Missing Laptop!

A little while ago I posted on the pros and cons of writing in serial in relation to my own serial, Indiscretion.  Yesterday I found I’d fallen into one of my predicted pitfalls.

‘IT MIGHT ALL FALL APART!’ – Part 3, The Dutch Master, saw Molly Van Dyke escape her gangster husband, taking with her a valuable laptop, Part 6, Refuge, sees Molly return but with no sign of the laptop.  Maybe she dropped it?  Maybe it got left in the taxi her and Amos took?  Maybe Maybe?

Here’s the problem – Said laptop plays an important role in the rest of the story.  I’ve got to get it back.  Now, if it was not yet published, no troubles, I just go back and write it in.  But people, you’ve already read it!  Well, some of you at least.

Thankfully Kindle Direct Publishing will let me republish material as many times as I like.  So, for those of you who have not yet picked it up, you would have been none the wiser.  For those who are yet to get part 6 onto their device of choice, sorry!

Indiscretion now has a Facebook page.  Click here and like it to stay in the loop.

Part 5, Into the Dark is now free on Kindle, get it while it’s hot!

Limerick for Valentines Day – Steve

There once was fella named Steve,
Whose romantic advances were not well received.
When he was young,
He tattooed his bum,
With ‘Jenny will you marry me, please!’

By Tom and Chloe

Check out my Valentines Day flash fiction too.
And look out later for a new prologue to DCI Amos – Indiscretion especially for Valentines Day too.

Flash Fiction for Valentines Day – Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in Bed
His dad’s instructions had arrived 3 days before, printed in halting handwriting on a thin piece of lined paper. Telltale perforations told him it had been ripped from a notebook.
He’d followed the instructions to the letter but perhaps there was more to cooking that could be expressed in writing – the breakfast was a mess.
As he mounted the stairs, tray in hand, he could hear the muffled sobbing that filled every waking hour. Yesterday another letter had arrived, not the tattered, torn parchment his father used but a crisp letterheaded affair.
He was not surprised, when he pushed his mother’s door open, that she was clutching the letter.
‘Happy Valentines Day, mum,’ he said.
His mother smiled in reply through her river of tears.
Together they cried over burnt sausages and soggy toast.
His father looked on, a man in uniform, grinning out of a silver frame.

The World’s Greatest Detectives – Part 2

See part 1

Crime fiction has a long and illustrious history, encompassing some of our best loved and most celebrated authors.  There has not been a genre adapted more frequently for both the large and small screen, take Arthur Conan Doyle’s work which currently has both a cinematic and tele-visual franchise ongoing.  This is all due, I would suggest, to those great detectives, who we love to see, presented with an intriguing and intricate puzzle, battling against malevolent forces, and winning through in fine style.  So who’s the greatest of them all?

Philip Marlowe

Appearances:  Raymond Chandler penned 7 full length novels starring his archetypal Private Eye, beginning with his most famous, The Big Sleep (1939), as well as a fistful of short stories.  Several other authors have taken Marlowe and written him into their own works.

Characteristics:  On occasion, Marlowe appears, the very embodiment of the macho P.I., hard drinking and wisecracking.  However, beneath the surface Chandler’s hero is a morally straight, contemplative man not given to unnecessary violence.

Notable Adaptations:  For the silver screen, Marlowe has been adapted ten times and portrayed by a wide range of actors, from Humphrey Bogart to James Garner, Elliot Gould to Robert Mitchum.

Inspector Morse

Appearances:  Inspector Endeavour Morse, created by Colin Dexter, has 13 books to his credit, starting with Last Bus to Woodstock (1979) and ending with Morse’s death in The Remorseful Day (1999).  In addition several short stories appear in Dexter’s collection, Morse’s Greatest Mysteries and Other Stories.

Characteristics:  Much like a number of his great forebears, Morse is blessed with remarkable intelligence.  However it is often his intuition that breaks cases.  Morse is portrayed as frequently sullen with a stubborn and rebellious streak, leading to tension between himself and superiors.

