Book Of The Year

Audible.com has picked Falling Glass as its best mystery or thriller of the year. I am absolutely delighted and also amazed; there are thousands of mysteries released as audiobooks every year and if you look at who I topped in this category its quite the collection of superstars. These are big names whose publishers supported their books with massive amounts of advertising, book tours and media appearances. Because I have been unable to find a US publisher Falling Glass had zero advertising, I didn't do a book tour and I did zero media. Falling Glass got the top spot on its writing and more importantly, I'm sure, because of the excellent performance by that brilliant actor and narrator Gerard Doyle. 
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I give a lot of credit to the editors at Audible who saw through the hype machines of the big publishers and picked the book they liked the best. I thank also the writers who reviewed Falling Glass on their blogs, the 207 listeners who rated the book on Audible and the people who took the time and trouble to review Falling Glass on Audible's web site, on Amazon proper and Good Reads. I really do appreciate it. I always read reviews and though I often violently disagree I take them all on board. A big thank you also to Mr Doyle and everyone at Blackstone Audiobooks. 
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Despite this award and the great reviews in the British press I still don't have a US publishing house. Why? Well, the book business is an arcane world. Publishers and editors say they like to try the new and the different but in fact they don't. Apart from the rebel badasses at Serpents Tail everywhere its the same story: if you don't fall neatly into one of their genre boxes they don't know what to do with you. I've always had that problem and rather than pander to the lowest common denominator I've always wanted to write my own books in my own way. Sometimes you pay the price: Here in Australia my publishers Allen and Unwin were so unconvinced by Falling Glass they didn't email me about it or tell me when it was coming out and it was a huge surprise when I just happened to see it in my local bookshop. It's hard enough to write a book but when you struggle to get noticed even by your own local publisher you do sometimes wonder what's the bloody point.
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But maybe the struggle is the point. I bet if I put my mind to it I could write a knock off Michael Connolly or Lee Child and make boatloads of cash. But I don't want to. I'm not that much of a cynic and books are too important to me. I don't want to write for money or for the whims of editors in corner offices, I want to write the books that move me and make me think and make me excited. My readers get invested not just in the characters and the story but also in the words and sentences that make up the story. My readers like irony and judicial profanity. My readers like a good joke and a well turned phrase. My readers admire wit. My readers know who Seamus Heaney is. My readers DONT HAVE TO HAVE EVERY LAST THING EXPLAINED TO THEM. My readers aren't prudes. My readers don't have to be told why its wrong to pour a shamrock on the head of a pint of Guinness. My readers can spot the gag in the sentence that begins chapter 2 of Falling Glass. My readers can recite poems from memory. My readers aren't frightened by a page without dialogue. My readers can name the Presidents back to 1932. My readers are sometimes poleaxed but seldom banjaxed. My readers are a select group and, you know what, I'm really glad about that. Slainte. 

Coming In January 2012

Vote For Me!

My novel Fifty Grand has been longlisted for the prestigious Theakston Best Crime Novel Award. There are 14 other books on the long list and to make the short list of five the general public is required to vote for their favourite.
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If you want to vote for Fifty Grand you can do so here.
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To be honest I think making the shortlist seems like a bit of a tall order. I'm up against several huge beasts of best sellers and I imagine those books will have a hard core fan base in the thousands. I suspect the five shortlisted books will also be the five books who sold the most copies. . .but you never know, do you? So I'd certainly appreciate your vote.
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Fifty Grand's always been a bit of an ugly duckling. I've gotten some barmy reviews from left wingers who say my portrayal of Cuba is fascist propaganda; I've also been attacked by right wing nuts who say that my description of immigrant life in New Mexico and Colorado is blatant commie propaganda. They can't both be right, can they? I then had to deal with some potential libel issues and a breach of copyright suit from the Church of Scientology (because I quoted from one of their rather eccentric questionnaires). Fifty Grand also seems to stir up strong passions among online reviewers (I got almost no print reviews in the US (thank you Henry Holt!)) who generally either love or hate the book. Some of the online reviews are pretty heavy but on the other hand I got a really nice review in The Guardian and Fifty Grand won the 2010 Spinetingler Award which is also voted on by the general public.
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Anyway if you hated Fifty Grand you can go to the Theakston Prize website and vote for somebody else. If you liked it you can go there and vote for me.
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The system they have in place to prevent double voting isn't the greatest one so if you want to vote Chicago style, feel free. (I voted only once and not for me.)
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And finally, for the Amazon reviewer who didn't believe Cuba could possibly be as bad as I've portrayed it and claimed that I hadn't been there at all...here's a link to an article I wrote for The Times about just one of my trips to Havana, and here's a link to the blog of Yoani Sanchez, a young Cuban woman, who despite being daily intimidated and on one occasion beaten up by Raul Castro's secret police, still bravely tells it like it is.
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Slainte and thank you for your vote!

