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Posts Tagged ‘author’

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The UK cover for ‘Human Game’

In publishing on May 15, 2012 at 9:28 am

On Monday, my British publisher—Constable & Robinson—sent me the mock-up for the cover that will adorn the UK edition of Human Game. They’ve slightly altered the subtitle, “The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen,” streamlining it and using it almost as a tagline. The cover imagery is stark and derived from a scene in the book. I’m absolutely thrilled with the result.

The British edition hits stores March 7, 2013, which just happens to be my son’s second birthday. Perhaps it’s an omen. The book was three years in the researching and writing, so it’s quite rewarding to reach this phase of the publishing process.

It’s amazing how different the cover is from the US edition. Both are striking in their own way, but I think the British cover packs much more of an emotional punch. The American version, published by Penguin, will be in stores October 2.

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Meeting Dr. Gonzo: An encounter with Hunter S. Thompson

In Random thoughts on May 11, 2012 at 8:05 am

I whiled away a couple of hours this week reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." It brought back memories of the evening I met one of my literary heroes . . .

In May 1997, while living in Los Angeles, I went to Book Soup on the Sunset Strip to see Hunter S. Thompson. He was there signing copies of the Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967, his first volume of published letters. I had just graduated college with a bachelor’s in journalism. While in school, Thompson’s work was a near-constant companion. It wasn’t so much the writing I admired (though I do love his way with words) but the wild and eccentric personality that leapt off the page.

In person, Thompson did not disappoint. The signing had a conveyor belt quality to it. He didn’t do a reading or give any sort of talk. Fans simply filed past in a long line and were given a quick minute to grab his autograph and ask a question. He refused to scribble in the books themselves, choosing instead to scratch his name on a book plate, which was then placed in the book. He sat at a long table, his ever-present cigarette clamped in a long holder between his teeth. On the table sat a large grapefruit and a bottle of Chivas Regal, which he seemed to be working his way through with great enthusiasm. Johnny Depp, then preparing to play Thompson in the film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, stood nearby and watched the proceedings in silence.

My signed copy of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

Just before it was my turn to meet him, someone told Thompson there was a porn convention going on at the Palladium down the street. All the big starlets were in attendance. Thompson stood up and made as if to leave. A Book Soup staff member quickly stepped in and urged Thompson to stay put. I’m sure he would have taken off if given the chance. When it was finally my turn, I shook his hand and told him I’d just graduated with a degree in journalism. Did he have any advice for a young, struggling reporter with aspirations of becoming an author?

“You majored in journalism?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“What are you,” he asked in a slightly raised voice, “some sort of fucking freak?”

I was thrilled Hunter S. Thompson considered me freakish. When I asked him for advice, he replied without hesitation: “Go into advertising.”

He dully signed several bookplates for me, which I stuck in my copies of The Proud Highway, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Songs of the Doomed. My friend Dan, quite buzzed from our drinking session at Red Rock, was next. “I’m drunk,” he said, as he took a signed book plate from Thompson.

Smiling, Thompson replied, “It’s a great state to be in.”

Perfectly content, Dan and I scurried from the shop and returned to Red Rock, deeming it most appropriate to cap the evening off with a few more rounds.

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Experiences beyond the page

In books, Writing on April 24, 2012 at 7:01 am

A small relic associated with one of New York's most bizarre crimes.

An article filed from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Monday featured a great story from Scottish crime novelist Philip Kerr, who had a strange run-in with a Russian cop while researching a novel in the former Soviet Union. Without giving too much away, it involves bottle of vodka, a naked man, a frightened translator, and a frozen lake. Working on my own books over the years, I’ve had several interesting experiences. The most memorable ones are associated with the writing of my first published effort, On the House. The book details the murder of Michael Malloy in Prohibition-era New York by a gang of bumbling killers nicknamed the “Murder Trust.” Malloy survived multiple attempts on his life—each one more outrageous than the last—without realizing anyone was trying to kill him.

I spent quite a bit of time in New York researching the book. Many hours were spent in the basement of the Bronx courthouse, reviewing trial transcripts and other official papers. One afternoon, while I was going through a stack of folders, a rather large gentleman with his own pile of documents took a seat opposite me at the same table. He wore an ill-fitting suit that looked two sizes too small for him. His shirt, buttoned no more than midway up his chest, revealed a large gold pendant on a clunky chain. Nearly every finger boasted a thick glittery ring. He immediately struck me as a character out of “Goodfellas,” a sort of walking cliché. When I looked up at him, he smiled by way of greeting. I did likewise and returned to my research materials.

