the left room

Firstly, apologies for the silence (again). And I know there are some comments I’ve not replied to, here and elsewhere, which makes me feel very rude, so apologies for that as well. There has been very little in the way of news to report, and in the meantime I’ve been struggling with a few things, not least of which is getting the final part of Book Six into shape. It’s sort of beginning to come into focus now, but still needs a hell of a lot of sharpening up. The good news is that I’m vaguely pleased with the stuff I have done, and – if I can make the end sections work as I’d like to – I have a feeling the book will work.

In the absence of anything coherent or intelligent from me, there was a brief twitter conversation yesterday, and Sophia MacDougall has made a blog post about it. It’s about the difficulty of transitions: between scenes; between parts of the book. You could do much worse than go read and comment on it here.

Hope everyone is well in the meantime.

Search term for my blog (1):

“why do feminists argue we should take account of gender in analysing crime and victimisation?”

Search term for my blog (2):

“black lesbian anal rape”

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking a bit about my writing process. There’s no point, but I have. I get asked about it every now and then. Sometimes by email; other times in interviews. And when I did the interviews in Amsterdam at the end of last year, the question came up a few times: “what’s your writing day like?”

I wish I had a writing day.

I wish I had any process at all, in fact, as it would make things a lot easier (or maybe not; maybe the safety net of a tried-and-trusted schedule is the last thing you need; and these maybes are examples of my overall problem). Whatever, I’m working on my sixth book now, and the fact remains that each one has been written in a different way. I know the first one – The Third Person – was the easiest, but only because I wasn’t published, there was no deadline and I was on my own time. I guess the same problems and difficulties were there, but I can’t remember exactly. I came up with the ending (which would eventually be changed totally after acceptance) while sitting on the back-step of a house that’s now four homes behind me and part of a life so distant it’s uncanny to imagine it was ever mine at all.

Possibly because I’ve never settled on a process, I tend to think the whole idea is bullshit: talismanic and self-deceptive, like the academic I used to know, a Leeds fan, who parked his car in the same spot by Elland Road before every match. Or at least so individual that there’s no point asking. But people are often interested, and I remain no different. I like knowing what other writers do. I keep thinking there might be something I’m missing.

Anyway, there are two things I think I understand. The first, I’ve thought for a while; the second, I’ve just figured out, and although I know it applies to my writing, maybe it applies to everyone else’s too. Neither are all that helpful, but here goes.

The first is about that whole planning/writing business. You often see this discussion: are you a ‘planner’ or are you ‘driving with headlights through the fog’? At one extreme, you have a guy like Jeffery Deaver, who plans his books out meticulously, down to the paragraph level. At the other, you have someone like … I don’t know – someone who just sets off writing and sees where it takes them. My theory is: it doesn’t matter which you do or whether, like most of us, you’re somewhere in between, you’ll end up doing the same proportions of both. Writing involves getting the paragraphs in the correct order; the most extreme planner still spends time doing this. The planner spends time getting the plot right in advance; the extreme writer has to address this further down the … lines (cough). Basically, the same questions are being asked and answered, and each takes the time it takes. I think books emerge for every individual author with – basically – the same amount of each activity, however you tackle it.

(Occasionally, you encounter a writer who claims to plan nothing, sit down and write and not change a word. These people, in my opinion, are vicious liars: one step up from the kid in school who assured me the three utilities problem could be solved and I should try harder. However: even after I knew it was impossible, I still kept trying, and I solved it in a dream once, so the joke’s on him).

The second thing I’ve realised is, like I said, personal to me. And I hate it, but it’s true. I haven’t worked out the exact percentages, because that would be silly, but it goes roughly like this. In the days spent writing a book, 50% will be ‘okay’ days. Not good, not bad. Just plodding along. 10% will be ‘good’ days: that fabled kind where everying feels natural, the words flow and the book comes alive. And 40% will be utterly shit days, where I sit at the computer and nothing happens. There’ll probably be a poor word count, but, regardless, whatever is there will be dreadful. I’ll hate the book. I’ll wonder what I’m doing with my life. I’ll speculate on how, when this one is published, I’ll finally be found out.

