Mason Cross's Blog, page 24

CrimeFest - Part 2: 2 Fest 2 Furious

Saturday
Another early morning panel, but another great lineup of co-panellists to compensate.

Meg Gardiner did a great job moderating the panel on Name Your Price: The Hired Gun, featuring yours truly along with Hanna Jameson (Girl Seven), Mark Allen Smith (The Confessor) and one John Gordon Sinclair (Blood Whispers), whose name may be familiar to some outside of crime writing.

we make a very thoughtful-looking panel here I think
We'd been gathered together, as the name suggests, because we specialise in protagonists who work on their own and have moral codes ranging from grey to pitch black. Lots of stimulating discussion about the ethics of vigilantism and the perks of writing a character who operates outside of the system. Everyone else on the panel was at least on their second book, but they were all gentle with the newbie, which was much appreciated.

John Gordon Sinclair probed me about Blake's 'black, white or grey' classification system for prospective jobs, and even tweeted the following later on:

@MasonCrossBooks straight to the top of my reading pile. My only purchase at crimefest bookshop yesterday. pic.twitter.com/bMubi6BU7j
— John GordonSinclair (@Jgs_x) May 18, 2014

...which was very nice of him, and I'm pleased he was intrigued enough to pick it up. Or maybe it was just the fact that as a fellow Glaswegian I was the only one whose accent he understood. I'd planned to read his anyway, and hopefully I'll make it along to his event in Glasgow in a couple of weeks, so maybe now we can compare notes.

After the panel, I caught up with Crime Thriller Girl for an interview following on from her fantastic review of The Killing Season earlier in the month. I can't remember every question we covered (hey - it was the morning), but there were some good ones I hadn't heard before. Discussion ranged from my favourite book to how and when I write, to who should play Carter Blake if there's ever a movie. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the interview by revealing the answers to any of these questions here. I did, however, reveal my nerdy attachment to Excel and PowerPoint as novel planning tools.

I walked back to the hotel for a quick rest and to do a bit of studying for my specialist subject on Criminal Mastermind the following day, then headed back to the convention hotel to hang out in the bar before seeing Mark Billingham in his guest of honour slot. Billingham was great value as always, and his new book sounds great. I've heard the anecdote of him stalking David Morrissey to play Thorne before, but it's a great story. And probably, as Craig Robertson said when I suggested following his example, the only time in history that approach has ever worked.

Having said that, if Hugh Jackman is reading this, drop me an email.

I caught up with Angela from Orion and Helen Giltrow again at our table at the gala dinner, and was also introduced to AK Benedict, whose supernatural thriller The Beauty of Murder has been on my to-read list for a while. The food was just okay this time, but the company was brilliant again, and we conversed about everything from the recent James Bond audiobooks to Eminem. Also the surprising number of great Keanu Reeves movies. There's more than you probably think...

Sunday I took advantage of my only day without an early panel to stay in bed a little later. If I'd known the full horror of what was to come, I might never have left the bed...

Okay that's putting it a bit strongly, but only a bit. A lot of regular CrimeFest-goers had been warning me that Criminal Mastermind was brutal, but until I was sitting in that black swivel chair being interrogated by Maxim Jakubowski, I didn't know what brutal was.

Courtesy of photographer / question-setter Ali Karim
I was on with three other writers: previous Mastermind champ Paul Johnston, who chose Dashiell Hammett as his specialist subject; Kate Ellis, who chose Josephine Tey; and Susan Moody who picked one of my favourite authors: Raymond Chandler. Needless to say, all three were lovely. I've yet to meet a crime writer I dislike, actually, at this or any other event I've been to.

Round one (specialists subjects) actually went pretty well for me. Fellow Reacher Creature Ali Karim had been in charge of setting the questions, so I knew I had to bring my A-game. I scored 9 points with 2 passes on Lee Child and the Jack Reacher novels, putting me into second place behind Paul. But that's when the trouble started. Because there was a round two. A general crime round.

Now, I'm reasonably well-read and retain useless information pretty easily, but these questions were tough. As I sat there racking up pass after pass after pass and shedding flop-sweat like a garden sprinkler, I actually started to worry that the powers that be were going to kick me out of being a crime writer for my base ignorance. It wasn't so much that I didn't know any of the answers, it was that I couldn't even make an educated guess at any of the answers.

