Mason Cross's Blog, page 15

The Time to Kill - launch

At a loose end on Wednesday June 29th? Come along to the launch of...

The Time to Killby Mason Cross

7pm, Wednesday June 29, 2016

Waterstones, Argyle Street, Glasgow

Join acclaimed Tartan Noir author Douglas Skelton (Blood City, Open Wounds) in conversation with Mason Cross for the official launch of his new novel The Time to Kill , published by Orion.

The Time to Kill is the sequel to the Richard & Judy Spring book club selection The Samaritan, and follows mysterious manhunter Carter Blake on an all-new assignment. This time, the hunter becomes the hunted...

There will be a reading, a Q&A and a signing. More importantly, there will be free wine. The event is free and all are welcome. You can register for free tickets here to let us know you're coming:



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The Time to Kill - cover reveal

So The Time to Kill has a new cover.

Much as I liked the previous version, I think this one is the best jacket I've had to date. What do you think?


It's not long until publication day now - The Time to Kill is published on 30 June in the UK, and you can preorder right now from all good book emporia:

Trade paperbackWaterstones AmazonWHSmithHive
ebookKindleKoboiBooksGoogle Play
AudiobookAudible

IT'S BEEN FIVE YEARS since Carter Blake parted ways with top-secret government operation Winterlong.
They brokered a deal at the time: he'd keep quiet about what they were doing, and in return he'd be left alone. But news that one of Blake's old allies, a man who agreed the same deal, is dead means only one thing - something has changed and Winterlong is coming for him. Emma Faraday, newly appointed head of the secret unit, is determined to tie up loose ends. And Blake is a very loose end. He's been evading them for years, but finally they've picked up his trace.
Blake may be the best there is at tracking down people who don't want to be found, but Winterlong taught him everything he knows.
If there's anyone who can find him - and kill him - it's them. It's time for Carter Blake to up his game. High-stakes action, blistering tension and a deadly game of cat and mouse, THE TIME TO KILL is the must-read new thriller from Mason Cross.

Tweet and sign up to win!

I've just received a big box of the brand new Harlequin Worldwide Mystery book club edition of The Killing Season. No matter how often it happens, I still get a huge kick out of receiving a shipment of books with my name on it.

If you fancy winning a signed copy, all you need to do is retweet this and sign up to my mailing list before Friday:
  

Want to win 1 of 5 copies of new edition Killing Season? RT & sign up to my mailing list! https://t.co/jkjRJgXxVf pic.twitter.com/vbC6CWvy8t— Mason Cross (@MasonCrossBooks) April 25, 2016

Killing Season - book club edition

I've just seen the new American cover for The Killing Season for Harlequin's Worldwide Mystery book club, and it's pretty damn cool.


Subscription book clubs of this kind seem to be pretty much extinct in the UK, but I'm pleased to see they're alive and well across the pond. It's a great way to reach a lot of new readers.

If you haven't read Killing Season yet, this is a great opportunity to jump on board with the first Carter Blake book - you can order the new version in paperback here.

May I count on your vote?

The Richard and Judy Spring Book Club is coming to an end at the end of this month, to make way for eight new titles for summer. It's been a fantastic experience and an honour for me to have The Samaritan selected as one of the titles.

The polling is now open to vote for the winner of the Spring Book Club .

You can vote in literally ten seconds: two clicks and an email address (used for administration, they don't retain your email or spam you).

Obviously I would appreciate any votes for The Samaritan enormously, but all eight of the books are deserving selections.

Voting closes on 28th April - go forth and exercise your democratic right!

Notebook art

Just wanted to share these fantastic doodle art pages by German reader and reviewer Kaisu - how awesome are these?
This one is based on Killing Season (Der Rushhour Killer in German)...



and this is what The Samaritan (Blut Instinkt) inspired...

As someone who can barely draw a smiley face, I love stuff like this, and it's such a compliment that someone has translated my books into an extremely cool word art diagram thing.

There are from Kaisu's review blog Life4Books, where you can also read her reviews of Der Rushhour Killer  and Blut Instinkt and see more amazing work like this.

Upcoming events - including this week!

I've just updated the events page on the website. Three library events and my first ever trip to Harrogate for the legendary Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. I'll be hosting a table at the author dinner on the Saturday night, so if you've ever had a hankering to dine with a crime writer, I hope you'll consider me.


Hamilton Town House - Thursday 24 March, 7:30pm 
Larkhall Library - Tuesday 10  May, 2:00pm
Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival author dinner - Saturday 23 July, 7:00pm
The Ben Cleuch Centre - Tuesday 9 August, 7:00pm


Hope to see you at one of these. Or heck, even all of them, if you happen to have a social life as quiet as mine.

Hamilton Town House - I probably won't need the whole building...

What's in a name?

So the big announcement this week is... Winterlong is no more.
The third Carter Blake book has a brand new title:


What do you think?

The idea originated with my publisher, on the not-unreasonable grounds that The Time to Kill tells you what kind of book this is, in a way that Winterlong doesn't. From a design standpoint, four short words work better than one long one, and I think the look of the cover has improved as a result.

