to what is beyond. And then like today, the sun seems to bring it alive. But there are still shadows there, hiding in the folds of the mountain, the odd wisp of cloud covering some part of it, then in a moment it’s gone.

I often find my writer self wondering, what is beyond, what is behind that ridge etched against the sky?
Actually it’s Marbella, but not inside my head. 

It was the mountains of the Himalayas in The Foo Sheng Key. Beyond was the safety that Jai, my young hero was struggling to get to, with the Chinese People’s Security Bureau and a rogue faction of the CIA hot on his heels, needing to get only one drop of his blood, and for no one else to find him, for Jai to remain up there, undiscovered, frozen forever.

In The Final Pontiff, it was the Dinaric Alps of Serbia, hiding the answers to the deadly puzzle my heroes, Joe Fagan and Françoise (Frankie) Lefevre, were trying to discover, with some very dangerous people determined that their secrets would never be uncovered.

That’s how I see my stories. I have the big idea, the endpoint, in my head, but the journey to get there, to discover what it’s really all about, is beyond that ridge. That’s the journey I have to go on to find my story.

One of the things I do to help/inspire me on that journey is to get my book cover designed early on in my writing process. When I have the big idea for the story, I discuss it with Peter, my book cover designer (Peter has designed all my covers – I think he’s brilliant). Interestingly, Peter’s covers never actually turn out the way I envisioned them. I often give him images that I believe  show what the story is about. Peter smiles and takes the ideas that I am trying to envisage, but he never uses the images. My usual response (In shock) is, ‘this is not what I expected, but I love it’. I guess that’s why he’s the book cover designer and I’m the storyteller.

So recently I discussed January’s Child, my latest book project with him, and Peter did an awesome job of creating the cover. It looks nothing like the cover image I suggested, but guess what – I love it.

But quite frankly, it scared me too. There’s a promise in that cover, maybe a deadly secret, a mystery that I have to unfold as the story progresses . My story has to live up to that promise – yikes!!!

So the mountain is there every morning, and I have to get over it, find my way through the mist, and bring my hero home.
I’ll let you know how I progress.

Click on the Books link on the menu tab at the top of this page to find out more about my books.

PS – Writer’s Joke:
Reader: I can’t wait to get to the next chapter to find out what happens next.
Writer: Neither can I.

PPS:
If you want hear how my stories progress, and also get the prequel to my Armageddon Trilogy for FREE, you can join my Readers’ Group (Just click on the link)

So Long Tom.

I said that my blog had been neglected for a long time but I won’t get into the reasons why.
However I do feel bad about this particular short blog because I wrote it and never posted it,
and it was about someone I admired as a writer, a lot.
Still now having read it 2+ years later I still mean every word.

So here goes ´So Long Tom´ (originally written Mon, January 13, 2014)

Recently we said farewell to another great story teller. Gone to that great camp fire in the sky where all the great writers of the past sit around drinking cocoa ( or maybe the odd scotch) and tell their tales.
Like many, I first discovered Tom Clancy through ‘The Hunt for Red October’. I remember being totally blown away by it. For many it was the technical detail, the incredible inside knowledge that hooked them in. But personally, I believe that if you strip all that away at the heart of it was a great story with great characters.
Even though his books were great fat tomes, I was consumed by them. I personally always thought his books were usually a hundred pages or so too long. Tom could ramble on for 30 or 40 pages at a time, on some technical detail. But that’s just my opinion, I’m sure many readers loved that aspect of his books. But me, I was always champing at the bit to get back to the story.
I loved ‘Patriot Games’ and ‘Clear and Present Danger’ both of which made excellent movies, but I also loved ‘The Cardinal of the Kremlin’. I could go on.
Tom went on to great stardom, great wealth, Video Games?? (who knows where life will take us). But he was another of the great storytellers who made me want to tell stories, to weave that magic which had enthralled me since I was a kid, sitting around the fire with my brothers and sisters, listening to my Dad tell his stories of the Second World War. I was the one sitting with his mouth open, seeing the story unfold like a movie in my head. Not a lot’s changed. It’s just taken a little longer to get them into print, but I never gave up. I know I never will.
So long Tom, and thanks for all the great stories.

Lost in France

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Why is it that seemingly the worst things happen at the worst times? What’s that classic quotation? Oh yes – ‘Shit happens’. But often in the midst of a bad experience, at a time when you’re feeling jumped on, kicked in the teeth, on your knees with only one thought in your mind – Why me? – something else happens, something good. In fact sometimes the bad thing had to happen before the good thing could.

A few months ago my wife, Gigi and I, and our 13 year old, golden retriever, Petra, packed up the car from our house in southern Spain and headed north, for the UK. I had important business in a week’s time and expected to be there for a few months, hence driving there rather than flying. We had been on the road for about ten hours and had just crossed the border into France. We were travelling on the motorway at 130 kph, an hour or so from a glass of good French wine, dinner, and glorious bed (what’s the old song – ‘Only 24 hours from Tulsa’). Suddenly the engine juddered and cut out. I glanced down at the dashboard. An ominous, orange figure of an engine glowed in the centre of the instrument panel. We were in the outside lane and I had my foot down, now I had no power and a highway full of thundering six and eight wheeler trucks, seemingly intent on the same destination as me. The hard shoulder was only a narrow strip with a metal crash barrier running alongside it. It seemed miles away. I manoeuvred my way gingerly across the intervening lanes, punctuated by the screech of the horns of irate truck drivers, and somehow managed to bring the car to a stop. But our problems were only just beginning.

