The last two books have been written in Scrivener, which is an excellent piece of software, great value at $39.95, and one I heartily recommend if you have a Mac. It’s perfect for the mosaic way I work, seeing a book as a collection of chapters and scenes, not as a single lump of text. Will I use it for book nine? Probably, but there are a couple of interesting contenders on the horizon for Mac users, Storyist ($59) and the $49.95 Storymill. How do they stack up?

Scrivener is pretty powerful competition it has to be said. Once you get the hang of the thing it can do pretty much everything any writer would want to do - and more. A lot more. Maybe too much more. Even after two years of working with it I still only scratch the surface of the thing and I’m sure there are a lot of powerful features I just haven’t missed. It is a very rich - in other words complex - piece of software once you begin to play with it. Not that I’m worried too much about that these days. I long ago learned to pick up the piece I needed and ignore the rest. But the complexity is still there, which I suspect puts off some newcomers. And let me be honest. I spend a lot of time inside my chosen word processor. Sometimes it’s just a good idea to take a break and try something new for a change.

First up I tried Storymill. This is based upon an older writers’ word processor called Avenir, with a few added tweaks. It’s a straightforward piece of work and you can download a copy of Treasure Island adapted for it to see how everything hangs together. A left hand pane handles the structure of the book, chapters, characters, scenes, locations and research for example.

It’s all pretty logical stuff. You can attach a status to sections to note when they’re finished or in final draft. You can drag in images and research for future reference, as you can with Scrivener and Storyist too. The one obvious unique feature is a timeline graph which allows you to check the visual progress of a story, hour by hour or day by day, based on times set for each scene. You can see it below. Not the kind of thing I’d use to be honest so I don’t have much of a useful opinion about it.

A couple of things baffled me. I don’t really understand why the scenes section works independent of chapters, the chronological order of the book. Scenes appear in both locations and for the life of me I can’t see why - it just confuses me. Also I fail to understand why it’s impossible to get a scene word count easily, while chapter word counts appear automatically in the status bar. I asked the tech support people about this and got the question: why would I want a scene word count? Why wouldn’t I? Scrivener shows me scene, chapter, act and manuscript word counts dead easily. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be. Oh, and one thing I hated. This does the full screen writing trick which I hated until Scrivener came along. But Scrivener does it brilliantly, throwing a perfectly formatted scene onto a black background, fading out everything else, but leaving your scene notes on one side if you need them. Storymill does it the way most full screen writing apps do it. You’re back in the world of MS-DOS, with bare text against a bare background, one that is far too wide to read on any modern screen of any size. Still, it’s worth a look, and will doubtless progress with time.

Storyist is, I think, more promising though. If you look at the screenshot below (which can be magnified) you’ll see that it follows the general outline of most apps of this sort.

You have a structure on the left, with areas for characters, plot points and threads, locations, research and notes. You can get scene word counts, though in the current version you have to add them manually. There’s a storyboard that will let you see all the different elements in outline or corkboard view. To me it feels cleaner and less fiddly than Storymill, though that’s doubtless a personal thing (all these programs have free trial downloads so I suggest you give them a try yourself). For someone who wants to plot out a book in detail, Storyist has some really strong tools. In fact, while I only half outline most books, I am tempted to try to do a full outline in Storyist for once because it looks so easy and inviting. We’ll see.

A few things confuse me. The section sheets are effectively flip pages of scenes and are created whenever you create one of those. The way they look when you first see them made me think they were somehow separate. Again you can make this (to me) more logical by fiddling with the program but it is a little work, and the changes - essentially hiding the section elements and putting them in the storyboard pane - don’t seem to stick from edit to edit. You can also do clever stuff with wiki style editing, linking to different parts of the document. I suspect this would be really useful but I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.

There are, for me, a few omissions too. No easy way to annotate directly into text. No chapter numbering. No way to pull out a scene and open it in a window of its own to work just on that (only Storymill of these three apps understands the ‘open in new window’ idea which strikes me as odd). The full screen option would be something I’d like too so long as it was done in a decent way, not one that pushed me back into the era of MS-DOS.

Storyist has started to grow on me the more I use it. I’ll be spending the first ten days of September on the road in South Africa and plan to take it along to see how well I can try to map out the new book using it. I could, of course, do all this in Scrivener if I wanted too, and perhaps I will. We’ll see. More later when I feel I’ve reached some kind of conclusion.

I don’t honestly know where to begin to thank all the many people I’ve met along the way, authors, readers, would-be writers and just plain civilians out there. To the grand folk of the Book Passage Mystery Writers’ Conference I can only say: thanks for four days of unrelenting enjoyment, good company and great discussions about this great craft. Barbara Peters’ Poisoned Pen in Phoenix was as excellent a place to visit as ever.