The buzzer went, and Maxim had started so he'd finish, and thank God, it was a question I knew the answer to: the full names of the husband and wife team that make up Nicci French. Round over: 1 point and about a hundred million passes.

The only consolation is that everybody else found the general round fiendishly tough as well (with the exception of Paul, who managed to extend his lead handily). When the scores were totalled, the three non-winners were very close together. I tied for second-place with Kate, but was knocked down to third as she had less racked up passes than me. Paul Johnston has my respect and awe for triumphing in his second Criminal Mastermind. As for me? Once is definitely enough.

I had a much-needed drink in the bar, caught up with Craig Robertson and Ali Karim, waved at Chris Carter and met Neil Broadfoot and James Oswald for the first time. I also chatted to Katherine Armstrong from Faber and discovered that we'd both been to the same university and that Faber publish Thomas Enger, who I'm going to be doing an event with later this year. She kindly sent me a copy of one of Thomas's books and also the debut novel of one of her authors... who happens to be one John Gordon Sinclair. Synchronicity is nice.

Thinking about it in the sun, holding a frosty pint, I realised that the greatest thing about CrimeFest is that for a whole weekend, it had been impossible not to get into interesting conversations with interesting people: writers, readers, bloggers, editors, publicists, agents. About books and publishing, of course, but also about movies, music, politics, sport, Keanu Reeves, the UK witness protection program, and all kinds of common interests besides. I learned tons and met some new friends, and I even got a few people to read my book. A worthwhile if occasionally humbling experience.

Some more reviews

Part 2 of my CrimeFest update soon, but in the meantime, here's some links to more reviews that have popped up in the last couple of weeks.

The Daily Mail  have printed my first review in a national newspaper, penned by Geoffrey Wansell and sharing a page with Jeffrey Deaver:

Cross brings his native city’s sharp-edged ferocity to this debut thriller and in the process creates one of the most interesting ‘loner’ heroes to have arrived in recent years...Told with pace and vigour by a writer who seems to have a natural aptitude for thrillers, it is not to be missed.

Adrian Magson writes a really great review in Shots :

A very fine debut penned with the smooth style and skill of a much more experienced writer, this adds a new name to the gamut of special operatives and high-tension characters and plots so loved by thriller readers...I know it’s been said already, but I’ll say it again: this is one to watch out for.

And over on Fantasy Book Critic , Mihir Wanchoo thinks The Killing Season makes it easy to suspend disbelief:

The Killing Season by Mason Cross is one of those terrific debuts that you almost often never hear about. I loved it for all the aforementioned qualities and if you happen to be a fan of thriller stories by Robert Crais, Lee Child and Jeffrey Deaver, then the first Carter Blake volume is a book you absolutely shouldn’t miss.

Three more lovely reviews, I'm really glad people are liking the book. Still nervously awaiting that first one-star job.

CrimeFest - Part 1

I had an awesome time at my first CrimeFest.

Wait... is it CrimeFest or just Crimefest? Let's go with CrimeFest, because I like camel case.

Anyway, I met lots of cool people, consumed more beer than I've managed in the rest of the year put together, and even flogged a copy of The Killing Season to a star of stage and screen. This is going to be a mammoth post for me, so I'm going to split it into two parts. The first one will cover Thursday and Friday, the second Saturday and Sunday.

Thursday
I flew down from Glasgow on Thursday afternoon, having to brave the airport bus link (seriously, how is it 2014 and we don't have a rail link to Scotland's major airport, or buses that take debit cards for that matter?). After a short delay, the flight down to Bristol was uneventful and smooth, which is just as well because I'm the world's worst flyer. After checking into my hotel (the Radisson Blu, very nice) and making fists with my toes on the carpet...


one for the Die Hard fans
 ...I made my way across the canal to the Bristol Marriot, venue for CrimeFest, and quickly located familiar faces Craig Robertson, Michael J Malone, Douglas Skelton and Ali Karim. It was great to relax with a beer, chat to familiar faces and meet some new ones.

