the left room

Just a quick update, while I battle through deadline Hell on the next book.

A while ago, I wrote a short story called 9 Songs. I’ve decided to post it online here, with a brief introduction explaining the circumstances that caused it to be written. You can read it here. I hope you like it.

I thought my worst ever review was lost forever, but, thanks to the wonders of wayback, I found it online last week. A bunch of writers on twitter were comparing war stories, so I went searching for it, then stuck up a link. It got a flurry of sympathetic responses, and I thought I’d post it here too, and say a few things about it.

Housekeeping. Since it’s not properly online anymore, and was pseudonymous in the first place, I’m just going to post the whole thing without feeling too much guilt. But the link to it on wayback is here. And the site that hosted it, Bookmunch, is still going in a new incarnation here.

Right. Buckle yourselves in. Because this is going to get ugly.

“Bitesize: Excrutiating, tedious, clichéd crime debut from Steve Mosby, a name not to watch . . .

Sometimes it is rather difficult to know quite where to start. Sometimes a book is good – so good that the job becomes difficult. How can you explain what makes this particular book different from that particular book? This is good, you say. You will enjoy it. Other times, you may feel a book is alright – this book shows promise. You may not wish others to experience the book, but it may be worth bearing a certain name in mind for the future. Look out for this author next time around. Further down the scale, there may be books that – had they experienced ruthless editing – could have been fit to see the light of day (and again, these writers are possibles, these are writers that the future may yet be kind to – a good example would be Yann Martel, whose first two books were quite, quite horrible). You may read a book and – horrible word this but – “appreciate” what it has to offer – it isn’t for you, but you can see why others would take to it (I tend to throw things like The Lord of the Rings in here – it isn’t for me, but . . . you know?). And then – there are the bad books. There are the books that bore you. The books you do everything to avoid (you wash up, you talk to relatives you don’t even like on the telephone, you watch soaps on TV). The books that cause you physical pain. The books you invariably fling across the room in rage – because who was responsible for this outrage, and who ensured it was made available in print?

These are the books you want to hold up to the light and gut like a fish.

The Third Person by Steve Mosby is such a book.

Jason is looking for Amy, his girlfriend. She disappeared three months ago. There was a letter on the kitchen table – she was going away, to think about things, to work stuff out – but she would be coming back. She said. But she didn’t, and Jason has been busy, trawling through the true detritus of the Internet, following Amy’s electronic footsteps through rape sites and snuff sites and – sick shit, my friends. He has his friend, a techie called Graham, sifting through CCTV footage purloined from various hacked sites and mapping Amy’s final route through the city – which I should add is no actual city but rather a “suggested” city – because The Third Person operates in a kind of murky future world (which feels the need to appropriate Americanisms like “freeway” and “sidewalk”), a world in which the spaces between various high rises have been paved, a world that has seen fit to eclipse Downtown, forcing its emergence as a spooky netherworld of crime and disorder. But I’m getting ahead of myself – prior to Amy’s disappearance, Jason was having himself a wee cyber fling with Claire – a cyber fling that resulted in his leaving Amy for a pivotal day around which much of the novel revolves – who, in turns out, was a prostitute involved with an old gent who was purchasing examples of writing, writing capable of transporting the reader to wherever and whatever the writing recorded (think of it as the writing equivalent of Dreamscape, that Natalie Wood movie in which virtual reality was the equivalent of genuine reality, so you experienced whatever you saw, be it sex or death or – whatever). As Jason searches for Amy, the snuff writing stolen by Claire – and the writer himself – become inextricably wound up in the search and before you know it people are dying left, right and centre and a virus capable of reducing the Internet to a ghost town is on the loose and . . .

Before we start gutting, let’s talk about common principles. The common principles of bad writing, if you will. If you were to sift through the mountains of unpublished writing in search of a home, you would find a number of tropes that have a tendency to repeat: the most common thing is violence against women. Sometimes it’s thuggish and ignorant. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is dressed up as darkness. The modern darkness that obsesses a vast number of misanthropic men in their late twenties. But, for all that, it’s still violence against women written by men with issues. Bad writers also have a tendency to DESCRIBE EVERYTHING, irrespective of whether (a) said detail will advance plot or (b) said detail is in the least bit interesting. Bad writers have a tendency to insert tangential comment – what they think of coffee or pot plants or – whatever; bad writers confuse said tangential comments with “style” – believing wrongly that their thoughts on just about everything are hugely original (this ties in with another common characteristic of bad writing – that wounded superiority that you know has arisen from the fact that the writer in question knows beyond a shadow of a doubt they are a genius but can’t quite work out why other people have failed to cotton onto the fact). Bad writers labour under the misconception that using filmic shorthand (a) makes them appear cool and (b) no doubt eases the work required when their masterpiece is – inevitably – transformed into a blockbuster. Filmic shorthand invariably has filmic characterisation – in other words, characters you’d expect to find played by somebody of the calibre of – ooh I don’t know, Jason Statham. So characters kill without compunction (or worse, if the author has a little intelligence – and you know what they say about a little intelligence – the killer will kill and the reader will then be subjected to a page or so of existential anguish – anguish which is then sloughed away in time for the next killing and the next). You can also expect comebacks more often than not (think of it as the “yippee-kie-ay, motherfucker” factor). Bad writing is too literal. Bad writers spell everything out in block capitals. Conversely, you can also expect bad writing to hop, skip and jump about with nary a thought for logic.