It's out of print now. Bummer.

“What are you working on?” he asked in a New York accent that seemed totally appropriate to the way he was dressed.

When I filled him in, he told me he was familiar with the Malloy story. Most people who grew up in the Bronx, he said, knew it. To be polite, I asked him what he was doing at the courthouse—and, with great enthusiasm, he told me.

“I’m researching a case, too,” he said. “Mine!”

It turned out that some years back this gentleman was accused of breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stealing a number of valuable jewels (I immediately stole another glance at his fingers). He was eventually picked up by the cops, charged, and convicted. He claimed to be innocent of said crime and hoped to find something in the case files with which he could overturn his conviction.

“Sounds to me like you need a good alibi,” I said, entertained by the story.

“Oh, I got a great alibi,” he said. At the same time some “loser was tossing my ex’s panty drawer” (his words), he was on the other side of town having sex with the victim’s sister. He did not phrase this in a g-rated manner—and, to this day, I have no idea what it means to have “porked the dog legs” off someone. But this guy had apparently done it and was proud of the achievement. The sister had refused to testify on his behalf because she didn’t want her sibling to know of the tryst. Having shared this rather sordid episode with me, the gentleman fished a business card from his pocket and passed it my way. His name was Pete, and he worked for what appeared to be a loan agency.

“You’re a loan officer?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Let’s just say I work in collections.”

I immediately got the hint and stopped asking questions. Pete, however, kept up his friendly banter and wanted to know how long I’d be in town. When I told him a couple of days, he volunteered to be a tour guide of sorts and promised to show me a New York most people don’t get to see. This, he said, would entail visits to a high-end brothel, a member-only club, and suppliers of whatever commodity I desired. When I told him my girlfriend would most likely disapprove, he said, “I ain’t gonna tell her.” This would be the point in a movie where an angel appears on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each urging me to follow their respective moral path. In the event, my sense of decency got the better of me. I thanked Pete for his kind offer but ultimately declined.

When I returned home to the Bay Area, I finished writing the book and shipped it off to my editor at Penguin. It hit stores in October 2005. One of the would-be killers in the story was a Bronx taxi driver named Harry Green who was paid a small fee to run a drunken Malloy over one frosty evening. For various reasons, Green failed in his objective. Subsequently, he was the only member of the Murder Trust not to meet their end in Sing-Sing’s electric chair. Shortly after the book’s publication, I received a very nice email from an elderly woman in Berkeley who had read the book and enjoyed it. Would I care, she asked, to meet in person? This woman was non-other than Harry Green’s widow. I was quite flabbergasted by the whole thing and naturally agreed to see her. Mrs. Green (I don’t want to reveal her first name for privacy’s sake) invited my girlfriend (future wife) and I to dinner at her daughter’s house.

Having spent more than a year writing a book about a gang who plots a fiendish murder, I wondered jokingly if I wasn’t being lured into a trap. Would the Green family tarnish my food with anti-freeze (as the Murder Trust had done to poor Malloy)? Or, would an aggrieved member of the clan try to run me over as I approached the house? In the event, it was a lovely evening. The dinner was a backyard barbecue. A long table had been set; the centerpiece was a diorama featuring a toy taxi running over an action figure. The Greens were wonderful people. Harry’s widow, then in her eighties, was a real firecracker with a great sense of humor. She met Harry after he had served ten years for his involvement in the Malloy case. She described him as a good man who had made a very bad choice. Upon his release from prison, he spent the remainder of his life on the right side of the law, working in various professions. I wish now I could remember all the details, but my notes from the evening are packed away somewhere!

At the end of the evening, as Katie and I got up to leave, the Greens gave me the toy taxi cab from the table’s centerpiece. It still sits on my writing desk today.

On the House unfortunately went out of print several years ago, but I hope that someday it makes a return. If it does, I’ll add an “Afterword” and detail the man Harry Green became.

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Writing room makeover

In creative spaces on April 19, 2012 at 9:01 am

Where I bang the keys . . .