It was dark and trucks were thundering by at a hell of a speed. I realised I hadn’t put on the hazard lights. I quickly switched them on and got Gigi to get out of the car and climb over the barrier and away from the roadside. Petra was on the back seat, looking at me, unsure what was going on but with that unfailing look of trust in her eyes that she always had. I hope I wasn’t going to let her down. It was too dangerous to get out on the driver’s side of the car, so I climbed over into the passenger seat and stepped out between the car and the metal barrier. My wife was shouting at me to climb over but I looked back at Petra, she sat there, panting expectantly, her big pink tongue hanging out. The trucks were still racing past. Our car is a big 4X4 but I was still scared stiff that at any moment one of them would wipe us off the face of the earth. I opened the back door and jammed myself in the space so she couldn’t get past. The noise of the motorway was now much louder in the car and Petra was starting to get nervous. I was terrified she would jump out and run into the road. I found her lead on the floor and looped the chain over her head. I wound the leather lead around my hand and wrapped my arms around her. She’s a golden retriever and not small but she trusted me and didn’t try to struggle. Another truck screamed past, closer than ever, making the car shake with the vibration. Petra was getting nervous now. I manhandled her out of the car as quickly as I could and handed her across the barrier to my wife. At least the two most important things in my life were safe. My wife was yelling at me to climb over. I closed up the car and scrambled over the barrier, expecting our car to be swept away at any moment. We stood there, the three of us in the darkness and the growing chill of the evening and wondered what next.

A set of lights appeared in the nearside lane and started to slow, then its hazard lights began flashing, and out of the gloom appeared a large motorway service truck, the kind with the big flashing arrow on the back, warning approaching traffic to move over. Rescue at last. Our saviour called a tow truck and an hour later it arrived and we were all soon jammed into the confined space of the truck’s cab, my wife in the back and me on the seat next to the driver with Petra on my lap. The driver didn’t speak any English and my French is not what it used to be but between it and some Spanish that he knew we were able to communicate. He was looking at Petra.

“Does it bite?”

“No,” I said.

The driver then commenced to lean over and tickle Petra under the chin. She loved it of course but I was looking out of the windscreen. We were blasting along at some crazy speed in this battered old tow truck, with our car on the back and the driver seemingly only interested in our dog. The gods must have smiled on us at last, because we made it to the garage in one piece. As we pulled in to the yard the biggest German shepherd dog I’ve ever seen started to run around the truck barking like crazy. It was my turn to ask if she bites.

“No, she’s all woof, woof, woof,” the driver said. I hoped so.

It turns out he was right and after the ritual sniffing of Petra’s rear end it disappeared into the depths of the yard. I spent an hour trying to contact the service agent of my car manufacturer (I won’t say the name of the manufacturer but the car has a 7 year warranty) with no luck, while Petra managed to coax biscuits out of the garage owner’s wife and get her belly tickled. In the end I gave up and asked the garage owner, who was also the tow truck driver, if there was a hotel near by. He said yes and got on the phone. The next thing he was dropping us in front of a small hotel in a tiny village, miles from anywhere. We thanked him and he drove off leaving us standing there with a few retrieved belongings from the car and seemingly nothing else in the world.

The hotel owner greeted us with a smile, his name was Sebastian and thankfully he spoke excellent English. His hotel, was called ‘Le Bon Geours’ and we were in a village called Saint Geours de Maremne, somewhere in the depths of the Languedoc. We were too late for dinner but Sebastian made us sandwiches and I got my glass of wine (well more than one actually). He showed us to our room, we were exhausted so we showered quickly and climbed into bed, Petra climbed on and lay at out feet. My last thought before I drifted off – “At least we were still alive, and tomorrow was another day.”

And so it was, and the day after that, and the one after that too. After a series of increasingly unhelpful phone calls to the manufacturer’s agent, we finally got the car to a dealer. But that was it, no information, always good news tomorrow, we’ll call you but they never did, it was left to me to chase them around. So we were stuck, waiting for our car to be repaired, in this undoubtedly beautiful village, with nothing to do but sit outside the hotel in the sunshine.

Soon everyone in the village knew who we were, and our tale. They would stop and say hello to Petra, and with my halting French we would communicate a little. Each day, Gigi and I would sit out at one of the tables in front of the hotel, Petra lying on the floor between us, me scribbling away at a new story I had been kicking about in my head, and Gigi sketching ideas for her next series of paintings in her pad. Across from where we sat, were the church and the Mairie (the town hall), the traditional pillars of every French town. The symbols seemed to connect directly with a major element of my story, as indeed did the people of Saint Geours de Maremne, something I realised later as my story began to blossom. Before long people were waving to us as they passed, the local patisserie greeted us every day with smiles and the most wonderful pastries. At the end of the day we would wander up to the little bar at the corner where the welcome was always extremely friendly. The food in the hotel was excellent and everyone, from the waiters to the owner just looked after us so well. In the midst of all the corporate ignorance and downright obstinacy, we had found an oasis, surrounded by ordinary people, people who stood for traditional values, who cared about the little things in life, politeness, and concern for your fellow man.