The Bristol Marriot
I said hi to Mark Billingham, who'd given me some great advice when I was struggling with writing the second Carter Blake book, and then someone introduced me to Barry Forshaw, who was kind enough to say my book had something of a critical buzz around it. I also met Jake Kerridge of the Telegraph, the man in charge of my panel the following day. I took it easy on the bar, and headed back to my hotel around 12:30 for an earlyish night, because I was on at 9am the following day.

Friday
I hauled myself out of bed and got ready for the panel with several cups of coffee. I was amused later to see Lucy Santos of the CWA had tweeted that I was looking bright and breezy.

Jake Kerridge was moderating my panel (the second of three over the weekend) on Debut Authors: An Infusion of Fresh Blood, and I was on with four other newbies: M.J. Arlidge (Eenie Meenie), Kate Griffin (Kitty Beck and the Music Hall Murders), Colette McBeth (Precious Thing) and Jake Woodhouse (After the Silence). I quickly remembered that the best and worst thing about these book festivals is you end up with tons of new novels you want to read. I genuinely wanted to read all of these books after hearing their authors talk about them, but probably Kate's most of all, because I'm a sucker for Victorian-era mystery.

Of all of us, Jake Woodhouse and I were probably the freshest of the fresh blood, with our debuts coming out within a day of each other at the end of last month. It was great to chat to the others and hear about their backgrounds, their journeys to publication and their experiences of being published for the first time. I think I managed to be reasonably lucid for a non-morning person, and I talked a bit about getting an agent and thinking about the commercial appeal of my book. Jake (moderator Jake that is) got a big laugh from the audience when he read the current FAQ section from my website out in full:

Q: Do you have a lot of material for the FAQ section?      
A: Not as yet, no.

Which reminded me I really need to update that now I'm getting actual questions. After the panel there was a signing, during which I managed to write the wrong date while signing a copy of The Killing Season. The gentleman concerned was incredibly understanding, and magnanimously suggested the mistake just made his copy unique. I've been known to use this excuse myself: the Japanese call it a wabi: a tiny flaw that emphasises the individuality of the piece. Note to self: keep a calendar nearby at all times.

I visited the Foyles festival bookshop and was pleased to see a familiar cover on display...

the hardback version too!
Sorry, I'll get over taking pics of my book in bookshops someday. Perhaps. Okay, probably not gonna happen.
I settled back to be in the audience for another couple of panels after that: one on Death in High Heels: Women as Victims and another on The Modern Thriller. The first one was a heated but very well-behaved debate about the prevalence of young pretty women as victims in crime fiction and what it says about society (and readers of thrillers, I suppose). I was particularly interested to discover that the typical reader for books that feature young female victims is, perhaps surprisingly, young females. The panel on modern thrillers was also lively, with an eye-opening anecdote from Simon Kernick about being briefly kidnapped as a teen.

After that I caught up with an old friend for lunch and then headed back to the bar at the Marriott. On the way, my editor tweeted that I had been reviewed in the Daily Mail - my first review in a national newspaper, and thankfully they liked it.

The usual suspects were at the bar of course, and the supernaturally-organised Angela McMahon from Orion had arrived and introduced me to fellow debut Orion author Helen Giltrow - whose book The Distance has just been published - and Harry Bingham, who is more established than either of us, with a whole series of DC Fiona Griffiths novels. We went to dinner at the nearby Hotel du Vin where we spent a few hours over great food and wine and conversation. Again, it's always fascinating to note the similarities and the differences between how other authors approach writing a book. Also brilliant to talk to Angela about the exciting life of a publicist and just how many Ian Rankin enquiries she has to field on your average day even when he's taking a year off.

I would have loved to head back to the bar after dinner, but I had another 9am panel the next day.

Come back tomorrow to find out all about the Hired Guns panel and my bruising encounter with a certain black leather swivel chair...

See you in Bristol...

This weekend, I'm looking forward to my first trip to a book festival where I'm actually on the bill.

CrimeFest is the one of the biggest events in the UK crime calendar, and is listed by the Guardian and Independent as one of the world's best crime-writing festivals

This year there's a great lineup featuring Mark Billingham as guest of honour, and I can't wait to see some of the friends I've made already on the scene as well as some new faces.

