Tony Salter's Blog

Tony’s latest novel, The Unicorn, was released on 12th November 2021.His fifth thriller, picks up on the story of 2019 best seller, Sixty Minutes, and follows Nadia Laroche, MI5 agent as she searches for the terrorist mastermind who almost cost her her sight.___________________________________

Ibrahim Abdel Hak is the Unicorn.

Lost in the mists and shadows of urban legend, he waits and builds his plans in the cold darkness.

Nadia knows he’s out there. She knows he’s planning something terrible.

Only she can stop him. Why won’t they listen?

___________________________________You can buy The Unicorn by clicking on the links below. I hope you enjoy it and please leave a review.Kindle ebookAmazon UKAmazon USAmazon CanadaAmazon AustraliaOr from your local AmazonPaperbackAmazon UKAmazon USAmazon CanadaAmazon AustraliaOr from bookshops worldwide

The post The Unicorn – Out Now! first appeared on Tony Salter.

Tony’s latest novel, Sixty Minutes, was released on 29th August 2019.

His fourth thriller, Sixty Minutes, is set over a single one-hour period and tells the story of five ordinary people who are all brought together in an extraordinary race to prevent disaster.

Hassan, Jim, Shuna, Dan and Nadia come from very different worlds. If life were straightforward, their paths would never cross. But our lives are rarely that simple and, as the clock ticks away the minutes of a single hour on a July morning, fate draws all five together in one unique location.

Who are the heroes and who are the villains?

Tony Salter’s latest novel leaves us guessing right up to the last page.

___________________________________

“Addictive thriller! I thought I knew where this was going, but couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“Fascinating characters. Loads of tension.”

“Made me think differently. On top of the cat-and-mouse tension, I was surprised to find myself questioning my own stereotypes along the way.”

“Clever and beautifully observed. Each of the five characters has a role to play – although it isn’t always obvious what that will finally be. Loved it.”

___________________________________

You can buy Sixty Minutes by clicking on the links below. I hope you enjoy it and please leave a review.

Kindle ebook

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Or from your local Amazon

Paperback

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Or from bookshops worldwide

Gaslighting is a term and a concept which is all over the news these days and, having written a gaslighting thriller, I thought I should find out a little more about the word, its background and why gaslighting is suddenly appearing everywhere.

I didn’t know anything about gaslighting when I wrote Best Eaten Cold and I still haven’t seen the 1944 film, Gaslight, which most people reference as the origin of the term. I wrote the book because I wanted to explore the ways in which technology could be used as an instrument of vengeance or punishment. The fact that it turned out to be a classic example of gaslighting was simply how the plot and characters evolved.

The original film was based on a 1938 play and starred Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The core theme is his use of a range of manipulative techniques to drive her to question her sanity and her perception of reality. One of the methods Boyer uses is to cause the gas lighting to dim and flare erratically and then claim Bergman’s character is imagining it.

Having slipped into relative obscurity, Oxford Dictionaries shortlisted gaslighting as one of the most popular words of the year for 2018 and that popularity seems to be growing. Many sources believe that this resurgence stemmed from the way that Donald Trump cast doubt on the credibility of the women who had accused him of assault – a steady drip-drip-drip of slurs, implications and accusations of mental weakness which destroyed their credibility and sowed seeds of doubt. He is also being accused of gaslighting his entire country through a combination of fake news and accusations of media bias.

The concept of gaslighting was also taken up by the #MeToo movement and tied in to a wider combination of physical and mental abuse and it has now stretched even further to describe jealous sniping between Love Island contestants.

It is a shame when a word and an idea become so diluted and confused. Gaslighting, in various degrees, exists all around us and can be immensely destructive, but it shouldn’t be used as a catch-all term for bad or disgraceful behaviour.

I think the definition given by Barbara Ellen in the Guardian is about right:

Gaslighting is about systemically dissolving another person’s sense of self, until they’re questioning their every move and instinct. It’s a pernicious process whereupon reality is distorted, inducing a state of psychological near-paralysis in the disoriented, anxious victim. 

Books and films which explore these ideas often have a particular resonance for their audience. There is a sense of recognition and familiarity. I suspect that, almost all of us have observed gaslighting and we’ve probably also all experienced it to an extent.

Cold Intent – the thrilling sequel to Best Eaten Cold – is now live.

Julie Martin hasn’t forgotten about Sam Blackwell and certainly hasn’t forgiven him. Sam wants to move forward, but Julie has other ideas and she has always had a remarkable ability to bounce back from adversity. Not only that, but there are more secrets lurking in her past than anyone imagined. They are well hidden, but not quite well enough.