Those percentages are rough – in every sense – but more-or-less correct for me. Every book I can remember, the writing can be divided up like that. That’s my actual writing process, no matter how I divvy up the planning, writing and editing. And the unfortunate thing is that I have to go through that 40% of shit days one by one. If I don’t have it today, it’ll still be there tomorrow. Which is why the only piece of writing advice I’ve ever felt confident enough to give is “get your arse on the chair and fucking write something”.

The lack of a universal process makes sense to me. The way I see it, a finished novel – the text in a book – is an instruction manual for understanding a story. The story itself might – shock! horror! – even be an instruction manual for understanding something else: themes; ideas; emotions; a sense of wonder. But whatever, you’ve got so many levels to work out, it makes sense that it takes time and feels difficult. It needs to be figured out. That’s encouraging; it would be weird and unrewarding for everyone if it was any other way. An easy solution – a schedule; a typical writing day; a formula; a process – makes a nonsense of the whole enterprise. Reduces it to data-entry.

Nietzsche said “one must still have chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star”. I like that. And I guess that’s my definition of a writing process – at the keyboard and away from it.

Well, now. It has been a while, hasn’t it? I’m hoping everyone had a great Christmas and New Year, and that 2010 is treating you all well so far. There seems to be a common consensus amongst many people that 2009 was an absolute bag of knackers. From my point of view, it was certainly mixed. But on we go.

Few things feel as pointless as someone talking for the sake of it: breaking a comfortable silence for no obvious reason. And that’s partly why I closed this blog down for a few months last year, then started it off afresh. I’ve been in the same frame of mind as that for the past few weeks – very little of interest to say; very few original or even half-interesting thoughts in my head – but this time I’m not doing anything as extreme as shutting up shop. I’m just keeping quiet.

Apart from life being fairly uneventful at the moment, I’m also just dead busy. Boox Six is running along, although not quite as fast or smoothly as it should. The shape is there, and a lot of words are there, but there’s still a load of work to do before the first draft is finished. The image of it I have in my head is a good one. I know more-or-less what happens, and more-or-less how to present it. If I can pull it off, I think it’ll work very well indeed. The bulk of the storyline takes place in the present, but there are two minor strands set in different periods in the past. They tie together in ways I can’t really describe – stories within stories – but all need to lead comfortably in and out of each other, giving the reader the information I want in the right order. That’s my main problem right now: getting something intricate and complicated to unfold naturally on the page. It is – technical term, here – a ball-ache.

Anyway – that’s what I’m up to: writing most of every day. In between: building furniture for the nursery; attempting to exercise; reading Bone by Bone by Carol O’Connell; drinking too much coffee; and blinking at the wall with a growing sense of existential terror.

You see? Very little to say…

Here’s a photo of my office right now.

EDIT to add:

I nearly forgot. There are a couple of new links and things, some of which I’ve mentioned on twitter over the past few weeks.

First up, Donna Moore has some lovely things to say about Still Bleeding here.

And, on the subject of that book, the paperback is out fairly soon and it’s acquired a new cover, which looks like this:

as opposed to this:

Third up, I contribute a very brief but no doubt profoundly moving paragraph to One in Four magazine’s article on the NHS, which you can feast your eyes on here.

And finally, a reminder that this year’s CrimeFest is fast-approaching. I’ll be in attendance, fighting 80% of the Curzon Group live on stage probably on a couple of panels, and generally lurking about while up to no good.

Hello there. I’ve not posted very much recently, I know, and that’s basically because I’ve had an evil cold and been almost totally out of action. I’d like to say it’s swine flu, but it isn’t. It’s just Something Awful. Regardless, it’s knocked me for six, and I’ve had trouble keeping up with a lot of correspondence, activity and such.