Notable Adaptations:  Every Morse novel has been adapted for ITV television with the involvement of the detective’s creator, Dexter.  In every episode Morse is played by the great John Thaw.  As well as the 13 original books an additional 20 stories were written and produced just for television.

My Wild Card Entry – Dirk Gently

Appearances:  Douglas Adams, he of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, wrote just two novels starring the eccentric detective, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988).

Characteristics:  Gently, real name Svlad Cjelli, is a holistic detective, who makes use of the ‘fundamental interconnectedness of all things’.  This leads Gently to follow every lead believing everything, everywhere is connected and will assist him in solving the ‘whole’ case.

Notable Adaptations:  Gently has been adapted for television on two occasions, most recently for BBC 4 where the title role was taken by Stephen Mangan.

And the award goes to . . . for sheer staying power, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

 

If the mood takes you, you could take a glance at my own detective creation, DCI Amos, in the ongoing serial, Indiscretion.

1.1 The Missing Gardener is currently #8 in crime short stories on Amazon Uk.

1.3 The Dutch Master is free for the next three days.

World Book Day – March 1st

Usain’s ready for World Book Day.  Are You?

The World’s Greatest Detectives – Part 1

Crime fiction has a long and illustrious history, encompassing some of our best loved and most celebrated authors.  There has not been a genre adapted more frequently for both the large and small screen, take Arthur Conan Doyle’s work which currently has both a cinematic and tele-visual franchise ongoing.  This is all due, I would suggest, to those great detectives, who we love to see, presented with an intriguing and intricate puzzle, battling against malevolent forces, and winning through in fine style.  So who’s the greatest of them all?

C. Auguste Dupin

Appearances:  Edgar Allan Poe wrote three books starring the eccentric amateur detective, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), widely considered the first detective fiction story, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842) and The Purloined Letter (1844).

Characteristics:  Much like his literary descendant, Holmes, Dupin is an amateur, investigating at his own whim.  Again, as a forebear to many that followed, Dupin is portrayed as a logician, or, as Obi Wan Kenobi would put it, ‘More machine than man.’

Notable Adaptations:  The Murder in the Rue Morgue and The mystery of Marie Rogêt were both adapted for the silver screen in 1932 and 42 respectively.  However it is Dupin’s influence on other works, referenced by Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and in Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to name but a few, that is Dupin’s real mark of greatness.

Sherlock Holmes

Appearances:  Arthur Conan Doyle completed four novels with Holmes as his hero, A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised in The Strand 1901-02) and The Valley of Fear (Serialised in The Strand 1914-15) as well as whopping 56 short stories.

Characteristics:  Holmes in pursuit of his prey is variously portrayed as, an actor given to disguise and deception, a fighter, trained as a boxer, and as an academic knowledgeable on all manor of subjects.  However it is Holmes’ taking of abductive reasoning from a science to the level of art that is his most noted characteristic.

Notable Adaptations:  Holmes is listed in the Guiness World Rocrds as the most portrayed movie figure, played by 75 actors over 211 films.  Perhaps the most famous portrayal is that by Jeremy Brett who reprised the role for four series of Sherlock Holmes on British television.  More recently both Robert Downey Junior’s depiction in the Guy Richie Films and Benedict Cumberbatch’s in Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s modern re-imagining have been widely celebrated.

Hercule Poirot

Appearances:  The hugely prolific Agatha Christie wrote a staggering 33 novels with Poirot as her lead, the most famous being Murder on the Orient Express (1934).  As well as this Poirot starred in no fewer than 51 short stories.

Characteristics:  Poirot differs somewhat in method from Holmes and Dupin.  Like his two predecessors, he relies primarily on his ‘little grey cells’, however, Poirot enquires more closely into the nature of the victim or psyche of the murderer rather than a laborious analysis of the crime scene.

Notable Adaptations:  Poirot has been played by numerous actors over the years from Albert Finney, who received an oscar nomination for his portrayal in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), to Peter Ustinov, who played the detective a total of 6 times.  By far the most prolific and well known adaptation is the ITV series, which began in 1989 and will film the remaining stories this year, with David Suchet reprising the role throughout.

