Writing speculative scripts - is it worth it?

There are few more exciting thrillers I've read in recent times than Simon Wood's high octane THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, and as such I've taken it on myself to scribble out a full review of it. But, as usual, you'll find that at the lower end of this column. 

Scroll down there straight away, if you wish. But if you also fancy pondering the thorny issue of spec scripts and whether it can ever pay to take the time out of your busy schedule to write them, then feel free to head south at a more leisurely pace, and check out my own views on the matter first ...

Soo, script-writing on spec. Is it worth it?

A big question indeed.

This is a conversation I've had repeatedly with Cathy, my wife and best friend of the last 28 years and my business partner for the last four. So I'm very familiar with the arguments for and against, but even then finding a satisfactory answer is never easy (at least not at first glance).

When you're first starting out as a screen-writer, you don't have much choice. No producer is going to commission a script from you if you haven't got a track-record (these days you're lucky if they'll commission a script from you if you HAVE got one). It's amazing how much more receptive to your ideas film and TV companies tend to be if you can walk into their office, hit them with a cool pitch and then, in a single artistic flourish, lay a finished first-draft script on their desk as well (even though they'll probably not bother to read the script until you've written a concise outline and they've read that first).

But even then it's going to be a long-shot, mainly because, unless you had a consultation with them beforehand, you're not really sure what kind of project they're looking for, and even if you have had a consultation, things may have changed in the last couple of weeks, or some other writer who they may know better and therefore trust more might have come along with a similar or better idea, or maybe because you haven't developed the idea they expressed interest in the way they'd have liked you to because, you know, you didn't have a producer or script-editor looking over your shoulder while you were writing it, etc etc ...

Either way, it most likely means you've done an awful lot of work for nothing. And it won't end there.

The average  movie-length screenplay usually comes in at something like 20K-25K words, which is no small effort on your part when you're not being paid for it - and there's the other rub.

When you've invested so much time and effort into a thing, you don't want to just throw it into a drawer. You've got to keep hawking it around, which is yet more time and energy. And of course each new producer you show it to will likely be in a similar position to the first: Is it the sort of thing he/she is looking for?, have you developed it they way they'd like?, and so on.

It's an ominous prospect, and my own experience reinforces this. I'm better known these days as a novelist. But I've done my share of screen-writing. The problem is that - despite writing scripts for pre-existing television shows, where I had some success during my early days - I've only written two movie scripts which have actually progressed right the way through preproduction, been made, and have then gone out to general distribution. On the first of these, SPIRIT TRAP (2005), I was only a co-writer anyway, a first-draft script already existing when I was brought in to 'doctor' it. For the second, THE DEVIL'S ROCK (2011), I was acquainted with a talented young director, Paul Campion, who had already devised a detailed idea, had got a producer on board, and was willing to pay me to flesh it out into a script.

Neither of those projects involved speculative writing. The vast majority of the scripts I DID write on spec, however - and oh yes, there have been many - have rarely got close to principle photography, even though several have made it into actual development. For example, my screen adapation of  CAPE WRATH, my Bram Stroker Award nominee short novel of 2001, was under option for nearly nine years and has still never been made. It's been though something like 10 drafts now and has been workshopped half a dozen times, and is probably in the best shape I could ever imagine a script of mine being, but at present it sits and gathers dust. My forthcoming next novel, STRANGERS, conerning a young female detective at the sharp end of crime in Manchester, commenced life as a spec TV script called NO FURY way back in 1993; it was optioned on and off, but so much time passed on this one that in the end I saw better potential in turning it into a book.

So, on first glance - and purely coming at this with brain rather than heart, it doesn't look as if it's worth writing speculative film or TV scripts.

But you know ... are we really in this business because we are logic machines who will only type out what we are 100% sure we can sell, who will only create if there is a dead-cert buyer, who will only write what the general herd wants us to, who won't get out of bed for less than a guaranteed five grand a day?

Of course we aren't.

I don't know any writer who is successful today who hasn't at one time or another had to slug his/her way through a jungle of indifference, who hasn't ridden the blows of rejection again and again, who hasn't produced speculative work at length over many, many agonising years.

Back in 2013, at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, I was fortunate enough to chair a 'Selling Your Spec Script' panel, which among others comprised script-writing legends like Stephen Volk, Richard Christian Matheson and Peter Atkins, not to mention top London literary agent, Ellen Gallagher - all of whom were hugely positive about spec-script writing (with the obvious caveats that you have to do a proper job, you have to be professional, you have to be prepared to take an awful lot of metaphorical smacks on the nose, and so forth), all of them having done this very thing themselves multiple times.

None of the panelists felt that the difficulties you will encounter trying to sell a speculative script should put you off writing one - if you've actually got the gumption to embark on that rocky road.

One of the biggest off-putters when it comes to writing speculatively (be it scripts, books, stories, anything really) is the amount of unpaid time you are required to spend at your keyboard. But if I was to look at this, say ... from a purely personal perspective, it would be sheer folly for me NOT to make this time available. In addition to having three ideas-folders that are, each one, the size of a telephone directory, I also have stacks of novellas, novelettes and short stories, all published many years ago but now fading into the mists of history. With the best will in the world, at least some of these have got to be script-worthy, and so as a professional writer I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't dig through them now and then and adapt as many as I could into screenplays. Hell, if the story's already written, the characters are already developed - what have you got to lose?

