The Name Game; Or, On Killing ‘The Baby Killers’

Raymond Chandler once said - and I’m paraphrasing, now - that a good title for a novel is a title of a novel that has sold a million books. By which he meant, I think, that a novel’s title is far less important than its story, and that we shouldn’t get unduly hung up on what the book is called.
  That said, I’m a sucker for a good title. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE. THE LORD OF THE FLIES. TREASURE ISLAND. THE BIG SLEEP. Terrific titles, one and all - although, it should be said, they’re all terrific novels too.
  Now that THE BABY KILLERS is going to be published, I’m wondering if ‘THE BABY KILLERS’ is a good title. In theory, at least, it’s an eye-catching attention grabber, which is one function of a novel’s title, and it’s nowhere as gratuitous as it might seem on first glance, as no actual babies are killed during the novel (it refers to the phrase ‘kill your babies’, the advice given to writers who, when redrafting a novel, need to excise those elements they might have a personal preference for, but which are not essential to the story).
  I like the title, but I’m not precious about it, and I’m thinking strongly of changing it. If a potential reader declines to go any further with the book than that title on the basis of its ugly connotations (and there are few uglier concepts than the killing of babies), then I couldn’t really argue with him or her. Yes, we’re all grown-ups here, and the world we live in can be an ugly place; but that’s not a good enough reason to add unnecessary ugliness, just for the sake of what may or may not be an attention-grabbing title.
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’m a struggling writer, and I have a baby girl called Lily. The novel features a character called Declan Burke, a struggling writer, who has a daughter called Lily. I was messing about during the week mocking up a cover for the book, and in the spirit of post-modern japery, it occurred to me to put a picture of the real Lily on the mocked-up cover. Except I didn’t even get past the idea of it; the very notion of putting a picture of my lovely little girl in close proximity to the title THE BABY KILLERS was a step too far.
  Besides, I’ve been racking my brains, and I can’t actually remember one person who’s said to me, ‘Wow, that’s a great title.’ I have had quite a few comments, on the other hand, to the effect that the title is jarring, and off-putting. Most of those quite-a-few-comments have come from women, which is perhaps unsurprising; and what’s significant there is the fact that, as we all know, women read much more fiction than men. Does it make any sense to alienate the majority of potential readers?
  This isn’t just a commercial decision that needs to be made. If it were, I’d probably allow my perverse streak to make the call, and plough ahead with THE BABY KILLERS. It’s more a question of whether or not I want as many people as possible to read my book, be they women or men. Occupying, as I do, one of the lowest rungs on the publishing ladder, I’m not actually writing for money, which is just as well, because at this point I’d be dead from starvation. No, I’m writing for the fun of it, for the joy of putting words in their best order, for the thrill of seeing people emerge hesitantly from whatever dark shadows lurk in the back of my mind and gradually come together to create something real and vibrant and true. Having achieved that, to the best of my ability, only one thing then matters - that as many people as possible read the story. And if even a non-scientific, anecdotal approach tells me that some or many women (and very probably men too) are likely to avoid the story on the basis of the title, then ‘killing the baby’ of the title becomes a no-brainer.
  As it happens, most of the people who’ve been kind enough to pen a few words in support of the novel (see left) read the novel under a different title (it was called BAD FOR GOOD back then), and they either did or didn’t like it on the basis of the story, as opposed to the title. I may well revert to BAD FOR GOOD, although I do have another title in mind too.
  In the meantime, what say you, O Three Regular Readers? Would the title THE BABY KILLERS put you off picking up a novel? Are you even worried as to what a novel is called? How important is a title, and a novel’s cover in general? I’m all ears …

On Writing As Wasteful Self-Indulgence

I’ve written in these pages before about Deborah Lawrenson, author of the very fine THE ART OF FALLING and the Lawrence Durrell-influenced SONGS OF BLUE AND GOLD (and the forthcoming THE LANTERN) - indeed, it was the Lawrence Durrell hook that drew me into her novels first. She isn’t a crime writer by any stretch of the imagination, even if there is a crime lurking at the heart of SONGS OF BLUE AND GOLD, which is why I’m doubly pleased that she not only agreed to read the m/s of THE BABY KILLERS, but offered the following blurb:

“THE BABY KILLERS is surreal rollercoaster of a read, full of the blackest humour, and yet poignant – an outrageously funny novel that’s also deadly serious about the pain of being a contemporary writer. The joy is in the writing itself, all sparky dialogue and wry observation, so smooth that when it cuts, it’s like finding razor blades in honey.
“Here’s the agony that underpins the novel: the writer – as opposed to the real-life human being who is father, husband, son, brother, friend – only truly becomes what he strives to be when he is on this own, wrestling with his creations on the page. Yet, at certain times in life, when there is a new baby for example, or publishing hits the economic buffers, guilt for all those stolen hours sets in and those fictional creations become demons.
“In THE BABY KILLERS, Declan Burke hasn’t just written another comedy crime novel (at which he excels) but has used it as a getaway vehicle to peel away the layers of the writing process itself, howling with anger at the state of the world and sparing himself no punishment along the way.” - Deborah Lawrenson

  I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  THE BABY KILLERS, for those of you new to these pages, is a novel which will be published later this year, and which has already received a number of humbling blurbs from some very fine writers. As such blurbs by definition come from fellow writers, I’m a tad concerned at this point that the book, which is in part concerned with the process of writing a novel, will be more interesting to other writers than it will to readers who aren’t writers. And there’s always the danger that a reader with no interest in the process of writing, or the struggle to get published that most writers experience, will simply feel that that aspect of the novel is at best self-indulgent.
  All I can say to that is that this book captures a particular frame of mind, an especially profound time and space in my life, and that I wanted to incorporate that into the story itself. As a challenge, as an experiment, as a once-off peek behind the curtain of the writing process, to expose myself as a pathetic ‘wizard’ furiously pulling on levers in a vain attempt to convince the world of my ‘magical’ powers. Perhaps it’s because so much of the publishing industry - leaving aside the actual writing for the moment - is an exercise in smoke and mirrors, one in which too many writers swan about offering lofty guff about genius and the creative process and dropping broad hints as to how they occupy a different plane entirely to their readers, when the truth is that they are every bit as desperately seeking truth, inspiration and meaning as the people who read their books.
  Most writers, if they’re honest, struggle with the same issues (financial and otherwise) as are dealt with in THE BABY KILLERS; most writers, if they’re honest, lose the battle, although very few, thankfully, resort to blowing up hospitals in frustration.
  Maybe THE BABY KILLERS is an exercise in self-indulgence - at this point I’m still too close to it to offer any kind of balanced opinion. That said, and for those writers who aren’t earning a decent living from publishing novels, which is most writers, the very act of writing, that of stealing away time, effort, income and emotion from your nearest and dearest in order to invest it in a tissue of lies, all for the sake of satisfying ego and ambition, is as self-indulgent a process as can be imagined. But can you imagine how much poorer the world would be without it?

Edinburgh, El Greco And Me

I know nowt about art, but I do have a soft spot for El Greco, not least because no one can capture sadness quite like the Cretan. We were in Edinburgh for the weekend, and The Saviour of the World can be found in the National Gallery there, so - never missing an opportunity to see an El Greco or a Caravaggio in the flesh, as it were - I beetled across to stand in front of The Saviour of the World for so long that I was eventually asked to leave. Haunting stuff; as you can probably appreciate, the reproduction doesn’t do it justice, and particularly the impact of those heartbreaking eyes.
  Anyway, it was a very fine break indeed in Edinburgh. It’s a lovely city to stroll around, given that there’s architectural delights to be had around every corner, even if I didn’t manage to make it as far as the folly that gave the city the title ‘the Athens of the North’. To be honest, though, I wasn’t there for the art or the architecture - it’s been mind-meltingly busy lately, and it was nice to draw a quiet breath or two, forget about deadlines, and simply wander around with my good lady wife, doing our own thing at our own pace, eating fine food, drinking when we felt like it, and sleeping my tousled little head off at every opportunity. Oh, and it was nice to sit down and break bread (drink coffee, actually) with Scotland’s finest living author, Allan Guthrie, on Saturday afternoon. Especially as he paid for the coffee. Nice one, Al.
  It’s back into the fray with a vengeance this morning, though. This week sees DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21ST CENTURY delivered to the publishers, Liberties Press, and once that’s out of the way, I’ll be starting into a redraft of mine own humble tome, THE BABY KILLERS, which will be published later this year.
  Did I spend any time over the weekend thinking about either project? No. My brain being the unruly slave that it is, and the El Greco having the impact it had, I found myself wondering about the possibility of resurrecting a half-written novel of mine, a quasi-sci-fi tale of a messianic second coming recounted by a scribe detailed by the relevant authorities to discover the whereabouts of said messiah’s body, which appears to have been stolen from its tomb by one of a number of vested interests, lest its disappearance give credence to rumours of divine intervention, and result in political, social and theological revolution.
  Yep, that’s me - always with the sharp nose for a best-selling commercial prospect (koff) …