The Third Person ticks all of the boxes outlined above. I am sorely tempted to quote an example (or examples) of each – but (i) I’m spoiled for choice and (ii) I’ve already spent a week of my life reading 264 pages of this bilge and – that’s a week’s reading I’m never getting back. Of course, you can always say that there is much in the way of shite writing that sells by the bucketload – your James Pattersons, your Michael Marshalls. There is also a fair share of extraordinary writing – both in crime from the likes of James Ellroy, Walter Mosley etc, and in that curious hinterland of writing that seeks to wed fantasy and scifi and crime and – stuff, people like Jeff Vandermeer, whose Veniss Underground could offer Mosby stark lessons in doing this kind of thing – but that would rely on Mosby being able to display the kind of talent that The Third Person more than demonstrates him woefully short of. This is the kind of book that forces you to be harsh – somebody wants to sit this guy down and say NEVER WRITE ANYTHING AGAIN. Or – prior to his unleashing anything else on the world – ensure that the book is edited by a marine drill sergeant – the guy from Full Metal Jacket should do the trick.

Let’s just all save ourselves a lot of time and effort and never speak of this again.

Any Cop?: Didn’t I just say: we’re not to speak of this again!!”

1.

Okay. First things first. A few people on twitter suggested I might have been upset when I read this. Even if it hadn’t been one of the first reviews I ever received (and it was), I can understand that viewpoint. It’s a brutal review. I’ve read more brutal reviews, I think, but not many. It’s up there in the top ten.

So, how did it feel? I don’t really remember, to be honest. I know I can’t have been that distraught about it, simply because, if I had been, I’m sure I would remember. I think my reaction then was more or less the same as it is while reading it now (with the caveat that, right now, it doesn’t feel like my fledgling career is going to be destroyed by it).  The level of vitriol – about a book, let’s not forget – is surprising, but within a few sentences of that plummeting feeling, all that’s really left to do is strap yourself in and see how far down the thing goes. And a part of me enjoys reading a good evisceration, so I can’t really complain when the knives get turned on me.

2.

Is the criticism valid? Well, that’s not for me to say. I’m sure the reviewer genuinely did have those feelings about the book, so on that level, her criticisms can only ever be considered legitimate. It’s a curious book. I have a great deal of affection for it, as not only is it my first published novel, but the last I wrote – as it were – purely for myself, and the best I could do at the time. If I was writing it now, it would certainly be very different; I see flaws throughout. And I always worry a little when people who have liked my later writing say they’ve picked it up as a result, because it is very, very far removed from what I do now.

At the same time, I don’t think Hatchick (the reviewer) really got what I was trying to do with it, or even what the book was supposed to be about. That is also my fault, of course – but a different kind of fault to the ones she picks out in the review. Despite what she says, I think, if anything, I didn’t spell certain things out enough.

3.

“Excrutiating” should be “excruciating”. Holding a fish up to the light to gut is a mixed – and potentially very messy – metaphor. Etc. You see. Nobody’s perfect.

4.

One thing I do remember is writing to the editor to complain about the review. Not because it was negative – I made it clear that was totally fine – but about the one line concerning misanthropic men in their late twenties. I thought that was needlessly personal and, given the subject matter of the book, both presumptuous and more than a little offensive. I received a reply from the editor that he would not consider removing that sentence, but would allow me right of reply below the review. He also cautioned me that it seldom looked good for the author to do so. Well, no, it doesn’t, and since that wasn’t what I was asking for anyway, I didn’t do so. At the time, that particular line pissed me off far more than the overall tone; reading it now, it still grates. But the world turns. These days, I wouldn’t bother sending that email.

5.

I think, all in all, it was good I got this review so early on. Reviews can be harsh (and I’ve certainly had some bad ones since), but really, if you get something like this when you’re starting out, at least you know it’s unlikely to get much worse. In much the same way, my first panel experience was an utter disaster; the second panel I was on, I could hardly have cared less. It was freeing. And in terms of this review, ten years later, I’m still going. I didn’t stop writing. When you put books out there, the chances are you’re going to take a hit. And when I see new reviews these days, whatever the content, there’s some consolation in knowing that I’m likely to have been hit with a hell of a lot worse.

1. http://jerermyduns-watch.blogspot.co.uk/

The original, and still the most revealing. Its profile claims the author is Maria James, and yet the initial post begins thus:

“Dear Jeremy,

My name is Emily James, and I am a human rights lawyer who campaigns against the surveillance society.”

