David Barrie's Blog
March 23, 2017
On neophytes.
Some 30 months after setting down the opening line of the sixth Franck Guerin novel (which is still in place, despite the fact that I gutted and rewrote the opening third of the story about nine months ago), I have finally finished the first draft.
July 28, 2014
On unwittingly dabbling in historical fiction.
The fifth Franck Guerin novel (Tight-Lipped) will be published in paperback in the UK in October (since things move quicker in the digital realm, the Kindle version is already available). It features a scene in a location that no longer exists: the del Duca bookshop on the boulevard des Italians.
February 18, 2013
On limping into port, sails torn and masts askew.
Well, it looks like there may well be a fifth Franck Guerin book after all.
May 5, 2012
On digital disbelief.
So Loose-Limbed has come out. Or so I am told.
January 10, 2012
On titles (again).
A rose by any other name may indeed smell as sweet, but I do wonder whether it is always true of books.
December 11, 2011
On feedback.
Pitiless, detailed feedback is the one thing you're sure to get from your publisher (far more so, say, than heaps of money, which remain a distant, hypothetical prospect given the current sales of my titles). It's just as well, because you have little chance of getting it anywhere else.
November 24, 2011
On being stillborn.
The next Franck Guerin novel suffered two false starts (each about 25 000 words long) before I finally hit on a plot and a bunch of characters I was happy with.
June 20, 2011
On starting over.
In the bad old days when every computer application had to be written from scratch, my first post-student job was with Price Waterhouse, who promised me a radiant future as a management consultant if I could only put up with writing programs in COBOL for a while.
May 8, 2011
On (not) being a writer.
Some time ago I was invited by a local school with a substantial Anglophone population to come along and speak about how to go about writing a detective story. This proved an interesting and revealing exercise.
February 21, 2011
On deadlines.
Black Swan was released in France two weeks ago so I finally got to see it. To tell the truth, I did so twice: first time through I was too tense to enjoy it, fearful of finding too much common ground with Loose-Limbed; second time I just sat back and surrended to the tidal pull of the film (the relentless corruption of innocence, the costumes, the feeling that Vincent Price was lurking just around the corner, ...).