All Killer No Filler. . . Falling Glass

My new crime novel Falling Glass is out this week. It's the story of Killian, an Irish Traveller, a finder of lost things and people, who is set on the trail of Rachel Coulter ex wife of Richard Coulter, owner of an upstart cheapie Irish airline (not unlike Ryan Air). Rachel has gone missing with Richard's two daughters and perhaps something else...
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There have been a few erroneous reports in the blogoverse that this is a Michael Forsythe novel. It is not. Forsythe is a character in the book and does make a cameo appearance but this is not his story. Parts of the book were based on a short piece I was going to write at one time called Scotchy Finn's Wake, which would have continued the pun of the last Michael Forsythe novel The Bloomsday Dead, but this is only a section of the novel. The emphasis is on Killian, Rachel Coulter and Richard Coulter as well as a few other crooks and ne'er do wells.
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If you're in the UK and Ireland the book is published by Serpents Tail and you should be able to get it in most bookshops as well as on Amazon.co.uk, right here. If you live in Australia or New Zealand the book will be published by Allen and Unwin in May or if you really can't wait you can also get it at Amazon.co.uk or the Book Depository. If you live in the US, it isn't available in the bookshops and it isn't on amazon.com yet so you'll have to get it from amazon.co.uk or the book depository. (That goes for the rest of the planet too) You can also get Falling Glass from the Serpents Tail website where they offer free worldwide shipping. (Just to thoroughly confuse you I think the E version is available at Amazon.com).
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Finally audio. The audio version of Falling Glass has been narrated by the wonderful Gerard Doyle and is available now on Audible.com or iTunes or direct from Blackstone Audio. That one you might also be able to get on Amazon.com.
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If you do get the book and you like it I would really appreciate it if you could give me a review on Amazon or Audible or Good Reads or your blog. I do try to read every single review I get, even the bad ones. I don't, like Liberace, cry all the way to the bank, but I do agree with Borges when he says "Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself."

George McFly Day

Falling Glass Cover

Essay Crisis

I've got a new book coming out in March of next year called Falling Glass. It's a stand alone crime novel being published by Serpents Tail. The book isn't about Michael Forsythe but that sleekit wee character does have a fairly large cameo. Anyhoo, I mention this only because I got my editorial letter from Serpents Tail this week and its going to require about 10-12 days hard graft from me to edit the book, add a couple of scenes, take out all the libel and remove all the jokes (which, sadly, nobody else seems to like but me).
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With that in mind blog service will be limited for the next 10 days or so. I'll be posting some old (and hopefully good) stuff from the early days of the blog and although I will read your comments I probably wont be that great about replying. This isnt me being rude, just me trying to focus on doing a good job on Falling Glass.
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Thank you for understanding. Normal service will resume soon and I do think you'll enjoy the older blog stuff that you probably haven't seen before.
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BTW this is NOT the cover of the book, just me mucking about with paintbox, although it is thematically appropriate.

Books For Christmas

The Guardian newspaper has picked my novel Fifty Grand as one of its books of the year and as a recommended book for Christmas (thank you Justine Jordan). Fifty Grand also got a nod as one of the books of the year by John O'Connell in the The New Statesman and I got a hat tip from Chris Mullin in The Observer. So far so good in Britain! but this is a novel which has struggled a bit in the US. The reasons for this are many: the bad economy didn't help; it also wasnt good that my editor left Holt two months before publication and that my replacement editor left two weeks before the pub day. Editors are crucially important in getting blurbs for books and getting them into the hands of reviewers. With 50G review copies were only sporadically sent out, were not followed up on, and there was no budget for publicity. I also think the subject matter may have been too controversial for some American reviewers. Still the success of Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast shows you what a dedicated publishing house can do (it also helps that the book is f**king brilliant) and in the UK the success of Fifty Grand is all down to the hard work of Rebecca Gray, Anna-Marie Fitzgerald, Pete Ayrton et alia at Serpents Tail; and in Oz, Kate Hyde at Allen and Unwin. Word of mouth of course also helps and if you were one of the people who reviewed Fifty Grand on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or Good Reads or Audible.com rest assured that I not only read your review but showed it around the family and probably sent it to my agent to prove that "some people like me". Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.

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Blurbs are important too and I'd like to thank Ken Bruen for being an early champion of Fifty Grand. Finally a word about the blogosphere. Because I didn't get reviews in the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post etc. I was more dependent than ever this year on bloggers for their support, so a big thank you to Declan Burke, Gerard Brennan, Peter Rozovsky, Dana King, Brian Lindemuth, Seana Graham, Sandra Ruttan, Brian O'Rourke, Liam Hoyle, Dan Wagner, Jolie Jordan, John McFetridge and many others - without you I'd be up the bloody creek. Thank you guys and gals. If there are going to be Adrian McKinty crime novels in the future (something I'm thinking quite hard about right now) it will largely be down to your support. Go raibh maith agaibh.