Ultimately, it's a matter for the individual. It boils down to how serious you are about writing. If you're in it for the long-haul, you've got to keep battering that rampart of indifference with every weapon you've got, and the more of those weapons you produce, the greater your chance of creating a breach.

The whole thing was summed up far more eloquently than I ever could by Richard Christian Matheson at the Spec Scripts panel back at Brighton in 2013, when he said:

"You have to have a really high threshold for rejection. In this business, golden opportunities turn black. You have to keep writing. There are an extraordinary number of set-backs to face. Take an inventory of your nature: where is your threshold? It's not about the one moment; it's about momentum. You have to be relentless - in a way that you're not about anything else in your life. And you do that by loving to write - so all the rejection doesn't punch a hole in you; it just makes you keep on going."

There is one other thing too. It actually COULD happen for you. It's not impossible by any means. And don't take my word for that. Look at the evidence. TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE was a spec script written by Randy Brown, which languished with no-one interested in it for 10 years, until 2012, when Clint Eastwood picked it up and made a major movie out of it. Back in 1996, Shane Black's spec script THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT sold for a mind boggling $4 million.

At the end of the day, a good idea well-written is a good idea well-written. It doesn't matter if no producer or film-maker happens to be looking for it at that moment in time. It may still find a home at some point, so it's worth doing it for that reason alone.

And if it doesn't ... or it it doesn't straight away, you've still learned something, because there's no better school of writing than actually writing - and on top of that you've got yourself a neat little calling card into the bargain.

Seriously guys, how are you better off NOT writing a spec script than writing one?

It's a no-brainer.

(Thanks to my fellow wordsmith, T.D. Edge - whose excellent website can be found HERE - for making a note of that fine Richard Christian Matheson quote back in 2013, and for granting me permission to reproduce it in this column).

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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY 
by Simon Wood (2015)

In Simon Wood’s heart-stopping thriller, The One That Got Away, PHd student and party girl, Zoe, has some rapid-fire growing up to do when she and her best friend, Holli, are abducted outside Vegas by desert serial killer, the Tally Man. Holli dies, but though Zoe escapes, she is both physically and emotionally scarred by the event, and finds her life in ruins. In fact, it gets worse than that. With one exception, the empathetic Inspector Ryan Greening, the cops are highly sceptical – there is no evidence of the abductions and soon Zoe herself becomes a suspect in Holli’s disappearance.

At the same time, the Tally Man – a deceptively clean-cut and yet highly obsessional psychopath – is very far from being finished with her …

This novel’s greatest strength in my view is its central character. Though initially a cold and distant figure, instinctively mistrustful of all those around her, Zoe remains likeable. A former free spirit, she is distressingly damaged by her experience … so you feel for her, you empathise with her pain. But at the same time, she isn’t cowed by trauma. In fact, she is driven by it to change her life, to become a hardened survivor, and in this you cheer her – because a key theme of this book is that fighting back, while not always desirable, may sometimes be a necessity if you want to make it through (especially when, as in this case, you can find no help among the grey faces of bureaucracy that surround you).

Of course, while Zoe struggles to convince the cops that she is the victim, the real killer – cool, intelligent, resourceful and relentless – gets ever closer, finally launching a protracted and carefully planned assault by which he intends to reclaim Zoe for his collection. Tired and alone, our heroine must face and resist this deranged aggression in almost complete isolation – which, though she is no longer the panic-stricken ‘fraidy-cat she was at the beginning, is a challenge of nightmarish proportions …  

Okay, this is a straightforward and simple idea. And yes, I’ve seen it done before, though rarely as well as this. The only real problem with this novel is finding enough time in which to sit down and read it, because trust me, it’s unputdownable. It starts out at 100 mph, and maintains that rip-roaring pace all the way through, the narrative careering from one hair-raising set-piece to the next. Some minor criticisms have been levelled at it: that it doesn’t possess enough twists and turns (virtually none, if I’m honest); that any cops behaving as some of these guys do would surely lose their jobs. But hey, it’s a great read … it keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you turning the pages, and what else is a thriller really supposed to do?

The One That Got Away gets my strongest recommendation, though as I say it’s another one you’ll need to find time for, because once you start you won’t want to stop. 

As usual, and purely for fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if The One That Got Away ever makes it to the screen (and in this case, I’d be surprised if that didn’t happen):

Zoe Sutton – Emilia Clarke

Inspector Ryan Greening – Jared Padalecki

Marshall Beck, the Tally Man – Timothy Olyphant

A roadtrip north, with demons on my mind

I’ve recently read another awesome piece of dark fiction, THE DEMONOLOGIST by Andrew Pyper, which I’d like to bring to everyone’s attention, but you’ll find my full review of it at the lower end of this column. Scroll down now if you so wish, though if you fancy a more leisurely stroll first, here’s a quick rundown on my last couple of days, which comprised a pretty remarkable journey from bookshop to bookshop across what seemed like the whole of the England's wild north. This is not the kind of thing that happens regularly in the life of an author, but it’s certainly an experience to remember when it does …

The Great White North was the Great Green, Cork-Brown and Generally Misty North these last two days of mid-March, as I travelled uphill and down dale, ploughing back and forth between North Yorkshire, Northumbria and Cumbria in a pre-arranged quest to meet those many gallant folk who fight the good fight in the cause of that institution so beloved by so many of us, and yet probably widely underappreciated too: the small, independent bookshop.