Every writer dreams of having that perfect creative space, a place where they can retreat from the stresses of the real world and work in relative peace. The reality, of course, is many of us can’t afford a little studio out back or a separate office somewhere. The next best thing is a room in the house you can claim as your own. My hideaway is a bedroom upstairs I requisitioned as an office. The above picture is what the room currently looks like. I have long been threatening to do something with this space—to make it more of a writer’s retreat.

My dream involves installing a recliner, mini-bar, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—none of which will actually happen. If I really had my way—and the necessary cash to pull it off—I’d live and work in the English countryside. I’d own some quaint cottage with an appropriately English name, something along the lines of “Inkwell” or “Quill House,” on a wooded acre or two. It wouldn’t be far from a proper country pub. By proper, I mean stone fireplace, beamed ceilings, and no flashing fruit machines. The mornings would start with an early walk in the country—coffee mug in hand and dog at my side—followed by breakfast with the family. I’d then retire to my writing shed out back and get my daily quota of 1,000 words down on paper. With the writing finally out of the way, my wife and I would head to the pub for an evening drink and be home in time to catch the latest “Downton Abbey.” Yes, life would be grand.

Since I live in a suburban town in Northern California and not my native UK, I’ve had to amend my vision somewhat. I’ve started work on the project, though I’m not entirely sure what the end result will look like. Regardless, I’ll eventually post a picture of the great “Home Office Makeover.”

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My apologies to J.K. Rowling

In publishing on April 13, 2012 at 8:40 am

She looks utterly devastated, doesn't she?

Today, J.K. Rowling is a woman consumed by fear and anxiety. “But, why?” I hear you ask. The answer is simple: Her first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, comes out the same week as my humble effort, Human Game. The Parabolist of Potter, the undisputed queen of bestsellerdom, knows she has met a worthy opponent. In me, she faces a man with a few books released by respectable publishers but only purchased by a small circle of readers composed primarily of his wife, parents, and yours truly.

Yesterday, I discovered J.K. Rowling’s doomed tome hits stores a mere five days before mine. The poor lass; she’s probably in her Scottish castle, cursing her luck and kicking her priceless objets d’arts. I almost feel sorry for her when I consider the pressure she’s under. Expectations for her first non-Potter book are at a stratospheric level. Not only must she contend with fears of whether readers will embrace her as a “serious” novelist, she must now worry about the infinitesimal ding my book will make in her sales. Sorry, J.K., you can blame my publisher, Penguin, for the scheduling snafu.

True, her book will undoubtedly enjoy five months of pre-release publicity, rife with speculation about the plot and characters. Media outlets will hound her publicist to set up interviews, while pre-orders will likely push her book to the top of the bestseller lists months before it even comes out. But on the actual week when her publisher–Little, Brown and Company–thrusts The Casual Vacancy onto the reading public, a segment of the population will flock instead to purchase Human Game. Who are these people? The same folks I mentioned above: My wife, my parents, and me.

If the fates are particularly cruel, six inches of column space in some random book review section may even mention my book, cutting into the endless number of pages devoted to Rowling’s effort. It will surely be a bitter pill for the Goddess of Gryffindor to swallow.

Let it be known I take no pleasure in reducing one of the world’s most beloved storytellers to a quivering mass of insecurity and self-pity—but such is the cutthroat world of publishing. I wish there was something I could do, but things are out of my hands.

Sorry, J.K.

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First impressions: My opening paragraphs . . .

In Writing on April 2, 2012 at 8:41 am

It’s always fun, when in a bookstore, to pick up a random book and read the opening paragraph. Over the years, this exercise has resulted in the purchase of books I might have otherwise missed or ignored. I discovered Fred Vargas’s The Chalk-Circle Man this way, which soon led me to her other wonderful books. As a teen, the opening lines of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye hooked me instantly. I’ve been a fan of Philip Marlowe’s adventures ever since.

It goes without saying that a great opening sets the tone of a book. Ian Fleming and John Steinbeck are responsible for my two favorite opening paragraphs. Fleming’s introduction to Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, is brilliant for its sense of atmosphere:

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling–a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension–becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

The opening to Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is wonderful for its vivid evocation of setting:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.

