Two Words

Writing can be tough. You’ve got to find a great concept, plot out the story, then carefully unfold the whole thing across several hundred pages. Some days it goes well, some days it doesn’t, but you press on towards that exhilarating point where the book takes on a life of its own, where it starts to feel real, and the chapters fuse together into a whole…

And then comes the really gruelling bit: thinking of a title.

Strictly speaking, it’s not just thinking of a title, it’s thinking of a good title that hasn’t been used recently. I got lucky with my first book – “Eye Contact” had the right feel, and it had been a few years since anyone else had used the name. For the sequel it took longer, with a large number of emails going back and forth before my editor suggested “Knife Edge”, which fitted the story perfectly.

And so to Book Three, whose name has been an ongoing source of debate and head-scratching for months. There have been email exchanges, word-lists, and phone-calls. Every time I thought we had something, a quick check on Amazon would reveal a recent book with the same title, and my hopes were cruelly dashed. Were all the good titles taken?

In the midst of such despair, it was a truly great moment when, over cookies and coffee at Hodder, my agent Eve White came up with two words that everyone agreed on: “Cut Out”. It’s certainly a huge relief to me, and the book feels more complete, now it has its own identity.

So there you have it – writing really can be tough. The first ninety thousand words might be straightforward enough*, but the last two can be a right pain.


CUT OUT will be published in August 2014, with paperback the following January.

 *Actually, not straightforward at all.    

Apple Tree Yard

Let's get this out of the way, right at the start – Apple Tree Yard is wonderfully written. From its brilliant opening, it held me throughout, and I was completely absorbed by the story. If you haven't read it yet, forget about this post as it may contain some spoilers, and I wouldn't want to lessen your enjoyment of a really good book.
For those of you who have read it, I've no problem with the novel itself, but when I finished it, there was a sense of something not quite right, something missing. For me the issue was simply this: I didn't like Yvonne Carmichael. I didn't particularly like any of the principle characters – nor should I need to in order to enjoy a book – but the more time I spent in Yvonne's head, the more I felt that she wasn't as nice a person as she thought she was.
To be clear, I'm not referring to the horrible crime – and for the record, I was grimly pleased about what happened to Craddock – but rather to Yvonne's thoughts regarding her family.
Perhaps it's because I simply can't empathise with a parent who harbours resentment towards their own children. Although it's beautifully subtle, there's a sense that Yvonne feels somehow unrewarded by her family. She's worked the hardest, sacrificed the most, and put her career second (even though it's apparent that she's reached the top in her field anyway). While the relationship with her husband is more ambiguous, she does appear to have alienated her children – in fact, almost everyone in the story seems able to get along better without her on the scene.
She's not a stupid character – far from it – and she has a good insight into most people she encounters. And yet, when she describes her relationship with her children, there's a selfish undertone in the way she spins certain situations for sympathy.
None of this is a criticism of the book. It's a testament to the writing that I felt I was uncovering things about a real person. And of course, whenever we form opinions of other people, such opinions are subjective.
It simply made me wonder… how important is it that we actively like characters? When I think back over books I've enjoyed the most, there is usually a strong character that I like, or like to hate. Yvonne didn't elicit either feeling.
Perhaps other readers don't need such a particular emotional connection to their characters. Or perhaps it's just that I lack the life experience to appreciate or empathise with a character like Yvonne. In any event, it's something I'll be thinking about in whatever I read next.

Knife Edge locations

Following on from the one I produced for Eye Contact, I've set up a map detailing the key locations from Knife Edge. You can access it via Google Maps by clicking the link below.
Be warned, though - the map contains a lot of spoilers, so I wouldn't advise looking at it until you've read the story.

Click here to view the map.

As you may know, I try to set scenes in real places, so I thought I'd list them out in an easy-to-explore way. I hope you find it interesting.

Untitled McNeill 3

A few months ago, while browsing on Amazon, I noticed that a new book had appeared beside "Eye Contact" and "Knife Edge". It felt odd, seeing the online listing for a novel I hadn't finished writing, as though I was typing away to fill blank pages that were already bound and sitting on a shelf somewhere. I remember mentioning it to a friend, and joking that it would be a big help if I could just get hold of a copy and read it, so I'd know how the story ends.

Well, this week the story did end. I had a general sense of where the plot would take me, but it didn't really snap into place until I actually came to write it. This has caused me a lot of concern over the past few months, but a great deal of relief when it finally came together. It's somewhat darker than I first envisaged, but I'm pleased with the way it worked out.

Now I can enjoy a couple of weekends off. It's an unfamiliar feeling - this will be the first time in years that I've not being working on this series, and I'm just beginning to grasp how big a part of my life the story has become. I've tried to ensure I didn't miss out on too much time with my family, but other areas were more affected. I've managed almost no photography, read almost nothing, even been reluctant to commit to watching new TV shows! When I went to look for some music on my iPhone, I realised that practically everything on it was eerie or morose of tense - all music for writing.