Its initial focus is on Jeremy’s taping of a conversation with the author Steve Roach (made without informing him) about Roach’s experiences of being bullied by bestselling author Stephen Leather. You can read a storify about that here.

[It’s worth noting that Roach did feel maligned by the attention, not least because, at this point, he felt he had buried the hatchet with Leather. Leather’s own attitude to that rapprochement was to publish a private email from Steve Roach on his Facebook page, and make fun of him.]

Regardless, this is a blog that was clearly created in haste – hence the spelling error in the title – and one which was then swiftly, even cruelly, abandoned, like a wretch.

2. http://jeremyduns-watch.blogspot.co.uk/

Also alleged to be by Maria James. Maria James 2. Ma2ia James.

[Actually, as a brief aside, no record appears to exist to support Maria’s existence as a human rights lawyer – or, indeed, as a human being. She does have a twitter account – here – which alternates between tweeting links to blogs about Jeremy Duns, and retweets of messages with feminist content. The feminist retweets may well be automated, based on keywords, as Maria has had at least one terrible misfire, involving posting an image of a blowjob. Another author who uses automated tweets is Stephen Leather.]

The content here reiterates some of the concerns of the previous blog, before evolving into accusations of misogyny, the main evidence for which appears to be that Jeremy admires the novel Casino Royale. It also has a pop at me, and others. Logic is tortured; facts, brushed aside. This is not a blog prepared or fit for discourse; it will not survive well. And indeed, it appears to have fallen into a state of decomposition, with its penultimate flail at life an almost incomprehensible attack on David Hewson for writing adaptations of the (very famous) TV series The Killing:

“Note the use of the description of a ‘gaping wound’ that is ‘like a second sick smile’. I can assume that Hewson is trying to compare it to a vagina. Sick. Just a one off? Before that Hewson published ‘The Killing I’”.

Another writer that has criticised David Hewson is Stephen Leather.

3. http://jeremydunsjournalist.blogspot.co.uk/

It is an anonymous blog, and the content is mainly concerned with whether Jeremy is a journalist or not. (Spoiler: he is a journalist).

There is some junk DNA in this thing about Jeremy editing his own wikipedia page. Which, as I check it, yes, he appears to have done – openly, under his own name, with limited success, and with the aim of correcting the malicious attentions of numerous anonymous editors. For a while, the entry was mostly focused on his altercations with other authors and journalists: R J Ellory; Q R Markham; Lenore Hart; Nate Thayer. The present version – hard-fought-for; wrangled over – now also includes mention of an author named Stephen Leather.

4. http://jeremydunsjournalist.wordpress.com/

More of the same, more-or-less. We look at these things and yawn, after a while, don’t we? The same dead eyes; a similar path worn in the dirt as the useless fucking thing circles, then circles again. But we press on. This blog is distinguished for two reasons. The first is its almost incoherent howl of plagiarism, which is based on the notion that the Telegraph republishing an article previously published (by them) by Jeremy constitutes self-plagiarism. Well, it doesn’t, obviously, but this is a blog, and it cannot possibly understand. Take this thing out back and put it out of its suffering. Wait, sorry. I get ahead of myself.

The second is this post, which is interesting only in terms of the screengrabs it uses to illustrate its points. At least two of them are clearly screengrabs made by Stephen Leather (they’re amongst the motley collection visible here). Perhaps these images have been absorbed by osmosis and incorporated into the whole of this blog-thing, this thing that not even a mother would love, and which should, undeniably, die. Leather should sue. But then, most of these blogs use photos and images they have no right to use, so perhaps he should not.

5. http://jeremydunsauthor.blogspot.se/

This ostensibly puny creation is a clone of the following .co.uk site – but dislocated to a Swedish address – so we’ll just move swiftly on to that instead, and speak of it no longer.

6. http://jeremydunsauthor.blogspot.co.uk/

Most notable for its false accusations of sockpuppetry. As any fule kno, it’s not sockpuppetry to use a pseudonym or an elaborate username online – and many people log into forums with names that differ from their given ones. The important thing is what you’re using that false name for, and whether you’re pretending to lack an interest while you do so.

For example, Stephen Leather admitted creating accounts to promote his work – accounts that readers might assume were other disinterested readers like themselves. They had no idea that the individual recommending Stephen Leather’s books was Stephen Leather himself. That’s sockpuppetry. Whereas, while Jeremy initially seems to be promoting his work under an alias, it’s clear upon reading the screengrabs that he has self-identified as the author of the book he’s discussing. He’s not being a conman. He’s not misleading anyone. He’s not using a sockpuppet.

This blog is also notable on a teeny, tiny level for using the same screengrabs of Jeremy’s reviews as the final blog to be discussed, but honestly, this blog would take anything at this point, and it’s best not to indulge it.