Part 2 coming soon where we will consider, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Endeavour Morse and my own wild card selection.

In the mean time you could take a glance at my own detective creation, DCI Amos, in the ongoing serial, Indiscretion.

1.2 Consequences is free till the end of the day.

1.3 The Dutch Master will be free for three days from tomorrow.

Writing in Serial – The Pros and Cons

Serialising books has its obvious precedences, from Arabian Nights to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the great Arthur Conan Doyle to Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.  That all without mentioning the greatest of all serialisers, the quintesential Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens.  Serialising, I have found through the recent experience of the DCI Amos Serial, has its pros and cons.

PRO:  Immediate Reader Response

Publishing via the regular route, books take many months if not years between the writers final draft and the moment the first devours his small offering.  With a serial, each week or even more frequently, chapters are published and readers pick them up, response is immediate, your still close to the piece, and able to remedy any of your readers pressing concerns in the next episode.

Con:  Immediate Reader Response

It’s still very raw, your relationship with the book, still very delicate.  The first tentative steps into a novel are usually the most vulnerable when it could all fall apart beneath your tapping fingertips.  Now, I have no safety net, no way to shelf a story or plot line that’s not working, the readers read it and liked it or not before it’s had its usual gestation period.

Pro:  The readers guess is as good as mine as to how the story ends

It’s fresh, each episode spilling forth onto the screen, tales told before each can be plotted and weaved into the finished story.  It’s exciting to meet new twists and turns along the way, which is in many ways the same as writing a regular novel, however in this case, plotting new ideas onto existing words, without the luxury of re-writing those existing parts, is an exciting challenge.

Cons:  The readers guess is as good as mine as to how the story ends

Don’t tell a anyone else, but it could all fall apart!  What if I get to a point where I realise that the story just doesn’t work.  No that won’t happen.  Will it?

Pro:  I’m finished!  I’m finished!  I’m finished!

Every few days I get to finish an episode, edit it, commission the ever talented Chloe Avery to work on the cover, and publish it.  In the regular world of writing, all of this takes FOREVER.  I am meeting my wonderful editor at Frances Lincoln tomorrow to receive her notes on a manuscript I finished months ago, a strange situation, to go back to something that’s sat dormant on my computer for so long.

Oh look, the pros out weigh the cons!  Good stuff.

Four parts of DCI Amos series 1:  Indiscretion have been released so far, 1.1 The Missing Gardener, 1.2 Consequences, 1.3 The Dutch Master, 1.4 Koningen. 

Crime Writer Sandwich Anyone?

The first part in my crime serial is no longer free on kindle, but still doing remarkably well! As I write, The Missing Gardener, is the #4 crime, thriller and mystery short story on Amazon UK. Incredibly sandwiched between Agatha Christie and Agatha Christie, with Arthur Conan Doyle just a little ahead. If you’ve had the chance to read it would love to hear what you think. Oh and don’t forget part 2, Consequences, which is currently #95 in the same charts, will be free for 3 days from Monday.

Amazing New Cover by Chloe

Check out Chloe’s latest cover work on the third part of the DCI Amos serial, The Dutch Master.

‘Molly knew the cells existed, in the dark, beneath her house. She knew well, the purposes they were put to, cruelties that went unspoken in the light of day. So, when her husband ordered her ‘to the cells’, she struggled, as only a woman who knows will do.’
In part 3 of the DCI Amos serial, Molly Van Dyke’s gangster husband has discovered her indiscretion with the fugitive detective. Can she do anything to halt the inevitable retribution?

DCI Amos – The Missing Gardener EXCITING UPDATE

Yesterday I let you know that the first part in my crime serial was free on kindle. Today’s its been doing remarkably well! As I write, The Missing Gardener, is the #1 short story free in Kindle store and #40 all books free in Kindle store, thanks to 827 downloads by you fine people. It’s also had 97 downloads in the US. All very exciting. Hope you’re enjoying!