Cold Intent is just as dark as its predecessor (maybe more so) and, for those who remember Best Eaten Cold, Hollywood endings should never be taken for granted. Readers will need to wait until, in a headlong rush to the final nail-biting conclusion, all becomes clear.

Best Eaten Cold has been a hugely successful debut with 90,000 downloads and over 1,000 reviews to date. The average star ranking on Amazon UK is 4.7 out of 5.0. Many readers have asked if there will be a follow-up and now there is.

Cold Intent is a stand-alone thriller which continues t. Although it works on its own, I think it will be more enjoyable for readers who have already read Best Eaten Cold.

You can get your copy via the links below. I do hope you enjoy reading Cold Intent as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

Kindle ebook

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Or from your local Amazon

Paperback

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Or from bookshops worldwide

When I wrote Best Eaten Cold during 2016, I spend a lot of time researching ways in which an individual life could be hacked and influenced.

I started out with the ideas I had, and then tried to find real world examples to cross check the feasibility. I was amazed by how easy it was to do almost anything – however devious and intrusive – I came up with.

There were a couple of hacking techniques which I wanted to use, but which were either impossible or not documented anywhere I could see. Fortunately, the great thing about writing novels is that an absence of documented proof doesn’t need to be a stumbling block. I decided that, if they didn’t exist, they should, and included them anyway.

One example was SnapMail. From the fictional quote at the top of Chapter Three of Best Eaten Cold:

“Growing concerns about long-term privacy and the potential of personal profile damage were the main drivers behind the success of Snapchat and the various copycats which have arisen since Snapchat launched in 2011. Hackers and identity thieves have been using bespoke ‘snapmail’ software for many years. True snapmail (where all trace of a received email is removed at a fixed time after receipt or reading) can only be implemented on infiltrated email accounts.”

I invented Snapmail for my novel, but from a Guardian article of today about the closing down of Cambridge Analytica, former CEO, Alexander Nix is quoted as saying:

“No one knows we have it, and secondly we set our … emails with a self-destruct timer … So you send them and after they’ve been read, two hours later, they disappear. There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing.”

I guessed well, but apparently real-life Snapmail works without even having access to the recipient’s email account.

On a separate note, does anyone believe that a company like Cambridge Analytica is really going away, just because they’re closing the current legal entity? And was anyone that surprised about the way their Facebook data was being used in the first place?

I’ve been working on the sequel to Best Eaten Cold since the Autumn of 2017 and the Cambridge Analytica scandal is tiny when compared to what might happen …

This is the world we live in.

All commercial logic dictates that the sensible strategy for an author is to write a series. That way you don’t have to invent new characters and introduce them to your readers. If a reader has become invested in one or more characters, it is much easier to persuade them to buy the book to find out more. In today’s world of online publishing and distribution, one of the most powerful marketing strategies is to actually give away the first book in a series in order to suck as many people as possible into the world of your character.

Knowing that, there was definitely something stubborn and pig-headed in my decision to write three completely different novels after I started writing; I was going to write what I wanted and what felt right – not allow myself to be driven by what I “should” do.

I am pleased I did, but at the same time, both Best Eaten Cold and The Old Orchard were always going to have sequels and I was very excited to start on Best Eaten Cold (2). It was going to be so much easier – I knew my characters inside out, there were lots of unanswered questions which I already knew the answer to, I had an established base of readers who would be keen to know what happened next to Jax/Julie, Sam, Daz and the others (and maybe learn a little more about Fabiola as well).

That euphoria lasted for a very short while before reality kicked in. Yes, I had a good over-arching plot which would (hopefully) satisfy readers, but it is easy to forget just how much the devil is in the detail. Some novels in series have very formulaic plot structures – especially the ones where the hero is a troubled policeman (or woman) or retired special forces veteran. Those formulae work very well and I enjoy reading books of that type (although after about five or six, I do tend to stop caring about how or why the protagonist has been driven back to the bottle (again) or whatever other dark place they tend to sink into).

But a formula wouldn’t work for the sequels to either Best Eaten Cold or The Old Orchard for all sorts of reasons, and I realised quickly that there weren’t any short cuts. I still needed a full and detailed plot which could grip people for 300 pages, I needed to show the characters grow and evolve in response to their new experiences and, to make it worse, I needed to keep everything consistent with the previous book and the expectations of its readers AND the sequel still needed to work as a standalone book.

I was also going to find it just as difficult as before to come up with a title. So far I have Best Eaten Cold Sequel, but I think it needs more work.

