Archive for July, 2008
Chopin now available to read
The Chopin Manuscript on Kindle
In a way anyway. ITW’s audio project The Chopin Manuscript, which won the prized audio Oscar an Audie earlier this year, is now available in book for, electronically that is. The work is out for Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader.
That means sadly it is largely confined to the US for now (though my old mate Kathryn Fox somehow manages to own a Kindle she picked up on eBay and use it from Australia - hope this doesn’t dump you in the dunnee, doll.) But things will change I’m sure. Chopin was written for audio — Jeffery Deaver kicks off and ends the tale, I provide chapter two, and a variety of authors including Lee Child and Lisa Scottoline join in along the way. This does mean the piece is shorter than the average book which seems to be reflected in the selling price, a mere $9.99.
It’s only just gone up there but we have a nice review already. Thank you AW 830 of Bonita Springs, Florida, for the following…
This is fun. It held my interest throughout the book. Knowing a new author would have to pick up the pieces at the end of each chapter added mystery and anticipation. I wish it had been longer.
A nice piece from Malaysia
It always fascinates me to see how the field in which I write — I hate the word ‘genre’ — is taken much more seriously outside the UK and to an extent, the US, where we are largely seen as the manufacturer of potboilers by the literary media. Back in April, on a whistlestop tour around Asia, I spent just a day in Kuala Lumpur. A fascinating one too, talking to a succession of writers and journalists who turned up to interview me incredibly well-briefed and full of interesting questions (some of them about books I’d almost forgotten writing).
You can see the quality of the journalism in this piece by Christy Yoong that’s just appeared in the Star. How often do the UK papers devote that much space to popular fiction? Well, there you go. Thanks for the piece and the great questions, Christy. I’m not sure I actually invented the term ‘whydunit’ (or did I?) but it certainly explains my approach to things.
How to give an old book new life
Saved, my story of the save-wye campaign, only went up on Scribd two days ago. In that brief period of time it’s been made a featured read on the site and garnered close to a couple of hundred readers. Not bad for a book that is about a tiny village in southern England, and a controversial development project (no defeated) that, in theory anyway, only affected a couple of thousand people.
For the record Saved is my only self-published book. While my novels are published commercially around the world, this was a very focused project (though I hope quite a thrilling real-life story) that was never going to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. What was more I wanted the book out quickly, while the scandalous story of Wye was still fresh in people’s minds. So I typeset the book myself in Apple’s Pages and worked in conjunction with the excellent self publishing house Troubador to get it out just three months after the final word was written.
You can still buy physical copies from a variety of sources, including Wye News in the village and the Sellindge campaign. But they are, as one would expect, slow, so it made sense to look at a way of trying to find a new lease of life for a book which, if you are involved in some kind of environmental campaign, may well be of interest.
Scribd was the solution I hit upon. You open an account, upload your document (in this case in the form of the pdf of the original book) then upload it. Scribd does all the hard stuff of converting it into some kind of web streaming format. Then you can embed the book in your own site, let people read it in full and forward it to others. I also allow the entire book to be downloaded for free (you don’t have to do this). You will get a pdf if you do that (you will need to register for Scribd - for free - to get the file but it should be readable in most modern e-readers).
It’s been an interesting and worthwhile experience I think. Saved generated a lot of international interest, including an invitation - which I couldn’t take up unfortunately - to talk to an environmental campaign in Tasmania. Foreign readers can now grab the book for free and see if it’s of any use to them. I never wrote it for money in the first place, though it has covered its production costs, selling more than two thousand copies of its original three thousand print run.
Does Scribd have something for my mainstream books too? I suspect we will be seeing excerpts from all the Costa books here soon, not just the one from Dante’s Numbers you see here as an experiment. And perhaps something bolder too. I can’t talk about this yet but if you’re interested I suggest you sign up for the newsletter to make sure you are among the first to know - because it should be quite intriguing.
To see the Scribd page on Saved go here.
The spoken word in Camden
It’s always a pleasure to be in a library, and an extra one to do something different. So I’m looking forward to being in Kentish Town, Library, Camden, on October 2 at 7pm for two very good reasons. I’ll be talking about the books as usual, but doing so in the company of Saul Reichlin, the actor who voices the Costa series on audio.
Saul and I will be talking about writing and audio as part of the spoken word month for the National Year of Reading. Saul and I won the unabridged audio crime book of the year award earlier this year for the fifth Costa book, The Seventh Sacrament. Expect some more readings - and hopefully one big surprise. Many thanks to my audio publisher WF Howes and Camden Libraries for organising this event.
The new Costa novel is hailed as ‘the best yet’
The sixth Nic Costa novel, The Garden of Evil, is winning rave responses from the critics, including coveted starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association. PW describes the work as ‘this dark jewel of a thriller’. Booklist’s Bill Ott declares, ‘Arturo Pérez-Reverte has long set the gold standard for mixing history, mystery, and modern life into literary stews of mouthwatering flavor and incredible subtlety, but it’s time to agree that Hewson now shares that position—and is on the verge of claiming it outright.’
The Daily Express describes it as ‘even more gripping that its predecessors’. Margaret Cannon, in the Toronto Globe & Mail, says the series is one of her favourites, and adds, ‘The Garden of Evil is the best book so far in the Costa series, and that’s saying a lot. But Hewson takes his plotting here a giant step further than in the usual cop/chase story.’
It was Book of the Month in this month’s Choice Magazine which said: ‘David Hewson is on top form with this novel, taking his readers on a gripping journey through the streets of the Eternal City’. Crimesquad, which makes David author of the month, gives the book a five-star review and says, ‘This is a heady concoction of classic crime novel elements, perceptive characterisation and illuminating historical detail, all set in exotic locations and brilliantly told by a master storyteller.’
Where in the world is…?
Well, not Wally, but Nic Costa and his colleagues. Most of the time they are in Rome, but in very specific areas, usually real ones. In a little while, though, they will be travelling to California. Want to know exactly where they go in the books?
It’s easy enough to track them through the site’s Google maps feature. Some of the books now have their own map pages which will show you the real-life locations in the books, from the talking statues of The Garden of Evil to the underground sites used in The Seventh Sacrament.
Watch the new video on The Garden of Evil
The sixth Nic Costa book is now the subject of a twelve minute video at Blip TV. Just click on the link below to watch it now. A shorter version is also available on Youtube.