Anyway – just a quick update to say thank you – one and all – for stopping by over the last year and contributing. Normal service will resume shortly. Hopefully, anyway, although with a book to finish and a baby due shortly, ‘normal service’ is a term that must remain slightly ill-defined. Regardless, if you’re reading this, I genuinely hope you have a lovely Christmas and New Year. Take care, one and all, have loads of fun, be good to everyone, and I’ll see you properly in January. Or improperly. Depends on how things go…

I don’t really agree with ‘best of’ lists, but I’m happy to flag up a few books I read this year that I think are worthy of mention. However, if I was going to pick a best novel, it would be a two horse race. On the one hand, Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney. (Actually by Graham Joyce, but the artifice of the pseudonym reflects the levels of self-deception and forgery in the characters and the plot). It’s a fantastically written book about a decent, troubled man who makes a kind of living from forging books – while also drinking wine, caring for the people around him, seeing demons, and gradually struggling towards a kind of redemption. More than anything else, while never losing the genuine heart of its characters or becoming frivolous, it’s fun. An enjoyable, original, moving story. Original should certainly be applied to the other book I’d ’single’ out: China Mieville’s stunning novel The City & The City. There’s a temptation to reveal the wonderful conceit at the heart of this – what? – urban-fantasy-crime-mystery-thriller, but I won’t. It’s about two cities, with a detective investigating a cross-border murder. It’s brilliantly-realised, enthralling, intriguing … and like nothing else out there. You’ve probably read it by now, but if you haven’t, then you really should and you won’t regret it.

Having said that, aside from a few disasters, there’s not been much I’ve read that hasn’t impressed me on some level. So – what else?

First off, It’s always nice to be able to say good things about people you know or have met. With No More Heroes, Ray Banks takes his Cal Innes series up another notch. Talking about how clever and knowing the series is would detract from the fact they’re just great books, taking the familiar notion of the PI and doing really credible and surprising real-world things with it. Claire Seeber’s Lullaby doesn’t look, on paper, like the kind of book I’d like, but I enjoyed it a lot: the story of a woman whose baby is abducted, it’s well-written, psychologically smart and, in places, dark as pitch. A preview copy of Sean Cregan’s The Levels provided my last great read of the year. It has a hint of Mieville’s novel about it, actually, and it’s also reminiscent of Jack O’Connell’s best stuff. A tough, action-packed, chemical-stained urban thriller, it creates a believably fantastical mythology in a destitute US estate and lets its characters loose within it. Look out for it in January – it’s ace. And if you haven’t read Sarah Pinborough’s wonderful The Language of Dying, then – again – you should. You’re missing out. It’s a wonderfully observed, perfectly controlled piece of fiction about a woman tending to her dying father, and is one of my favourite reads of the year.

If you’re after horror, then Kaaron Warren’s Slights delivers. More of a character piece, in some ways, than an easy, straight-forward narrative – but fuck me, what a character that is. The book is disturbing, occasionally funny (although I’m warped), and never less than totally absorbing. I’d say the same about Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth, a prose poem about warring werewolf packs that has a sweet and rewarding love story at its heart. Both read like genuine one-offs: I hope they aren’t, and I’m sure they’re not. Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places proves she certainly wasn’t: while not quite – for me – as good as Sharp Objects, it shows beyond doubt how excellent and capable a writer she is. It’s another book that’s massively strong on character and voice. As, in more of a subdued way, is Amy MacKinnon’s Tethered, about an undertaker who is drawn to the case of a murdered girl. Using flowers as a metaphor, the novel is gorgeously-realised and entirely earns its moving finale.

Two of my favourite writers had new books out: Mo Hayder with Skin, Michael Marshall with Bad Things. Neither were the best books either writer has written or will write, but both are head and shoulders above most other crime novels out there, and are well worth your time. In fact, both stand out as best-selling writers resolutely following their own paths and producing the stories they want. And I like that a lot. I also – finally – read David Morrell’s First Blood. Couldn’t put it down. Most other action-based thrillers I’ve read seem like pale imitations now. Such a good book.