Among other narrow, winding routes, I followed the ‘Old North Road’ (any cool fanboy types remember that old story of mine?), and crisscrossed the respective forests of Loon, Gisburn and Grizedale, and all the way called in at town and village bookstores, meeting the managers and sales staff, and signing piles of Heck novels.

The whole delightful thing was arranged for me by those kind folk at HarperCollins, who not only pre-booked the meets-and-greets, but even provided a driver for one lengthy stretch of the trip – thanks for that, Mike (did those bleak moorland roads get a bit dicey, or what?) – though I think I must have spent 12 hours at the wheel myself over the last couple of days. I was a bit stiff when I finally got home yesterday night.

The whole charabanc kicked off with a cracking event at the White Rose Book Café in Thirsk, where, in company with successful children’s author, Rob Biddulph, I met a load of local booksellers, all hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic folk who are seriously dedicated to their trade. I was treated to a lip-smacking three-course dinner at The Black Lion (which I washed down with copious beers), made an impromptu speech – which seemed to go down okay – and then was allocated a very cosy room upstairs in a delightfully olde worlde hotel, The Golden Fleece.

The following day, we really hit the road, traversing the wildest, most windswept realms of England’s far north, skirting mountain, fell and forest, at times barely seeing another human being, but always receiving warm welcomes in those quaint little bookshops on our itinerary. In fact, at the Kendal branch of Waterstones, a customer I’d just signed a copy of HUNTED for collapsed on the spot and had an immediate epileptic fit. That’s no lie, though I don’t think it was due to the excitement of meeting me (even though she afterwards, jokily, said that it was). She recovered quickly and safely, so there was nothing to worry about.

Overall, it was an amazing couple of days. Huge thanks go to everyone who attended these events and made me feel so welcome. Off the top of my head – and I really hope I’ve not missed anyone out (please remind me if I have)! – here are some of the folk I encountered who were such good company and so interested in stocking and promoting my novels: Bookends (Carlisle and Keswick), Waterstones (Carlisle and Kendal), White Rose Books (Thirsk), Forum Books (Corbridge), the Little Ripon Bookshop (Ripon), Drake Bookshop (Stockton), the Grove Bookshop (Ilkley), Bertram Books (wholesalers), and the Booksellers Association. Thanks also to the guys at Harper who facilitated the experience: Mike, Olivia, Ben, Mick, Harriet, and Helen and Helena back in the office (as before, I sincerely hope I’ve not missed anyone out – please feel free to correct me, if I have).

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For those further interested in this type of thing, here is a blog I penned at the beginning of the month for the HarperCollins INDIE THINKING website, on the subject of small independent booksellers (in this case with a slight bias towards second-hand bookshops) and my lifelong love-affair with them …

I owe my late father a great deal, not least my love of books – which he infected me with at a very early age, but also a love of bookshops. I suppose people would expect a writer to say something like that, but for me it’s actually a very personal thing, and not just for reasons of nostalgia, though that comes into it too.

To start with, let’s tear ourselves away for a second from this current age, wherein so many of us lead such rapid-fire lives that we don’t have time to browse for books any more, but purchase our reading material online or pop distractedly into our high street chain-stores, where all the new best-sellers are arrayed in front of us on a display stand so that we can quickly grab one and be on our way again.

No, I’m talking about that other world of book-buying; that easier, gentler, more discerning world. The one I was introduced to – as I say, by my Dad – quite often while we were holidaying somewhere else in the UK, exploring quaint villages or country towns in the Lake District or the Scottish Highlands, or down in Cornwall or the Cotswolds.

It became part and parcel of those dreamy holidays, our regular visits to the many bookshops we discovered, which almost without fail were small and discreet, tucked away in cathedral mews or down the ends of harbour-side alleys. Just talking about atmospheric shops like that brings back a rush of fond memories: the clangour of the door-bell when you entered; the combined smells of dust, pipe-smoke and sun-warmed leather binding; the respectful murmur of polite enquiries at the counter; the rustle of age-yellowed pages from the browser alongside you …

That is something a great many of us have lost in these days of e-readers and orders-by-iPhone: the sheer joy of working your way along the shelves, searching through innumerable titles of a type you would rarely encounter during one of your quick-fire visits to the city centre. And it wasn’t just aesthetically pleasing; it actually paid dividends!

My personal preference is for dark and scary fiction, everything from thriller novels to collections of ghost stories. I’m a lifelong collector too; it’s been my quest of decades to create an immense library of the mysterious, the brooding and the macabre. And how often on these trips this tenacity and perseverance was rewarded – and not just in days long past.

One particularly joyous occasions in the 1990s, by which time I was grown up and had my own family, we were heading north when we happened to call in at Cartmel, a Cumbrian village famous mainly for its racecourse but also for its medieval church and its dramatic encircling fells, and on days when the race-meet is not in town, for its rapid return to the status of sleepy hamlet, when only the occasional clatter of hiking boots or lazy yapping of a dog will disturb the peace. Here, after lunching in a local pub, I followed a chalkboard sign which simply read BOOKSELLER, passed under an ivy-covered arch and at the end of a narrow passage, discovered a tiny shop with mullioned windows and an open door.

Tiny on the outside maybe, though indoors it was a virtual Tardis, seeming to physically expand as I wandered from one shelf-lined room to the next, each one crammed with books, which for once were ranked in completely comprehensible order. I found the Horror/Thriller section without difficulty, and there was blown away by the treasures on offer: Not just classics of the genre, but rarities and collectables too: authors whose work had long been discontinued by their publishers, titles that were deleted decades ago – and so many of them high on my ‘want-want-want’ list.