If you're going to be in Bristol, you have not one but three chances to see yours truly on a panel:


Debut Authors: An Infusion of Fresh Blood Friday 16 May | 9:00am - 9:50am
Moderated by Jake Kerridge, featuring M.J. Arlidge, Mason Cross, Kate Griffin, Colette McBeth, Jake Woodhouse


Name Your Price: The Hired Gun
Saturday 17 May | 9:00am - 9:50am
Moderated by Meg Gardiner, featuring Mason Cross, Hanna Jameson, John Gordon Sinclair and Mark Allen Smith


Criminal Mastermind
Sunday 18 May | 1:00pm- 1:50pm
Quiz Master Maxim Jakubowski, featuring authors and specialist subjects: Mason Cross (Lee Child), Kate Ellis (Josephine Tey), Paul Johnston (Dashiell Hammett), Susan Moody (Raymond Chandler)

If you're going to be there, please come up and say hello. Outside of the above times, I'm likely to be in the bar.

The launch

 The 23rd and 24th April was a very cool couple of days, featuring a lot of firsts. If I wasn't a writer, and therefore theoretically supposed to be avoiding the most well-worn of clichés, I'd be forced to describe the day of the launch using the adjective 'whirlwind'. Let's all just agree that I thought up a more original and inspired metaphor than that and move on. I kicked off the day with my first-ever interview with the media, for a story in my local newspaper that would be repurposed for a lot of the local Glasgow newspapers. That was followed up with my first interview on live radio, on East Coast FM. I think I did okay on both, for a newbie, but I knew this was just the warmup. The 23rd was launch night, which meant I would have to do a Q&A in front of a live audience. It was a steep learning curve: from talking to someone on the phone, to talking to someone on the phone with his radio audience listening in, to talking to someone in person with a hundred people staring at me.  My editor at Orion, Jemima Forrester, had travelled all the way up from London to Glasgow to be there for the launch event, and I was so pleased she was able to make it. Jemima has been one of the most important people in getting the book to this point, not just in the obvious way (signing me up for Orion), but in her dead-on suggestions and contributions to the book itself. My wife and I had a brief but very enjoyable dinner with Jemima before it was time to head down to Waterstones. Caron Macpherson, manager of Waterstones Argyle Street, was doubling as talk show host for the evening, and being the hyper-organised person that she is, naturally had everything well in-hand. A big part of my ability to conquer pre-game nerves was the knowledge that all I had to do was show up and attempt to talk in coherent sentences. I knew everything else would be taken care of, and so it was. We held off starting until a little after seven because people kept on arriving, until the point that there was standing room only. I never got around to doing a precise headcount, but I'm told there were over a hundred people, which was amazing. Just as amazing as the great turnout from family, friends and workmates was the fact that there were a few people there who didn't actually know me.   We began with the part I was most nervous about: the reading.

Now, you would think that a normal person would find this the least scary part of an event, as you're simply reading words that are in front of you (words that were written by you, even), but hey, I never said I was normal. I have a decent amount of experience in delivering presentations and even taking audience questions in a work context, but I was surprised at how different an experience it is to give a reading. I suppose that's because when you're giving a presentation, it's the information that's important, and you're trying to come across like this is all off the top of your head.

A reading is much more like a performance: you have to give a lot more thought to everything than I'm used to: how loud you speak, how quickly you read, how you differentiate dialogue from narration. Taking some advice, I picked a nice short excerpt from The Killing Season that would take me about five minutes to read. I practiced a lot, terrified of fumbling the words, and I seemed to pull it off okay on the night. Even so, it was almost a relief to sit down and begin the interview segment.   Caron had politely declined to share her planned questions with me, and I'm glad she did. I'd only have prepared detailed answers and proceeded to sound like a robot while reciting them. I was able to answer most questions okay, I think (I ought to be, being the guy who wrote the book and all), and the only ones that stumped me were Who should play Carter Blake in a movie? and, surprisingly, What's the best book you've read in the last year?  I read so much that this was a tough one - I can think of lots of standout books I've read over the past twelve months, but picking 'the best' is a tall order. With the luxury of hindsight... I still can't pick one outright winner. Sorry. I'd probably say the top three last year was Stephen King's Joyland, Michael Connelly's Gods of Guilt and Ian Fleming's From Russia, With Love. The last of which doesn't really count as I'd read it before, but this time I really liked it.    But I digress. After Caron's expert questioning, we took some questions from the audience. I think these went all right too, and as I'd expected there were questions about my writing process and my influences. There was one tough question from my fellow author Alexandra Sokoloff about whether I'd wanted to say something about America in the book. I didn't have a pat answer for this one, other than that I didn't set out to write a 'message' book, just to tell a good story. That said, I think the story does end up saying something about America, and the modern world in general, in the way the politics of fear drive the plot and some of the characters. And after some great questions, we were onto the really fun part: the signing. 
 