7. http://authorjeremyduns.wordpress.com/

This stumbling, crawling one is notable for two primary reasons. There are two posts. The first attacks Jeremy’s sales figures, using a screengrab that resembles one Stephen Leather took to misrepresent my own. (Leather is obsessed with sales figures, by the way. See the comment thread here, and likely a zillion other places). You’re tempted to say “and how many books have you sold, anonymous blog?” and also “what does it matter, anyway?”, but to do so would only encourage the thing, and it’s better to leave it be.

The second – and come on, now; we’re nearly done – is the accusation that Jeremy exchanged reviews with another writer. The evidence is that they have both favourably reviewed each other’s books. There is zero evidence – as things stand, on the basis of that – that this is a “review swap”, rather than one writer honestly admiring another that works in the same genre. And the names are not hidden. And where is my shotgun, and where is the back of the motherfucking barn?

Where am I? It’s a reasonable question, although perhaps one I ask myself on an existential basis more often than anyone else asks it after visiting here. But still. It’s been a while since the last proper post, so I figured it was worth sticking my head above the parapet and explaining what I’ve been up to.

Which is easy: I’ve been knee deep in the next book. Or possibly shin deep. But working hard at it, at any rate. It’s been an interesting process. This book is, basically, a replacement for the one I turned in at the end of last year, which I mentioned in an earlier post didn’t work. So that book is on the shelf, awaiting attention at some point (which it will receive), and what I’m working on now is something entirely new.

When I took the idea for it to Orion, the plot was more-or-less fully formed, in that I had the skeleton: the basic bones of structure on which a meaty final product would hang. I got the go-ahead, with a certain amendment, which I’ll go into more at some point, but which I was happy to make. But that amendment has required a slight rethink, and, while I’m doing well in terms of word count, a lot of the past month has been spent adjusting the original structure and exploring different ideas: writing my way, basically, into the story and the characters. The burgeoning first draft has therefore thrown up lots of new ideas – elements and connections I didn’t know about until I brainstormed particular passages. Hopefully, that draft will be finished by the middle of May, and I’ll then have a handful of weeks to order and edit. That’s the plan anyway. It’s a June delivery. Eek.

Anyway, it’s untitled (as yet), but slated for a May 2014 release. I’ll post more information as and when.

The other thing that I really need to mention is the handful of events I’ve got planned for this year, as one of them is next week. I’ve added them to the events page (see right), but I’ll also simply paste them in below. Hope to see as many of you there as possible. In the meantime, back to work…

12 April 2013
Scarborough Literature Festival
Delighted to be appearing at the Festival for the first time. More details here.

30 May – 2 June 2013
CrimeFest
I’ll be attending the annual CrimeFest in Bristol, there for the whole weekend, but appearing on panels on the Friday and Saturday. More details here.

18-21 July 2013
Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival
I’m pleased to have been invited back to participate in this year’s festival. The full programme’s not been announced yet, but I can promise you it is stellar. More details here – and I’ll add more when they’ve been officially released.

_____________________________________

AMENDED TO ADD

After publishing today’s post, I see that Stephen Leather almost immediately tweeted this:

Leaving aside the fact that Mr Leather feigns total disinterest in my comings and goings – yawn, etc – his tweet is clearly directed at me, and it does raise interesting questions. As a writer, how should you behave, and how much should you share about it?

If I didn’t submit a manuscript when I was unsure about it, I’d never submit a manuscript. I generally have no idea whether something’s good or not (the author has little insight or influence when it comes to how others will experience their writing), so I’m used to relying on the opinions of others. In the case of the original Book 8, I suspected there were problems – and yes, there were. But I had a deadline, and the conversation, as unhappy as it might have been, needed to be had. It’s actually far less professional  to say “to hell with the deadline, you can’t have it, and we can’t talk about it.” That’s genuinely not how professionals operate. What you do is have the conversation.

As to whether I should talk about it on twitter … well. I suppose it’s about your approach to social media and how you use it. I prefer to act like a human being on it. I’ve published seven books and I’ve made a living solely from writing for over five years – but there’s little real difference between me and a first time writer trying to break through. We both face many of the same obstacles and difficulties, while attempting the same things. If you care about your writing, you always will face those things. And I think maybe it’s better to say “look, we all find it hard, and we’re all in the same boat, and it doesn’t get any easier,” than pretend that being published gives you superpowers. Occasionally, people will approach me at events and say “I’m trying to be a writer”, and my response is always the same: “Me too.”

Put bluntly, I would rather be honest about my failings than pretend to be an invulnerable sales machine. This may not sit well with certain people, whose tweets amount to little more than self-aggrandising rhetoric with links to places their books may be bought, but never mind. I don’t care about such people. I use social media as a human being, not as a brand, and I care deeply enough about my writing for it to be worth discussing – on good days and bad – as part of my feed. And so it will continue.