It took two weeks before the dealer announced that the car’s engine was totally kaput and it would have to be shipped back to Spain for repair. By then my business opportunity was history so it was back home to Spain for us. We said goodbye to Sebastian with a strange feeling of regret and promised that in the future, when we were making this journey, our stop off point would be his hotel.

Here we are months later, our car repaired but not our relationship with the manufacturer. The events in that tiny village are now just memories but for me one thing remains clear in my mind. It’s people that matter and people caring about people is the most important, basic value in life. Brush aside all the corporate greed and insensitivity, the headlong rush of life, and you find it’s still alive, living in everyday, ordinary people – If you look for it. As John Lennon so succinctly said – ‘All you need is love’.

Lost in France

Why is it that seemingly the worst things happen at the worst times? What’s that classic quotation? Oh yes – ‘Shit happens’. But often in the midst of a bad experience, at a time when you’re feeling jumped on, kicked in the teeth, on your knees with only one thought in your mind – Why me? – something else happens, something good. In fact sometimes the bad thing had to happen before the good thing could.

A few months ago my wife, Gigi and I, and our 13 year old, golden retriever, Petra, packed up the car from our house in southern Spain and headed north, for the UK. I had important business in a week’s time and expected to be there for a few months, hence driving there rather than flying. We had been on the road for about ten hours and had just crossed the border into France. We were travelling on the motorway at 130 kph, an hour or so from a glass of good French wine, dinner, and glorious bed (what’s the old song – ‘Only 24 hours from Tulsa’). Suddenly the engine juddered and cut out. I glanced down at the dashboard. An ominous, orange figure of an engine glowed in the centre of the instrument panel. We were in the outside lane and I had my foot down, now I had no power and a highway full of thundering six and eight wheeler trucks, seemingly intent on the same destination as me. The hard shoulder was only a narrow strip with a metal crash barrier running alongside it. It seemed miles away. I manoeuvred my way gingerly across the intervening lanes, punctuated by the screech of the horns of irate truck drivers, and somehow managed to bring the car to a stop. But our problems were only just beginning.

It was dark and trucks were thundering by at a hell of a speed. I realised I hadn’t put on the hazard lights. I quickly switched them on and got Gigi to get out of the car and climb over the barrier and away from the roadside. Petra was on the back seat, looking at me, unsure what was going on but with that unfailing look of trust in her eyes that she always had. I hope I wasn’t going to let her down. It was too dangerous to get out on the driver’s side of the car, so I climbed over into the passenger seat and stepped out between the car and the metal barrier. My wife was shouting at me to climb over but I looked back at Petra, she sat there, panting expectantly, her big pink tongue hanging out. The trucks were still racing past. Our car is a big 4X4 but I was still scared stiff that at any moment one of them would wipe us off the face of the earth. I opened the back door and jammed myself in the space so she couldn’t get past. The noise of the motorway was now much louder in the car and Petra was starting to get nervous. I was terrified she would jump out and run into the road. I found her lead on the floor and looped the chain over her head. I wound the leather lead around my hand and wrapped my arms around her. She’s a golden retriever and not small but she trusted me and didn’t try to struggle. Another truck screamed past, closer than ever, making the car shake with the vibration. Petra was getting nervous now. I manhandled her out of the car as quickly as I could and handed her across the barrier to my wife. At least the two most important things in my life were safe. My wife was yelling at me to climb over. I closed up the car and scrambled over the barrier, expecting our car to be swept away at any moment. We stood there, the three of us in the darkness and the growing chill of the evening and wondered what next.

A set of lights appeared in the nearside lane and started to slow, then its hazard lights began flashing, and out of the gloom appeared a large motorway service truck, the kind with the big flashing arrow on the back, warning approaching traffic to move over. Rescue at last. Our saviour called a tow truck and an hour later it arrived and we were all soon jammed into the confined space of the truck’s cab, my wife in the back and me on the seat next to the driver with Petra on my lap. The driver didn’t speak any English and my French is not what it used to be but between it and some Spanish that he knew we were able to communicate. He was looking at Petra.
“Does it bite?”
“No,” I said.
The driver then commenced to lean over and tickle Petra under the chin. She loved it of course but I was looking out of the windscreen. We were blasting along at some crazy speed in this battered old tow truck, with our car on the back and the driver seemingly only interested in our dog. The gods must have smiled on us at last, because we made it to the garage in one piece. As we pulled in to the yard the biggest German shepherd dog I’ve ever seen started to run around the truck barking like crazy. It was my turn to ask if she bites.
“No, she’s all woof, woof, woof,” the driver said. I hoped so.

It turns out he was right and after the ritual sniffing of Petra’s rear end it disappeared into the depths of the yard. I spent an hour trying to contact the service agent of my car manufacturer (I won’t say the name of the manufacturer but the car has a 7 year warranty) with no luck, while Petra managed to coax biscuits out of the garage owner’s wife and get her belly tickled. In the end I gave up and asked the garage owner, who was also the tow truck driver, if there was a hotel near by. He said yes and got on the phone. The next thing he was dropping us in front of a small hotel in a tiny village, miles from anywhere. We thanked him and he drove off leaving us standing there with a few retrieved belongings from the car and seemingly nothing else in the world.