Part of me will always think of this book under the title it's had ever since I came up with the idea three or four years ago, but the new title is growing on me. And it fits the story in a couple of different ways, which is a good thing for a title to do.

But the important thing is, it's the same book, and it's still coming out this summer. You can pre-order in your format of choice here.

Why America?

The other day I was delighted to be part of an author panel at Aye Write - Glasgow's biggest literary festival, which takes place every spring in the fabulous Mitchell Library.

I was in good company, with fellow crime writers Douglas Lindsay and Mark Leggatt, and the theme was an interesting and unusual one:  it was titled Beyond These Shores, because the three of us are from Scotland, but have chosen to set our books further afield. My books as you probably know take place in the US, Douglas's latest, Song of the Dead , is set in Estonia, while Mark's

It was a really enjoyable panel, expertly chaired by Shari Low, and I particularly liked that it took a question I get asked all the time and made it the central focus of the evening. It reminded me of a piece I wrote in 2014, in the run-up to the publication of Killing Season, that attempted to address this question. I can't remember who I wrote it for, or if it ever saw print, but I thought I'd revisit it.

So here it is: Why My Books Are Set in America


Although I'm still fairly new to the professional writing experience, I'm already becoming accustomed to being asked certain questions. Number one on the list is, "How do you find time to do that with three kids?" To which the answer is, I have absolutely no idea, and unfortunately I’m not blessed with a Victorian-style ‘seen and not heard’ environment. In second place is, "Why did you choose to set the book in the United States rather than somewhere closer to home?"

I have a better handle on this question, because there are actually a few different reasons. 

Firstly, I write what I like to read. While the novels I love aren't exclusively American (or even exclusively in the crime genre) a lot of my absolute favourite authors from Chandler and Hammett through MacDonald and Leonard right up to Child, Crais and Connelly set their thrillers in America. When I started to write my own stories, all of those influences and many more were bubbling away under the surface.

There are practical reasons, too. In some ways, you have more freedom when you take the US as your location. The story comes first of course, and you could probably set most novels just about anywhere, but America is the land of the free for a writer. There’s a massive geographical area to play with, dwarfing the UK and Western Europe. You can visit bustling metropolises or barren wildernesses and everything in between. You have freedom of movement across four million square miles, crossing fifty boundaries with no need for a passport. There is huge variation in local culture, but everyone speaks English. That’s before you get to the bonuses specific to crime writers: the ubiquity of guns. The tradition of frontier justice. The fact that dozens of real-life serial killers are thought to be operating in America at any given time. 

Lastly – and this is hardly ever a good excuse – I decided to do it because other people were doing it.

John Connolly from Dublin, RJ Ellory from Birmingham, Matt Hilton from Cumbria. And of course one of the biggest names in the business, Lee Child, who began writing his all-American thrillers at his dining room table in Birmingham.  I decided if those guys could do it and find success, it seemed like a viable career option.

Once you look beyond the literary world, you realise that there’s a long and honourable tradition of Brits working in quintessentially American art forms, from Hitchcock’s Hollywood thrillers to the rock n’ roll of the Rolling Stones to Grant Morrison’s superhero comics.

Perhaps that’s because we absorb American popular culture in almost equal measure with our own here in the UK. Most Brits will count American movies and TV shows and bands among their favourites. And we have one big advantage – we can be familiar with American culture and society, we can even blend in to an extent, but we are always outsiders. For a writer, that's a must. It’s also the reason I've made my protagonist Carter Blake an outsider. He's a man of the world, but not necessarily a native of any city or state.

When it came to researching my American-set novel, The Killing Season, I drew on my own trips across the pond – to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. I spoke to my American friends to get ideas and check details and ask about the things only a local would know. I backed that up with a lot of research using all the tools that a writer has at his disposal in the twenty-first century: books, travel guides, newspaper articles, websites, satellite maps, discussion forums. When I had a working draft, I recruited my American friends as early readers, asking them to be on the lookout for mistakes and inaccuracies and rogue Britishisms. They caught me out a few times, but the consensus was I’d done a serviceable job of sounding authentic.

If I was surprised by anything, it was by the fact it was less difficult to write about another country than I might have expected. Perhaps that’s because a lot of the local detail is about set dressing – important and necessary, even vital – but ultimately of secondary importance. Because the most important things to get right are the things that are universal: a compelling story, a thrilling atmosphere, believable characters. If you work hard at those things, then the research and the local colour ends up doing what it’s supposed to: serving the story.

Fitting in the writing around three delightful but demanding children, though? That’s a challenge.

Competition - win a signed copy of The Samaritan US hardcover

There was a really fantastic response to the Goodreads giveaway of The Killing Season a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd try something different this time.

This time, you can win a signed, hardcover first American edition of The Samaritan. All you have to do is sign up to my mailing list between now and midnight GMT on Sunday 6 March 2016.

I promise not to spam you with daily ramblings - I only send an update when a new book is coming out or something actually interesting is happening.

Sign up to the Mason Cross mailing list
Email Address First Name Last Name






The lucky winner will be selected at random and contacted by email (obviously) to let them know they've won and to get a mailing address. The competition is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. I'll sign it, personalise it if you want, doodle on it if you don't mind terrible artwork, and post it to you, wherever you may be.
Good luck!