To start with, almost the entire series of the Pan Horror Stories occupied the top shelf. I’d been an avid hunter of these anthologies since I was far too young to legally read them. I was only a handful away from a full set. But now, in one fell swoop, I’d acquired them all. There was also a bunch of classics from the Arkham House vault, not to mention original paperback editions of two of my favourite hard-as-nails crime novels, Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis and Hell is a City by Maurice Procter.

What a haul that was. The first day of my holiday and I’d provided myself with a month’s worth of quality reading, and purely because I followed in the family tradition of refusing to pass the local independent bookshop without checking inside.

Sadly, that smashing little place, whose name, somewhat criminally, I have forgotten, has long ceased to trade (what a sadness it was the first day I called back there, to find it empty). But it can’t be a surprise that even today I get no end of pleasure from the same pastime: invading every little side-street bookshop I see in every new town I visit.

So what can we learn from this? Well, it’s pretty simple. Support your local booksellers. Unfortunately, they’re a tad like sunny spells – there’s never any guarantee they’re here to stay. So get through that door and ring that bell at every opportunity.

It’s not like it’ll be chore.

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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and fantasy) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

THE DEMONOLOGIST by Andrew Pyper (2013)

Outline

Nothing is going right in the life of Professor David Ullman. He’s an expert in demonic literature, in particular Milton’s Paradise Lost, but he’s also an atheist, so he gets no spiritual fulfilment from this. In addition, his home life is a mess, his marriage falling apart and his 12-year-old daughter, Tess, suffering from depression. Then he learns that his best friend, Elaine O’Brien, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In an effort to get away from it all, Ullman accepts a curious invitation to travel to Venice and bring his expertise to bear on “a phenomenon”. Taking Tess with him, he embarks on what he hopes will be a short but welcome holiday. However, the phenomenon turns out to be the apparent and rather horrible possession of an unknown man in a dingy backstreet house. Bewildered and distressed, Ullman returns to his hotel, only to find Tess in a similar condition, standing on the roof. Before he can intervene, she throws herself into the Grand Canal, screaming two words: “Find me!”

When the police search, no body is recovered. But Ullman saw the incident with his own eyes, and is certain his daughter is dead. He returns to the States, devastated, but soon embarks on a mission to learn more about the evil spirit he confronted in that grubby old house.

So begins a journey from religious denial to religious conviction for David Ullman. And it’s a very arduous journey indeed, a demonic entity that he’s only previously encountered in fictional work leading him from pillar to post across North America with a series of complex clues. It’s also a journey he must make with an extremely dangerous man on his heels, a proficient killer who calls himself ‘George Barone’ after a famous Mafia hitman. Whoever this guy really is and whoever’s paid him to pursue Ullman are details that remain elusive for the time-being. All that matters initially is Ullman surviving and unravelling the devilish puzzle that has been laid in front of him in the seemingly vain hope that, at the end of it all, he might find Tess, and that she might – just might! – still be alive …

Review

In some ways, The Demonologist is more like a road trip than a horror novel, but be under no illusions. For all its arthouse trappings, it is a horror novel, and in some ways a very traditional one. It’s not even low on gore – there are killings aplenty, while the demon, when it appears, will be very familiar in its motives and manners to those imagined by orthodox religious folk.

And ultimately, at least at subtext level, that’s what this is all about: a soul’s voyage from darkness to light. It’s been suggested that in some ways it mirrors Satan’s journey in Paradise Lost; he too clawed his agonising way out of the pit, though in his case there was no chance of redemption at the end.  

David Ullman is a strange kind of hero – somewhat stiff, somewhat stuffy, quite superior on some occasions, and yet vulnerable and uncertain in others (he’s been dealt a pretty crappy hand, after all!), and for much of the time in this book, he’s terrified, relying on intellect rather than raw courage. For all that, he’s a nice guy in his odd, introspective way. So you can’t help but root for him along every inch of his difficult path.

I personally wasn’t terrified by The Demonologist, even though I first noticed it in various ‘top 10 scariest novels’ lists. But I was intrigued and pleasantly unnerved (the hitman is in many ways your very worst nightmare – an utterly cold, completely unemotional professional murderer), and once I got into it, I found it a damn good read. It’s taut, tense, and while it might not keep you awake at night, it will certainly keep you turning the pages.

As usual, just for fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if The Demonologist someday makes it to the screen (I’ve heard that a movie version is in development, but we’ll have to wait and see):

Professor David Ullman – Brian Cranston

Elaine O’Brien – Mayim Bialik

George Barone – Viggo Mortensen

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At the risk of making myself look less heroic and melodramatic, that pic at the top of this column is sadly not a shot of my good self striking  a 'lord of all I survey' pose on the edge of a typically dark and silent northern lake, but Heck from the cover of HUNTED. For those interested, that image was originally going to be part of the cover for DEAD MAN WALKING  the fourth Heck novel, the one actually set in the Lake District ... but for some reason it was pushed back to the fifth and most recent in the series.

The Bookends picture is by Kenneth Allen, the Little Ripon shot used by courtesy of the Little Ripon Bookshop.

Murderous mutterings: the city and the sea

Well ... NOIR AT THE BAR at Carlisle last week was a fantastic occasion.