The Baby Killers: Good Times For A Change

“Good times for a change / See, the luck I’ve had / Can make a good man turn bad …” I don’t invoke those mopey depressmeisters The Smiths very often on these pages, but believe it or not, it is, and for once, good times and good news at Crime Always Pays. As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’ve been struggling for quite a while now to get my latest opus, THE BABY KILLERS, aka BAD FOR GOOD, published. There have been ups and downs along the way, and many pleasant rejection letters to peruse, and much by way of support from those of you who wander by here once in a while; indeed, there was much love last year for my proposal to self-publish the book via ‘crowd-sourcing’, with all (any) profits being donated to charity.
  But lo! It has come to pass that a small but perfectly formed Irish publisher has made an offer to publish THE BABY KILLERS. The deal proposed is also small but perfectly formed, to the extent that it’s fair to say that my plan of buying a Greek island will have to be deferred until the publication of my next book, at the very least. I do like the publishing model, though. It’s based on small print runs, firm sales (i.e., no sale-or-return), and a commitment to no-frills publishing of quality, quirky books for readers with an appetite for books that don’t necessarily conform to mainstream publishing’s idea of a commercial prospect. All of which is music to my ears.
  Now, the deal wouldn’t necessarily appeal to every writer. For one, there’s no advance involved, which effectively means that I’m giving away my book for free. Given that I was planning to self-publish it anyway, that’s not an issue for me; far better that the book, which was gathering dust on the shelf, be published without earning an advance than not published at all, or cost me to publish, particularly in these straitened times. It also removes the pressure of earning out the advance, and / or feeling indebted to a publisher.
  In effect, the deal will accomplish everything I wanted to achieve through self-publishing, with many added benefits, the most important of which are that the publisher already has a good reputation for publishing interesting books, and that the publisher also absorbs the cost of publication, and provides the distribution and - crucially - the experience.
  For my own part, I get to see a beautifully produced (if the publisher’s previous offerings are anything to go by) book of mine on the shelf, and to feel a little less of a charlatan when I mumble that I’m a writer in my spare time. Equally important, I get to fulfil that commitment I made to the Three Regular Readers last year, of donating all royalties from the book’s publication to charity. Given the content of the book, and the fact that the story revolves around a sociopathic hospital porter’s plot to blow up the hospital where he works, the charity to benefit will mostly likely be that of a children’s wing of a local hospital.
  So that’s it in a nutshell. Contracts have yet to be issued and details formalised, so it’s only fair that I mention no names as of yet. I have to say, though, that I’m hugely energised right now, enthusiastic and upbeat. Suddenly, naively, everything seems possible again.
  The early word, in terms of blurbs at least, has been good. To wit:

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” – John Banville, author of THE SEA

“If you want to find something new and challenging, comic crime fiction is now the place to go … Declan Burke [is] at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works.” Colin Bateman, author of THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL

“THE BABY KILLERS is unlike anything else you’ll read this year … Laugh-out-loud funny … This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone … a feat of extraordinary alchemy.” – Ken Bruen, author of AMERICAN SKIN

“Burke has written a deep, lyrical and moving crime novel … an intoxicating and exciting novel of which the master himself, Flann O’Brien, would be proud.” – Adrian McKinty, author FIFTY GRAND

“Stop waiting for Godot – he’s here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing themselves and turns it on its ear, and then some. He gives it body and soul … an Irish soul.” – Reed Farrel Coleman, author of EMPTY EVER AFTER

“THE BABY KILLERS is shockingly original and completely entertaining. Post-modern crime fiction at its very best.” – John McFetridge, author of EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

“A harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel … Burke has outdone himself this time; it’s a hell of a read.” – Scott Philips, author of THE ICE HARVEST

  So there you have it. The plan is to publish THE BABY KILLERS later this year, with attendant trumpet blasts and the strewing of garlands. In the meantime, and if the spirit so moves you, feel free to pre-order a copy by leaving your name and a contact email address (using (at) rather than @ to confound the spam monkeys) in the comment box below.
  Finally, and at the risk of sounding mawkish, I’d like to thank everyone who has ever expressed an interest in this book. It’s people like you who make all the difference, who give writers like me that most elusive and precious of all commodities in this writing game - hope. God bless you, every one.