The hotel owner greeted us with a smile, his name was Sebastian and thankfully he spoke excellent English. His hotel, was called ‘Le Bon Geours’ and we were in a village called Saint Geours de Maremne, somewhere in the depths of the Languedoc. We were too late for dinner but Sebastian made us sandwiches and I got my glass of wine (well more than one actually). He showed us to our room, we were exhausted so we showered quickly and climbed into bed, Petra climbed on and lay at out feet. My last thought before I drifted off – “At least we were still alive, and tomorrow was another day.”

And so it was, and the day after that, and the one after that too. After a series of increasingly unhelpful phone calls to the manufacturer’s agent, we finally got the car to a dealer. But that was it, no information, always good news tomorrow, we’ll call you but they never did, it was left to me to chase them around. So we were stuck, waiting for our car to be repaired, in this undoubtedly beautiful village, with nothing to do but sit outside the hotel in the sunshine.

Soon everyone in the village knew who we were, and our tale. They would stop and say hello to Petra, and with my halting French we would communicate a little. Each day, Gigi and I would sit out at one of the tables in front of the hotel, Petra lying on the floor between us, me scribbling away at a new story I had been kicking about in my head, and Gigi sketching ideas for her next series of paintings in her pad. Across from where we sat, were the church and the Mairie (the town hall), the traditional pillars of every French town. The symbols seemed to connect directly with a major element of my story, as indeed did the people of Saint Geours de Maremne, something I realised later as my story began to blossom. Before long people were waving to us as they passed, the local patisserie greeted us every day with smiles and the most wonderful pastries. At the end of the day we would wander up to the little bar at the corner where the welcome was always extremely friendly. The food in the hotel was excellent and everyone, from the waiters to the owner just looked after us so well. In the midst of all the corporate ignorance and downright obstinacy, we had found an oasis, surrounded by ordinary people, people who stood for traditional values, who cared about the little things in life, politeness, and concern for your fellow man.

It took two weeks before the dealer announced that the car’s engine was totally kaput and it would have to be shipped back to Spain for repair. By then my business opportunity was history so it was back home to Spain for us. We said goodbye to Sebastian with a strange feeling of regret and promised that in the future, when we were making this journey, our stop off point would be his hotel.

Here we are months later, our car repaired but not our relationship with the manufacturer. The events in that tiny village are now just memories but for me one thing remains clear in my mind. It’s people that matter and people caring about people is the most important, basic value in life. Brush aside all the corporate greed and insensitivity, the headlong rush of life, and you find it’s still alive, living in everyday, ordinary people – If you look for it. As John Lennon so succinctly said – ‘All you need is love’.

Who will make my movie now?

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As a writer, I see my stories as movies that play out in my head as I am writing them. And probably like many writers I can be more of a dreamer than a writer. I find myself imagining which Hollywood actors will play the parts. When I’m deep into my contemplation I can even see the closing credits of the movie, the whole audience on their feet applauding, whilst I stand there with tears flooding down my cheeks, and those same actors patting me on the back. That’s usually when I wake up to a blank page staring at me, and the ever-present realization that it’s easier to dream it than to make it a reality.

But for me, it goes even further. My dream has always been of a famous director calling me up and asking to turn my book into a movie. In my jumbled head of dreams there was only ever one director making that call. It was always Tony Scott.

So like many others in August of last year, I got up early, switched on my computer and ‘bamm’, there it was – Tony Scott had tragically taken his own life. Reading those words sent a tremor through me that shook me to my emotional core, and stayed with me for days and days after. How desperate must someone feel to take that ultimate step? Tony Scott, larger than life Tony Scott, rumoured to have got a speeding ticket for travelling the fastest ever, on Ocean Boulevard on a motor bike. Tony Scott, dream maker, and from everything I have read abut him, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

But I’m not sitting here to discuss what drove this man to end his fantastically fulfilled life, even though I have pondered it for hours. No, whenever someone I’m close to, or someone who is special in my life, dies, I try to spend a little time celebrating their life and thinking about how they brought a little sunshine into mine.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why Tony Scott could make the thriller genre work on film, when so many failed. I have spent hours watching rubbish renditions of a genre that I love, especially when taking a novel that I have liked and seen it moved to the screen with disastrous consequences. But Tony Scott had that something special.

He made many great movies but my favourites, which are close to the genre I love, are ‘Enemy of the State’ and ‘Spy Game’.

‘Enemy of the State’, is just one of those great movies. I have lost count how many times I have seen it, but every time I watch it, it grabs me, even though I know what is going to happen, I am still riveted to the story. It’s a great story but essentially it is about a man, how he has everything taken from him by the ‘State’, his family, even his identity, and how he fights back.

‘Spy Game’ is another great Tony Scott movie I have watched many times, and I still love it every time I see it. Its backdrop is about spies, but it’s really a story about people, it’s about love, it’s about loyalty, and more important it’s about sacrifice. And it’s all wrapped up in a lovely pacey plot, with the right amount of back-story, intrigue, and tension.

But why do they work so well? It something I have spent some time pondering but in the end the answer was under my nose. As a writer I have a number of touch points I try to use when I am writing, to make my stories be what I want them to be. On the top of my list is ‘emotion, emotion, emotion’. If you don’t have emotion in your story, if your readers don’t care about your characters, you have nothing.