I felt hugely honoured to be invited to participate in the first of these remarkable events ever to be held in England. On arrival, it was no surprise to find myself on the podium (so to speak) with some serious British crime-writing talent, but I was totally blown away by the huge and enthusiastic attendance by local crime fans.

More about NOIR AT THE BAR in a minute, but first a quick note to the effect that my detailed review of Frank De Felitta's terrifying SEA TRIAL can be found at the lower end of this column, so just scroll down to it when you get tired of my usual blather.

Now, back to NOIR AT THE BAR. For those interested, by origin this is an American institution first pioneered by crime blogger Pete Rozovsky (of  DETECTIVES BEYOND BORDERS) in Philadelphia back in 2008 (as shown above), and finally brought to the UK in June last year, when the inaugural event was organised by Brit crime writers, JAY STRINGER and RUSSEL D. McLEAN, in Glasgow.

In concept, it's not especially radical, but it is a tad unnerving: a gang of crime and thriller writers pick a public bar on a specific night, and gather there in the beer fumes and the low-key lighting and, when they are able to call the general clientele to order (folk who can gain admittance free-of-charge and without tickets!), read out selected extracts from their latest works.

The readings can be anything of the writers' choice, but almost invariably the guys and girls in the spotlight go for the moodiest, darkest and, well ... the most noirish thing they have penned.

I was amazed when I first heard about this. I thought: "Suppose there are disturbances caused by drunks? Suppose the local bar-flies just don't want it and get irritable?" But that is the whole point. NOIR AT THE BAR is about edgy stuff: this is crime fiction at its hardest; volatile characters in a dangerous world of rain-wet streets, broken neon signs fizzling on and off, menacing shapes lurking under dripping archways, etc ... 

It takes a bit more planning than all this, of course. You can't just turn up at a pub and expect everyone to drop what they're doing. It needs to be prearranged, and in the case of the Carlisle NOIR AT THE BAR, the plaudits for this must go to three hardened crime-writers in their own right, the legendary trio, Crime Ink-Corporated: MATT HILTON, GRAHAM SMITH and MIKE CRAVEN (all pictured here).

The venue was the MOO BAR, smack in Carlisle city centre; a real 'spit-and-sawdust' place, as we used to refer to them, with an enormous range of real ales on offer, a bunch of very hard-working staff, and, as I said before, a smashing crowd, who packed it to the outer doors and remained rapt through every reading. 

The organisers were subsequently delighted with the way the evening went, and rightly so. It was tremendously successful. I shared the platform with some amazing fellow crime-scribes: ZOE SHARP, NEIL WHITE, DAVID MARK, JAMES HILTON, LUCY CAMERON, TESS MAKOVESKY and JAY STRINGER. The line-up also included LINDA WRIGHT, who was the official 'wild card' reader. This latter is a very neat idea, which on each occasion will see a local amateur crime-writer drawn from a hat and invited to pariticpate. Linda more than held her own, but I think each one of us gave it everything we had, every presenation ending on a high note, with cheers and clapping from the gathered crowd. 

There was no particular order of play. We were drawn in lots from David Mark's ever reliable flat cap, and I found myself second-from-last. My chosen extract came from the most recent Heck novel, HUNTED, a sequence which saw Heck snare a Nottingham murder suspect by playing a very nasty trick on him at the back of his girlfriend's run-down council flat. 

I wasn't sure whether this would be the best plan - mainly because this chapter was already in the public domain having been put out by Avon as a taster before HUNTED was even published. But I needn't have worried. The attendance was hugely warm and appreciative. So good was the atmosphere that I didn't even feel vaguely nervous as I stepped up to the microphone (I mean, you can see how relaxed I am here ... honest).

Overall, it was a great event. As I say, it's the first one ever to be held in England, and a very worthy start to what will hopefully be an ongoing series of such entertainments. I was so inspired that it occurred to me to try and mount one in Wigan. We are close to Manchester and Liverpool here, and have no shortage of crime-writing talent in this vicinity.

So this is the question ...

Can we do a NOIR AT THE BAR here in Wigan? I'll be giving it some thought, but feel free to have your own say in the Comments box below.

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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

A new series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror, fantasy and sci-fi novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

SEA TRIAL by Frank De Felitta (1980)

Outline

When adulterous businessman, Phil Sobel, and his married mistress, Tracey, embark on a secret boat trip to the Caribbean, they anticipate it will be the holiday of a lifetime. But they have no concept of the horrors ahead.

Rather than taking an official cruise, Phil and Tracey opt for a private charter run by a Florida couple, Captain Jack McCracken and his almost impossibly hospitable wife, Penny, who, as well as their luxurious motor-yacht (the amusingly named Penny Dreadful) also guarantee excellent seamanship and gourmet cooking.

Everything seems perfect. Captain Jack is a slightly odd fish – a bit distant, a bit philosophical, and he plays up outrageously to his self-image as a salty seadog. But Penny is very capable and can’t do enough for her guests, the sun is blazing and the sea that shimmering ‘swimming pool’ blue, so there’s no reason at all to assume this’ll be anything other than a luxurious experience.

Phil and Tracey feel they’ve finally got away from the stresses and strains of their deceitful life in New York

But only a couple of days in, things start going wrong: minor accidents and malfunctions, which gradually impinge on the couple’s enjoyment. In addition, the further they draw from land, the more their relationship with their hosts subtly changes. At first this is driven by necessity, the yacht’s systems failing and everyone having to pull their weight. But in a short time, Phil and Tracey are being treated less like paying customers on the boat and more like employees, and underpaid, ill-treated employees at that.

