Mason Cross's Blog, page 12
January 28, 2017
Events coming up
A few dates for the next couple of months. It's likely I'll be adding some more in the lead-up to the publication of
Don't Look For Me
, but in the meantime here's where I'll be (click on the dates for more detail):
Thursday 2 March - World Book Day talk at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
Sunday 12 March - I'm delighted to be in conversation with Ian Rankin about 30 Years of Rebus at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Wednesday 12 April - I'm reading and giving a talk at East Kilbride Central LibraryKeep an eye on my events page for more soon.
Excitingly, I'm also going to be in New York City in a week or so for the American release of Winterlong . I'll be doing an informal signing or two, so will let you know where you can get signed copies if you're in the market.
Aside from that, I'm just looking forward to a trip to my favourite city in the world, and meeting my American publishers Pegasus for the first time. Last time I visited, I wasn't a published author yet, so I can't wait to see Winterlong in a real NYC bookstore.
Finally, there's still (just) time to win one of 10 paperback copies of The Time to Kill if you're in the UK - enter the Goodreads giveaway by midnight on Monday for a chance to win a copy pre-publication. Look - the lovely Laura from Orion has taken a nice photo of one in the wild:
Thursday 2 March - World Book Day talk at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
Sunday 12 March - I'm delighted to be in conversation with Ian Rankin about 30 Years of Rebus at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Wednesday 12 April - I'm reading and giving a talk at East Kilbride Central LibraryKeep an eye on my events page for more soon.
Excitingly, I'm also going to be in New York City in a week or so for the American release of Winterlong . I'll be doing an informal signing or two, so will let you know where you can get signed copies if you're in the market.
Aside from that, I'm just looking forward to a trip to my favourite city in the world, and meeting my American publishers Pegasus for the first time. Last time I visited, I wasn't a published author yet, so I can't wait to see Winterlong in a real NYC bookstore.
Finally, there's still (just) time to win one of 10 paperback copies of The Time to Kill if you're in the UK - enter the Goodreads giveaway by midnight on Monday for a chance to win a copy pre-publication. Look - the lovely Laura from Orion has taken a nice photo of one in the wild:
January 13, 2017
The Time to Kill - UK giveaway
My publisher is giving away ten copies of the new paperback edition of The Time to Kill over at Goodreads. All you need to do is click on this link and register.
This one is open to UK only, but if you're in the USA you still have a couple of days to enter the American giveaway.
Good luck!
January 12, 2017
Writing a series - top tips
I've been pretty busy lately, but the good news is that means there are more books in the pipeline. The paperback of
The Time to Kill
comes out in the UK on February 9, which happens to be the same week that it's published in hardcover under its American title
Winterlong
.
It snowed today, so here's an appropriately wintry picture of the new edition:
Book 4: Don't Look For Me is out in the UK in April, and you can preorder it now. I'm currently writing the fifth book, which seems incredible since it doesn't seem all that long since I started writing Killing Season.
It makes me glad I put some thought into the series before I wrote the first book. With that in mind, here's a piece I wrote for the Scottish Book Trust website last year: my top 5 tips on writing a series of novels:
Writing a continuing series has a lot to recommend it. You don’t need to start everything from scratch with each new book, and you have the opportunity to develop your characters and themes across multiple novels. On the other hand, you don’t have the standalone author’s luxury of an entirely blank slate at the beginning of every new project.
Here are my tips for writing series fiction. Bear in mind these are from the point of view of a crime writer, but they’re adaptable to working on any kind of ongoing series.
Build your protagonist to last before you write the first book, rather than trying to turn a standalone character into a series lead
Ideally he or she will be intriguing and compelling (though not necessarily likeable), and will have room to grow as a character over the course of the series. That means you don’t necessarily want to give them too detailed a backstory. If you leave your protagonist’s history reasonably vague, there’s more to discover about them in future books. Just as importantly, you have less continuity to keep track of.
Don't make your central character too old
Ian Rankin recently spoke about this problem, as Rebus hit retirement age a long time before his author. Even Jack Reacher is now pushing sixty as he hitchhikes toward his twenty-first adventure. If you want your character to age naturally but have a long fictional life, it’s best not to start out with an octogenarian detective. Alternatively, you can just make them immune from ageing. Like Batman, for instance, who started his caped crusading in 1939 but shows no signs of slowing down.
Naming convention - yay or nay?