Thrillerfest proved itself to be an absolutely essential event in the writing calendar for anyone published in the US or looking to be. At one point I counted myself in a room that contained Clive Cussler, Kathy Reichs, Steve Berry, Douglas Preston, David Morrell, Lee Child, a bunch of other big name authors, the cream of New York’s publishing and agent industry and little old me. Though the highlight still remains Lee introducing the line of ITW debut authors to a packed breakfast. Watching them look a little glazed and scared on the podium reminded me of how lonely it felt when my first book was published - lucky things!

The Harrogate Crime Writing Festival was better than ever under the amiable and deceptively organised stewardship of Simon Kernick. Well done, mate - I’ve never seen so many smiling places around the place. My personal highlight was conning Kathryn Fox into performing a sixty second autopsy on a plush toy Gromit in front of two hundred people. Thanks Kathryn! You are, officially, now a star.

And now I’d better start writing again… before South Africa at the end of August. Next year these three wonderful events take place on three consecutive weekends in July. No prizes for guessing where I will be.

Programs for storing and cataloguing information

Mac
Together My current personal favourite - can store anything very easily.
Journler An interesting alternative, though not so great if you use multiple computers.
Devonthink Heavyweight data storage for lots and lots of stuff - quite hard to learn for me.

Windows
OneNote Part of Microsoft Office
WebResearch

Photo storage. For keeping pictures organised

Mac
iPhoto

Windows
Picasa

Journal software

Mac
MacJournal

Windows
WinJournal

Word processors aimed at authors

Mac
Scrivener
Storyist
Storymill

Windows
Liquid Story Binder
Power Writer
PageFour
Writers Project Organizer
Book Writer (www.yadudigital.com)

You can also get most of the books on download too from Audible. For Audible UK go here. For Audible US go here. Please note that all of these books are unabridged - full versions of the original story, not shortened abridged versions.

You can also find some books which are out of print in the UK available in audio now too, including my first book Semana Santa and my first Italian novel, Lucifer’s Shadow.

You can see lots of the pictures taken for the various Costa books here. Every entry for one of the titles includes a picture gallery of shots taken during the research process. I’ve used a number of cameras over the years, most recently the great little Panasonic FX100 which is a 12 megapixel compact that takes great pictures and is easy to use.

But I have now swapped to a new model, the Fuji F100d, above, which has just come out. Why?

Couple of reasons really. It is actually a touch smaller, and size always matters to me. The pictures are fantastic too, and on occasion better than the Panasonic. But most of all Fuji seem to have the knack of taking photos in low light. I seem to spend a lot of time in dark places. This is very useful. There’s also a ‘museum’ mode which turns off all noise and flash, and bumps up the low light ability, which makes things even easier? The downside? In some circumstances you get an annoying purple fringe on a few pictures. This is occasional, hard to reproduce, only happens in low light, and frankly hasn’t bothered me at all though if you google Fuji F100 and purple fringing you’ll see it has upset a few people.

Still, I’m happy with the beast and will soon be trying it out in bright sun in Calabria. It seems to cope well with both extremes. Here are two shots from Hong Kong taken with my F100, one with automatic flash in the Temple Street market, and another, on the beach setting, in searing daylight at Stanley. The full size, untouched versions, are available by clicking on the images below (and they’re big - 4mb or more, this is a 12 megapixel camera). The Stanley shot is the desktop on my new MacBook Air and looks lovely. I can’t quite believe the quality and detail of that photo.

Let me deal with the easiest part first. You can see the books order if you just look in the left hand column here.

In terms of UK publication the order runs…

• A Season for the Dead (2003)
• The Villa of Mysteries (2004)
• The Sacred Cut (2005)
• The Lizard’s Bite (2006)
• The Seventh Sacrament (2007)
• The Garden of Evil (2008)
• Dante’s Numbers (October 2008)

Does it matter if you read them out of order? Not really. These are separate stories, and none of them rely on knowledge of the other books in order to work (I hope). But there are underlying back stories running from book to book, some of which will reveal their elements out of sync if you start at book five, for instance, and then go to book one. So I guess the honest advice is: if you intend to read the lot, then it’s a good idea to start at book one and work your way through the chronological sequence. But it’s not essential at all… Also I should say these are all very different books too. The first is much darker and more violent than the others, for example (because, in part, it was written in the wake of 9/11 and everything that followed). So please bear in mind that they are separate novels.

I’ve been on this year’s roster for some time, but now there’s a fuller list of the authors taking part in this four-day teaching fest for would-be writers.