And of course by now there is no sign of land, and the two lubbers don’t have the first clue where they are …

Review

If you’re a fan of both sea horrors and psycho thrillers, you can’t do much better than Sea Trial. Okay, it’s an old novel, one that’s been swimming around in the back of my awareness for several decades, and which for some unfathomable reason (alright, enough puns!) I’d failed to take a chance on. Well, now I have – and I’m very glad.

It’s a simple enough yarn, following a very basic premise – innocent couple get lured far from their comfort zone by the falsely charming, and are then plunged into a web of insanity. But it’s written in absorbing fashion, relying initially on brief but ominous hints that things may not be all they seem, and once the downward tilt towards disaster finally begins, accelerating to a rollicking pace, the fear and agony poured on unrelentingly.

De Felitta also achieves the near impossible by transforming the beautiful and serene Carribean Sea – and it never changes from that, there’s rarely a cloud in the sky – into a metamophorical desert where all hopes of rescue and salvation are repeatedly dashed.

This book is also a masterclass in the creation of understated villainy. Fictional baddies who roar and bellow don’t impress me much. Likewise, baddies who scream abuse as they brutalise, or baddies who cackle insanely. You don’t get any of that here. Nontheless, this is terrorising ordeal for the hapless victims caught up in it. How frail we ordinary humans sometimes are when confronted by monsters of the realistic variety. How weak we appear when straying only a few nautical miles from our orderly world and finding ourselves in the realm of savages …  

As always, just for a bit of a laugh, here are my picks for who should play the leads if Sea Trial someday makes it to the screen (I believe Tom Selleck was once lined up for a TV movie version, but whether that ever happened, I’m not sure):

Phil Sobel – John Hamm

Tracey Hansen – Holliday Grainger

Jack McCracken – Iain Glen

Penny McCracken – Rachel McAdams

Mermaids, murderers and beers at the bar

This is the new cover for the latest book in the Terror Tales series. As you can see, it will be TERROR TALES OF CORNWALL.

The book isn't quite ready yet, so I can't post a direct link to it, or even give you a table of contents or a back-cover blurb. Suffice to say, it will be full of what you expect: roaring seas, jagged coasts, wild moors, lonely tin mines and isolated villages with curses on them. We've got witches, sea serpents, ghosts, faeries, sadistic killers, etc. As I say, it can't be unveiled just yet, but we're looking to publish sometime in late spring or early summer. In the meantime, enjoy the striking cover, provided as usual by the indefatigable Warrington-based artist, Neil Williams.

We've had more hi-jinks than usual with the cover this time. Initially, it was raunchier than usual in that the mermaid - predatory she-devil though she clearly is - was showing quite a bit of flesh. Most observers thought we should go with it anyway to try and capture the erotic allure of this ancient monster, but ultimately I bottled out. These books need wide exposure and we had it intimated to us that several websites might not be able to carry the image as they have a kind of unofficial 'no nipples' policy.

This is a slightly more chaste version. But I'm sure you'll agree, it's still pretty impressive.

(A quick note on the Terror Tales series, by the way. Gray Friar Press are currently between websites. They are constructing a brand new one, so at present there is no direct access to the Terror Tales books via the publisher. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but if you are interested in buying or reading about them, please feel free to follow the links to the Amazon pages and other online retailers, where they can still be purchased. Again, as soon as the new site is up and ready, I'll post all the details here).

On a completely different note, at the end of this column today, I'll be reopening my Thrillers, Chillers, Shockers and Killers feature for 2016, and this week it will focus on Peter James's latest crime masterwork, YOU ARE DEAD. As usual with my book reviews, you will find that at the end of this post.

Still on the subject of crime fiction, if there's anyone up here in the North or on the Borders who fancies a face-to-face chat, I'll be appearing in NOIR AT THE BAR at the Moo Bar on Devonshire Street, Carlisle, at 7pm on Thursday March 10, alongside a bunch of famous crime-writers, including Neil White, Zoe Sharp, Jay Stringer, James Hilton, Lucy Cameron and Tess Makovesky. If you're in the area at the time, why not pop in for a pint and listen to us blather on?

And now, a small diversion. A few months ago, I was approached by Readers Digest, who were looking to do some promotion work for their annual 100-Word Short Story Competition. They asked if I would produce one of my own, a chilling tale of exactly 100 words, to include in the publicity material. I scribbled a few down, and one was duly accepted and went to press.

It follows below. But as a treat - I just know you guys love your treats - the other best four of the bunch I supplied (in my opinion) will follow on from it. Happy (if speedy) reading ...

“Darren,” Sue whispered, “there’s someone in the wardrobe.”

“Go back to sleep,” he muttered. Her nervousness at night had always irritated him.

“No. We must check. That lunatic who escaped from the asylum …”

Grumpily, he climbed from the bed and fumbled his way across the darkened room. “For God’s sake, put the lights on,” he said over his shoulder.

The bedside lamp came on as Darren yanked the wardrobe open – and choked in horror. Sue stood facing him, propped against the compartment’s wooden back, throat slit.

“Is it anyone we know, darling?” came a singsong voice from the bed.

And now, as promised, the rest of them ...


When I went into the prison cell, it was awful. Tiny, dark and damp. The maniac, meanwhile, was waiting in its far corner, arms folded across his barrel chest.

“So you’re the doctor, are you?” he said.

I nodded, immediately wary.