A reminder that this is happening next week:

It’s free entry, but you need to book tickets in advance. So far, there are more than 70 people attending, so it looks like it should be a really good, fun event. Hope to see a few of you there, if you can make it.

Not that this blog has much of one, of course – but still.

The Left Room was (briefly) used as a reference on Julian Ruck’s wikipedia page, which (again, briefly) mentioned his admitted plagiarism. It doesn’t presently, due to the attentions of an editor called Bagehot1, who has been carefully curating that page (and only that page). What interests me is a comment left by Bagehot1 in defence of one of the edits made:

“This ‘controvesy’ insert is both mailicious and libellous and is not credibly sourced. The blogger John Abell is presently under police investiagtion along with the left room blogger” (17.26, 10 February 2013)

The “police investiagtion” (sic) presumably refers to this, in which Julian Ruck, a man otherwise much concerned with taxpayers’ money being wasted on behalf of authors, has lodged a claim of harrassment against a clearly satirical website that jokingly threatened to have monkeys throw dog shit and his own books at his house. As absurd as that is, I don’t have any responsibility for that website, so can only assume I’m under investigation for the mentions I’ve given Mr Ruck here at The Left Room – which amount to two.

The first is of no consequence. The second is here. That’s the one where I accuse Julian Ruck not only of writing a pathetically sexist column – as such an accusation would be tautologous – but also blatantly plagiarising Christopher Hitchens. He is a plagiarist, I say. Julian Ruck is a plagiarist. “Step forward if you’re not a plagiarist – where do you think you’re going, Julian?” And so on. And shame on the Llanelli Star, which is still, as of today, hosting stolen content and continuing to publish his column. The only reasonable assumption is that Ruck has particularly embarrassing photographs of someone in charge there, assuming anyone is.

Anyway – if Dyfed-Powys police really are investigating my blog, the relevant links they’ll be interested in are above. Always happy to co-operate.

There have been a few arguments, disagreements, debates and falling-outs on Twitter recently around the subject of illegal firesharing. The critic and writer Damien G Walter has been more-or-less at the centre, arguing for the virtues of piracy and free books, aggravating many people both with the content and the tone of his comments. Yesterday, he wrote an article for the Guardian – free to read – that explored the issue a little, although not in depth.

I figured I’d take the opportunity, skimming over some of his comments, to talk a little bit about how I feel about the subject.

All feelings, as always, are subject to change.

1. The Basics

Debates on piracy – and I’ll just use that term as a shorthand for illegal filesharing – tend to be fairly tedious, because the various arguments are familiar and the responses well-worn and rehearsed. It can be a lot like chess openings: the same moves provoke the same replies. For example, if I say “piracy is theft”, you will reply “no, it isn’t!”, and tell me why. Sicilian Dragon.

So let’s get a few basic things out of the way first. Piracy is not simple theft. It isn’t the same as walking out of a shop with a book hidden under your arm. In the latter case, you are depriving the shop of the value of that copy of the book, and – because the shop doesn’t know – possibly depriving future browsers of being able to buy the copy the shop would reorder to take its place. That doesn’t happen with piracy: the original copy remains, and it can still be bought. Theft is subtraction, whereas piracy is multiplication. Piracy, put simply, is getting something for nothing. That is the only real similarity between the two. Although it’s worth noting that the desire to “get something for nothing” is often part of the disdain people have for literal thieves.

Okay, look here:

Walter seems to think that the people who object to piracy lack technological knowledge, which isn’t particularly admirable of him. For what it’s worth, I completely understand that piracy can’t be stopped: that, without gross and wholly unacceptable limitations being placed on personal freedom, or some kind of catastrophic social collapse, it will only ever get easier to copy and distribute files. That’s a world away from claiming, as he has appeared to, that it’s a positive thing. We’ll come back to this.

2. Free books

For the purposes of what follows in this bit, I’m going to conflate piracy with giving books away for free. They’re not the same thing. Clearly, there’s a moral difference between choosing to give your books away yourself and someone else choosing on your behalf. But this is more about the benefits of having free books circulating, so we’ll meld the topics.

A key question put to Walter during the twitter exchanges can be stated as: “if you’re giving books away for free as a marketing strategy, where does the money come from?” It’s a reasonable question. Walter’s response –

- appears to reference Tim O’Reilly’s famous observation that “obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy”. Walter also mentions Cory Doctorow -

- who has achieved hundreds of thousands of book sales, even though he gives the same work away for free. Leaving aside the tiresome fact that – once again – Walter assumes his critics are less educated than he is, how does giving stuff away for free to make money work?

Well, it’s fairly straightforward. The act of giving away hundreds of thousands of free books makes no money directly but also costs nothing in itself. The readers who receive those free copies can then be divided into three categories. The largest of these – the vast majority – contains (1) the readers who would never have bought the book anyway and do not go on to support you financially in any way. (This is why a free download absolutely does not equal a lost sale; there was never going to be a sale to these people, so absolutely nothing has been lost). The remaining two categories contain: (2) the people who were not going to buy it but then do support you financially in some way; and (3) the people who would have bought it and then don’t. If (2) is larger than (3), then giving away free books has probably made you money.