 This was one of those moments that makes you question whether you've won a competition to pretend to be a writer for a day. People lining up to talk to me and wanting me to sign their copy of my book - I'm not sure it gets better than that. Because so many people I knew had come along, I had quite a queue, but again I was really gratified to see some unfamiliar faces as well. I spoke to people I hadn't seen in ages, met some new people, signed a lot of copies of The Killing Season and before I knew it, it was time to head along to the post-launch soirée at Sloans.   Sloans is one of Glasgow's oldest pubs, apparently established in 1797, and it's a cool place: spreading over several floors of a big old townhouse that adjoins the Argyle Arcade, Glasgow's jewellery hub. We had the first floor booked out, and it was set up more like a living room than a bar, with couches and candles. It was an evocative venue to get together with friends after the show, and it was great to relax with a few drinks and contemplate the next day: the day my first novel would be published. On Thursday 24th April, I woke up without too much of a hangover and contemplated existence in a world where The Killing Season was suddenly a real book you could walk into a shop and buy, rather than some scribbles on a page or a computer file. Just to check it wasn't a dream, I headed into Glasgow and checked the book was still there. It was. Caron asked me to sign some of the store copies and suggested I hit some of the other Waterstones branches to sign stock there too. I conducted a mini-tour of Waterstones branches in the West of Scotland over the next few days, notching up Glasgow Sauchiehall Street, Braehead, East Kilbride, Newton Mearns and Ayr. I even made a trip east to Scotland's runner-up city to sign stock in a couple of the Edinburgh branches. One final nice surprise when I dropped into Argyle Street the following week, and it's down to the fact that Waterstones branches compile their own local sales charts.  Even though I know the results had been skewed somewhat by the number of copies I sold on my launch night, it was pretty cool to see The Killing Season on the shelves in this position, if only for one week:   Let's hope it gets to be number one again, some other week.

Der Rushhour-Killer

I'm going to blog soon with a full account of the launch event at Waterstones and the amazing experience of having my first book published, I promise.

In the meantime, I'm going to round up some of the other developments, starting with some more really great, thoughtful reviews that have been posted on The Killing Season:

The guys at Crimesquad.com gave it 5 stars:

The Killing Season, together with a plot that speeds along, is a great mix of intrigue, strong characters and a thrilling plot which reels you in from the first page. This debut has the feel of an author who is destined to become well practiced in producing best-selling thrillers.

Mat Coward of The Morning Star liked it:

This is an impressively exciting debut, written with panache and a good ear for grim humour.

Matthew Craig at Reader Dad gave it a fantastic write-up:

The Killing Season marks the arrival of a new “must-read” author on the British thriller scene. In Carter Blake, Mason Cross has produced an engaging character whose wit, mysterious background and often dubious moral stance keep the reader coming back for more, and elevates The Killing Season from just another thriller to one of the finest you’re likely to have read since Jack Reacher stepped off the bus in Margrave, Georgia all the way back in 1997. Cross makes Chicago and the surrounding area his own and his characters, despite his own background, are as American as American can be. A seemingly effortless and assured debut, you’ll be jonesing for your next Mason Cross/Carter Blake fix before you’ve even finished this first helping.

I'd forgotten that the book was being published down under already. I was reminded by Richard Cotter of  The Sydney Arts Guide , who delivered some prime no-bullshit Aussie praise:

With this slick, fast paced and assured serial killer cum conspiracy theory monolith, author Mason Cross has nailed the mechanics of blockbuster ball tearer to his mast and a series of Carter Blake adventures is in the pipeline. In a crowded market, The Killing Season holds its head above the crud.

