Random Thoughts after Launch Week (and Book Week Scotland)

Russel D McLean

With the launch of CRY UNCLE in the UK (is it the last McNnee? Its certainly the culmination of my five book plan) I've been reading the damn book all over Scotland. Crowds (or at least two people) were present in Gilmerton, Dundee (three times!) and Glasgow have now heard the opening chapters to the book (Including my impressively bad Hungarian accent, which caused me to corpse terribly during the Glasgow event). Its been great fun, reading the book. It always is. I like reading. I like (badly) acting when I'm reading. But I know that reading isn't for every author. I limit myself when I do read because, frankly, I tend to lose track of author readings at the best of times. I much prefer someone talking with passion about their book or about anything.

But it has left me wondering about events. Are single author events worthwhile? The most fun I had these last few weeks - and they were all fun - was pairing up with other authors. Jay Stringer's impromtu quizzing of my knowledge of Mel Gibson's films was great fun. Realising that Chris Brookmyre was the new Shakespeare at Kirkcaldy was a highlight. And I think it adds atmosphere to an event, too, when writers with good chemistry pair up. It becomes more of a show than someone talking about something of interest only to them.

I also started to think about the mechanics or reading your work. Its strange to see your own words there in front of you. I find that - for my own amusement more than anything - I start to edit or adapt as I'm going along; changing small lines of dialogue, speeding up and slowing down sequences. Its part of the experience of writing for me; a book is never finally finished. It gets published, but if I was allowed to, I would tinker forever at the nuts and bolts of sentence structure and word choice.

Author events are strange things. Authors are not natural performers, but I think that if we are going to go out and talk about our books in public we should be. One of the nicest moments this week during a solo event was a librarian, after I was done, saying she hadn't had readers laugh quite so hard with an author in a while. I know I write hardboiled crime, but honestly, that one moment summed up everything I love about doing live events: its a show, its entertainment, its supposed to be interesting and entertaining. And entertaining doesn't just mean funny. It means it has to be interesting to the audience, it has to grip their attention the same way reading a book does. If a live event doesn't do that, then, really, what's the point?

Cover Story

By Russel D McLean

If you don't know, the new McNee book will be out in the UK a little quicker than some of the others have been. This, the fifth and possibly final* book about the dour Dundonian detective has been in many ways one of the most challenging to write, tasked as it is with tying up several loose ends and that massive change that happened at the end of Mothers of the Disappeared.

But here's the cover:

Good, isn't it?

The thing is, a good cover is essential to a book. Whether its an ebook, a big pub book, a small pub book, whatever, a cover is absolutely vital. Just slapping images about with no context isn't good enough. Just using a font you think is "cool" isn't enough. You need to have thought through your design.

So why do I like this cover?

There's the match. The match is important. And the club scene behind. Both work in the context of the story (which you'll learn later) and together, the designer has actually given the readers a little hint about what might be to come. The composition is nice and threatening, too. It gives the atmosphere of the book.

Then there's the text. Positioned nicely. Author's name nice and clear. And the title. The title looks great. What's really nice - - and this is something I didn't notice for a while - - is that the text isn't just distressed, but  that the distress comes from someone's mucky fingerprints. Its a nice detail and works in context of the book's genre.

I've had covers I've been unhappy with. I've had covers I've loved. This one, its one of the latter. I think it does the story inside justice. And I hope, come November, you'll agree with me...

*I always said there would be five books and this wraps up a lot of McNee's story - - but will it be the end completely? Oh you'll just have to wait and see...

And so the end is near...

By Russel D McLean

As I write this, I am finishing up the latest draft of CRY UNCLE, the last McNee novel. The draft is due to submitted just before MOTHERS OF THE DISAPPEARED  comes out in April. I feel a little odd about this one. Its the fifth McNee and I always said that I had a five book plan. One I've almost stuck to. So this, in a way, is the end.

Its not necessarily the very end. But its the end of the particular arc I wanted to write. It ties up a lot of loose ends. It brings a kind of emotional closure to certain aspects of the series. And of course it does open up the possibilities for new paths to be followed. If people want it, there may be room for more in the series. I just don't know how they would look. Yet.

To tell the kind of story I wanted to tell took a lot of ambition for someone who's not as concerned with plots as he is style. I always wanted the writing and the emotion to win out over any kind of whodunnit chicanery or clever-clever reveals. I never minded if people saw the twists coming but I did want them to be interested in the characters and where they were going. McNee has changed as the books have gone on. By the end of book 3, he had come to terms with his part in the death of his fiancee. He had started to quell the anger that he had felt for years. In fact, without giving too much away, the point of book 3 was to show that with a very specific kind of emotional switch that happened in the final act as McNee saw someone else go through the kind of anger he had experienced and realised how destructive that could be to someone.*

Book 4 therefore should start with McNee in a good place. But having had him come through that, I didn't think it was fair that he should have an easy time of it. And besides there were, as someone pointed out, still a few loose ends dangling from as far back as THE GOOD SON. When were they going to bite him on the arse?

They do. Right at the start of MOTHERS, a very bad decision we saw McNee make several years ago is rearing its head. Consequences are finally asserting themselves. He  has started to forgive himself. But can others forgive him?

We also explore a little more the time before he left the force. The book is very much about McNee's past both in the chronology of the books and his past as a cop. We learn that before he left the force he was involved in a very high profile investigation along with his now dead mentor, Ernie Bright. But while that case was close, it looks like the wrong man may have been arrested. The wrong who pleaded guilty. I've always been fascinated by the idea of miscarriages of justice, and the idea that an innocent person might have reasons for pleading guilty. So this book looks into that.  Not in a legal sense. I've never been one for that although I do think that this book might actually have more research than some of the others have when it comes to procedure. Its all about emotional consequences, however. And on that level I think it works very well.

McNee still has some very dark places to go. But I'm so very pleased that both Five Leaves and now Severn Publishing have given me the chance to write the books I wanted to write. Of course the series looks different in some ways from how I imagined it back at the start. But the thrust of that five book arc remains the same and I'm very glad to have done what I set out to do. You may be just about to enjoy book 4, but for me, book 5 is nearly complete and that brings with it a kind of beautiful bitter sweet feeling.

This may not be goodbye for McNee. But for me, it marks a kind of ending. One that makes me both smile and feel a tiny bit wisftul.

*I make no claims that I succeeded in doing this, but that was the intention