Tony Scott had emotion in spades, it came out in his characters, it hit you on the screen, and you cared. That’s why you connected. I have read many tributes to Tony Scott, and the common theme I read from all the actors who worked for him was simple – He cared about them and they cared about him. You saw it on the screen, you felt it on the screen, and that’s what made the difference. That’s why you felt you knew Tony Scott, because he connected with you.

So life moves on. Who will make my movie now? Thankfully Tony Scott influenced many movies makers, whether directly or just by them coming up in a world where he was such a major force. Interestingly I like what Ben Affleck is doing as a director at the moment. So who knows? Maybe George Clooney could produce it and get Matt Damon involved – dream on (I don’t ever intend to stop).

God bless you Tony, sleep tight. You brought a lot of sunshine into my life. It was very nice knowing you.

Who will make my movie now?

As a writer, I see my stories as movies that play out in my head as I am writing them. And probably like many writers I can be more of a dreamer than a writer. I find myself imagining which Hollywood actors will play the parts. When I’m deep into my contemplation I can even see the closing credits of the movie, the whole audience on their feet applauding, whilst I stand there with tears flooding down my cheeks, and those same actors patting me on the back. That’s usually when I wake up to a blank page staring at me, and the ever-present realization that it’s easier to dream it than to make it a reality.

But for me, it goes even further. My dream is always of a famous director calling me up and asking to turn my book into a movie. In my jumbled head of dreams there was only ever one director making that call. It was always Tony Scott.

So like many others in August of last year, I got up early, switched on my computer and was met with a shock that shook me so emotionally it stayed with me for days and days after. How desperate must someone feel to make that ultimate step? Tony Scott, larger than life Tony Scott, rumoured to have got a speeding ticket for travelling the fastest ever, on Ocean Boulevard on a motor bike. Tony Scott, dream maker, and from everything I have ever read about him, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

But I’m not sitting here to discuss what drove this man to end his fantastically fulfilled life, even though I have pondered it for hours. No, whenever someone I’m close to, or someone who is special in my life, dies, I try to spend a little time celebrating their life and thinking about how they brought a little sunshine into my life.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why Tony Scott could make the thriller genre work on film, when so many failed. I have spent hours watching rubbish renditions of a genre that I love, especially when taking a novel that I have liked and seen it moved to the screen with disastrous consequences. But Tony Scott had that something special.

He made many great movies but my favourites, which are close to the genre I love, are ‘Enemy of the State’ and ‘Spy Game’.

‘Enemy of the State’, is just one of those great movies. I have lost count how many times I have seen it, but every time I watch it, it grabs me, even though I know what is going to happen next, I am still riveted to the story. It’s a great story, but essentially it is about how a man has everything taken from him by the ‘State’, his family, even his identity, and how he fights back.

‘Spy Game’, I don’t think ever made it on the box office stakes but I loved it. I have watched it many times and I still love it every time I see it. It’s a story about the old-fashioned spy game, but it’s about the people, it’s about love, it’s about loyalty, and more important it’s about sacrifice.

But why do they work so well. As a writer I have a number of touch points I try to use when I am writing, to make my stories be what I want them to be. On the top of my list is ‘emotion, emotion, emotion’. If you don’t have emotion in your story, if your readers don’t care about your characters, you have nothing.

Tony Scott had emotion in spades, it came out in his characters, it hit you on the screen, and you cared. That’s why you connected. I have read many tributes to Tony Scott, and the common theme I read from all the actors who worked for him was simple. He cared about them and they cared about him. You saw it on the screen, you felt it on the screen, and that’s what made the difference. That’s why you felt you knew Tony Scott, because he connected with you.

So life moves on. Who will make my movie now? Thankfully Tony Scott influenced many movies makers, whether directly or just by them coming up in a world where he was such a major force. Interestingly I like what Ben Affleck is doing as a director at the moment. So who knows?

God bless you Tony, sleep tight. It was nice knowing you..

I wonder if the George Browne is still there?

A number of years ago I made the step from working for a major computer company (sadly on its demise) to being an independent contractor. My first job was in the newly independent Estonia at the Estonia Mobile Telephone company in the capital Tallinn. I had to take a flight via Copenhagen, where I switched airlines to Estonia Air, newly separated from Aeroflot. I remember walking out onto the tarmac and looking up at an ancient Tupolev TU-134. It had a glass nose and reminded me of a World War II Lancaster Bomber. I realized this was my flight to Tallinn. Someone told me later that the company motto was ‘Fly – if you feel lucky.’

I arrived in Tallinn in late November and it was cold, I mean brass monkey cold, Tallinn is only 50 miles south of Helsinki and 200 miles west of St Petersburg. After much bargaining and the scenic tour of Tallinn, I finally arrived at my hotel, having paid the taxi driver most of the cash in my wallet. After I settled in, the girl behind the bar in the hotel told me there was an Irish pub across the town square. This was in the days before Irish pubs were more numerous than Catholic churches. I decided it was time to explore and soon found myself moving at a rapid rate across the cobbled square. The reason I was moving so fast was that I was sure if I moved slower I would freeze solid and join the statues scattered around the square, no doubt figures of years gone by who had merely gone out in search of a drink.