There are familiar faces: Tim Maleeny, Cornelia Read, Dylan Schafer, Michelle Gagnon, Cara Black, Tony Broadbent, and David Corbett. Plus the talented duo who graciously co-chair the event, Sheldon Siegel and Jacqueline Winspear.

Hallie Ephron, who doubles as both author and acclaimed writing teacher, will be there to offer some customarily thought-provoking words of wisdom. For some inside forensic track you really can’t beat D. P. Lyle, a professional physician and author of some of the best reference guides around. LA Superior Court judge Ken Freeman will talk about law and criminal procedure. George Fong, supervisory special agent for the FBI, will be around too, and he is, I can guarantee, unmissable.

Plus you get agents, publishers and a host of other authors there’s no space to mention here. It really is a blast - four days of panels, workshops and informal chats, an intensive programme that is enjoyable and just as thought-provoking for the authors as it is for the students.

How long does it take you to write a book?

Generally I spend a year on each book, which is just as well since they’re scheduled to appear once a year. But that’s not writing alone. There’s a lot of preparation, research, editing, rewriting and post production work, such as proof reading and final tweaks, before a book is finished.

How many Nic Costa books will there be?

I can’t answer that except to say that at the moment I would like the series to be open-ended. I am committed to producing nine in the series for Macmillan in the UK and Bantam Dell in the US. The first seven are already complete. The ninth will be published in 2010 or 2011. After that it will depend on whether readers want to read more and publishers want to publish more.

How much time do you spend in Rome?

When I first started the series I spent a large part of the year there, renting an apartment and enrolling at an excellent language school Italiaidea to study the language. Over the years the need to visit has diminished somewhat, and the call on my time for travel for promotion has increased. So I generally spend six weeks or more in Italy these days, though I wish it could be more.

Are the characters in your books based on real people?

Absolutely not - as far as I’m aware. I’d find it very disconcerting to base a fictional character on someone I know. I’d be constantly asking myself what he or she would be doing in real life.

Do you intend to write more standalone novels such as The Promised Land and Lucifer’s Shadow?

I don’t want to be confined simply to the Costa series but I don’t see myself writing standalones every year. In 2006 I wrote Saved and the year before The Promised Land, both in addition to Costa books. This year I am sticking to a single Costa book. Next year… who knows? I certainly don’t… there is a stack of ideas I would like to tackle if I have the time.

Did you go to writing classes?

No, but I’ve taught at a lot since becoming an author. My honest belief is that you can’t teach writing, but you can teach people to think about writing, which is very important indeed for people who want to become novelists. The basic material for any budding writer can be found in any good book store or library… in the form of books. But understanding the process and craft of writing is important and better explained than discovered for some people. It also helps if you understand how the publishing industry works, and have some kind of insight into the needs and working methods of editors, agents and publishers.

What are you reading at the moment?

I read a lot of different sorts of books, not just crime and thrillers. Mostly these days I am stuck inside non fiction, some of it a little obscure. At the moment I’m reading a number of titles covering Etruscan history and the background to the Italian terrorist movement the Red Brigades. One title I can heartily recommend is Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies, edited by Larissa Bonfante. I am also looking forward to John Harwood’s new novel The Seance. I did an event with John in Melbourne a few years ago and we discovered many similar tastes, including MR James.

How do I find your earlier books such as Lucifer’s Shadow?

Lucifer’s Shadow is still in print and doing very well in the US, published by Bantam Dell in trade paperback. It is currently out of print in the UK but you can order import copies through online stores such as Amazon UK. The earlier books are for the most part out of print and best sourced through places such as eBay or the used pages of Amazon UK or US.

Would you be interested in talking to my writing group/book store/library?I like talking at public events, particularly if the subject is general (I’m very bad at selling individual books). In the first instance please contact the relevant publicist according to your region (Macmillan in the UK, Bantam Dell in the US). You can find their contact details on the Contact page here. Or just mail me directly through the same page. Time and expense constraints do come into events, so it’s helpful if they can be organised around other visits to the same region.

Can you recommend an agent or publisher?

Sorry but no. Publishing is a big and complicated business. The best way to understand how to get into it is by reading one of the standard guides to selling a manuscript through books such as Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and Writers’ Market.

Will you blurb my book?

After a lot of thought I’ve now decided to pull out of the business of giving quotes for novels. This wasn’t an easy decision but I feel it’s the right one for me. I’ve been inundated with requests over the last couple of years and frankly don’t have the time to meet them all. That means I’d have to pick and choose between the unread novels on offer, which is iniquitous situation I’d rather avoid. But don’t let that put you off asking other writers. The principal constraint for me at the moment is simply time.

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….

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.