While I’m certainly not attempting to compare myself with the likes of Fleming and Steinbeck (!), I thought I’d share the opening paragraphs to my previous books. I hope you enjoy . . .

On the House (Berkley, October 2005):

This story is true. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent, for nearly all the participants were perpetrators of nefarious schemes and bodily harm. They were low-rent thugs and booze-addled crooks surprisingly incompetent in their criminal undertakings. This is not a tale of smooth operators in silk suits. It is, instead, a story of bungling ineptitude, of a crime so convoluted, authorities were “admittedly skeptical” of its veracity when it first came to light. Once the facts were established, Bronx District Attorney Samuel J. Foley declared the scheme to be “the most grotesque chain of events in New York criminal history.”

In the Dark (Berkley, November 2006); Published in the UK as The Blackout Murders (JR Books, March 2008):

A dark, cramped space of stagnant air, the bomb shelter’s interior smelled of cold mortar and stale sweat. A stone seat ran the length of one inner wall, while, on the floor, an electric lantern cast a pallid circle of light across the morbid discovery made earlier that morning. The brick-built shelter was one of several on Montague Place, Marylebone—near Regent’s Park in Central London—and one of countless similar structures that lined the streets of the capital. It was just shy of nine o’clock, and a harsh winter’s sun backlit the city’s shattered skyline. Daybreak came hard to London, a metropolis whose landscape had been forever altered by incendiary and high-explosive—but the air-raid sirens had remained silent the night before.

War of Words (Union Square Press, May 2009):

A profession not without risk, the job of newspaper editor attracted men of stern stuff in the testosterone-rich days of old San Francisco. Nearly fatal beatings and bloodletting by pistol and bowie knife were regularly occurring phenomena outside (and sometimes inside) the sanctity of the newsroom. Gunpowder and steel proved highly effective in expressing one’s displeasure with an article–more so than a letter to the editor. An angry reader gunned down a reporter in the autumn of 1852 outside Sacramento after the scribe penned an editorial criticizing the governor. One editor got the picture and posted the following notice on his office door: “Subscriptions received from 9 to 4; challenges from 11 to 12 only.”

Dark City (Ian Allan, London, October 2010):

Christmas shoppers crowded narrow Birchin Lane in the early afternoon hours of Friday, 8 November 1944, their collars turned up against the heavy fog that hung over the city. They paid scant attention to the Vauxhall that turned into the street shortly after two-thirty and came to a stop outside Frank Wordley’s jewelry store at number 23. Three young men, one of them carrying an axe, clambered out of the vehicle and approached the store’s front window.

The Killing Skies (Spellmount/The History Press, London, March 2006):

Memories still lingered. A generation of British men wiped out in the mud-swamped, rat-infested trenches of the Western Front. A war not yet far removed by the passing of time. Now, on a Sunday, a mere two decades after the Great War’s guns fell silent, the BBC carried the subdued tones of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, broadcasting from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street . . . At 11 a.m. on 3 September 1939, as barrage balloons ascended above London, Big Ben tolled the hour of war.

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The mercurial tastes of readers . . .

In books on March 29, 2012 at 8:55 am

Why do so many books fail to make a big impression on the public, while others become blockbusters? This is a question I’ve been pondering since the emergence of Fifty Shades of Grey, the book dubbed “Mommy Porn” by the press, which has become a sales phenomenon. What started out as a piece of Twilight fan fiction on the Web has morphed into a New York Times mega-seller, earning author E.L. James and the small Australian press that initially published the book a six-figure deal from Vintage. According to the Los Angeles Times, the major studios are lining up to purchase the film rights.

Richard Perry/New York Times

For those who might not be familiar with the story, Fifty Shades of Grey chronicles the sexual adventures of twenty-something literature student Anastasia Steel, apparently a virgin at the beginning of the book, and her sadomasochistic boyfriend, young billionaire Christian Grey. The book, according to the articles I’ve read (seriously, I haven’t read the book), is pretty much one long sex scene, replete with hardcore bondage, domination, and other things that would have made Lady Chatterley blush. Make no mistake, I’m no prude. The subject matter is not one I find offensive—I’m simply curious about the book’s popularity.