Choosing titles that are immediately identifiable as part of a series can work really well. James Patterson’s early ‘nursery rhyme’ Alex Cross books and John D. MacDonald’s colour-coded Travis McGee thrillers are examples of this done right. What you don’t want to do is pick a title theme that has you scraping the bottom of the barrel by the fourth book. One Direction song titles will probably be of limited use.
Think carefully about your hero or heroine’s job
Is your protagonist a police officer? A private investigator? A lawyer? A random troublemaker?
A job in law-enforcement will provide all the rationale you need to get them embroiled in murder investigation after murder investigation, but it also means more research and pressure to keep up with the intricacies of modern policing procedure.
A lone wolf character has its own pros and cons, but the big advantage is you get to invent their rules.
A related concern: make sure they’re not so great at their job that they get promoted out of the action. This doesn’t just apply to the police: James T. Kirk hated being an admiral.
Easy on the formula
Series fiction is popular for a reason: people like knowing what they’re going to get, to an extent. Meeting your readers’ expectations while at the same time surprising them can be a difficult balance.
In an ideal world, you want to keep enough familiarity in the books to keep regular readers happy, but not so much that each book is indistinguishable from the last. Formulas are necessary and enjoyable, but each book has to stand on its own and offer something different to the reader.
Focus on the sweet spot: you want familiarity to build content, not contempt. If the reader can recite the plot of the next book before it’s published, you need to mix things up a little.
It snowed today, so here's an appropriately wintry picture of the new edition:
Book 4: Don't Look For Me is out in the UK in April, and you can preorder it now. I'm currently writing the fifth book, which seems incredible since it doesn't seem all that long since I started writing Killing Season.
It makes me glad I put some thought into the series before I wrote the first book. With that in mind, here's a piece I wrote for the Scottish Book Trust website last year: my top 5 tips on writing a series of novels:
Writing a continuing series has a lot to recommend it. You don’t need to start everything from scratch with each new book, and you have the opportunity to develop your characters and themes across multiple novels. On the other hand, you don’t have the standalone author’s luxury of an entirely blank slate at the beginning of every new project.
Here are my tips for writing series fiction. Bear in mind these are from the point of view of a crime writer, but they’re adaptable to working on any kind of ongoing series.
Build your protagonist to last before you write the first book, rather than trying to turn a standalone character into a series lead
Ideally he or she will be intriguing and compelling (though not necessarily likeable), and will have room to grow as a character over the course of the series. That means you don’t necessarily want to give them too detailed a backstory. If you leave your protagonist’s history reasonably vague, there’s more to discover about them in future books. Just as importantly, you have less continuity to keep track of.
Don't make your central character too old
Ian Rankin recently spoke about this problem, as Rebus hit retirement age a long time before his author. Even Jack Reacher is now pushing sixty as he hitchhikes toward his twenty-first adventure. If you want your character to age naturally but have a long fictional life, it’s best not to start out with an octogenarian detective. Alternatively, you can just make them immune from ageing. Like Batman, for instance, who started his caped crusading in 1939 but shows no signs of slowing down.
Naming convention - yay or nay?
Choosing titles that are immediately identifiable as part of a series can work really well. James Patterson’s early ‘nursery rhyme’ Alex Cross books and John D. MacDonald’s colour-coded Travis McGee thrillers are examples of this done right. What you don’t want to do is pick a title theme that has you scraping the bottom of the barrel by the fourth book. One Direction song titles will probably be of limited use.
Think carefully about your hero or heroine’s job
Is your protagonist a police officer? A private investigator? A lawyer? A random troublemaker?
A job in law-enforcement will provide all the rationale you need to get them embroiled in murder investigation after murder investigation, but it also means more research and pressure to keep up with the intricacies of modern policing procedure.
A lone wolf character has its own pros and cons, but the big advantage is you get to invent their rules.
A related concern: make sure they’re not so great at their job that they get promoted out of the action. This doesn’t just apply to the police: James T. Kirk hated being an admiral.
Easy on the formula
Series fiction is popular for a reason: people like knowing what they’re going to get, to an extent. Meeting your readers’ expectations while at the same time surprising them can be a difficult balance.
In an ideal world, you want to keep enough familiarity in the books to keep regular readers happy, but not so much that each book is indistinguishable from the last. Formulas are necessary and enjoyable, but each book has to stand on its own and offer something different to the reader.
Focus on the sweet spot: you want familiarity to build content, not contempt. If the reader can recite the plot of the next book before it’s published, you need to mix things up a little.
