Archive for September, 2007
Harrogate Crime Writing Festival
The dates for the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival have now been fixed and I’m delighted to say I’ll be going along next year too. For those of you who like to plan ahead set aside July 17 to 20, 2008, for what has rapidly become one of the most important events in the European crime fiction diary.
I’ll be chairing an event on Saturday, July 19. More details to come.
On tour… what it really means
Around the world in 22 days. Does that sound glamorous? Painful? Indulgent (the air tickets are, naturally, carbon offset, but it’s still a long way to go)?
At the moment it simply feels exhausting. Talk to any professional author about touring and he or she will tend to glaze over and tell you it’s a necessary evil. Publishers do their best to ease the labour (and a million thanks to my small team of publicists - Wannatee in Thailand, Janet in Hong Kong, Annie and Jane in Australia and Angie who worked so hard for me when I visited their countries). But it’s still work, not play. Here for example is an almost typical day (though usually there would be a morning event too).
12:00nn Pick up from the hotel
1:00pm RTHK Radio 4 interview (recorded), ArtBeat
1:30pm RTHK Radio 3 interview (live), Naked Lunch
3.30pm Meet and greet staff Dymocks IFC, stock signing
4:00pm Meet and greet staff Dymocks Princes Building, stock signing
4:30pm Meet and greet staff Dymocks Lyndhurst Terrace, stock signing
6:45pm Hotel pick-up for dinner event
7:30pm Literary Dinner with HK Magazine and Dymocks (dinner and book talk)
Organized by HK Magazine and Dymocks Booksellers
Post 97 restaurant, Lan Kwai Fong
Readers think authors spend their time on tour at book store events. Nothing could be further from the truth. Usually we’re doing media, meeting book trade people, signing stock copies, or going to specific events, such as a literary festival or a dinner. In fact there seems to be general agreement everywhere I go that the standard book store signing is becoming more and more difficult. People lead different lives, ones that are often too loosely organised to carve out time to see a novelist passing through. You hear stories of even mega-authors turning up at events these days, only to find a handful of people there.
The real value of tours is that you meet key people - your publisher’s representatives in the countries you visit, your publishers in translation, and the brave hearts in the book trade who sell this stuff and often get very little in the way of thanks from the people whose livelihoods they are supporting. Why so many countries in so little time? That’s simple. For me a journey to Australia is bound to take at least ten days. I do not enjoy spending twenty four hours on a plane (actually I don’t enjoy spending twenty four minutes on a plane). So the journey is going to be broken somewhere on the way out, and somewhere on the way back too. For the extra ten or twelve days on the schedule I get a lot more out of it.
That’s the way it works for me anyway. As always in this business, other people will feel differently. There’s one other thing that happens to me too when I drag myself away from familiar circumstances and into new ones. I start to think. And that’s been happening too, more of a little later….
Weird e-mails from readers
Yes, authors do get them. Before the internet readers could barely get in touch with writers at all. They sent a letter to the publisher. The publisher sent it to your agent. Then your agent usually passed it on, by which stage a month has usually passed. Now people just hit your contact form, and quite right too.
Usually the messages are very nice and welcome. Occasionally they’re rude. And sometimes they’re just plain odd. Here’s one recent example that came my way.
Dear Mr. Hewson, I am a big fan of yours and other authors who write about Venice, but please, please don’t use the word “staunch” when you mean “stanch” (as in stanch the flow of blood) Thank you.
Stanch? Stanch? Where I come from there is no word stanch. Nevertheless, I do something that the sender of this message clearly hasn’t. I reach for a couple of dictionaries. Then I pen this reply…
In UK English the word is staunch, not stanch. According to the American Heritage Dictionary and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary both spellings are acceptable in the US. I write in UK English and my American editors change spelling/usage as appropriate but given that staunch is in Random House’s own dictionary among others I think I’m happy with that. Glad you liked the books.