The George Browne was a genuine out-of-the-box, Irish pub (well-known to us all now, but a novelty back then). There was a small road sign by the front door that said Dublin 1200 Miles. The place had creaking wooden floors and a long polished bar that served draught Guinness, which wasn’t bad, and the local head banger brew, Saku. The place was well patronised for a Sunday evening and I soon got chatting to a couple of English guys at the bar. One of them, Ernie, was a short rotund guy, who after a couple of drinks gave me a peek at Betsy, his automatic pistol tucked away beneath his coat in a leather shoulder holster. Ernie’s parents were Estonian and had left Tallinn for England as children during the Second World War. Now Ernie was back to claim his birthright. He was working as a minor official in the government. Under the influence of a good few pints of Saku, he would often boast, with a conspiratorial wink, that his position allowed him to use Betsy on one adult or two small children with complete immunity.

Ernie’s friend Bob was another character, as tall as me and twice as round as Ernie. He had the skinniest waif of a girlfriend who he supplied with a constant stream of vodka. She just leaned on the bar and never spoke a word. Bob told me he was in the semi-precious metal business. To hear him describe it, he was a sort of mix between James Bond and Harold Steptoe (sorry, for the non-Anglophiles, Harold Steptoe was a famous comic TV scrap metal dealer (when I was a lad)). Bob was involved in decommissioning a local radar station, only from what I could gather, they were decommissioning it over the back fence.

The George Browne was my first close up view of the Russian Mafiya. There was a bleached blond guy, whose name I forget, who always wore his overcoat around his shoulders like a cloak. He had the meanest looking eyes I’ve ever seen. He had a bodyguard the size of a house, who was on nodding terms with Ernie and Bob and occasionally, while his boss was in the corner chatting up two or three women at the same time, he would wander over for a chat. He spoke broken English, but enough for bar conversation. I remember Ernie egging him on to show me his gun, and him pulling out a make-my-day special as long as my forearm.

So this was the level of intrigue available at the bar of the George Browne, the writer in me was loving it. I could go on writing for pages yet about nights in the George Browne, but this is a blog so I need to get to the point. Suffice to say I was a frequent visitor over the next months. It was often my step off point before venturing into the depths and delights of the old town. I have very happy memories of that little Irish pub and of my stay in Tallinn. Back then it was a frontier town, a frontier in time to the old Soviet Union. There were still few visitors from the other side of the old iron curtain (the west) and the place was frequented by just a few ex-pats and dodgy traders. Now, I believe it has become the stag party (bachelor party) capital of Europe, frequented for long weekends by a string of drunken youths, trashing the bars and nightclubs and, if they are lucky enough to return home on Monday morning, with no memory whatsoever of the place they have visited.

Something prompted me the other day to Google the George Browne. I wanted to see what it had become. No doubt it would have its own website and offer free Wi-Fi to its clientele. I was devastated to find I didn’t get a single hit. Panicking, I looked up various tourist maps, places to drink in Tallinn, but not a single mention of the George Browne. It had simply faded away, except in my own precious memories. But isn’t that the way of the past, the golden memories that you have, are best left there. The fact is, for the most part they don’t exist anymore or worse.

I frantically e-mailed and old friend who I met over there (and has been my best friend ever since) and he sent me a link but warned me not to look. I should have listened to him. The place is now a posh wine bar, but worse, it’s decorated in pink and does not even sell beer. It makes you wish you’d never gone looking in the first place. Trying to go back only leads to disappointment. Memories are made from the now, the place you are in, the people you are with, that are then carefully packaged away for you to reflect on in the future. These are the golden moments, remember them, sure, treasure them, absolutely. But they are for moments of pleasant reflection, to relive with a wistful smile and quiet thanks that you had the opportunity to be there, before moving on and living with the now. In these particularly tough times, it’s easy to hanker for the past, but the future isn’t there, it’s here, where it’s always been, with the people you love, the people you respect, the people you work with and see on the street every day. The future is that way, as my old dad used to say, pointing forward, out into the distance. And he was right.

I guess the thing that had prompted me to look up the George Browne was a theme that had been running through my head when I was writing my new thriller, the Foo Sheng Key. The whole idea that you can never go back, that the mere process of moving forward changes things. It is a theme that follows my hero, Jai, throughout his physical and emotional journey through the book. This theme was so strong in me that after writing the first 50 hand scribbled pages in my notebook, I got up one morning and turned back to the first page and wrote across the top, the opening line from a favourite Paul McCartney’s song from way back:

‘Once there was a way to get back home.’

I let that thought and everything it implies, stay with me throughout the writing of the whole book. And even that is now a memory, that I can look back on and smile, but know I have to move on to the next one.

Check out my books on https://www.amazon.com/author/neilhow... and remember –
Enjoy the now.

I wonder if the George Brown is still there?

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A number of years ago I made the step from working for a major computer company (sadly on its demise) to being an independent contractor. My first job was in the newly independent Estonia at the Estonia Mobile Telephone company in the capital Tallinn. I had to take a flight via Copenhagen, where I switched airlines to Estonia Air, newly separated from Aeroflot. I remember walking out onto the tarmac and looking up at an ancient Tupolev TU-134. It had a glass nose and reminded me of a World War II Lancaster Bomber. I realized this was my flight to Tallinn. Someone told me later that the company motto was ‘Fly – if you feel lucky.’