January 11, 2017
The Time to Kill - paperback cover
Very minor changes for this cover compared to the Killing Season and Samaritan paperbacks, but I'm completely okay with that as I was very happy with this design. The only tweaks are the title font changing from pink to blue and a slightly modified tagline from the original 'He was one of them. Now they want him dead.'
The Time to Kill is out in UK paperback on February 9th and you ought to be able to find it in all good bookshops, or you can preorder right here:
Paperback
Waterstones
Amazon
WHSmith
Big Cartel (signed copies)
ebook
Kindle
iBook
Kobo
Google Play
Audiobook
Audible
December 16, 2016
American Giveaway Extravaganza
Winterlong, the third book in the Carter Blake series (aka The Time to Kill in the UK) is being published in the USA on February 7 2017, and you can preorder it in gorgeous hardcover right now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Indiebound.
If you can't wait that long, you can enter the Goodreads giveaway right now to win a copy. My American publisher Pegasus is celebrating the new book by giving away copies of the first two books in the series at the same time. All you have to do is register for the giveaway before January 16th.
To enter, just click on the cover to go to the giveaway (enter individually for each book).
This is open to readers with a US address only, but I'll be running a UK giveaway very soon, so watch this space. If you want to kept in the loop for news and competitions, remember to join the Readers Club.
Good luck!
Win an exclusive advance copy of
Winterlong
Win The Samaritan
Win The Killing Season
If you can't wait that long, you can enter the Goodreads giveaway right now to win a copy. My American publisher Pegasus is celebrating the new book by giving away copies of the first two books in the series at the same time. All you have to do is register for the giveaway before January 16th.
To enter, just click on the cover to go to the giveaway (enter individually for each book).
This is open to readers with a US address only, but I'll be running a UK giveaway very soon, so watch this space. If you want to kept in the loop for news and competitions, remember to join the Readers Club.
Good luck!
Win an exclusive advance copy of
Winterlong
Win The Samaritan
Win The Killing Season
December 11, 2016
What I've been up to, and what's happening with the next book, anyway?
Apologies for my lack of blogging lately, but I've been making up for it in other areas.
Getting out and about for one. I just completed the final date on a tour of WHSmith stores in central Scotland, taking in Hamilton, East Kilbride, Glasgow, Ayr, Livingston and Stirling.
It was a really fun experience getting out and chatting to people, some of whom I was even able to persuade to buy a book. Big thanks to the team at Smiths for organising everything and making me feel very welcome at every stop.
I also made a couple of other appearances, one at East Kilbride Library for Book Week Scotland, which was great, plus a talk to my old primary school (pictured below). Speaking to sixty ten-year-olds was hands down the most terrifying experience of my writing career to date, but it was also awesome. I didn't have to persuade them of the benefits of reading books and writing their own stories, because most of them were already doing both. Fantastic questions, too.
What else...?
I got copies of the large print edition of The Samaritan delivered in hardback - another great job from Magna Books:
The Time to Kill picked up another nice review from Crime Review:
"In Blake we have a hero with questionable motives but one that is fundamentally likeable...The Time To Kill is an exhilarating and absorbing thriller making good use of fast-paced action, scenes of tension and convincing characters."
I guested on a couple of great blogs: a Q&A on From First Page to Last and Seven days in the book world for Cool Books, where I talk about everything I've read over a week.
I put the finishing touches to the copyedit of the fourth Carter Blake book, which at the time of writing is still going to be called Don't Look For Me (preorder now! It's out 20th April in the UK). It's a change of pace from the epic scale of the last one, and I had a lot of fun writing it. I just hope everyone else will enjoy reading it.
I appeared at Noir at the Bar in Carlisle with an excellent lineup of crime writers including Jay Stringer, Matt Hilton and GJ Brown. If you're not familiar with the format, the title basically says it all: crime writers reading short pieces in a bar.
This one took place in the Old Fire Station in Carlisle, which was a great venue. I decided at the last moment to read a really old story of mine called A Living. It seemed to go down okay, but for me the real pleasure was watching the other writers do their thing.
Oh yes, and the only other minor part of news is...
I've started work on the fifth Carter Blake book.
Although I work mostly on computer, I've got into a tradition whereby I write the first chapter of a new book longhand in a pub. And that's just what I did last week.
Wish me luck...
November 7, 2016
Winterlong - American Giveaway
If you're in the United States and would like to win an advance copy of Winterlong (aka The Time to Kill) my American publisher Pegasus Books is running a Goodreads giveaway to win one of three copies.
All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is click on this link and register for the giveaway by December 3.
October 22, 2016
The Problems of Being a Writer
To paraphrase Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas, as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer.
