The Next Big Thing

What is the working title of your book? The Deep Secret.

Where did the idea come from for the book? It’s the sequel to The Handshaker, a novel I wrote some years ago, and which I self published last year.

What genre does your book fall under? Crime and thriller, hard boiled. It pulls no punches and is quite a departure from STAC Mysteries like The Filey Connection.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Anthony Howell who played Milner in Foyles War, would be perfect as Croft, and Angela Griffin, formerly of Coronation Street and Casualty, would make a wonderful Millie.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? It can’t be done in one sentence, but here it is as short as possible. Serial rapist and killer, Gerald Burke, also known as The Handshaker, escapes from prison. Alex Croft, the hypnotist who helped capture him, is called into assist in his recapture. Burke wants Croft to decipher the puzzle of The Deep Secret contained in a handwritten manuscript written by The Great Zepelli, master hypnotist and coincidentally, Burke’s long-dead father. The murders will not stop until Croft delivers.

 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Does that mean self published or published? I have no need of agents. The majority of my work is placed with an independent publisher, Crooked Cat Books, and they have agreed, in principle, to look at it. A part of the deal, if it goes ahead, will be the transfer of publishing rights of The Handshaker from me to Crooked Cat. The Handshaker will be issued by Crooked Cat early in 2013 and The Deep Secret will follow in the spring. Both novels will be published in all e-formats and paperback.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? One week. It was a blog meme which I set up as a challenge. Write a novel in a week. In seven days, I turned out the first draft of 60,000 words. That was in July this year.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Considering the subject matter, the abuse of hypnosis, I cannot find anything like these tales, but I suppose they could be compared to any hard-boiled, gritty and graphic crime thriller.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? A little known, true series of events, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany, between 1927 and 1934. The Heidelberg Case, as it is known, detailed the systematic sexual abuse of a woman by a criminal hypnotist, and it underscores the claim that is possible to hypnotise and subsequently control a subject with their consent or even their knowledge.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Set in 2012, the book uses flashbacks to span the years from the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, to the imprisonment in the UK of a criminal hypnotist in 1979, and the subsequent search for the secret of his mastery; The Deep Secret. Within the pages is a puzzle which leads to The Deep Secret, and which Croft and Millie must decipher. The tale is sexually graphic, without being erotic, and contains scenes of strong language and violence. It is not suitable for minors. Women were the most avid readers of the original tale, The Handshaker.

***

The Handshaker is available from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (All formats)

The Deep Secret will be published in the spring of 2013

Michela O’Brien asked me to pick this up, and I was supposed to find five other bloggers willing to tackle The Next Big Thing, but I couldn’t find a single one. However, any bloggers reading this you’re perfectly at liberty to have a go.