You win some, you lose some. Sauntered down to the dentist yesterday, to pick up a prescription for an antibiotic for a gum infection, and wound up in the dentist’s chair for three hours getting a double root canal treatment (Part 1). Am I the only one who sits in the dentist’s chair and, despite his best efforts, can’t help but channel his inner Dustin Hoffman? In better news, I heard this week that GREEN STREETS (or DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, to give it its full title) got the green light, and will be published in hardback by Liberties Press in March or April. As all three regular readers will be aware, GREEN STREETS is a collection of essays, interviews and short stories about the recent explosion in Irish crime writing, as written by the authors themselves. Contributors, in no particular order, include John Connolly, Colin Bateman, Tana French, Adrian McKinty, Declan Hughes, Niamh O’Connor, John Banville, Alan Glynn, Cora Harrison, Ken Bruen, Ingrid Black, Gene Kerrigan, Arlene Hunt, Brian McGilloway, Gerard Brennan, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eoin McNamee, Cormac Millar, and many more. I’m biased, of course, but I think it’s a terrific collection. More of which anon …
I also signed contracts that will see THE BIG O published in Italy next year, by Comma 22, a very funky publisher that also, in its wisdom, sees fit to publish Cormac Millar, who could very probably write novels in Italian rather than wait for them to be translated.
A good week, then, all told, especially as I’ve been cracking on with a new story of my own that I’m not entirely sure about at all, which is generally a good sign. It started out as a YA novel but has since morphed into a Big O-style caper (albeit one with a 14-year-old heroine) with added Greek gods and monsters, and heavily influenced by some teenage favourites of my own, including THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. And, I fear, a little too much by John Connolly’s THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS. Still, if you’re going to steal, steal big, right?