It’s essentially a gamble on human nature – but one that can easily pay off, and it shouldn’t be surprising that it does. Most readers, for example, are good people with a passion for books. They want to reward the creators. And it certainly appears to have worked for Cory Doctorow.

Will it work for you? Who knows, but here are some obvious problems I see with the free approach:

a) The world has changed since Doctorow began doing this, which was (correct me if I’m wrong) the early to mid 2000s. His arguments back then included the idea that reading on screens was an unsatisfactory experience, and that many readers who enjoyed the ebook would want a physical copy, either instead of or as well as. And back then, ebooks formed a vanishingly small proportion of the overall market. Given the explosion in ebooks since, and the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated ereading devices, I’m not convinced these points hold true to the same extent.

b) Cory Doctorow is Cory Doctorow. Not only is he a bestselling writer of fiction, he’s an articulate and sought-after expert on digital media, DRM, copyright etc. His public persona, in other words, is inextricably linked with this subject matter; his reputation has been built on it. Yes, every success story can be considered a special case, but Doctorow is perceived not simply as a writer who gives his work away for free, but as a pioneer in the whole area of digital rights. You will not be a pioneer; he got there first. You will just be someone giving your work away for free. And the more people pursue the free strategy (much as with the 99p pricing strategy) the harder it will be to stand out.

c) We’re not in the music industry, where artists can at least hope to make money from won-over fans who maybe don’t pay for the music itself but at least attend tours and buy merchandise. (Writers can perform, of course, but – again – you’re not Cory Doctorow. Pub bands on their debuts get larger crowds than many midlist authors). We’re also different in that our media is produced and consumed in different ways. There are fewer readers than listeners, it takes much longer to read a novel than to listen to an album, and the replay factor is considerably lower. Those three factors combined make giving a novel away for free significantly more of a financial risk than giving away an album.

3. What this means for you.

Doctorow is certainly more aware than Walter appears to be that his approach won’t work for everyone. Walter seems to think:

It would take a lifetime to unpack everything wrong with such a blanket statement. He also appears to take the position that because the most pirated authors are the most successful, the former causes the latter:

It’s possible, in certain cases, that this is true, but I’d suggest that for the most part he’s getting the cart a huge distance before the horse there. I have more faith in another of O’Reilly’s famous observations as an explanation: that piracy is a form of progressive taxation. The most successful authors are pirated the most because they’re the most successful authors, so they pay the most “tax”. At best, it seems baseless to assume most of them became successful because of piracy. Evidence, basically, or GTFO.

4. Where you are determines what you see

There will always be a degree of subjectivity to this debate. Much has been made of Walter’s position as a largely unpublished writer. I think that’s unfair, although it’s true that the loudest exponents of piracy and free books are generally likely to be the people least at risk from it – the very successful who can weather it, like Doctorow and Neil Gaiman, and the people with nothing to lose from it. People like me, somewhere on the midlist, are more conflicted. This is human nature. But I dislike this kind of thinking:

Because, yes, obviously I’m concerned about my own position – but why imagine that everybody is purely out for themselves? The larger debate, which encompasses piracy, free books, cheap books, ebooks, and so on, is also about the kind of society you want to live in, along with the approach you want society to have to culture.

At this point in my life, for example, voting Tory would probably benefit me economically, but I would never do so, because I don’t think my actions, and the repercussions of them, should be centred solely on what’s best for me. So when it comes to ebooks and piracy, I’m not just thinking about my sales; I’m also thinking about the large number of people who have helped me get my books where they are, and the whole social and financial infrastructure that underlies that. I’m thinking, for example, about what the high street looks like. I’m thinking about sustainability. I’m thinking about where people are going to work to earn the money to buy the things people are selling at these cheap prices, and where they’re going to work to be able to afford to produce them. I’m thinking about whether what comes after is really what is better simply because it comes after. In short, it’s really not just about what leaves me with the most money. And that, incidentally, is also why I buy the media I want and like.

5. What I think

I have endless and fantastically violent contempt for the sites making money off the back of work they didn’t help create, and for the people behind them. I have nothing, really, against the ordinary people who illegally download my books – I can’t stop you, most of you wouldn’t have bought them anyway, and I just hope that, if you enjoy them, you consider buying some of them at some point, to support not just me, but also the other people, less visible, whose work made my books possible in the first place.

One last thing:

I think this is a good article to end with a link to. It’s lengthy, but very good. Along with other points, it makes the case that free isn’t really free. I suppose it emphasises the points I just made, especially directly above, and that last tweet of Damien’s. Here’s a snippet:

“Let’s look at other things you (or your parents) might pay for each month and compare.