I am finding writing books to be a fascinating learning process and have found many things much easier and more natural than I expected. Writing sequels doesn’t appear to be one of them – it’s definitely as tough as coming up with a new novel from scratch, and possibly tougher.

I suppose I’d better get my head down then!

I’m not a computer programmer, nor do I spend any time chatting on forums, but I was involved in internet publishing for many years and have seen the ease with which a few ordinary people (known as trolls) can hijack any constructive online dialogue and drag it down into an underworld of bitterness and mean-spirited vitriol.

The major social media companies do try to control this to an extent, but not always, and some of the stories of persistent bullying and persecution (of young people and adults alike) are shocking.

It’s all our own fault of course!!! They give us the tools to manage and control permissions and access rights, but they don’t make it easy. As an example, anyone who has finally given in and signed up to Facebook Messenger will probably feel a little uncomfortable about all of the permissions they’ve handed over.

Most of us don’t have the time to study the rules and learn how to manage all of our access rules in detail. Random postings still appear on my news feeds which have nothing to do with my friends or their interests – I wouldn’t have a clue how to block them.

The point is that, whether via over-enthusiastic friends or loopholes in our permissions, most social media users are exposed to externally-generated postings. These may or may not be harmless and the way they affect us is changing.

What exactly is a Troll?

It used to be that a troll was a private individual. An active forum or chat room user, often small-minded and empowered by anonymity and the protection of a keyboard. They would attack individuals, create conflict after conflict and, however many times they were locked out by forum administrators they would find a new identity and get back in. To troll was to attack someone or something online.

Those people still exist, but there are new dimensions to modern trolling. A growing number of troll ‘armies’ are appearing around the world. Some are owned and managed by governments or political parties, while some are commercially motivated mercenary groups, guns for hire in ever-evolving battlefields.

Unlike individuals, troll armies are trained and co-ordinated and, even worse, their employers keep them moderated and disciplined which makes them hard to identify and block. Each will control numerous social media accounts and will make multiple postings daily.

For example, with probably the largest and most-established troll army, the Chinese state pays a network of over two million people to post almost half a billion pro-government comments every year.

The strategy isn’t always one of direct praise. An outrageous or shocking claim made at the right time (by enough people) can deflect anger from a political scandal or a poorly-managed natural disaster. Or a tidal wave of warm, positive comments (cheerleading posts) can feed enough white noise to swamp legitimate protests.

And Bots?

As we all know, people can be a pain to deal with. They don’t always do what they’re told, they gossip, they change sides and they’re sometimes overcome with ‘totally unreasonable’ ethical objections.

In today’s world where computers and robots are set to take over more and more human tasks, why bother with a human troll?

The answer is fairly obvious – algorithms and programs can’t quite replicate the nuances of a real person, so most troll armies are obliged to manage with a combination of human and robot troops (which are know as “Bots”).

Bots are used across the internet in many positive ways; to keep things tidy, to improve bad spelling, to remove repetition etc. Anything that involves simple, clear repetitive tasks.

For the troll army commanders, the advantages of bots are that they cost less, don’t argue, don’t sleep and can do much more, much more quickly. The disadvantages are that they are more predictable and easier to identify and block automatically. It also requires more technical skill to manage bots.

What does this mean in the real world?

In future blogs I will look at some recent examples of social media manipulation including Brexit and the US and French elections, but before doing that, we should question whether it is really that easy to influence reasonable people using social media. Are we really that gullible?

Luckily, the nice people at Facebook have carried out some research which helps to answer that question? More on that to follow next time…

But before that, I think that it is worth taking a moment to imagine how advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will affect this landscape. How long will it be before AI bots are indistinguishable from human trolls? And then how long before user-friendly apps will appear which will allow any of us to build our own troll army?

What happens then?

There’s a lot of talk about social media manipulation these days. Fake news, the Russians tampering with elections – it can all seem a bit far fetched and over-dramatised. Then the articles start talking about trolls, and bots, and sleeper bots; at that point, most people will switch off.

But maybe switching off isn’t such a good idea!

It was easier when you could put a face or a name to something more tangible. Is the BBC politically biased? Is Rupert Murdoch too close to the current Prime Minister?

These are things we can understand and the Sun’s apparent influence on the UK’s 1992 general election “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” is well known. There’s no doubt that people are influenced by the TV they watch and the papers they read and we’ve always been vulnerable to propaganda of one sort or another. We’ve learned to live with that.

