Spenser's Boston, Temperance Brennan's North Carolina, Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia...real places with fictional detectives. The setting is an important part of any series of books and is often informed by a deep connection the author has with the location they have chosen.
Links of the week February 26 2024 (09)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
4 March 2024
Robert B. Parker spent his whole life living and writing in Boston. Kathy Reichs, like her protagonist, is a forensic investigator based out of Charlotte who also worked in Quebec, both locations brought vividly to life in her novels, and James Lee Burke sets the majority of his work in his hometown, except when he occasionally detours to place a mystery in Montana.
'As a barrister, that learned skill, the ability to tell a passionate, engaging story to twelve complete strangers and to take them with me when I do it? That's storytelling'
Practising barrister and former boxer Tony Kent published his first novel Killer Intent, the first book in the Dempsey/Devlin series, in 2017. Since then he has published Marked for Death, Power Play and No Way to Die; his new book, The Shadow Network, is out tomorrow (15 February) with Elliott & Thompson. The political thriller is set against the backdrop of Russian espionage and American spy-hunting and the modern day consequences of what the superpowers did during the Cold War. He is also the founder of crime-writing festival Chiltern Kills, which launched in October 2023 and raised money for youth homelessness charity Centrepoint.
The Shadow Network, like all my books, began as a single line on a page of single lines. I have a very thin 'plots' folder that I keep in my office. There are maybe three pages in that folder - I say maybe; I've not looked for a while and I have a nagging memory that I added a fourth a few months back - and on each page are a bunch of one-line 'storyline ideas'. You'll notice I used inverted commas when I typed that term. That was not a mistake; calling them 'storyline ideas' (I did it again!) is a very grandiose exaggeration. What they are, really, are nuggets. One-line semi-concepts, and what I do is that I choose one of those nuggets when the time comes to start working on the next book. And then, for the next three months or so, I will let that nugget bounce around in my head, developing into something closer to a plot with a few key scenes attached until the idea has sufficiently flourished that I can start to write.
In this article, poet and NCW Academy tutor Helen Ivory shares her poem 'The Square of the Clockmaker', which was chosen to be one of the Poems on the Underground, and how she grabs her readers attention with her poetry by making things strange.
One of the challenges of being a poet is to grab and maintain your reader's attention. Attention is a rare commodity these days when information comes flying in constantly through the blue light of our screens. How do you seize the whole of a person's focus, if only for the few minutes it takes to read a poem? How would you entice them to come back into your world and sit still with your poem for a second, or perhaps multiple times? One of the ways is to appeal to the imagination is by shaking things up a bit - you make the reader see something in a way they have never seen it before.
'Reading thrillers is like solving a puzzle. I enjoy the challenge of trying to peer beyond the author's smoke and mirrors and identify what's really going on'
C L Taylor published her first novel, Heaven Can Wait, in 2009. She made her thriller debut in 2014 with The Accident, and has since sold more than two million copies of her psychological thrillers. Her new novel, Every Move You Make, is out on 28 March with Avon. It tells the story of a group of five friends, who are all being stalked - and then one of them is murdered, days after their stalker is released from prison. When they receive a threat that one of them will die in ten days' time, they decide they don't want to be victims any more - they want to take revenge.
Back in 2009, when my first novel was published, aspiring authors still had to send printed copies of their novels to agents, and, if they weren't offered representation, would be sent it back by return post. If they were successful, then the phone would ring. How we dreaded the clunk of a rejected manuscript, landing on the map.
'Making publishing an industry where people without any kind of financial back-up can work would help the industry become more inclusive'
How did you get into publishing? Slowly! Publishing wasn't something I was thinking about when I graduated, which is for the best as I wasn't in a position to work for free then. I was so sure I wanted to be a lawyer, and I took the LSAT and got into law school even though I was never in a million years going to be able to afford to go. There were a couple of grad schemes I considered, but I graduated in 2007, and within not many months those companies either had massive layoffs or went out of business. I got a not-well-paid financial services job close to home and saved up for a few years, until I decided it was time to do something that I was more interested in.
The Hugo Awards are facing a controversy of intergalactic proportions. According to emails leaked on February 14, the volunteer body that administered the 2023 Hugo Awards appeared to have directly engaged in self-censoring the nominees over political concerns about the host country, China.