'Blockbuster ball tearer' has to be my favourite pull-quote so far. Maybe Orion will use it for the mass-market paperback.

Sophie Hedley at Reviewed The Book also gave it 5 stars, and said:

The interaction and pacing in this book was spot on but what really stood out for me was that none of the writing felt like it was from a debut novel. It felt effortless and assured – something you’d read from the best-selling authors who’ve been releasing excellent thrillers for decades ... a riveting, edge-of-your-seat book, impressive throughout and I loved it. The whole story was executed brilliantly and whilst I think the author deserves to bask in the glory of a great debut novel, I’d much rather him hurry up with another one, respectfully.

Mark Hill, aka Crime Thriller Fella , gave it probably the funniest review so far, musing on the proliferation of tough guys in books who sit around hotel rooms waiting for The Call (you know, just like Carter Blake), but concludes that:

There’s lots to admire in Cross’s  thriller. The writing is assured and entertaining. Mr. Cross really knows his way around a set-piece, and they come thick and fast. The plotting is slick and pacey. As the FBI caravan zigzags from state to state in pursuit of Wardell, Cross manoeuvres his characters inexorably towards a satisfying fatal showdown ... in his debut novel, Mason Cross has really hit the ground running, there’s no doubt about that. The Killing Season delivers time and again with smart big-screen thrills."

Crime Thriller Girl liked it too, even saying it was her favourite read of the year so far:

I cannot sing this novel’s praises highly enough – it’s a joy to read, utterly engaging and kept me hooked right from the first page to the last. There’s high stakes and high tension, and the chemistry between Blake and Banner sizzles off the page. If you love action thrillers, if you love crime fiction, go and read this book. I’m sure you won’t regret it.

If any of that whets your appetite, Orion are currently giving away 10 copies of The Killing Season on Goodreads.com - all you have to do is sign up!

Other stuff:
The Killing Season has a German title, and it's a good one - DER RUSHHOUR-KILLER. The German publisher is Goldmann, and it has a release date of March 2015.

Hive have very kindly named me as one of their Rising Writers for May alongside some great up-and-coming authors.

Orion made The Killing Season their book of the week, and posted a piece from me in The Murder Room all about Why I Wrote The Killing Season

I take part in Reader Dad's #CarrieAt40 celebrations, with an article on Brian De Palma's adaptation which I had a blast writing in tribute to The King.

The Killing Season is out in audio as well, available to download from Audible, where it was briefly in the top 10 bestsellers last week. Eric Meyers has really nailed the book and the character of Carter Blake in his performance, and you can listen to an audio excerpt here.

Scottish Book Trust asked me to give my top five tips for plotting a thriller. For what it's worth, my advice is here.

Lastly, in addition to the great review, Crime Thriller Fella kindly interviewed me for his regular feature The Intel. Some great questions on the book and writing in general, which I had fun answering.

That's it for now, back soon to tell you all about launch night and publication day...

Publication Day

 The Killing Season  is now available in all formats from all good offline and online bookstores Hardcover | Trade paperback | ebook | Audio  Buy your copy now from: Waterstones  Amazon WH Smith Audible Or order from your local independent bookshop 

What works for me

This is my first attempt at joining in a Blog Tour, and first of all I'd like to say thanks to my fellow Orion author R.S. Pateman for asking me to join in. You can visit his blog to find out more about his writing process, and you can also pick up the paperback edition of his debut psychological suspense novel The Second Life of Amy Archer from Thursday - it comes highly recommended.

The idea is, I answer four questions about writing, and then ask another couple of writers to join in next week. Reading over a few of the offerings so far, it's fascinating and strangely comforting that everyone's techniques are so different from one another. I guess the only correct way to be a writer is the one that works for you.

So bearing that in mind, here's my answers:

What am I working on? 

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to the second Carter Blake novel, The Samaritan, and also starting to think about what's going to happen in the third instalment.