I don’t begrudge James her success. Indeed, more power to her. But what is it about the book that’s fueling its overwhelming popularity? Is it simply sex? If that’s the answer, does this mean Henry Miller’s books will start appearing on the bestseller lists? What was it about Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy that spawned a similar frenzy? I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels and enjoyed them all, but I’m at a loss to explain why those books in particular struck such a powerful chord with people. It’s a tragedy Larsson didn’t live long enough to see his books become the pop-culture phenomenon they did.

What I not only find puzzling–but disturbing–is Snooki, whose book . . . I can’t even finish typing this sentence. Let’s move on.

I’m currently reading Into Africa by adventurer Martin Dugard. The book details Henry Stanley’s epic 1871 search for missing explorer David Livingstone in the heart of Africa (their eventual meeting was immortalized by Stanley’s famous greeting: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”). The book is a stellar adventure story written in a lively manner that almost dares the reader not to turn the page. It’s one of the best works of narrative nonfiction I’ve picked up in a long while and reads like a real-life Indiana Jones story.

It’s a wonderful character study of two very complex individuals: Livingstone, the missionary bent on finding the source of the Nile; and Stanley, a journalist plagued by failure and desperate to make something of his life. Why didn’t this book generate mammoth sales? It has drama, human conflict, adventure, a touch of mystery—but not much sex.

An author I’ve mentioned on this blog before is James Crumley, whose violent, drug-fueled detective novels rank amongst the best crime fiction I’ve read. He has been cited as a major influence by such bestselling authors as Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane, yet he never found a large audience. Crumley, who died in 2008, voiced his thoughts on the matter in a 2001 interview with the Dallas Morning News:

I’m not middlebrow and middle class. Sure, I’d like it if more people read the books. My children would like it. My ex-wives would like it. But that’s just not what I’m about.

The opening line to Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss is considered by many to be one of the finest of the genre:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

The whole book, mind you, is phenomenal.

Otto Penzler, founder of the Mysterious Press and owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, could never account for Crumley’s lack of mainstream success. “He just never found a mass audience,” he told the the Los Angeles Times in 2008, “and I wish I could tell you why. I don’t know.”

As the author of six non-bestselling books (well, one did appear in a brief flash on the Barnes and Noble paperback bestseller list about six years ago) and my next book due out in October, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever beat the odds. If great authors like Crumley go their entire career hidden in the literary shadows, what chance do other scribes have?

All writers, of course, are prone to such feelings every now and then. The trick is not to dwell on them too long. If we knew why some books meet with great success, while others go out in a blaze of obscurity, we’d all be writing massive bestsellers.

Who knows? Maybe in the end, it is all about sex.

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The agony of book signings

In Uncategorized on March 21, 2012 at 9:26 am

I posted this on my blog last year but felt compelled to share it again. As someone who has endured the agony of a poorly attended book signing (okay, several poorly attended book signings), this video really struck a chord. There’s nothing more humbling than showing up for an event and finding only two of twenty or thirty seats occupied. It’s actually worse than no one showing up. If zero people attend, you can cut your losses and head home. If one or two folks show up, you have to entertain them with a reading. This is embarrassing for everyone involved. The author is embarrassed by the fact only two people made an appearance, and the two attendees are embarrassed that they’re the only ones there.

Mystery writer Parnell Hall vents his frustration in this mighty fine song . . .

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Presenting . . . the cover to ‘Human Game’

In books, publishing on March 6, 2012 at 7:31 am

Last week, Penguin sent me the mock-up of the cover to Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen. I’m pleased with the end result and find the red color theme to be pretty striking. The faded swastika behind the main title adds a menacing touch to the overall presentation without being distracting. I hope it lures readers! The book hits stores in the US October 2, with a UK release date scheduled for early next year.

Human Game is the non-fiction sequel to the famous World War II story of The Great Escape, the book by Paul Brickhill that became the classic 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. The book and film (a personal favorite) detail the mass breakout of 76 Allied airmen from Stalag Luft III, a prison camp deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. What made the breakout famous was not merely the number of men involved, but the operation’s overall logistics. All escapees were supplied with German money, fake travel documents and identity papers, homemade compasses, maps, and rations. Outfits, ranging from business suits to German military uniforms, were tailored for every escapee. The men spent more than a year digging three escape tunnels. As I write in Human Game, this endeavor alone required . . .