21st Century Boy

I have no idea of when it’ll go live, but at some point today Mulholland Books will begin serializing a new novel by Sir Kenneth of Bruen (right). It all sounds splendidly Dickensian, albeit in a 21st century kinda way, and would be even more Dickensian were it a Jack Taylor novel exploring the squalor of recession-hit Galway (sorry, Galway), with soot-blackened urchins being shoved up chimneys to discover corpses and whatnot. Anyway, you can clickety-click here for more …
  In other news, yesterday I received a long awaited decision on the future of my own current tome, which is at the moment languishing under the improbable title of THE BABY KILLERS. The news, disappointingly, was a negative, although the disappointment has less to do with the fact that the book won’t be published any time in the near future (I’m well used to that at this stage) as it has to do with the potential publisher, a small but perfectly formed press with some radical ideas on the future of publishing. It’s a pity, but there it is; upward and onward.
  It now looks very much like I’m going to self-publish THE BABY KILLERS, aka BAD FOR GOOD, aka A GONZO NOIR at some point later this year. I’ve had a good scour around the interweb for self-publishing deals, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t in all conscience, given these straitened times and the need to put food on the table, etc., pump even a relatively modest sum of money into a project just for the sheer vanity of being able to hold an actual book. And so I’ll be e-publishing THE BABY KILLERS, and pretending that I’m doing it to be on the cutting edge of technology, especially in the context of Amazon claiming that they’re now selling more Kindles than McBurger sells cheeseburgers, etc, yadda-yadda.
  For those of you who’ve been keeping an eye on this project, the principle behind it will remain the same: any monies accruing will be donated to charity. That won’t amount to much more than a hill of beans, and probably a lot less, because the price of the book will probably be in the $1 range. Still, it’s the thought that counts.
  As to what I’ll do once THE BABY KILLERS is out there, I really have no idea. I’ve a couple of stories I’d really like to write, and one in particular that simply won’t go away, so I have plenty of material to work with. Whether or not there’s an actual point to writing it, or them, is another matter entirely. Yes, it’ll be that uniquely perverse kind of masochistic fun that is writing, which is roughly 90% of the reason I write; but I can only delude myself for so long, and eventually the other 10% - actually presenting the story to other people for the purpose of reading it, if for no other reason than to justify the time you’ve wasted writing the bloody thing - will kick in. And where do I go then, with my oh-so-precious m/s clasped in my clammy hands? Being practical, there’s only so many times I can tell the Three Regular Readers of ye olde blogge that good times are just around the corner; at some point they’re going to lose interest, or worse, start pitying me. Better perhaps to just accept that I’ve had a good enough run at this point, a better run than I’d even allowed myself to imagine starting out, and simply fall on my sword.
  We’ll see. Right now my priority is to get DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS to the publisher on deadline, and see it ushered onto a bookshelf near you in all its pomp and glory; and once that’s done, I’ll crack on with e-publishing THE BABY KILLERS, and apologies in advance to all of you who, like me, prefer actual books to the electronic version. After that, well, who knows? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell.

When The Barbarians Come They Will Make The Laws; Or, Rome Wasn’t Sacked In One Day

It’s not often I get reviewed these days, which is hardly surprising, given that I haven’t had a book published since God was a lad. Or 2008, to be a little more accurate about it, which was when HMH published THE BIG O in the US. Even so, reviews of THE BIG O do tend to pop up on blogs and websites at irregular intervals, for which I’m very grateful indeed, the latest coming courtesy of Glenna over at Various Random Thoughts, with the gist running thusly:

“It was clever, funny, the characters smart and witty, and a plot evocative of Elmore Leonard … Intelligence, humour, and wonderful characters all made for an enjoyable and quick read.” - Various Random Thoughts

  I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  Print reviews, of course, traditionally appeared in a very narrow window around a book’s publication, but websites and blogs give people the freedom to write about whatever it is they’re reading, however belatedly. Brian Lindemuth, if I’m not mistaken, is taking that notion to another level entirely, by revisiting novels to review them years after they’ve been published, while the Patti Abbott-inspired meme-a-licious ‘Friday’s Forgotten Books’ has been excavating ignored novels for quite some time now, and is very probably the inspiration for Twitter’s ‘Friday Reads’ hash tag.
  It’s not quite the interweb’s fabled long tail, and it may well be the reverse of the long tail, without being an actual short tail, but whatever it is, long may it continue. The increasing volume of books published, combined with the limitations of print reviewing - space, for the most part - mean that most books don’t get reviewed in the traditional way, leaving the interweb to pull in the slack and go some way towards levelling the playing field for upstarts like yours truly. And that’s before we factor in the number of e-only books being published these days, which is very probably the next big growth area for on-line reviewing.
  Anyway, it was a good holiday for me in terms of being reviewed, for two - Oh yes! Two! - reviews of my books appeared. The second gives another little twist on the potential of web-based reviewing, given that Mike Dennis, bless his cotton socks, not only read my current novel-under-consideration, BAD FOR GOOD, aka THE BABY KILLERS, but blogged a review of it over at his interweb lair. The gist:

“The book is a dizzying ride through all phases of author angst, including the ending (which you won’t see coming), and Burke has deftly pushed the envelope just about as far as it can go.” - Mike Dennis

  Now, there’s a very good chance that I’m a little too close to this particular project to be objective about it, but there’s something delightfully subversive about the idea of a novel that hasn’t been published, and may well not be published, being fair game for reviewing. Maybe it’s just a mini-version of Authonomy and suchlike, where writers post excerpts for workshop purposes, and get feedback from their peers, although it’s only fair to say that BAD FOR GOOD is the finished article, for good or ill. Either way, it’s another example of the web’s capacity to bypass, undermine and / or ignore the current model of publishing, which seems to grow more moribund by the day.
  Of course, such reviews - of books that may never grace a shelf - might well be pointless, given that they have no real worth beyond my own gratification. In other words, the writer-critic-reader feedback loop being largely the preserve of dusty academia these days, the industry’s perception of reviews is that they boost sales. So what’s the point of reviewing a book that can’t be monetised?
  Well, the thing is this: once a book is written, and written as well as it can be, then you’re kind of honour bound as its writer to do something with it. The traditional thing, of course, is to send said tome to your agent, if you have one, or to a slush-pile, and I have taken the traditional steps. But, given the dynamic immediacy of the web, such steps seem almost passive these days. So why not, if there are readers out there willing to read the story, send it to them and see what they think of it? If I may quote Dostoevsky, as I do in BAD FOR GOOD: “You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics. Answer: Because it was very dull to sit with one’s hands folded, and so one began cutting capers.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND.
  Or, more bluntly, and quoting Cavafy: “When the Barbarians come they will make the laws.”
  In short, I’m happy to imagine BAD FOR GOOD as one of a horde of barbarians clamouring at the gates. There’s a very good chance, what with all those pinging arrows and barrels of boiling oil, and all my fellow barbarians a-clamouring, that BFG won’t make it over the battlements. Still, better to die in a gloriously foolhardy assault than starve silently to death beyond the walls. No?