I wrote the first draft of The Samaritan in around five months, which is much, much faster than I wrote The Killing Season, so it was nice to get a few weeks away from it before turning in a rewrite at the end of January. I've since made a few more edits after discussion with my editor, and I think there'll be a few more tweaks before we lock it down.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

In a lot of ways, it doesn't.

That might seem a strange thing for an author to say about the beautiful and unique snowflake he's created, but it's true. I love crime fiction and thrillers, and when I started to write The Killing Season, I consciously incorporated a lot of the classic tropes of the genre: the driven serial killer, the mysterious outsider brought in to break the case, the professional law enforcement agent caught between playing by the rules and doing what's right. I wanted to use all of these conventions but still create a story that felt fresh and contained a few surprises and made the reader want to keep turning the pages. The reviews seem to bear this out: some of them say they were expecting a solid, run-of-the-mill thriller and got more than they expected.

On reflection, I think The Killing Season contains a lot of the same elements as other books in its genre, but there's nothing exactly like it, and that seems to be its secret weapon.

Why do I write what I do? 

Short answer: because I've always loved reading crime, mystery and thrillers, and it's what I seem to be good at.

When I started out writing my own stories, I did what everyone else does and tried to write in the style of my heroes. I tried a lot of genres on for size: horror, noir, adventure, mystery, psychological thriller, even science fiction. Over time, I developed my own style and, almost to my surprise, I found that what I was best at was at the thriller end of the spectrum.

I think all of the influences from other writers and genres inevitably feed into what I do, though. I'm often told my writing is very cinematic, and I take that as a big compliment. I guess that comes from my love of cinema, and perhaps also the fact that I'm a lifelong comic book geek. Certainly, when I'm coming up with my stories, I tend to imagine them in quite a visual way, coming up with a scene or setting that looks exciting and dramatic in my mind's eye.

How does your writing process work?

I always feel a twinge of guilt when I say I plot my books in advance, because I know Stephen King wouldn't approve. I write a fairly detailed synopsis before I begin, because it's important for me to have a plan in place, even if I don't follow it to the letter. One of my favourite quotes is from Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said that when preparing for battle, "plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." In fact, I like that quote so much I used it in my book.

As long as I know roughly where I'm going, I'm free to improvise and come up with better ideas as I go. The end of a book is often quite different from what I sketched out in the synopsis, because I need the weight of the book behind me to know exactly how it should end.

I have a full-time day job and three young children, so absolute adherence to a set writing regime isn't an option, unfortunately. My one rule is that I have to write at least 500 words a day. Often (particularly once I'm deep into a book) I'll aim for 500 and end up doing 1,000 or 2,000 words instead, but I find it's vital to have a modest target to make sure I fit in some writing every day.

Luckily for me, I can write almost anywhere: in pubs, in cafés, in bed, on park benches, on the train, in hotel rooms... even occasionally at my desk at home.


I prefer to type because I'm one of those writers who likes to tweak as he goes, and that's so much easier when using a computer. If I'm out and about without a laptop, however, I'll happily get the words down on a notebook and type them up later that night. I have to make sure I'm quick, though, because my handwriting is borderline-illegible even to me.


Most days, I settle down to writing in the evening, once the kids are in bed. If I've managed to squeeze in some extra writing earlier on in the day, so much the better. If not, I make sure I get some words down in a more or less coherent order before I can turn in for the night.

And that's pretty much it: I try not to look back too much and keep bashing out the words until I have a first draft. After that, I put it aside for a few weeks, and then I spend a lot of time rewriting and polishing and plugging in the necessary research. For that part, I print the whole manuscript out and go through it with a pencil and different colours of highlighter to help me work out exactly what to change, get rid of, or flesh out. That part is just like Stephen King tells you to do it.


And that's it from me. As I said earlier on, part of the deal is I have to infect two more unsuspecting authors with this blog chain, like some sort of blogging zombie, and here are my chosen victims:

Michael J. Malone's debut novel Blood Tears won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers, and his most recent book is The Guillotine Choice. Check out his blog, May Contain Nuts, for his instalment of the blog tour and lots more great stuff.

Douglas Skelton has published 11 books on true crime and history. His first thriller Blood City was published by Luath Press in 2013, the first in a series set on the tough streets of Glasgow from 1980 onwards. The second, Crow Bait, will be published in 2014. You can find his blog here.