It seems I have some catching up to do.

This was definitely the toughest of all the books to write. Partly, that's down to the subject matter of the story - which goes places that I personally find quite troubling - and partly because the last twelve months have been challenging with close family members affected by illness. It's definitely been a tough journey, but nothing worthwhile is easy.

In any case, now I can relax. No early-morning train journeys to Bristol, no hunching over a laptop in some distant cafe, no struggling to keep all those different characters in my head. The funny thing is, I already miss it a little. I know it won't be long before I'm diving back in to get going on the editing process, and there are already several glimmering sparks of ideas, competing for attention to become the next project... but for now, I'm done.

Well, mostly done. I think we still need to dream up a better title than "Untitled McNeill 3"...

Knife Edge

Another landmark day today, as my second novel Knife Edge is published by Hodder & Stoughton in hardback and e-book. When I first wrote Eye Contact, I didn't really envisage it as part of a series, but the book raised questions that seemed to lead naturally into a sequel. Now, I can't imagine one without the other.

Hopefully people will find Knife Edge is a satisfying development on its predecessor. I was determined not to write the same book twice – this was never meant to be just More Eye Contact – but it's a challenge to do something different while remaining faithful to established characters. I remember doing the research, traipsing around Bristol, writing in cafes and bookshops and on trains, working out changes with my editor… but when those pivotal moments in the plot happened, it was as though I was just writing down something I'd seen. I trust the story will feel as real to you as it does to me.

You can find Knife Edge on Amazon (Kindle and hardback) as well as iTunes (for iPhone and iPad) or Google Play (Android devices). I really hope you enjoy it.

Meanwhile, in Utrecht...

Not sure why this makes me smile so much, but it does. I absolutely love the cover that De Fontein have produced for the Dutch version of Eye Contact. I had heard there might be some advertising done to promote it but, not spending a lot of time in the Netherlands, I didn't think I'd get to see any examples. So it made my day when this popped up on Twitter.

Photographed by Ester van Lierop, this is one of the ad screens featuring the Oogcontact campaign. It's a really striking image, and it even animates - blinking eyes - just to give you that delicious sense of eeriness.

If I was free this weekend, I'd be tempted to jump on a plane and come over for a closer look. As it is, huge thanks to everyone involved. I couldn't ask for a more stylish promotion.

Music

Some authors find it difficult to work with music in the background. Sophie Hannah recently stated on Twitter that she had to switch off John Denver so she could write, and I've heard that Erin Kelly favours silence too.

In my own case, I find the opposite to be true - not only do I prefer having music on, I find it very difficult to work without it.

Before we go any further, it's probably worth pointing out that my music tastes are a little... different. Most of what I listen to is instrumental, so there usually aren't lyrics to distract me. Far from being off-putting, the playlists on my iPhone have become an important creative tool.

Naturally, I use different pieces of music to invoke different moods and emotions. If I'm writing a dramatic scene, I want something that fills me with energy, something that gets my pulse racing and keeps the sentences short. If it's a more thoughtful, or introverted moment, a more ambient piece helps me to find that mind-set and work within it.

One of the characters in my books is a lonely man, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, and I built a playlist of beautifully evocative, mournful tracks for him. Listening to this really helped me to get inside his head, and feel what he was feeling. I think that he was so emotionally draining to write because of the music that underscored him, but I'm sure that it helped make his chapters feel more authentic. The same process works for places too - walking through a city with something sinister in your ears will allow you to see your surroundings in a different way. It's like being 'on the set' of your story, with the soundtrack transforming mundane reality into the location you imagined.

So music helps to find the mood, but I believe it goes beyond that. Having distinct playlists for the different narrative perspectives helped to give the characters contrasting voices. It anchored each of my protagonists, helping me to find them again when I was jumping back and forth from one viewpoint to another.

It also helped me with one of the big challenges in my own writing routine - interruptions. Holding down a full-time day job means I have to be an author in my spare time, during evenings and weekends. Sometimes, days pass between the end of one paragraph and the start of another, and it can be tough to just pick up where you left off. Here, the music comes into its own, acting as a sort of mental bookmark - as long as I don't listen to a track during the intervening time, hearing it again will take me straight back to the mind-set I had when I was last writing to it.

So what do I listen to? Well, as you might expect, there are tracks from film and TV, such as Broadchurch (Ólafur Arnalds), Inception (Hans Zimmer), Monsters (Jon Hopkins), Tinker Tailor (Alberto Iglesias) and White Oleander (Thomas Newman). One particular song, The Moment I Said It (Imogen Heap) served as a mood-board for my female lead in book two, and I can no longer hear it without tasting that fear and doubt that she lives with through the story. Mostly though, I've relied on albums from artists like Deaf Center, Helios, Loscil, Christina Vantzou, and particularly A Winged Victory For The Sullen - if you want a sense of what my characters are feeling inside, look no further.