He had a shaved bullet-head, eyes like chips of broken glass and the neck and shoulders of an ox. “You don’t like me already,” he said. “I can tell.”

“I don’t know you yet,” I murmured.
"You soon will.” He grinned as he adjusted the cuffs on his prison officer uniform. “We don’t care for wife murderers in here.”

“It’s your fault, mum,” the vacant-faced young man told the weeping woman. “You’ve been saying for ages it’s time I took a girl out.”

“Of course.” She glanced at the grim-faced policemen standing behind him. “You’re twenty-five. I was getting worried.”

“Well that’s all I did.” He stood stiffly as they applied the handcuffs. “It was Jenny from work. We went for a pizza and then to the cinema.”

“So what on Earth went wrong?” his mother sobbed.

“Nothing.” He shook his head dumbly. “I drove her to the old railway bridge afterwards. And that’s where I took her out.”

The costume shop at the end of the dingy little back alley had always fascinated Miranda.

“Your mannequins are so lifelike she told its thin-faced proprietor. “May I touch?”

“Of course.”

The wax was smooth and cool under her fingertips.

He chuckled. “You must have believed those nasty rumours that I use dead bodies stuffed with straw?”

Shamefaced, she couldn’t deny it.

“Dead skin would never look as real as wax,” he added.

Then she knocked the mannequin over, breaking it. She gasped.

“On the other hand,” and he locked the shop door, “bones and internal organs do just fine.” 

“It’s the Mutilator for sure,” the DI said, grey-faced as he stepped outside the forensic tent.

The Police and Crime Commissioner’s heart sank. This madman had been terrorising the town for weeks now. “Are you absolutely certain?” she asked. “To be honest, I didn’t think there’d be a single body-part left that he hasn’t already collected.”

“There isn’t,” the DI said, loosening his collar. “That’s why this one isn’t missing anything.”

She felt a thrill of horror. “You don’t mean …?”

“We knew he was good with a meat cleaver. Seems he’s also a dab-hand with a needle and thread.”

*

THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

A series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and fantasy novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

YOU ARE DEAD by Peter James (2015)

Outline

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace faces one of his toughest ever challenges when, in the midst of moving house one rainy Christmas, at the same time as having to bury and grieve for a beloved colleague, he finds himself with two very serious crimes on his desk: a young woman is abducted from the garage below the flats where she lives, while elsewhere in the city a body is uncovered by workmen – this too belonged to a young woman, though by the looks of it she was killed at least a couple of decades ago. Initially there is no obvious connection, but then another girl disappears, and another, and it dawns on Grace with more than a smattering of horror that he might be investigating Brighton’s first serial murder case in 80 years.

You’d think the ace investigator with the ultra-reliable and professional team would be well equipped to deal with this. But these are tough times for all involved, Grace in particular – because suddenly there is fresh information about his first wife, Sandy, who disappeared 10 years earlier and who, for a brief time at least, he was suspected of having murdered. This is more than a little bit distracting for him, but never let it be said that any maniac – no matter how sadistic or deranged – can get the drop easily on Roy Grace …

Review

YOU ARE DEAD is the 11^th outing for Peter James’s popular police hero, and for my money one of the best yet.

Grace is a hugely likable character. Not just a sharp and fearless detective, or the cool hand on the tiller of what is almost always a massive and complex police operation, but an everyman too – life gets in the way for him much as it does for the rest of us mere mortals, he has personal issues and professional issues, things aren’t always great either at home or in the office. As such, we completely empathise with him. (He also has a remarkably warm relationship with his goldfish, Marlon, which I find charming and amusing in equal measure). But despite all this, of course, the killers keep coming – and someone has to catch them. Yes indeed, the Roy Grace novels are a deadly serious business.  

YOU ARE DEAD doesn’t just rattle along at the usual frenetic pace, hitting us with twists and curve-balls at every turn, working its way inevitably to another breakneck climax, but more so than almost any of the previous novels, it amply illustrates one of Peter James’s greatest trademarks – his astonishingly detailed research.

From the beginning with Grace, James set himself a difficult task, focussing on the SIO, the guy in command, and thus, with each book, needing to give us a constant and accurate overview of everything happening with the investigation. That would be a mammoth job even without the need to weave it into a fast and intriguing narrative. But James pulls it off in YOU ARE DEAD with his usual effortless aplomb. All the authenticity is there – you actually feel you’re in a real Incident Room, surrounded by the most up-do-date crime investigation technology, in company with coppers who look and sound like real coppers – and yet none of it is intrusive. James’s police protocols and procedures are bang-on, his understanding of even minor legalities is superb, his handling of police relationships as realistic as I’ve ever seen – yet this is background stuff; the narrative itself remains uncluttered, its pace relentless. Like all the others, this at heart is a very human story, one man determinedly pursuing an enemy of society with his wits and his courage, and risking life, limb and love in the process.

Another unforgettable entry in the Roy Grace canon. Absolutely terrific. 

As I usually do, and purely for fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if YOU ARE DEAD at some point makes it to the screen (there’s been talk for years about a TV series – which I personally would love to see, but I don’t think anything’s imminent, and even if it was, it obviously wouldn’t start with YOU ARE DEAD, so this one really is just for fun):

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace – Colin Firth

Cleo – Tamzin Outhwaite

ACC Cassian Pewe – Aiden Gillen

Here's Lucy: a new cop on the mean streets

I've had to field quite a lot of questions recently about when the next Heck novel will be coming out, will there be any more in the series, and is it conceivable that HUNTED, the most recent Heck adventure to date, will be the final outing for the lone-wolf detective with the know-it-all attitude and the dogged determination to pursue his prey to the very ends of the Earth?