The emails allege members of the Hugo administration team succeeded in keeping certain books off-ballot because they wanted to operate under Chinese laws related to content and censorship, Hugo-nominated sci-fi author Jason Sanford and Hugo-winning fan writer Chris M. Barkley wrote in a special report on February 14. "In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different ... we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work," Dave McCarty, division head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Department, wrote in an email dated June 5, 2023. Talk about the call coming from inside the house. Following a round of voting that left four writers, including former Hugo Award winner Neil Gaiman and Babel's R.F. Kuang, out of competition during the latest awards season, fans are accusing the Hugos of being book-award thieves.
According to Bookstat's records, last year's e-book sales were influenced by celebrity authors and BookTok hashtags. But alongside the high-impact book club picks and small-screen adaptations, several self-published authors proved that the independent and hybrid publishing model can compete in the digital space.
Bookstat has compiled its Top 25 titles for 2023 by tracking the movement of e-books on online retailers' websites and calibrating that information against publisher-supplied data. Bonnie Garmus' Lessons in Chemistry topped the class with an estimated 148,774 copies sold. One of the key ingredients in this recipe for success was an apple. Apple Studios, that is, as the adaptation starring Brie Larson (who played the titular character in "Captain Marvel") started streaming last October, which gave another boost to the book's long-running charts success and prize-winning haul. Lessons in Chemistry has appeared in the weekly Bookstat Top 20 more than 20 times and has been a huge success in physical formats as well, selling in excess of 565,000 copies across all print editions last year through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market.
Unintended Consequences in Publishing support Charkin's Law: everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
HarperCollins' announcement of a big increase in digital sales-largely downloadable audio and materially generated by the partnership with Spotify-made me contemplate the balance between decisions made with the best will in the world and their not-always-beneficial consequences.
I don't know enough (I couldn't know) about this particular deal, but is the offer of 15 hours a month of free audiobooks to Spotify customers a longer-term benefit to sales? What proportion of audiobook listeners actually listen to more than 15 hours a month? There will be some, of course, and Spotify might indeed increase the numbers of the hard-core audience but what happens to the rest?
With the benefit of an exceptionally helpful rear-view mirror, let's think about other similar decisions.
It has only been a little over a year since ChatGPT rampaged into our modern lives. Yet already certain companies are claiming that they can write an entire book for you in a matter of days - harnessing generative AI, of course. Please note: The books won't contain one bit of original content or any actual stories and wisdom from your life.
But still, it begs the question: Is there a role for authors in today's world? Is the dream of earning a living by putting words on a page (or on a screen or in people's ears) even attainable? Four publishing and media experts weigh in: Mark Gottlieb, literary agent with Trident Media Group; Megan Williams, founder and CEO of TSPA; Ashley Bernardi, founder and CEO of Nardi Media; and Karla Blocka, founder and CEO of Fiction Profits Academy. Read on to discover Blocka's top five tips for how to succeed as an author.
For budding authors, the submissions process can be daunting. For anyone with little understanding of the publishing industry and how it works, it can be even more so. And for anyone whose writing sits outside of the established ideas of genre, style or content, it can be utterly baffling as to how to present that to an agent or publisher.
Until very recently, I'd been submitting my novel manuscript as "northern fiction". It's a northern novel, set in a northern pit village, using northern dialect and written by a northern author. But then a response from one very lovely agent, who said she enjoyed it but that it didn't represent historical fiction, set my mind wandering. I'd thought for all these years that I'd been honestly and boldly stating my point of difference by labelling my work first and foremost as northern. But rather than being a help, was it perhaps a hindrance?
The UK book industry loves categories, which makes sense when you consider that it exists in a country still obsessed with class. While this seems a smart and stress-free way to market a publication for publishers and agents, it comes back to bite them on the arse when it comes to enhancing diversity.
After months of criticism and an open letter signed by Ian McEwan and Alan Hollinghurst the charity confirms referral is in process
The Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html (RSL) has confirmed that it is referring itself to the Charity Commission after an open letter urging it to do so was signed by leading authors including Ian McEwan and Alan Hollinghurst.
The RSL, a charity which elects fellows based on literary merit, has been subject to criticism over recent months, including questions over changes to the way that fellows are elected, and the recent postponement of its annual magazine Review. Former editor Maggie Fergusson told the Times that the issue was pulled from print due to an article that was critical of Israel. It was also claimed that Fergusson was dismissed, although the RSL dispute this and say it had been previously understood that this would be her last issue of the magazine.