Word Junkies; Or, The True Cost Of Writing

Like most people who are even semi-serious about the writing business, I try to write every day. That’s not always possible, what with pesky issues like the need to put food on the table and nappies on bums to deal with, and the even more pressing need of ensuring the mortgage gets paid so that your daughter doesn’t have to go live in an actual tree (right), but I generally get a couple of hours a day done, five or six days a week. Which is pretty poor going, especially as fulltime writers get to spend eight or ten hours at the desk every day, but needs must, and a couple of hours per day is usually enough to keep me ticking over and the bubble of whatever world I’m creating fully inflated.
  Taking a break of more than a day or two can be a dangerous business. It can be a good thing, in that it allows the mind to roam more freely, and you can start making connections that might not otherwise have occurred to you; it can also serve as a kind of damming process, behind which the story builds up, thus allowing you to burst back into a story bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
  The danger, of course, is that spending even four or five days away from a story affords a perspective that can very easily prick that bubble. The old doubts about your ability have time to fester; you start to wonder if the story is actually all that believable; or, worse, if there’s really any point to writing it, no matter how believable it is, or enjoyable to write.
  The week just gone by, in which I took a break of six days from working on the current story, appears to have fatally holed it beneath the waterline. I still think it’d be fun to write, and I like the characters, by which I mean I find them interesting enough to follow through to find out where the story will take them; but the whole ‘what’s-the-point?’ black dog started howling out in the darkness.
  Worse, while slumped in a turkey-and-sherry-trifle coma in front of some rubbish TV, I started crunching numbers. Now, I earn a decent if not remarkable wage as a freelance writer. The hours are long, and the work itself is interesting, and the bills get paid and nappies get put on bums. All of which, especially in the current climate, is very good indeed.
  For some reason, though, I started wondering about how much, in terms of dollars and cents, I’ve invested to date in my writing ‘career’. Any aspiring writers out there might want to look away now.
  The nuts and bolts run thusly: I’ve had two books published, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE (2004) and THE BIG O (2007). I’m hopeful, although not hugely so, that I’ll have another book published this year, BAD FOR GOOD aka THE BABY KILLERS. (I’m not counting CRIME ALWAYS PAYS for the purpose of this little exercise, by the way, as that went straight to e-format - but feel free to have a squint, if you’re so inclined).
  Now, I started writing EIGHTBALL BOOGIE some time around 2000 or 2001. So let’s say, for a round figure, and taking a huge leap and presuming that I’ll have another book published in 2011, that by the end of this year I’ll have had three books published to show for 10 years work. (I’ve written other novels, there are three or four gathering dust on the shelf, but for now let’s just stick with published books).
  The rates for freelance journalism have changed over the last decade, not always upward, so it can be hard to put an hourly figure on earnings. These days I can write a feature in two hours and earn €200 (very rare), but my hourly rate, when I’m being honest with myself and factor in the daily commute, is usually closer to €20.
  Now let’s extrapolate, and apply that hourly rate to writing fiction. At two hours per day, five days per week, 48 weeks per year, at a rate of €20 per hour, that amounts to €9,600 per year ‘spent’ on writing fiction. Multiply that by the ten years I’ve been writing seriously, we’re looking at the guts of €100,000, or €33,000 per book published. And that’s presuming that I’ll have a book published in 2011, which is a pretty big presumption; if I don’t, we’re looking at each book I’ve published costing me €50,000. Meanwhile, the largest advance I’ve ever received is €10,500, a figure that’s roughly ten times what an author scrabbling around at my level is likely to receive if he or she is lucky enough to see a book land on a shelf.
  I should say, of course, that those hours I spend writing fiction tend to be in the 6am-8am or 9pm-11pm bracket, hours when I very probably wouldn’t be working at earning anyway. Still, it’s a sobering thought, that investing all that time and effort should end up costing you somewhere in the region of seventy grand.
  If this was any other kind of business, I’d have been declared forcibly bankrupt and / or certifiably insane a long, long time ago.
  Unfortunately, it’s not any other kind of business. It’s writing. And just like the degenerate gambler and / or junkie who keeps on borrowing to feed his habit, I’ll keep on pounding the keyboard. Not in the hope that, one day, I’ll hit big and earn enough to have made all those years financially worthwhile, because junkies don’t think like that. No, I’ll keep writing for the pure and simple buzz of seeing the words appear on the page. My words, my story, my dream made real.
  I’m not a moron, all evidence to the contrary. Unlike the average junkie, I won’t be doing anything that might impact on my ability to put nappies on bums. Those writing hours I do scrape together will remain in the 6am-8am or 9pm-11pm slots, and will be just about enough, hopefully, to keep me from turning into the psychopathic bear I become when I don’t get my two-hourly fix every day. If I do get another book published this year, that will be marvellous; if not, well, you write in order to write. Everything else to do with the publishing industry, with apologies to everyone involved, is just a necessary evil.
  So, my New Year Resolutions:

1 To write and not to count the cost.
2 Give up smoking.
3 Spend more time with Lily.

  Meanwhile, a happy and prosperous New Year to all of you good folks, and here’s hoping that 2011 is a better year than the annus horribilis gone before. Upward and onward, people …

“They Think It’s All Rovers … It Is Now!”

Not a bad season at all for the Bit o’ Red, then. Sligo Rovers beat Shamrock Rovers to win the FAI Cup yesterday on penalties, admittedly, but apart from the first 15 minutes they were the better side, and fully deserved the win. What made it particularly sweet was that they came back after last year’s heartbreak (1-0 up in the final with about six minutes to go, only to lose 1-2), and that they won it playing attractive, flowing passing football, as they have done all season under manager Paul Cook - a Liverpool lad, as if it needs to be said. Also, beating Shams in the final - sweet as a nut.
  All told, the Real Rovers nabbed two trophies this year, doing the Cup double, and finished third in the League, thus qualifying for European football next year. All of which is just a tad improbable, given Sligo Rovers’ fairly limited resources, but there you go, it just goes to show what can be achieved when you’re not prepared to settle for how things are supposed to be. Oh, and did I mention that ’keeper Ciaran Kelly - who’s actually the club’s second-string ’keeper, behind the injured Richard Brush - saved four spot-kicks during the penalty shoot-out? Yes, that’s four saved penalties. I don’t know if it’s a world record, exactly, but it’s pretty impressive in any context.
  I’m going to go ahead and take Rovers’ win yesterday, and their season in general, as a good omen. The redraft of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS went off last Thursday, and (tenuous link ahoy) it’s set in Sligo, and yours truly is constrained by limited resources (time, talent, etc.) when it comes to writing. So you never know …
  I didn’t get to the game, by the way. A combination of a slipped disc and a 40th birthday celebration in Sligo (mine and my sister’s, respectively) meant that I wound up watching the game from the comfort of my couch, coaching Lily to shout, “Play up, Sligo!”. When I got home from Sligo, however, there was an email / reader’s report on THE BABY KILLERS waiting for me. I won’t say who it’s from just yet, as I haven’t had the chance to ask his permission, but the gist of it runs thusly:

“If you took Palahniuk’s FIGHT CLUB, Ellis’ AMERICAN PSYCHO and King’s SECRET GARDEN, SECRET WINDOW, combined them with Burke’s mastery of dialogue, character and the human condition, then removed the gratuitous violence, the end result would be Burke’s latest and most impressive novel to date, THE BABY KILLERS. An excellent read that continually ratchets up the intrigue and suspense factors as it builds toward the tremendous finale, while at the same time providing an intense, no-holds-barred, behind-the-scenes introspection into the psyche of the writer and his process.”

  Which is very nice indeed, and may in itself be some kind of omen. Who knows? If you’d told me yesterday morning that Rovers would win the Cup on penalties, saving four spot-kicks in the process, I’d have laughed you out of the building.

Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

Après le deluge, c’est moi. Or words to that effect. The immediate aftermath of writing a book is always a weird time, a period of twitchiness and sensory overload and an indefinable feel of gaping loss. There’s relief too, of course, but you’re still running on adrenaline in a vacuum, synapses firing like a Catherine Wheel, and yet you’ve nowhere to invest all the excess creative energy. The idea of starting something new is stomach churning, given that you feel physically drained, and that’s even presuming you’ve a new idea worth kicking around. Better writers than I have suggested in the past that this can be a good time to write short stories, and in that way siphon off the excess mental energy in brief spurts, but - as the man says - if I was able to write short stories, why would I bother writing novels in the first place?
  Anyway, the latest redraft is finished. Hallelujah, etc. For those of CAP’s three regular readers who have been paying attention, it was a redraft of the story that started out under the rather unwieldy title of THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS, then became A GONZO NOIR, moved on to BAD FOR GOOD, and is currently rejoicing in the not-likely-to-see-the-light-of-day title of THE BABY KILLERS. For those of you who have already read it in a previous draft form, the new draft contains roughly 10% new material, most of which was included to root the characters in what passes for my reality, and which - hopefully - makes the story just a smidge more bonkers than it already was. Which, given that the publishing industry grows more conservative by the day, is the literary equivalent of shooting myself in the foot. But what else can you do? Join the grey, homogenous ranks churning out grey, homogenous facsimiles of one another? Invent a particularly gruesome and / or fiendishly clever psychopathic killer? Wedge the latest dull-but-worthy Inspector Plod into a sub-genre already splitting at the seams with dull worthiness? Contrive a new variation on the superhuman sub-Bond thriller? Foist, God preserve us all, yet another tarnished knight of the private eye variety onto an unsuspecting - oh, hold on, I’ve already done that.
  No, it’s foot-shooting for me, and a permanent limp as I wander the publishing roads less travelled, and a metaphor mangled to within an inch of its life. But I digress.
  I finished the redraft on Thursday morning, and sent it off, and I’ve been mooning around ever since, or at least during those chunks of time I’d previously allotted to writing. What to do, what to do? I’ve some other novels I could be redrafting, and half-finished novels I could be finishing, and half-started novels I could be working on, but I’ve promised myself I won’t write another word of fiction until the New Year at least, as life tends to get a little frantic for a freelance journalist in the run-up to Christmas.
  Plus, knowing that the story is out there, and being read by people who have the wherewithal to put it on a shelf at some point in the future, has a paralysing effect. It’s like some kind of venom that blocks the synaptic impulse from reaching the fingertips. A very weird feeling, and hence the twitchiness.
  By the way, those few of you who have been paying attention will remember that my plan, when last outlined, involved self-publishing BAD FOR GOOD / A GONZO NOIR / THE BABY KILLERS for charidee. Well, there’s been a development since then, and a rather intriguing one, and while self-publishing remains an option, it’s not the only one. More of which anon.
  Meanwhile, I’m still waking at 5am ready to write, fully charged, utterly drained, bedevilled with ideas and frustrated for the want of a blank page to transform their glittering brilliance into toxic sludge, a process I like to describe as ‘the first draft’. It’ll pass, I know, it always does, and soon enough all that energy will subside back into the pit from whence it came, there to transmogrify itself and emerge as an entirely different beast, hopefully as a beast brandishing a pair of Gatling guns pointed squarely at my feet.
  For now it’s time to put my nose to grindstone, and put the hours into work that actually pays. Hell, maybe I’ll even be able to get back to waking at 6.30am.
  Finally, and for your delectation, I offer the new start to the book, with all brickbats and barbed-wire bouquets welcome, as always. To wit:

1.

