Making It All Worthwhile

by Matt Lynn

There’s always plenty for writers to moan about. Not having our books prominently displayed in the bookshop for example. A miserable sales ranking on Amazon. And that’s before we even get started on the publishers and agents.

            But every so often something comes along to make it feel worthwhile.

            A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from a woman whose son was very unwell. He wouldn’t be having much of a birthday, she said, and his situation made it hard for him to get out and meet people. But he was a big fan of my first two books, Death Force and Shadow Force. And he would really like it if I sent him a birthday card.

            In fact, I sent him a signed copy of Shadow Force.

            It’s nice to know your work has got through to someone enough that they would be pleased to hear from you, even though they don’t know you. I guess that is what all writers aspire to.

            I hope he has a good day. 

Summer Reading

by Matt Lynn

I'm off to Cornwall at the weekend with the kids, so I need to choose a few books for what I hope will be a relaxing week. I've already got a copy of Hunted by fellow Curzon-ite Emlyn Rees, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, who I know a bit from our work on Bloomberg, and American Pastoral by Philip Roth, who I have got back into since attending the Man Booker Prize dinner a few weeks ago in his honour. That seems like a pretty good range - some light fun, some art, and some serious stuff.

Hopefully a fair number of people will be taking 'Shadow Force' with them on holiday. I think of my own books as summer reading. But what makes a great story for the beach?

I think it needs a number of qualities. It needs a rattling good story that grips you from start to finish. It needs some jokes - no one wants to be too downbeat on holiday. It needs some escapism - a holiday is all about getting away from things, and we want a book that does that as well. But it also needs to tell you something serious, and educate you in some way, because a holiday is one of the few chances we have to fill gaps in our knowledge.

I try and touch all those bases in my own work. And I always keep in mind that that is the recipe for a great holiday read.

Judging A Book By Its Cover...

by Matt Lynn

One of the questions writers get asked is how much they say they have over their covers. To which the simple answer is: About as much say as we do over the weather.

My experience is that publishers send you the cover, and then whilst theoretically you could throw a tantrum and say you didn’t like it, that probably wouldn’t be a very welcome response.

Fortunately, I’ve never been in a position where I haven’t like a cover. I’ve just received the jacket for ‘Shadow Force’ and I think it’s fantastic: exciting, direct, in keeping with the previous two books in the series, but different enough to mark out its own space. (Then again, when a book is about mercenaries and pirates, it’s quite hard not to come up with a decent jacket).

And, of course, authors shouldn’t assume they know what is the best cover for their book. The editor and the illustrator will have their own take on it, and how it fits into the market, who it is going to appeal to, and how it will stand out from the rest of the books on the market.

That said, it would be awful to see a cover you really didn’t like on your book. After all, it is the most obvious statement about your work.

Finishing a Book

by Matt Lynn

I haven't posted here for a bit because I've been through that annual bout of angst and exhausation known as finishing a book. I finally handed in 'Shadow Force' to Headline last week. No idea what they think of it yet. It seemed pretty good to me, but then you never really know....

One thing struck me as interesting. I have a strange reluctance to actually finish a book. I completed the first draft in January, then spent ages flaffing around, making small changes, tweaking lines, trying to iron out the typos. But I came away with the distinct impression I was reluctant to finish the thing.

I wonder if all writers experience that. It wouldn't surprise me. Finishing a book is a psychological hurdle that needs to be cleared much more than starting one. Up until, that point, you can always fiddle around, change things, fix things. But once it is in, it's in. There's nothing much you can do. You go from having total control over the manuscript to almost none. Scary.

And then of course there is the whole business of what people will think of it.

In fact, all that considered, it's amazing I got it in at all.