Finally, a special mention for Sum by David Eagleman. It’s a slim book, containing forty conceptualisations of the afterlife. From an afterlife lived backwards to an afterlife divided into the activities of your life (however many years spent sleeping, etc), it succeeds because it makes you reflect on your life right now. Like most of these books, in fact. I’ve probably forgotten a few, but fuck it. To the writers involved – seriously – thank you, one and all.

I made a brief mention of this on Twitter – by linking to Laurie Penny’s blog post on the subject – but, since there was some discussion on Facebook as a result, I figured I’d post it here too, so it can be discussed, if desired, in the comment field. It’s been on my mind, as well, because of the interviews in Amsterdam. A number of them focused on my ‘work’ in the feminist studies department of Leeds University (only as an irrelevant secretary, but hey) and the contradictory idea that misogyny is inherent in crime fiction. I don’t think it is – necessarily – but these things are worth thinking and talking about, and this subject is one I’ve thought about a bit and, as a result of doing so, changed my mind about. So I guess a blog on the whole thing isn’t a terrible idea. You can always skip it.

Here’s a link to the main story. Basically, whenever Christmas approaches, the police step up a campaign to keep people safe. This one is about rape. There are two parts to it. The first warns men: “Rape: short word, long sentence”, which is semantically accurate, although perhaps not legally. The second is aimed at women: it advises women to look after themselves in the party season. “Let your hair down, not your guard down”. Watch your valuables, girls. And so on.

Now, to my shame, I used to sort of agree with this. One of the arguments is along the lines of “if you want to prevent burglaries, you don’t leave your house unlocked”. It seems fair enough. To expand on it, I don’t walk down dark alleys late at night. As a male, I’m at risk of assault in public, and I do what it takes, as much as possible, to avoid that. If someone is glaring at me in a pub, I put my pint down and go somewhere else. I shouldn’t have to, but that’s life for you: it’s jam-packed full of absolute wankers. And most realistic self-defence advice involves, if you can, being somewhere else as quickly as possible. I kind of thought the anti-rape advice I heard was no different. Of course you should take care of yourself. Of course you should avoid risky situations. Don’t get drunk; don’t let your guard down. No brainer.

But over time I’ve changed my mind. Because there are a number of problems with the “don’t leave your house unlocked” analogy.

The first is the obvious: while the analogy isn’t meant to compare a woman’s body to property, it does. So that’s bad. It’s not what the analogy is about, technically, but still. That one should try harder, because it has all sorts of shitty and irksome little connotations.

The second is that the analogy doesn’t hold for Reason One: you’d only be asking half the population to lock their doors and windows. You’re saying the rest shouldn’t have to, or – at best – not mentioning their responsibilities on this issue.

And the third? That’s Reason Two the analogy doesn’t hold, and it’s this. You can be locking your house from bottom to top, but it doesn’t cover it. What we’re really saying is you shouldn’t display money in any way, shape or form. Don’t carry it. Don’t wear clothes that cost money. Never visit a cash machine. Seriously: never mind walking down a dark alley – don’t visit a place where anyone might come to understand you have money to be taken at all. Of course, you do – we know that, you can’t hide it – but you’ve got to minimise it to the point you practically have to deny who you are. To be blunt, it’s very, very difficult to leave the house without someone realising you have a vagina. Financially, that’s what you’re going to have to aim for.

The other thing, though: what is risky behaviour? The people behind the advert above might say “Women – don’t get drunk with men you don’t know”. Well, that feels intuitively correct. But then again … why? Here’s the reality. I’ve got drunk with women I don’t know, and I never expected to have sex with them. It was just fun. Even drunk women I’ve drunkenly kissed, or drunkenly gone home with, I’ve always been clear where the boundaries lie. It’s not fucking difficult, is it? I would imagine the same is true for most of you (the guys, I mean). It isn’t risky for a woman to go home with you, because surely you’d back off the moment she expressed doubts. You treat people with respect. So it shouldn’t be risky behaviour at all. Okay, so, doing that might place someone in a potentially vulnerable position – but that only matters if you decide to be an evil arsehole. And if you do – which you all don’t – that’s your fault, not hers.