This man at the foot of my bed is too sharply dressed to be anything but a lawyer or a pimp. He is reading, intently, which leads me to believe he is more likely a pimp, as these days lawyers are more usually to be found writing novels than reading them.
  His navy suit, a three-piece over a pink shirt with a white collar and navy tie, is the only splash of colour in a room that is otherwise entirely white. White walls, white tiles on the floor. The window blinds, bedside locker, sheets, wainscoting, the door, all white.
  As it is a manuscript of a novel the man is reading, the page facing me is white.
  His eyes flicker up to meet mine. They narrow when he realises I have come awake, and a well trimmed eyebrow arches. Brown eyes, flecked with hazel, and not without warmth. He holds my gaze for a moment or two. ‘You’re some man for one man,’ he says.
  When I do not speak, he puts the manuscript down and settles himself comfortably in the straight-backed chair, folds his arms. ‘The best we can hope for is criminal damage,’ he says, ‘and that’s claiming insanity. We’ll start out full-blown, work our way down to temporary, you could be out in five years. But that’s your best case scenario.’
  He waits. The only sound is the faint hum of the a/c.
  ‘Worst case,’ he says, and his tone has not changed, ‘they’ll pull out the big guns, offences against the State, terrorism, the works. I mean, there’s no specific law against blowing up hospitals, but let’s just say they’ve plenty of wiggle room to play with.’
  Again he waits.
  His tone still patient, reasonable, he says, ‘Between you and me, you’re public enemy number one, and right now I’m the only friend you have. So we can do this with you playing dumb if you want, some kind of silent protest, it can only help with the insanity plea. But if you want my advice, which is why I’m here, then I suggest you start talking. To me, at least. There’s only the two of us, no one’s taking notes, there’s no recorder running, it’s all off the record. I’m here, I’m listening.
  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what d’you say?’
  A man cannot live tilted away from the world. The world will not permit it. Gravity will have its way.
  He must live straight, upright, or not at all.
  I reach for the pen and pad on the bedside locker and scribble a question. The man comes to the bed, takes the pad.
  ‘What day is it?’ he says. ‘It’s Monday. Monday,’ he checks his watch, ‘four-thirteen pm.’
  I beckon for the pad, and scrawl, Tomorrow.
  A wry grin. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘It’s all about the Tuesdays, isn’t it?’
  There is nothing I can add to this. It would appear that all effort has come to naught.
  My line for today comes courtesy of Samuel Beckett: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
  I close my eyes.

© Declan Burke 2010

On Beating Publishers With A Big Stick; and Ken Bruen’s Movies

First off, let me apologise for the erratic posting that the Three Regular Readers might have noticed here at CAP for the last while. The reasons why are positive, given that I’m swamped right now (yours truly in full-on nervous breakdown mode, right) with actual paying work, which is not something I’ll be complaining about any time in the near future, particularly as Ireland might do well to simply turn itself into one vast begging cap before the IMF finally decides to do the right thing. The other reason is that I’ve been beavering away at a redraft of A GONZO NOIR, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which I should have finished in the next week or so, all things being equal and a fair wind following, etc.
  Incidentally, if there are any bloggers and / or reviewers out there who fancy receiving a Word doc copy of said tome, which may or may not be labouring under the title of THE BABY KILLERS by the time it reaches you, I’d be delighted to provide a RARC (Ridiculously Advanced Review Copy). Please drop me a line at the usual address ...
  Once the redraft is completed, I’ll be turning my attention to other matters, including beating some unfortunate print-on-demand publisher with a big stick until it uncles and agrees to a reasonable price, and sundry other issues. All going well, following wind, etc., I’m hoping a print book version of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS will see a shelf near you by April or May. I’m also planning to release it as an e-book, for all you e-reader fans out there. No, please, form an orderly queue, etc. …
  Meantime, and because I’ve been so busy, I’m way behind the curve with the trailers for the two forthcoming movies based on Ken Bruen novels, which hit the interweb last week. The first, LONDON BOULEVARD, starring Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley, will be released on November 26th, if my information is correct, although I’m giving no one any guarantees on that one. Roll it there, Collette …

  The second movie, BLITZ, starring Jason Statham, is scheduled for a 2011 release, although I can’t be any more precise than that. Collette? In your own time, ma’am …