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Crime Writing for Teens and Adult
Recently, one of my favorite authors-who I am also lucky to call a friend-published her first work of crime fiction for adults after putting out seven young adult mysteries and thrillers. I devoured Kara Thomas's Out of the Ashes last spring, and with the upcoming release of my own debut adult thriller, The Split, after publishing five young adult thrillers myself, I was eager to talk to Kara about making the leap to the adult space after years of writing for a teen audience.
I wrote-but didn't sell-my first thriller for adults in 2017, when my first YA novel was under contract but not yet published. Writing in both spaces has always been a career goal of mine, and I had a sneaking suspicion the same was true for Kara, so I wanted to pick her brain about working in YA while also-finally!-making the move into the adult crime writing space. In the conversation that follows, Kara and I compare notes about taking on new challenges and expanding our audience at this pivotal point in both our writing careers.
A federal judge in California this week dismissed four of six claims made by authors in a now consolidated lawsuit alleging that Open AI infringes their copyrights. But the court gave the authors a month to amend their complaint, and the suit's core claim of direct infringement-which Open AI did not seek to dismiss-remains active.
Following a December 7 hearing, federal judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín needed just 13 pages to dismiss a host of claims made by the authors, including vicarious infringement (count two), claims that Open AI removed or altered copyright management information (count three); negligence under the unfair competition law (count five); and unjust enrichment (count six). The court allowed a fourth claim of "unfairness" under the unfair competition law to proceed, however, holding that, if true, the authors' claims that Open AI used their copyrighted works "to train their language models for commercial profit may constitute an unfair practice."
When you are next visiting a bookstore, and find your way to the children's section, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is no longer such a thing as a children's author. Instead, you will be ambushed by piles of books blazoned with the names of actors, singers, comedians, DJs and people who generously exhibit themselves on social media.
"Writing" a children's book has become another string to the celebrity bow. Imagine the scene. You've married a prince, and opened a shop that sells vaginal eggs. What more is there to do? A-ha, thinks the celebrity, perhaps while she is sitting on a bench. All those untutored minds, eager for moi! My personal brand will bring them such joy, such self-worth! They will all feel seen! And, think the celebrity's agents, jumping into their swimming pools full of gold, the gormless punters will glance up from their phones, see a name they recognize, and, hey presto, little Jane has a book from her favorite godmother. Will Jane read it? Probably not. Will anyone mind? I shouldn't think so. Only the legions of children's authors, whose own books are left to gather dust - and who cares about them?
A new generation of romance novel consumers has moved a long-standing three-way conversation between reader, writer and publisher onto social media, industry insiders say, speeding up an already fast-moving segment of the publishing world.
Those involved in romance publishing say the genre has long been nimble, adapting to societal shifts and consumer demand at a comparatively breakneck pace. The changing social views reflected in romance novels - from stories that centre queer joy to books written by and about members of diverse communities - can serve as a bellwether for the direction of general fiction.
Waterstones managing director James Daunt said social media is reinforcing the reading of "proper" paper books among young people.
Mr Daunt, who is also chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said social media trends such as 'BookTok' on TikTok had been "hugely positive", as he was made a CBE for his services to publishing by the Princess Royal.
At an investiture ceremony on Tuesday at Windsor Castle, he told the PA news agency: "There's been all of this innovation and change, but it has reinforced reading and reinforced reading real books.
"Certainly all the social media platforms - BookTok most notably.
"And then also audiobooks because they are (young people) listening to books as well, which is then promoting them to read more."
26 February 2024
Barbara Dee is the author of 14 middle grade novels, including Violets Are Blue and Maybe He Just Likes You. In her essay for PW, Dee reflects on her creative process and her forthcoming book, Unstuck, about a girl who struggles with anxiety and writer’s block.
Every writer knows the feeling: you’re sitting at the computer, or your writing notebook, staring at the same blank page as the day before, and the day before that. So you force yourself to write a sentence, but it’s terrible, so you delete it. Then you write a single word and delete that too. Now your head is buzzing and your heart is racing. You’re starting to panic, because what if you never write anything again?
Barbara Dee is the author of 14 middle grade novels, including Violets Are Blue and Maybe He Just Likes You. In her essay for PW, Dee reflects on her creative process and her forthcoming book, Unstuck, about a girl who struggles with anxiety and writer's block.
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