That’s why I’m always surprised when people ask me when I decided I wanted to write for a living. It’s like asking when I decided I was right-handed, or liked cheese, or that The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. I just don’t recall a time where these things weren’t part of me. The upside of that was that, unlike a lot of people, I always knew what my dream job was. The downside, as I was frequently reminded, was that it was statistically unlikely I would achieve my ambition.
I always knew I would eventually write a novel. The hard part was actually knuckling down and writing the damn thing. I was under no illusions that it’s tough to get published, but I knew that writing a book was definitely something I wanted do at some point. If it ended up sitting in the bottom of a drawer for the rest of my life, so be it, at least I would have achieved something.
So I was delighted when I not only completed a novel – The Killing Season – but was signed up by a major publisher. Even better: they wanted more books, so the second, The Samaritan , was published in 2015, and the third, The Time to Kill ( Winterlong in the USA), is out now.
Another question I often get: how does the reality compare to the fantasy?
The single biggest surprise for me about becoming a published author is the fact that, against all odds, it’s even better than I’d dared to hope. I had been braced for some level of disappointment, having my illusions shattered, all the usual stuff, but so far it hasn’t happened.
What’s the biggest buzz? No contest: it has to be walking into a bookshop or library and seeing a real-live book that I wrote on the shelves alongside so many of my literary heroes.
Other cool experiences: meeting fellow crime writers and finding them to be a thoroughly nice bunch. Working with skilled editors and proof-readers and designers and marketing people to make sure the book is as great as it possibly can be when it hits the shelves. Lovely reviews from readers, bloggers and national newspapers. Seeing a new cover design for the first time. Doing interviews. Meeting readers who love the books and are desperate to know what happens next.
The downsides? They do exist, but they pretty much all fall into the category of First World Problems. I don’t have time to say yes to everything I want to do, for example. There are a few projects I would love to start that I haven’t been able to fit in around writing the books, working a day job, being a parent, and occasionally sleeping. The biggest single downside has been the realisation that you never really get to the point where a book is perfect, you just stop editing it.
But whenever things threaten to get on top of me, I take a step back and remember: these are all incredibly good problems to have. Because I’m doing what I always wanted to do, from as far back as I can remember.
October 15, 2016
Public service announcement: two titles, one book
If you've been wondering why I have two books coming out in the space of six months, the answer is I don't. Unfortunately, I'm just not that fast. The Time to Kill and Winterlong are in fact the same novel.
While it's not the first time one of my books has different titles in different territories...
...it is the first time it's happened between English language editions.
What I really want to avoid is people accidentally buying the book twice, because cover and title aside, they are exactly the same book. Of course, if you're fully aware of that, I have no objection to anyone buying these or indeed any of my books twice.
So in the UK, the third Carter Blake novel is titled The Time to Kill. It's available right now in trade paperback and ebook, and will be published by Orion in mass market paperback on January 26 2017 - you can preorder on Amazon now with the price guarantee.
Over in the USA, my publisher Pegasus loved the original title and have decided to stick with it, so Winterlong will be hitting the shelves on February 7 2017 - again, you can preorder the hardcover edition right now.
The other news is I'm aiming to be in New York City for US publication day, and I'm going to try to get around some American bookstores for the first time. Stay tuned for more details...
While it's not the first time one of my books has different titles in different territories...
...it is the first time it's happened between English language editions.
What I really want to avoid is people accidentally buying the book twice, because cover and title aside, they are exactly the same book. Of course, if you're fully aware of that, I have no objection to anyone buying these or indeed any of my books twice.
So in the UK, the third Carter Blake novel is titled The Time to Kill. It's available right now in trade paperback and ebook, and will be published by Orion in mass market paperback on January 26 2017 - you can preorder on Amazon now with the price guarantee.
Over in the USA, my publisher Pegasus loved the original title and have decided to stick with it, so Winterlong will be hitting the shelves on February 7 2017 - again, you can preorder the hardcover edition right now.
The other news is I'm aiming to be in New York City for US publication day, and I'm going to try to get around some American bookstores for the first time. Stay tuned for more details...
October 3, 2016
Two extremely cool covers I didn't know existed
It's always nice to see new editions of the books, but I stumbled across the American large print covers on Amazon recently. I hadn't seen either of these, and they're both absolutely beautiful.
I also love the way American covers always point out it's A NOVEL just in case you're confused.
Just thought I would share.
I also love the way American covers always point out it's A NOVEL just in case you're confused.
Just thought I would share.