Smart phone with data plan: $40-100 a month.

High speed internet access: $30-60 dollars a month. Wait, but you use the university network? Well, buried in your student fees or tuition you are being charged a fee on the upper end of that scale.

Tuition at American University, Washington DC (excluding fees, room and board and books): $2,086 a month.

Car insurance or Metro card?  $100 a month?

Or simply look at the  value of the web appliances you use to enjoy music:

$2,139.50 = 1 smart phone + 1 full size ipod + 1 macbook.

Why do you pay real money for this other stuff but not music?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.

You are doing it wrong.”

Really pleased to say that my story “God moving over the face of the waters” has been included in the latest volume of Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best British Crime:

I’m especially pleased because: a) I don’t write many short stories; b) it came from Off the Record 1, and any success for the story necessarily reflects on Luca Veste as the editor of that fine charity anthology; and c) just look at this contents page:

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THE BONE-HEADED LEAGUE  – Lee Child

THIS THING OF DARKNESS   - Peter Tremayne

BIG GUY  – Paul Johnston

THE CONSPIRATOR   - Christopher Fowler

SQUEAKY   – Martin Edwards

FISTS OF DESTINY  – Col Bury

NAIN ROUGE  – Barbara Nadel

THE KING OF OUDH’S CURRY  – Amy Myers

LONDON CALLING  – Ian Ayris & Nick Quantrill

THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE DEODAND – Lisa Tuttle

GOD MOVING OVER THE FACE OF THE WATERS – Steve Mosby

STARDUST – Phil Lovesey

HE DID NOT ALWAYS SEE HER – Claire Seeber

METHOD MURDER   – Simon Brett

THE MAN WHO TOOK OFF HIS HAT TO THE DRIVER OF THE TRAIN  – Peter Turnbull

TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS  – Carol Anne Davis

LAST TRAIN FROM DESPRIT  – Richard Godwin

THE MESSAGE   – Margaret Murphy

TEA FOR TWO  – Sally Spedding

SAFE AND SOUND  – Edward Marston

CONFESSION  – Paula Williams

TEN BELLS AT ROBBIE’S  – Tony Black

WILKOLAK  – Nina Allan

WHO KILLED SKIPPY?  – Paul D. Brazill

INHERITANCE  – Jane Casey

A MEMORABLE DAY  – L.C. Tyler

LAPTOP  – Cath Staincliffe

BLOOD ON THE GHAT  – Barry Maitland

VANISHING ACT  – Christine Poulson

THE BETRAYED   – Roger Busby

TURNING THE TABLES  – Judith Cutler

HANDY MAN  – John Harvey

THE INVISIBLE GUNMAN  – Keith McCarthy

THE GOLDEN HOUR  – Bernie  Crosthwaite

THE HABIT OF SILENCE  – Ann Cleeves

THE UNKNOWN CRIME  – Sarah Rayne

THE LADDER  – Adrian McKinty

THE HOSTESS  – Joel Lane

COME AWAY WITH ME  – Stella Duffy

BEDLAM  – Ken Bruen

4 A.M., WHEN THE WALLS ARE THINNER  – Alison  Littlewood

THE CASE OF DEATH AND HONEY   – Neil Gaiman

________________________________

Fine company to see my name included with. I’m really pleased.

This is a quick(ish) and off-the-cuff(ish) response to Christopher Fowler’s piece today in the Independent, about crime fiction losing the plot. You can read his piece here, and I think you should, because any thoughtful discussion about crime fiction is, I think, good for the genre and should be welcomed. My random(ish) thoughts follow.

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One obvious problem with any kind of analysis of crime fiction is that it’s a hugely popular subsection of fiction as a whole. It sells – or rather, certain crime fiction titles sell – very well indeed. When looking at any field from afar, there’s always going to be a tendency to notice the tallest poppies first, and it’s important to remember that doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting stuff going on in the undergrowth. To put it another way, any analysis of the deficiencies (if that is what they are) of bestselling crime fiction titles is more a comment on the tastes of the masses that an artistic evaluation of crime fiction as a genre. It should come as no real surprise that if you’re looking for something unusual and different from what is mainstream and popular, you’re more likely to find it at the edges, away from the centre.

That said, I think Fowler’s right to highlight realism – or the pursuit of it – as a problem. It’s quite correct to say that one of the strengths of crime fiction is shining a light on and exploring social issues, but that’s a world away from claiming the majority of it to be realistic. And I think there are a number of problems with doing so.

1.

In a vague and airy way, I’d say that describing any fiction as “realistic” is problematic in itself. What does realistic even mean, in the context of such a claim? Fiction involves characters, events and locations, and not all of them can be real, or else we’re talking about fact or documentary rather than fiction. Realistic, as a concept, is hard to quantify when it comes to fiction. Angels and pinheads stuff. On a basic level, if you tell me “Ian Rankin’s novels are set in Edinburgh”, I’ll reply that I think “set in Edinburgh” is doing a huge amount of work in that sentence – work that, when you really think about it, is actually very strange labour indeed. Fiction isn’t set anywhere, apart from as type on a page.