I arrived in Tallinn in late November and it was cold, I mean brass monkey cold, Tallinn is only 50 miles south of Helsinki and 200 miles west of St Petersburg. After much bargaining and the scenic tour of Tallinn, I finally arrived at my hotel, having paid the taxi driver most of the cash in my wallet. After I settled in, the girl behind the bar in the hotel told me there was an Irish pub across the town square. This was in the days before Irish pubs were more numerous than Catholic churches. I decided it was time to explore and soon found myself moving at a rapid rate across the cobbled square. The reason I was moving so fast was that I was sure if I moved slower I would freeze solid and join the statues scattered around the square, no doubt figures of years gone by who had merely gone out in search of a drink.

The George Brown was a genuine out-of-the-box, Irish pub (well-known to us all now, but a novelty back then). There was a small road sign by the front door that said Dublin 1200 Miles. The place had creaking wooden floors and a long polished bar that served draught Guinness, which wasn’t bad, and the local head banger brew, Saku. The place was well patronised for a Sunday evening and I soon got chatting to a couple of English guys at the bar. One of them, Ernie, was a short rotund guy, who after a couple of drinks gave me a peek at Betsy, his automatic pistol tucked away beneath his coat in a leather shoulder holster. Ernie’s parents were Estonian and had left Tallinn for England as children during the Second World War. Now Ernie was back to claim his birthright. He was working as a minor official in the government. Under the influence of a good few pints of Saku, he would often boast, with a conspiratorial wink, that his position allowed him to use Betsy on one adult or two small children with complete immunity.

Ernie’s friend Bob was another character, as tall as me and twice as round as Ernie. He had the skinniest waif of a girlfriend who he supplied with a constant stream of vodka. She just leaned on the bar and never spoke a word. Bob told me he was in the semi-precious metal business. To hear him describe it, he was a sort of mix between James Bond and Harold Steptoe (sorry, for the non-Anglophiles, Harold Steptoe was a famous comic TV scrap metal dealer (when I was a lad)). Bob was involved in decommissioning a local radar station, only from what I could gather, they were decommissioning it over the back fence.

The George Brown was my first close up view of the Russian Mafiya. There was a bleached blond guy, whose name I forget, who always wore his overcoat around his shoulders like a cloak. He had the meanest looking eyes I’ve ever seen. He had a bodyguard the size of a house, who was on nodding terms with Ernie and Bob and occasionally, while his boss was in the corner chatting up two or three women at the same time, he would wander over for a chat. He spoke broken English, but enough for bar conversation. I remember Ernie egging him on to show me his gun, and him pulling out a make-my-day special as long as my forearm.

So this was the level of intrigue available at the bar of the George Brown, the writer in me was loving it. I could go on writing for pages yet about nights in the George Brown, but this is a blog so I need to get to the point. Suffice to say I was a frequent visitor over the next months. It was often my step off point before venturing into the depths and delights of the old town. I have very happy memories of that little Irish pub and of my stay in Tallinn. Back then it was a frontier town, a frontier in time to the old Soviet Union. There were still few visitors from the other side of the old iron curtain (the west) and the place was frequented by just a few ex-pats and dodgy traders. Now, I believe it has become the stag party (bachelor party) capital of Europe, frequented for long weekends by a string of drunken youths, trashing the bars and nightclubs and, if they are lucky enough to return home on Monday morning, with no memory whatsoever of the place they have visited.

Something prompted me the other day to Google the George Brown. I wanted to see what it had become. No doubt it would have its own website and offer free Wi-Fi to its clientele. I was devastated to find I didn’t get a single hit. Panicking, I looked up various tourist maps, places to drink in Tallinn, but not a single mention of the George Brown. It had simply faded away, except in my own precious memories. But isn’t that the way of the past, the golden memories that you have, are best left there. The fact is, for the most part they don’t exist anymore or worse.

I frantically e-mailed and old friend who I met over there (and has been my best friend ever since) and he sent me a link but warned me not to look. I should have listened to him. The place is now a posh wine bar, but worse, it’s decorated in pink and does not even sell beer. It makes you wish you’d never gone looking in the first place. Trying to go back only leads to disappointment. Memories are made from the now, the place you are in, the people you are with, that are then carefully packaged away for you to reflect on in the future. These are the golden moments, remember them, sure, treasure them, absolutely. But they are for moments of pleasant reflection, to relive with a wistful smile and quiet thanks that you had the opportunity to be there, before moving on and living with the now. In these particularly tough times, it’s easy to hanker for the past, but the future isn’t there, it’s here, where it’s always been, with the people you love, the people you respect, the people you work with and see on the street every day. The future is that way, as my old dad used to say, pointing forward, out into the distance. And he was right.

I guess the thing that had prompted me to look up the George Brown was a theme that had been running through my head when I was writing my new thriller, the Foo Sheng Key. The whole idea that you can never go back, that the mere process of moving forward changes things. It is a theme that follows my hero, Jai, throughout his physical and emotional journey through the book. This theme was so strong in me that after writing the first 50 hand scribbled pages in my notebook, I got up one morning and turned back to the first page and wrote across the top, the opening line from a favourite Paul McCartney’s song from way back:

‘Once there was a way to get back home.’

I let that thought and everything it implies, stay with me throughout the writing of the whole book. And even that is now a memory, that I can look back on and smile, but know I have to move on to the next one.

Check out my books on https://www.amazon.com/author/neilhow... and remember -

Enjoy the now.

I always wanted to be Alistair Maclean – what happened?