More reviews, and picking a good reading excerpt

Incredibly, it's only five days to go until publication day, and four until the launch night at Waterstones.

The advance reviews are still coming in, including this one from Mark Timlin at Crimetime:

A debut novel that Orion Publishing is putting big guns behind is The Killing Season by Mason Cross (P/B £12.99) and I don't blame them. Carter Blake is a man of many talents, including finding people who don't want to be found, and when a serial killer sniper escapes from jail, the FBI call for his assistance which is not always appreciated by those on the ground. This really is a superb, read in one go novel, and I'm sure we'll see plenty more of Blake in the future.


Book Oxygen likes it too, and this is the first review to suggest it would make a good airport thriller, which I take entirely as a compliment...

At the opposite end of the gender divide is The Killing Season by Mason Cross, who has followed the Lee Child recipe for narrative tension.  His saviour-figure is a loner, a freelance finder of people who do not want to be found, now working with law enforcement to track down an escaped serial killer.  As I read I could feel myself being manipulated by an efficient player and didn’t mind.  For whiling away a sleepless night or an airport delay, this would be ideal.


TraceyBookLover gave me a great review with some interesting points:

This book has been lurking near the top of my to-be-read pile for some time and all the good things
 
I’ve been hearing about it have made me impatient to get started. I certainly wasn’t disappointed – I devoured The Killing Season over a couple of days and I’m just about getting my breath back.

The plot revolves around a manhunt for a serial killer sniper and takes place over the course of several days. The enigmatic character of Carter Blake and the FBI’s Elaine Banner team up against a formidable opponent’s seemingly unstoppable killing spree.

I found The Killing Season reminiscent of early Alex Cross books by James Patterson, but with the action ramped up to the maximum. There’s a fair amount of graphic violence which can sometimes turn me off a book, but the quality of the writing kept me on board. I lost count of the clever plot twists and the action built to a gobsmacking conclusion. I’m hoping this is the start of a series and if so I’ll look forward eagerly to the next instalment.

Highly recommended


Finally, I got my first print review today in the Daily Record, which made it the lead review in their book club and gave it a great write-up...


I'm so glad people seem to like the book, though I'm sure I'll get some negative  reviews once it comes out.

I think I've selected an acceptable excerpt to read at the launch on Wednesday night. It's surprisingly difficult to find something that fits all the necessary criteria: not too long, not too short, action without spoilers, something that gives a good taste of the whole, but I think I've picked a chapter that will work. Okay, now I need to go and practice reading it out loud...

Reviews and previews

You can now read a free exclusive extract of the first three chapters of The Killing Season via my publisher's website by clicking here.

Some more great reviews have appeared online, I'm really glad the advance readers seem to be loving it.

There are a few great write-ups of the advance review copies on Goodreads, and some 5-star reviews from veteran reviewers through the Amazon Vine programme. One of the interesting themes I've been picking up from the reviews is that a lot of them didn't think the book was going to be great, or thought it would be just another by-the-numbers thriller, but were pleasantly surprised.

Another thing I'm seeing a lot is that people are blowing through the book in a couple of days, even staying up late to finish it in some cases, like Sara Meredith on her Walking with Angels blog. Seeing that I explicitly set out to write a page-turner, I couldn't ask for better praise.

I'm also honoured to have the book picked as a selected title this month by none other than the legendary Maxim Jakubowski. Maxim is a towering figure in the crime fiction world, and the Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction he edited introduced a teenage me to a bunch of great classic pulp masters including Westlake, Spillane, Hammett and tons more.

Here's Maxim's thoughts on The Killing Season:

A suspenseful thriller debut introducing Carter Blake, a bullet-proof American hero in the mould of Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne, created by a new British author. Blake is a professional with a shadowy background who, for a price, will locate anyone you want, even more so if they don't wish to be found. Half on signature, half on delivery and always works alone. When an ex-Marine sniper and serial killer breaks out from Death Row, the race is on and the FBI need Carter's help, not knowing that he has crossed the killer's path once already in his past. A breathless race against time ensues with all the gilt-edge thrills and more. Relentless and no holds barred, a guilty pleasure of a read.