I mean, are we really saying that most guys are evil arseholes? Are we saying that getting drunk with us when you don’t know us is comparable to leaving your house unlocked, or walking down a dark alley at night? Because, if so, that’s pretty fucked.

Cheshire Chief Constable Dave Whatton, who is the national lead on tackling rape, said alcohol is a factor in a large number of rapes. He said: “Ultimately we want to prevent rape from occurring in the first place, by arming potential victims with key advice on how to keep themselves safe”.

Shit, man. Seriously? However well-meaning, that’s horrible. Okay – let’s say women don’t get drunk. They look after themselves. They’re careful. And, through their own behaviour, the rape of potential victims is entirely prevented. Zero rapes. Is that a result? Of course it fucking isn’t. That’s not solving a problem. It’s brushing a problem under the carpet. But even more than that, it’s expecting the victims to push the broom.

1.

I got back from Amsterdam last night, and the whole trip was an absolute blast. There were two interviews on the Tuesday afternoon, and seven yesterday, which I suppose was pretty full-on but ended up being lots of fun. At the risk of forgetting someone, thanks to all the journalists for being nice to me, to the people at Bruna (especially Steven and Marieke) for having me over, and to Juliette and Lizanne for looking after me while I was there and making the whole experience so easy (and thank you both for the cd and the biscuits).

The interviews were for Still Bleeding, which comes out in Holland in January, although I also talked about 50/50 and Cry for Help a fair bit too. Topics ranged from the Curzon Group (no, really), misogyny and violence within the crime genre, all the way to philosophy. Hell, I even talked about Modern Warfare 2 a couple of times. In between interviews, I drank a lot of coffee, and, on Tuesday night, went out to dinner with people from the publishing house and a large group of booksellers. I think everybody had a good time there too. I hope so, anyway, because I certainly did.

Oh – and I got to stay in the amazing Ambassade Hotel in Amsterdam. I didn’t know before I arrived, but it’s the hotel in the city where writers tend to stay when they’re visiting, and they have a library there filled entirely with signed books by authors who have passed through. It’s really spectacular, and it was also strangely intimidating to sit in the room and talk about my books while surrounded by such a wealth of literary history. You can get an idea of how awesome it is here. I could easily have spent hours just browsing the titles and grinning like the kid I am. It’s impressive in a similar way to Neil Gaiman’s library:  if you love books, you see it – and you want it.

2.

Jen Forbus has a wonderful series of posts at her blog, in which she’s asked loads of writers to contribute a six-word memoir. (I honestly mistyped that as ’sex-word memoir’ just then – a follow-up series, perhaps). She was kind enough to ask me to participate: you can read my contribution here and then, when you’re finished, scan through all the others. Massive thanks to Jen for asking me to take part!

And now … work.

Search terms! You know when you Google stuff, in order to find something, and then you click on the link and go to the website? Well, the string of text you enter into Google appears in the search terms list on the back end of that website. For example, 72 people in November have so far googled the phrase “Steve Mosby” and come here. Hello!

Now, of course, you also get people arriving who didn’t want your website at all, and – depending on the type of site you run – you can find all sorts of disturbing shit turning up. If you’re a writer of dark, psychological crime fiction, you get nutters and freaks by the dozen. I don’t want to scare you (or myself) but it’s a rare month when I don’t have a fair few people – i.e. double figures – coming here while searching for things like “rape videos”, “torture videos”, “snuff porn”, “women gagged and bound”, “the Curzon Group”, and so on.

Sometimes, it’s not horrible just bizarre. For example, there was a four month period a while back when “Dean Koontz toupee” was one of my trending topics. Whereas currently my post on the Gable Film is the gift that keeps on giving. I write books too. Just so you know.