No European countries had any independent broadcast media until the 1970s and a few late developers (Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Portugal …) retained monopoly control of TV until well into the 1990s. We shouldn’t forget that states have always wanted to control and manage information. It’s not just North Korean and China.

But the real issue with social media is that some important things have now changed and it’s no longer quite as easy to understand what is happening. The old days are the old days and the way we are now being influenced is fundamentally different. And it is going to become more and more of a problem despite growing attempts to bring the social media beast to heel.

Apart from anything else, most or all governments want to continue to use social media to further their own interests – they just want to stop others doing it. Not a great recipe for success.

So what’s so different?

The most important difference about Social Media relates to scale and accessibility and that’s not so easy to understand.

As the Computational Propaganda Research Project at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford says:

“Computational propaganda is the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks.”

Well, I’m sure you’re pleased I cleared that up!

Can you feel your eyelids drooping? Maybe time to go and see if there’s anything interesting on Facebook or Twitter instead …

_____________________________

I thought I’d try and humanise this subject just a little and will publish a few more short blogs over the coming weeks which might help to demystify a few things. The next article will discuss bots and trolls – what they mean, what they can do and some ideas about what that might mean for you.

There’s a lot of talk about social media manipulation these days. Fake news, the Russians tampering with elections – it can all seem a bit far fetched and over-dramatised. Then the articles start talking about trolls, and bots, and sleeper bots; at that point, most people will switch off.

But maybe switching off isn’t such a good idea!

It was easier when you could put a face or a name to something more tangible. Is the BBC politically biased? Is Rupert Murdoch too close to the current Prime Minister?

These are things we can understand and the Sun’s apparent influence on the UK’s 1992 general election “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” is well known. There’s no doubt that people are influenced by the TV they watch and the papers they read and we’ve always been vulnerable to propaganda of one sort or another. We’ve learned to live with that.

No European countries had any independent broadcast media until the 1970s and a few late developers (Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Portugal …) retained monopoly control of TV until well into the 1990s. We shouldn’t forget that states have always wanted to control and manage information. It’s not just North Korean and China.

But the real issue with social media is that some important things have now changed and it’s no longer quite as easy to understand what is happening. The old days are the old days and the way we are now being influenced is fundamentally different. And it is going to become more and more of a problem despite growing attempts to bring the social media beast to heel.

Apart from anything else, most or all governments want to continue to use social media to further their own interests – they just want to stop others doing it. Not a great recipe for success.

So what’s so different?

The most important difference about Social Media relates to scale and accessibility and that’s not so easy to understand.

As the Computational Propaganda Research Project at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford says:

“Computational propaganda is the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks.”

Well, I’m sure you’re pleased I cleared that up!

Can you feel your eyelids drooping? Maybe time to go and see if there’s anything interesting on Facebook or Twitter instead …

_____________________________

I thought I’d try and humanise this subject just a little and will publish a few more short blogs over the coming weeks which might help to demystify a few things. The next article will discuss bots and trolls – what they mean, what they can do and some ideas about what that might mean for you.

It doesn’t get any less exciting – or at least not yet!

The moment of holding the book in your hands for the first time, holding the cover up to the light, spinning it slowly between your fingers. It makes everything worthwhile – even the unbelievably tedious process of proofing, re-proofing, tweaking the layout and all of the other small tasks which seem to go on for ever.

The fear is always there that you have somehow missed a chapter or two in the final compiling process, or a page break has decided to return in the middle of the first page despite your best efforts.

Now that I’ve held it, everything seems to be where it should be, and I love the cover design which was done for me by Carys Tait. It just gets better every time I look at it.

The Old Orchard is my second book, but was actually the first one I wrote and I can still remember the feelings I had when I sat in front of the blank screen for the first time.

Becoming a writer! What a ridiculous idea! Who did I think I was? The ways in which I would fail stretched out in front of me, with the only consolation being that I would fail soon and therefore fail small. The humiliation would only be in front of a close group of friends and family who would pat me kindly on the head and tell me to get back to running companies and leave the creative stuff to creative people.

It’s now two and half years later and I’ve had such wonderful feedback about Best Eaten Cold from so many people that I might have hoped to feel confident that this writing business was something I could do.

It’s funny how it doesn’t really work that way. The same fears are there, but now I  have the potential to fail in front of a larger group of people. I suppose I will have to accept this as a reality of my chosen profession and it may be that the fear is necessary to keep me motivated. I’ll probably never know.

The Old Orchard is different from Best Eaten Cold – not quite as dark – but I believe that it’s just as good, if not better.

Now, I’ll have to wait to find out if other people agree.