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I guess life happened, and in many ways I have no complaints about that. I‘ve always been a reader. When I was young I used to read ‘Just William’, under the bed covers, using my torch light. Then came ‘The Secret Seven’ and after that ‘The Famous Five’. I was 8 or 9 but already I was hooked.

I discovered Ian Fleming one Saturday morning in the public library. I was about 12. My friend nudged me in the ribs, “Hey, there’s sex in that one.” It was ‘You Only Live Twice’. We giggled together, him egging me on. I reached up, took down the book and self-consciously walked up to the front desk. The library lady, an ancient spinster, squinted down at me over her half moon reading glasses. I handed over the book, its glossy cover sticky with my sweaty paw marks. I could see her studying me, and I realized then with absolute certainty that she knew, and she was about to denounce me to the whole library. I could feel my face starting to flush. I wanted to run but I was rooted to the spot. Suddenly, she picked up her stamp and punched the checkout page. She looked down at me as if I was a moron. I realised I was standing looking up at her with my mouth open. I picked up the book and ran. That was my introduction to James Bond. I’ve been a fan ever since.

When I was 17, I went to naval college. One day the guy in the next bunk to me handed me a book by Alistair Maclean, It was ‘Where Eagles Dare’. To be honest, I’d seen ‘The Guns of Navarone’ movie years before and loved it, but never connected it to the writer. Now I devoured all of his books and that’s really where it started, as a dream, a wish. . . I wish I could write a book like that.

So I started scribbling the odd scene here and there. By the time I left college, and joined the Merchant Navy, I was a dedicated scribbler. But I could never get from being a scene writer to a full story writer. I always dreamed that I could take one of those story fragments and turn it into a full-blown novel.

I remember discovering John Le Carré. He didn’t write the fast-paced action packed thrillers I was used to. But he did write a story with intrigue, depth, deep mystery, and a certain elegance that mesmerized me. Before I knew it, I was in my mid-30s with a heap of disjointed scribblings and a deep, nagging, fear inside me. Maybe I was never going to be a writer. I remember telling myself, you either start writing this big story of yours now, or give it up and walk away. You’re not a writer, you’re just a dreamer.

So I started, passion in my heart and fear in my gut. I was already a big fan of Robert Ludlum. I loved his big, sweeping stories, set on an international stage, where the action buzzed off the page. So I had the idea, what about a story with the scope and pace of Ludlum, and the intrigue and depth of character of Le Carré. I also had had my setting, Berlin, a city that fascinated me. This was my place, this was my genre, my melting pot for my story. I was nothing if not ambitious.

And that was it. I was on my way. I had a character (maybe a bit clichéd), washed-up, ex-drunk, ex-secret agent, gets the chance to redeem himself. So it began, I wrote it by the seat of my pants, it was all I knew. I’d get up at 6 am and write for a couple of hours before going to work. I used to travel a lot, so I always had a notebook with me, I’d scribble on planes, in restaurants and bars. I just pushed on with it. What came out was raw, but it was me. This was my version of ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’, the good guys, the bad guys and the shady guys. It was steeped in the genre of my heroes but it was my story, all my own work. ‘The Song of the Nightingale’, the Berlin setting. I could hear the music, as the movie started to play (in my head). But what I actually could hear was the sound of the bulldozers, as they ploughed through the Berlin Wall, and the world declaring the Cold War was over. At the time they were saying the spy story was dead, thriller writers would have nothing left to write about, hmmm. . . But it did somewhat consign my big novel to the bin.

For one reason or another I didn’t write again for a number of years. Why, is a long story and perhaps for another forum. But that time did pass. I met a wonderful woman, who is now my wife, and who was also instrumental in getting me to write again. I was still working hard in my day job, but soon I was back to the 6am start. This time instead of a tiny room in a house in Basingstoke, it was an apartment in Singapore. I would drink green tea and let the ideas pour out of my head.

This time I had a new story, and yes you’re right, this was the big one. In the mid 90s I’d worked in Eastern Europe. I used to drink with a bunch of guys who were in the dodgy, semi-precious metal business. Some of the stories they could tell would curl your hair.  The pub we used to hang out in was also frequented by various members of the Russian Mafiya. There was one guy in particular. He always wore his overcoat around his shoulders like a cloak. He had a bodyguard the size of a house. I didn’t dare look at him directly. I used to sneak glances at him from behind my glass. He scared the living shit out of me. But at the same time my writer’s imagination was going wild. We were staying in a very old town, cobbled streets, dim, flickering street lamps. I had a vision of an old man. He comes out of the east with a secret. I just needed to find the rest of the story. It took me a while but I got there in the end. ‘The Doomsday Legacy’ was the result.

One thing I know now – I’m a writer and I always will be. First and foremost I want to write good stories. The kind that you can hunker down with, in your favourite chair, perhaps a glass of something nice to hand, and leave your everyday world behind. The kind of story that reaches out on the first page, grabs you by your shirt front and drags you into a dark and dangerous world, on a race of twists and turns, of threats and dodges. One that leaves you breathless and spent at the end, but thinking – ‘Wow, that was a good story.’ Maybe even the kind that one day a young aspiring writer will read and think – ‘I wish I could write a book like that.’

     

       ‘The Doomsday Legacy’ is published on Amazon and I’m hard at work on my new book, ‘The Foo Sheng Key’.

     

       Amazon Book Link is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KAA78Q