Anyway, I started thinking this was an under-used form of communication, especially as it’s far more anonymous to the average website owner than an unsigned comment on a blog. And what started me off was an incident, a few months ago, when a friend called Alison prompted Vincent to write more on his blog with a comment in his search terms. Which seemed very clever. I was asking whether this is a well-known internet phenomenon, and people don’t seem to know. You’d think it would have a name, and let me know if it does. In the meantime – thanks to Alison’s pioneering efforts – since mentioning it on Twitter two days ago, I’ve had the following search terms turn up:

• author steve mosby is a total twat
• did this appear appear in your search terms steve mosby?
• ah i thought it might steve mosby
• steve mosby theleftroom hairy arse
• steve mosby author and dreamboat
• steve mosby is an elephant
• writer steve mosby putting a tube of pringles in his arse
• steve mosby makes me feel special!
• steve mosby help i am trapped in the internet
• carlsberg don’t do gods but if they did it would probably be steve mosby
• steve mosby theleftroom this is god repent!
• steve mosby stop looking at your leftroom search terms

and – my personal favourite:

• who is a better writer ? steve mosby or jeffrey archer ?

Brilliant, honestly. I don’t know who you all are – well, most of you – but I love it. Keep up the good work, spread this technique far and wide, and – you know – don’t be evil. Or don’t be too evil. Or … ah fuck it, you’re all adults: go for your life.

I wasn’t going to do this, but hey – I’m bored, you’re probably bored (why else would you be here?), we’re all bored. And it was a sad day, in terms of another blog post by another writer, which we’ll get to in a minute. So I’m going to do it after all. Hang onto your hats.

I started thinking about the Curzon Group again yesterday. To be clear, I thought about them a bit when they formed, and then I’ve thought about them sporadically in the time since. Most of the time when my idle mind turned to them, the thoughts it had were generally derisory but had no real malice. And that’s still the case. I don’t dislike these people, because I don’t know them. And I don’t dislike their books, because I haven’t read them. Individually, all things being equal, I wish them well.

Collectively, however, I do have a slight problem.

Before we start, I don’t have any problem at all with writers banding together. There are loads of groups, collectives and ’squads’ out there, and I can see how it makes total sense. Most of us don’t get very much, if anything, in the way of a publicity budget – paradoxically, the bulk of that money tends to go to the sure-fire writers who’ll make the bestseller list regardless. It’s one of the odd facts about the publishing industry you learn very quickly. Similarly, you can buy new titles from well-known authors for around £8.99 in hardback, whereas – to sample an unknown like me – you’d need to shell out upwards of £18.99. Faced with that choice, I know how you’d spend your money, and – frankly – I don’t blame you. The explanation is simple: that well-known author will sell many copies anyway, so his or her book can be priced more cheaply (and therefore becomes more appealing to an impulse purchaser). As Kurt Vonnegut would say: so it goes. But in such a climate, it makes total sense for authors to promote themselves as heavily as they can, and if you group together you can do that more efficiently: an event with five mid-list authors is going to be far more appealing to organisers than five separate events with one author each. And so on. These days, even best-selling authors often do events together. I get it. It’s sensible. It’s fine.

And it also fits in with something you’ll often hear said at crime writing festivals. “Crime writers are like a gang”. I can’t remember who coined it. Mark Billingham? Ian Rankin? Whoever, it’s an appealing image. However much the noir crowd might dislike the generic, formulaic serial killer books, or the fainter-hearted might dislike the violent stuff, or people who actually write their own books might have a pop at the James Patterson brand, or the way everyone hates the much-maligned-but-rarely-actually-ever-seen cat mysteries – we’re all ultimately in it together. There’s a communal atmosphere at crime fiction festivals. We all get on. We even tolerate the people who don’t drink.