Well, the short answer is ... no, it is nowhere near the end of the line for Heck. But it will be another year at least before there are any further Heck novels. And the explanation for that is relatively simple and hopefully non-too alarming.

I was writing Heck at a rate of two novels a year, and while it was fun it wasn't leaving me much time for anything else. On top of that, for quite a while I'd been wanting to pen something different.

One of the problems with writing the same characters all the time is that, despite your best efforts, you sometimes feel there's a danger it can get stale, a little samey. I don't think for one minute that this has happened with Heck, but I didn't want there to be even a danger that it might. So I had a conflab with the powers-that-be in Harper UK's incredible new home on the South Bank of the Thames, and we decided to give the Heck series a brief rest.

And when I say that, I mean it - a BRIEF rest, that's all. If it'll help soothe any nerves, the next Heck novel, THE BURNING MAN, is written and awaiting a few edits, and it can already be preordered. In the meantime, I decided I was going to have a crack at something else for Avon Books. Another thriller, obviously - as I rarely stray beyond the boundaries of dark fiction - but centred around a different set of characters and circumstances.

Most of my readers will know that the Heck novels are based at Scotland Yard, where the National Crime Group's most specialised division, the Serial Crimes Unit (of which Heck is a detective sergeant), embroils itself in a relentless hunt for Britain's serial killers. It is high-level crime-fighting by a bunch of people who have all the modern police's most sophisticated techniques and facilities immediately to hand.

But in the new novel, I fancied toning things down a little - going back to Division in fact, where more down-to-Earth kinds of coppers also walk a tightrope in the world of crime, but with less hi-tech backup and at the same time having also to deal with the grimy fall-out of it: the drunkenness and drug-addiction; the ruined lives; the desolate, vomit-covered streets; the brutalised, terrorised citizens.

I also wanted to revisit a character who first appeared, believe it or not, in a television drama I wrote back in 1993 called NO FURY (aka DIRTY WORK). Though that script was optioned several times, and a fairly well-known British TV actress expressed strong interest in it, it was never actually filmed and in due course all the rights reverted to me. The character in question was a certain LUCY CLAYBURN, a young but feisty uniformed constable in the Greater Manchester Police, who is very self-conscious that her family come from the wrong side of the tracks but determined all the same to make a big splash in this most difficult and macho of professions.

At the time of NO FURY, Lucy is already an effective copper with a good working-knowledge of her beat and the various villains and vulnerables who live on it, but what she really wants to do is join CID and start chasing the higher league criminals, the detritus of whose activities make life for everyone else so difficult. Don't be worried about encountering any spoilers here, by the way. NO FURY is long dead; monstrously dated, with big chunks of its original story subsequently cannibalised for other projects. The only survivor from it now is Lucy herself, and in the new novel in which she stars, she goes on to follow a very different path from the one I originally envisaged.

The novel is to be called STRANGERS, and I've just completed - as in this very morning - the first draft of it. All being well, I can announce that it will be published in summer this year. Again, there'll be no spoilers here, but I don't think anyone will mind if I give this much away ...

At the start of STRANGERS, Lucy is ten years in the job. She's an excellent uniformed copper, having spent all her service working the mean streets of Crowley, a run-down, largely unemployed Manchester borough sandwiched between Salford and Bolton. But she is still young and still has ambitions to join CID, the opportunity for which finally comes when a series of extremely horrific murders commences in the district, and the call goes out for young policewomen who don't mind getting their hands dirty to accept various, risky undercover assignments.

Naturally, Lucy volunteers - only to find herself near enough marooned in a dangerous and sordid world of prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, general purpose sleazeballs, and of course, gangsters.

From this point on, those who enjoy the Heck novels will probably know what to expect.

I'm an ex-copper and newspaper reporter, so I try not to pull punches when dealing with this kind of subject-matter. STRANGERS comes to us from a very dark and dingy place, where the gutters run with filth, there is always blood in the bus station toilets and syringes litter the back alleyways. I make no apologies for any of that, nor for presenting violent crime the way it is: brutish weaponry, savage beatings, horrible injuries, and a plethora of gleefully twisted, depraved and downright certifiable villains, the sort who get no pleasure in life unless they are hurting others.

Another inheritance from Heck is the action. Sorry if there are folk out there who prefer the armchair approach to criminal investigation, but that isn't me - nor is it Heck, nor Lucy Clayburn.

Lucy isn't Wonderwoman, but she's kicked more than a few doors down in her time and chased plenty of bad guys hell-for-leather across the city in her police car. That was how I always conceived her, and that's exactly how it is in this new book. Of course, it's going to be a slightly differerent experience from Heck in that Lucy is a woman, and if she wants to come out on top when there are hoodlums to be collared, she's going to have to use at least as much guile as brawn.

Anyway, I've said enough.

Hopefully I've now put everyone in the picture about where we stand with Heck. Watch out for THE BURNING MAN in 2017, but also for STRANGERS featuring Lucy Clayburn, the action/cop heroine who'll be introducing herself to you this year, and who, if everything goes well - and this is really up to you guys, I suppose - could well be embarking on what may be a whole new series of high-octane investigations.

(The top image and the bottom two come to us courtesy of Pixabay. The armed cop is by John Crosby).