2.

In the context of crime fiction, nobody really knows what realistic is in the first place. We’re often told crime readers are smart, so you have to get the details right, but at the same time, most crime readers aren’t – for example – trained pathologists. That’s a very specific example, of course, but I think it’s a useful illustration. An average reader’s conception of what an autopsy scene in a work of fiction should look like is not dictated by real world knowledge of what they do look like, but by an ever-enlarging sample of how they have encountered them before in other works of fiction. That is not being realistic. That is an arms race built around suspension of disbelief.

To put it another way, The Wire may well be very realistic indeed, but I imagine a substantial number of people who praise it as such wouldn’t be able to point at Baltimore if they were presented with a map of Baltimore. What matters is not so much that it’s realistic, but that it’s convincing on its own terms, and that it’s very good. Fiction can be just as effective and revelatory and meaningful – and real - when it’s a stone skipping across the surface of reality as when it’s one that actively dives.

3.

Hat in the ring, I think – in my darkest and most private moments – that crime fiction as an overall genre is probably more at odds with realism than at home with it.  Crime fiction demands that certain things happen (although different subgenres obviously shift the timescale, camera angle and character focus). Crime fiction as a genre is not simply fiction about crime, but fiction that deals with a crime in certain specific ways. It is usually murder, for example, and it is usually solved. If you do otherwise with your story, you risk leaving the genre.

Fowler is right to say this flies in the face of reality in itself – never mind the often ostentatious nature of the bad guy’s schemes and eventual capture or murder. But even more so, it’s the concept of bad guy that’s problematic. Anecdotally, I’d say most of the writers of procedurals I know are politically left-leaning (thriller writers, more to the right), and I’d say the kind of realistic and intelligent analysis of crime those writers can provide is actually at odds with the more conservative demands of the genre – that there is a bad guy, and that he gets his comeuppance at the end. Of course, some commercially-successful writers manage it (Mark Billingham’s In The Dark, for example, eschews big set-pieces and obvious jeopardy for quieter and more resonant drama), but it’s a tough line to walk, at least while staying in the genre.

__________________________________

And finally, I think one of the real problems crime fiction has as a genre is that our traffic is almost universally one-way. We’re all aware by now that genre boundaries are porous and genre labels somewhat arbitrary, and we’ve all heard that old saw about the best genre books being snatched away as “literary”, but it seems to me that even if all that is true, crime fiction still gives away great authors far more often than it takes them.

By now, as a genre, crime fiction has innumerable recognisable tropes, patterns, characters, settings and so on. If we’re going to suggest that crime fiction is stagnating, I’d suggest in turn that it’s only because we recognise those features of the crime genre in certain arrangements, and not when they’re employed in more experimental ways. Certainly, it is easier for a crime novel to be accepted as an SF novel than vice versa; our passport control, I think, can seem way too strict. There is no reason why China Mieville’s The City & The City, or Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, or Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn and Child, or Adam Roberts’s Jack Glass shouldn’t be considered and discussed as works of crime fiction. They use our furniture, after all – our fixtures and fittings. They just don’t arrange them in a conventional order.

But in discussions such as this, those sorts of book, and many others, do tend to get lost in the undergrowth. When you take a step back, and see the land around, I really do think that, overall, it looks like a pretty healthy field.

As I said a couple of posts below this one, I want to try to read more this year than I managed in 2012. I have no idea whether that will happen or not, but here’s a list of the novels being published this year that I’m already looking forward to. These are the ones I’m pretty much certain to be buying and reading:

January

Gun Machine, by Warren Ellis
Adam Robots: Short Stories, by Adam Roberts
First Novel, by Nicholas Royle

February

Harvest, by Jim Crace

March

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
Poppet, by Mo Hayder
We Are Here, by Michael Marshall

April

NOS4R2, by Joe Hill
Mayhem, by Sarah Pinborough

May

The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes
The Twelve Children of Paris, by Tim Willocks

June

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
The Adjacent, by Christopher Priest

August

Sandrine’s Case, by Thomas H Cook

September

The Cry, by Helen Fitzgerald
Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King

Which is only what leaps out at me from what I know about – but it isn’t a bad list to be getting on with. I’m planning to keep track of what I do read here at pinterest, just as I did last year, basically because it’s a lot prettier to look at than Goodreads. I’ve already read A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness; I read it as an ebook, but it was so brilliant I immediately went out and bought a signed hardback (it was just what the shop had), because I wanted a physical copy to keep. And I’ve already started Gun Machine, which is fantastic so far. So the year is starting well.

[Edit to add: and if there are any upcoming books you think I'll enjoy, based on the above, feel free to let me know in the comments.]