So why is the Curzon Group different? Why does it annoy me? Simply because, as it was originally formulated, it flies in the face of all that. Actually, I’ll go further. It pisses in the face of all that. Their website is here. Their blog is here. On the face of it, you’ll notice no obvious piss, but some history is required. The Group was started by the top three writers listed on their website, based on the mission statement you can still find on the site. It says this:

From Wilkie Collins to John Buchan, Eric Ambler to Hammond Innes, Ian Fleming to Alistair MacLean, and from Len Deighton to Frederick Forsyth, the British thriller is one of the richest traditions in world literature.

But in the last decade the British thriller has fallen into a sad decline. The market has been colonised by production line American thriller writers.

… likes of James Patterson, Dan Brown and John Grisham have taken over the market.

The Curzon Group is dedicated to reviving the traditions of Buchan, Fleming, MacLean and Forsyth, bringing the British thriller bursting back to life in the twenty-first century. Formed by Matt Lynn, the author of the military thriller ‘Death Force’: Martin Baker, the author of the financial thriller ‘Meltdown’: Alan Clements, the author of the political thriller ‘Rogue Nation, The Curzon Group is dedicated to Five Principles:

1.    That the first duty of any book is to entertain.
2.    That a book should reflect the world around it.
3.    That thrilling, popular fiction doesn’t follow formulas.
4.    That every story should be an adventure for both the writer and the reader.
5.    That stylish, witty, and insightful writing can be combined with edge-of-the seat excitement.

At its best, British thriller writing combined pace, humour, drama and insight to create stories that were of their moment yet timeless: that could capture a snapshot of history, yet could keep reader awake for half the night. Through competitions, promotions, publicity, talks, and, most of all, through our own writing, The Curzon Group is dedicated to restoring its finest traditions.

Do you see my problem? Well, maybe not. It’s not that they were promoting themselves – with the initial patronage of perjurer and all-round fucking scumbag Jeffrey Archer – but that they were doing so at the expense of other writers. They were going to ’save’ the British thriller – as though it was ever in decline – from the invasion of allegedly crap US-style writers, which you, the great British public, were either stupid or brain-washed enough to buy. From the beginning, it was very transparently a marketing strategy that had nothing to do with quality – or even those five ‘principles’, which any writer worth his or her salt would endorse, but which, looking at some of the titles and descriptions, you might wonder whether the Curzon Group itself actually does. Because they don’t look that fucking different or exceptional to me.

Anyway. You’ll notice the website now lists eight members of the Curzon Group. And two more have joined: Zoe Sharp and Elizabeth Corley. I quietly weep. Yet the whole enterprise becomes ever more transparently ridiculous. Who else will join? Is there a limit? What would happen if Simon Kernick or Lee Child requested to join? They’re both best-selling British thriller writers, after all. Would they be welcomed in the Curzon Group’s quest to save British thriller-writing from … well, ultimately their own writing? It’s tedious to point this out again, but – just for clarity – I have nothing against the individual writers here – just the mission statement they’ve drawn themselves together under. Saving British thriller writing: by replacing what’s popular, and which apparently is shit, with – well, themselves.

Today, the crime writer Declan Burke wrote a moving piece on his blog, Crime Always Pays. Declan is the author of two great crime novels. But – rather than ever solely promoting himself – he’s used his blog to promote the best of Irish crime writing (and beyond: he also included an interview with me). Scroll through his site, and you’ll find the same thing, time after time: the promotion of other writers; discussion, disagreement; but never a real hint of overt negativity when someone else succeeds  - because it’s not about that, is it? Or it shouldn’t be anyway. Quite the opposite. And yet, as you’ll see when you read that piece, he literally can’t afford to write anymore, not even in his spare time.

So I guess my current thought is this: when people like Declan, along with other great writers like, say, Ray Banks and Allan Guthrie, are storming the bestseller charts, maybe then I’ll start worrying about the plight of certain self-promoting writers bleating about the state of the industry. Whose fucking books can be found on the shelves in Asda.

Okay?

Okay.

… and relax.