Oi! Publishers! Get a ****ing move on!!

Some time in the next three or four weeks the US paperback edition of what they call No Survivors (or The Survivor as it was titled in the UK) will finally be published, a mere three years after I started writing the damn thing and 27 months after I delivered it. In the middle of August, the UK paperback of Assassin will appear, almost 18 months after its delivery, and at roughly the same time as the first hardback editions hit bookshops in Germany and Canada.

Now, I don't wish to prejudice my relationships with any individual publishers, because there is no suggestion that mine have been any more dilatory or careless than anyone else's. My schedules are everyone's schedules. So the following question is addressed to the publishing industry as a whole, to wit: am I the only person in our business who thinks that these delays are, to put it mildly, f*cking ridiculous?

I can't speak for other thriller-writers, but I put a lot of effort into coming up with ideas that feel contemporary and if possible slightly ahead of the game. There are elements in Assassin, for example, that were quite original when I first conceived them, but have now passed into the realm of the everyday. That may, in some sense, be a good thing: readers won't have a hard time believing things they now know to be possible. But I have the lifelong journalist's love of speed: I want to get the story out as fast and as fresh as possible. I hate seeing my words decaying over time like piping hot gravy congealing into unpalatable fat.

What frustrates me even more is that these antiquated schedules, essentially determined, so far as I can see by the available slots on supermarket and bookstore-chain shelves make no sense at all in an age of instant digital publishing. Very soon I will have on my computer the final, copy-edited, proof-read manuscript for my next book, Dictator. There is no technical reason why I could not put it online a minute later. Now, I'm not in the business of making my work available for nothing, any more than Tesco, Ford or your friendly local plumber are. But the point remains: there is no need for delay.

What's more, there's a fantastic opportunity here. Publishers and authors alike spend a lot of time fretting about the impact of the internet and digital technology, but less time embracing the ways in which it could revolutionize our trade, and art for the better. I'd love to be able to write books the way that Dickens and Conan Doyle did, in serial form. I don't know what the deadlines were for 19th century magazines, but I'd hazard they worked on lead-times of days, rather than months. So Dickens was able to respond to current events and affect debate by being absolutely of his moment. How ridiculous that we have gone so far backwards since then.

But what fun it would be to use modern technology to recover the immediacy and relevance that our distant predecessors took for granted and make fiction a vital, contemporary, spontaneous part of our culture once again!

Please Sir, Can I Write Some More? Or, Franchise v Freedom

In 1993, Steven Spielberg directed Jurassic Park, a family action-flick about reconstituted dinosaurs, and Schindler’s List, an Oscar-winning film from a Booker Prize-winning novel about the Holocaust.
Between December 1855 and August 1861, Charles Dickens followed Little Dorrit, a social critique based on his hatred for debtors’ prisons, with the historical Tale of Two Cities and the sweeping contemporary drama of Great Expectations.
Shakespeare wrote historical plays, tragedies, comedies and sonnets. Picasso explored every possible way in which line, colour and form could be used to create art. Mozart composed virtually every form of music available in his time. Bowie spent the mid-70s changing his look and sound with every new album.
My point being, it has always been considered perfectly normal for creative people (and granted, I’ve picked some very, very creative people) to explore different ways of expressing their creativity. And audiences have gone along with them.
So why aren’t genre authors allowed to write more than one kind of book?
I ask because I write a character-based series. I have no complaints about that. I enjoy writing about Samuel Carver, my very own pet killer and the cast of characters that swirls around him. I’m extremely grateful for the fact that other people seem to enjoy reading about Carver, too.
But he isn’t the only thing I want to write about. Since, for family reasons, I am unable to take a holiday this year, I’ve been giving myself a working break by starting a stand-alone book: a psychological thriller, told in the first person by a protagonist who, like me, has no personal experience of violence, until it strikes right at the heart of his life.
I also have two historical sagas and a domestic comedy – what I call an ‘Up Against the Aga Saga’ – that I’d like to write. But the fact is, it will be extremely hard to find a publisher for them, because people want what they’ve already had, and that means more Sam Carver.
God knows far greater writers than I will ever be have had the same problem. Just look at the efforts Conan Doyle made to get rid of Holmes, or Flemings repeated attempts to leave Bond dead (or at least dead-ish_ at the end of his books. And I have to confess tot total hypocrisy, since as a reader I want Lee Child to write about Jack Reacher, James Lee Burke to keep giving me Robicheaux, and I bitterly resent Dennis Lehane for (apparently) quitting on Kenzie and Gennaro.
I can see the commercial argument, from the publisher’s point-of-view, too. It usually takes a while to establish a franchise in the minds of the reading public. So it’s vital to keep going – ‘Punch the bruise’ as Mandelson likes to say.
But how many franchises, in all honesty, produce more than half-a-dozen great books and ten reasonably good ones? And who lasts longer in general: the one-trick pony, or the artist who is willing to take risks, challenge his audience, but keep coming up with unexpected delights.
If anyone from Bantam is reading this, don’t worry: you’ll get your next Carver, as promised. But I’d like to give you, and anyone who reads my stuff, something else as well. Something new. Something that might just be better …