Caroline Smailes and Black Boxes

This morn­ing, I blew my nose, and — being one of those people who checks — saw that the con­tents were blue-black. Ah, yes: A trip to London last night. The reason? Caroline Smailes, a British author pub­lished by The Friday Project, had launched her latest book, Black Boxes, at the Borders in Oxford Street, and I’d toddled along to get a signed copy and meet the author.
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Stash in the Attic

It’s September, it’s get­ting chilly, and there’s a meme going around. This one comes from the nose of Aliya Whiteley, author of Light Reading (and much more). The the Vampire Lestat who infec­ted her is David Isaak. On his blog, he asked, ‘What is in your unpub­lish­able pile?“
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The White Screen of Death

Phew, that was close. Paul Graham Raven has gone and writ­ten a review of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992). My own review of the same book has been rolling around my head for the past few months and, now that Paul been there and done it, I can for­get about and divert my ener­gies towards get­ting through the last pages of MultiReal, which, para­dox­ic­ally, I’m review­ing for Paul.
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Free schtuff

If any­body from the digital advert­ising agency i-level wants to send me — as an upstand­ing, mixin’-it-up-bloggishly-since 2003 digi-man — a free Sony ebook reader, you are most bloody welcome.

Jo Nesbø — Special Delivery

You may — or may not — have heard of Jo Nesbø. He’s a Norwegian thriller writer with a series of noir­ish con­tem­por­ary nov­els fea­tur­ing Harry Hole, an alco­holic detect­ive, under his belt. Jo’s Random House pub­li­city ninjette con­tac­ted me a few days back to ask if I’d like some free cop­ies of his latest Hole book, Nemesis, which is out in trans­la­tion this week. Free books? Sniffing an inter­view oppor­tun­ity, I replied in the affirmative.

So, I’ve got five cop­ies of Nemesis to give away. Just add a com­ment express­ing an interest below and I’ll put you in touch with Random House.

Incidentally, Jo has landed him­self a Flash-tastic web­site. Check it out.

Like the German ö. Or the “o” in Peter Sellers’ pro­nun­ci­ation of “bomb” in the Pink Panther-movie.

How did you get star­ted with writing?

I read. And Read. I basic­ally post­poned writ­ing as long as I could, that was until I was 37. Then I star­ted writ­ing like a madman.

‘Nemesis’ is a Norwegian book trans­lated into English. How do you find the trans­la­tion pro­cess? Does it require cre­at­ive input from the trans­lator and, if so, do these decisions ever depart from the effect you were try­ing to cre­ate from a given para­graph or sentence?

I prob­ably read as much English as I read Norwegian, but I don’t take part in the trans­la­tion. Because in the end all I can do is trust Don Bartlett. And I do.

The novel ‘Nemesis’ has the concept of memory loss at its heart. In thrillers, this is often linked to ques­tions about iden­tity, and the dif­fi­culty of accept­ing the darker side of a person’s char­ac­ter. How did this become so cent­ral to the book?

I think the ques­tion whether true evil­ness exists – whether it’s an anti­so­cial gene, a response to upbring­ing and cul­ture or some­thing we simply need to sur­vive in cer­tain situ­ations — is a cent­ral theme in all my Harry Hole-books, but maybe espe­cially in “Nemesis”.

I’ve not vis­ited Norway, but in book­shops in Iceland, as well as sev­eral in con­tin­ental Europe, I was struck by the greater shelf space given to trans­la­tions of American and British fic­tion. Do you find Norwegian book­shops sup­port­ive of nat­ive authors?

Definitely. Norwegian and – for some reason — Swedish writers dom­in­ate the best­seller lists in Norway. Sometimes accom­pan­ied by an American writer or two.

One of the aims of this blog is to doc­u­ment the cre­at­ive pro­cess. Can you describe a little of your writ­ing routine?

Not really because there isn’t such a thing as a routine. I write any­where, any­time. And when I’m sup­posed to write I often find myself doing other things …

You’re a musi­cian as well as a writer. How does writ­ing dif­fer cre­at­ively from your music? Do you find them com­pet­ing for your attention?

Music for me is more like tak­ing things out of the air, I don’t really have a method. Writing is about dream­ing things up, using your ima­gin­a­tion and instantly know­ing whether you’re onto some­thing. Writing music has taken the back seat to writ­ing fic­tion now.

Live at the BBC

Well, alright, not the BBC. Phoenix FM, actu­ally. M’colleague Roger (of his plog) has released the audio of a radio inter­view from a few days back. You can listen to it here. In it, he dis­cusses the gen­esis of his St Petersburg nov­els¹ and his fond­ness for Dostoyevsky.

The End

Regular read­ers of this blog — hey Dad; hey Google robot — will won­der where my fin­gers have been for the past few weeks. Not updat­ing this blog much, that’s for sure. No; I’ve been com­plet­ing the first draft of the third Saskia Brandt novel.
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Lucky Star

Via Lonely Sandwich, here’s a post on a cute little trailer for a film that was never inten­ded to be made as a fea­ture: ‘Lucky Star’. I remem­ber watch­ing this in the cinema a few years back and clock­ing Michael Mann after the second or third cut. Extraordinary that Mercedes would pay for this as a response to an earlier BMW video. Is product place­ment worth it? It shagged the last Bond film.
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