Location, Location, Location

It's not long until CrimeFest arrives in the heart of Bristol, so I thought it might be fun to compile a map of nearby locations from the D.I. Harland books.

Just follow THIS LINK to access a fully interactive map (you should even be able to use it on your phone).

The blog side-panel has also been updated to include individual maps for each story. Enjoy exploring, and my apologies if I've set part of my book in your street!

eBook Prices

I've just written a piece for The Writer's Workshop, called The future of eBook prices: a lesson from the app industry. It's aimed at writers and people from publishing, so feel free to link to it or Tweet about it. Thanks!

A Series Of Fortunate Events

I had a hugely enjoyable time celebrating World Book Night at Bristol Central Library last week. Together with fellow authors Philip Purser-Hallard and Lucienne Boyce, we discussed the process of getting into print, and hopefully helped to encourage our audience of writers.

I'm back in Bristol for CrimeFest, with runs from the 14th to the 17th of May, and I'll be doing two panels on Saturday the 16th.
Following that, I have Library talks at Hythe on the 3rd of June, and Totton on the 10th of June - please contact the libraries for ticket details.
Then it's off to the wonderful Goldsboro Books for Crime In The Court on the 25th of June. And as if that wasn't enough, I'll also be wandering around Harrogate in July. If you're at any of these events, do please come and say hello!

Temptation

Oh dear. I appear to have reached that terrible moment that I reach in almost everything I write - the moment when another story starts to intrude on my imagination, tempting me with its simplicity and its lack of baggage, promising me that I can do whatever I want...

It’s a problem. I don’t want to be thinking about another story, particularly one in another genre, and certainly not now, when I still have a lot to do on my current book… but even as I push those thoughts and ideas away, I worry. I worry that if I don’t explore them now, when seem to burn so bright, that they’ll somehow fade; that when I do return to them, I’ll find them diminished.

Why can’t I have my ideas in a more orderly fashion, one at a time? Writing would be so much simpler if I could.

Broken Fall

When my editor suggested that I write a shorter, ebook-only story, I really wasn't sure what would happen. Yes, I'd written short stories before, but this was different – a 20,000 word novella, roughly a quarter of a full-length novel. After a bit of time mulling over different ideas, I began making weekend trips to Bristol, researching and writing on-location, just as I do for my full-length books. It took a while to complete, but hopefully you'll enjoy reading the results.

Broken Fall features my troubled detective, Graham Harland, in his very first murder case for Bristol CID. Set a little while after the events of Knife Edge and just before Cut Out, it's an ideal entry-point to the series for new readers. It's also my first real whodunit, so I'm eager to know how many of you correctly identify the killer, and whether you do so before Harland does – contact me via @fergusmcneill on Twitter and let me know once you've read it.

You can order Broken Fall on Kindle, Apple iBooks, Kobo, or Google Play, and it's only 99p – I really hope you enjoy it.

On three...

A few weeks ago, I was at Hodder's London office for a meeting. My editor, Francesca, smiled as she handed me a finished copy of Cut Out and said, "Your third book!"

At the time, it didn't really sink in and, with the pressures of work (and the pleasures of two different literary festivals this week) publication day sort of slipped past, without me having time to think about it.

Writing and publication are oddly disconnected events. Cut Out was finished months ago and, since then, I've completed a new DI Harland novella, and started work on a fourth full-length novel. With my head now firmly in a different story, it was like an unexpected meeting with an old friend when I read the first reviews of Cut Out. It made me pause, thinking back to the day my agent called to tell me she'd negotiated a three-book deal. At the time, that third book seemed a long way away... but now the hardback is sitting in front of me as I type this.

It's been a brilliant and challenging journey, thus far... I still can't believe it's happening, and I can't wait to see where the stories go next.

Context

I was genuinely saddened to read that old Tom and Jerry cartoons are being branded with a racism warning. In a world where there is so much equality and injustice happening right now, it seems wrong to demonise a cartoon cat and mouse from the 1940s.

To look at something seventy years out of context, is to see it through eyes that have no understanding of the period. To judge it against modern standards, is to judge it against standards that it had no opportunity or encouragement to embrace.

Of course, this may just be a legal safeguarding issue. We do live in a time where some people seem ready – even eager – to be offended at the slightest thing. But while some people may be uncomfortable with aspects of Tom and Jerry, others may be uncomfortable at the suggestion that a cartoon they like is "racist". After all, what does it say about you, if you enjoy racist entertainment?

Intolerant attitudes must be challenged and changed, but this feels like a well-intentioned shot in the foot. Until we've fixed the present, maybe we should be more tolerant of the past.