“. . . the requisitioning of 1,219 knifes, 582 forks, 408 spoons, 246 water cans, 1,699 blankets, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 1,212 pillows, 655 straw mattresses, 34 chairs, the frames of 90 bunk beds, 3,424 towels, 10 single tables, 52 twenty-man tables, more than 1,200 bed bolsters, nearly 1,400 beaded battens, 76 benches, 1,000 feet of electrical wiring and 600 feet of rope. Four thousand bed boards were used to shore-up the tunnels. Lights wired into the camp’s electrical supply provided illumination underground; air pumps made of discarded kitbags, empty powdered-milk tins, wood-framing, wire mesh and tar paper supplied fresh air to those doing the digging.”

What the men accomplished was nothing short of amazing.

Of the 76 “Great Escapers,” only three made it back to England. Twenty-three were returned to various prison camps. The remaining 50 were rounded up by the Gestapo and executed. The movie ends with the condemned being shot en masse in a field by a German machine gunner. In reality, the men were taken in groups of twos and threes to isolated killing fields throughout the Reich and shot in the beck of the neck. The bodies were destroyed at local concentration camps and crematoriums. The movie always left me wondering who, exactly, was responsible for killing the escapees and what, if anything, became of them? In 2007, I decided to find out. Human Game is the result of three years of researching and writing.

In England, where I’m originally from, “The Great Escape” comes on every Christmas day—a strange, but enjoyable, tradition. I first watched it with my grandfather when I was a child, and it left an indelible impression. Second only to my grandfather’s wartime service in the Royal Air Force, “The Great Escape” launched my lifelong interest in the Second World War. Tales of ordinary people rising to meet extraordinary challenges have always fascinated me—and the investigation into the “Great Escape” murders is such a story.

Tasked with tracking down the Gestapo gunmen was a small team from the RAF’s Special Investigating Branch. The men, detectives in their civilian lives, arrived in Germany in September 1945—seventeen months after the killings—to pick up a trail long gone cold. The team would traverse a Germany divided amongst the American, British, French, and Russian occupiers, all of whom had their own agendas. Through sheer determination and crack investigative skills, the team brought 21 killers to justice in a hunt that spanned three years and pierced the darkest realms of Nazi fanaticism.

I hope readers, upon the book’s release, find the story as enthralling as I do!

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Dreams of a non-bestselling author

In Writing on February 28, 2012 at 6:34 am

It’s safe to say most writers out there dream of quitting their day job and pursuing “The Craft” full time. This, for me, was once an all-consuming obsession. All I ever thought about was that moment, sometime in the future, when I’d turn in my letter of resignation and run from the office, laughing like a madman. While I still hope to someday be a full-time author, I now do a better job keeping my hopes grounded. There is, naturally, a part of me that hopes the next book will be “the one,” but now I try to focus more on the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that comes from having a book published.

As I write this, my manuscript for Human Game—a non-fiction story detailing the Allied manhunt for a Gestapo murder squad in post-war Germany—is winding its way through the editing process at Penguin in the US and Constable & Robinson in the UK. It’s the first time I’ve had a book accepted simultaneously by publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s exciting—but it also means I have to be extra vigilant when it comes to keeping my expectations in check. Still, I occasionally wonder what I’d do if this did indeed turn out to be the breakout book.

The only thing I’d change in my approach to writing would be the time of day I sit down to work. I write late at night when I have the house to myself—but as I get older (I’m 37), I find it increasingly difficult to stay up past midnight! If I had the luxury of being a full-time author, I’d get my scribbling done first thing in the morning and take my afternoons off. As for my daily quota: When working on my last book, War of Words, I aimed for 1,000 words a day. With Human Game, I was happy if I got 750 words down. Granted, I wrote the book with a newborn in the house. Surprisingly, Human Game turned out to be my longest manuscript to date, clocking in at 95,000 words.

What really appeals to me about being a full-time author, isn’t necessarily the writing—it’s the freedom of time. Yes, I’d be happy spending many hours churning out pages, but I love the thought of being able to take a break during the day, whenever I wanted, to spend time with my wife and son—or catch up on my reading. I realize, of course, this is something of an opium dream. Very few authors achieve a level of success that allows them to write fulltime, but life would be pretty dull without a dream or two.

So I wait for the breakout book—and, in the meantime, I write . . .

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