Tom Paver's Blog

The Next Big Thing is a blog hop interview giving authors from around the world the chance to answer 10 questions about their new book. At the same time they introduce the writer who first tagged them and add another 5 writers who repeat the process . . . simple!
 
Alrene Hughes, author of Martha’s Girls, tagged me in The Next Big Thing blog hop.  Martha’s Girls is her debut novel set in Belfast during the second world war.  It is published by Matador and is currently available on Kindle.  You can read Alrene’s Next Big Thing post here.

Now it’s my turn.

What is the working title of your next book?

Take the Soup
Where did the idea come from for the book?

I was fly fishing in the west of Ireland in an area ravaged by the Great Famine of the 1840s and the owner of the hotel told me about how the local landlords had each reacted differently to the crisis.  It gave me the idea of tying a contemporary crime to those dreadful days.
What genre does your book fall under?

It’s a fast-paced murder story with a decent body count and a seriously nasty underworld king-pin from Dublin.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Joe Delahunty would be probably be played by David Morrisey and the lovely Anna Heuston would have to be Reese Witherspoon with her feisty head on.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

As Ireland’s society crumbles under the weight of its economic collapse a string of suicides and murders point to a puzzling link with the country’s historic famine.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Four weeks, hard at it.  I thank the Good Lord every day that I learned to touch type at school.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Joe Delahunty has an air of Jack Reacher about him, but without the solitude and a good dollop of Liverpool-Irish charm.  And who can blame him for his softer edges, with the lovely Anna Heuston on his arm?
Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was educated by Irish nuns at a convent school in Liverpool and they taught us all about the famine, so I suppose the story has been within me for a few decades.
What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

There’s a great summation of the reasons behind Ireland’s economic collapse and the contemporary settings within Dublin and Mayo will please anyone with an Irish connection or affinity. I’ve even managed to get a passage in about fly fishing on the Moy…

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It’s a pile of fun dreaming up action scenes, not least because of the emotional attachment to the whole thing.  Namely, that it’s either a baddy getting a well-deserved kicking or one of our heroes is scrapping for their lives.

You’ve got to think through everything step-by-step and describe it in such a way as to sound both plausible and tense.  You also want your readers throwing every punch with you or feeling every kick to the knackers (with an attendant wince).  Certainly, someone’s got to know how to scrap, otherwise it’ll end up like a pub brawl between two fat drunks, all flailing arms and useless wrestling.

A fine place for a punch-up

Joe Delahunty, for example, has a fine line in head-butts – no mean skill for a former priest.  They possess a great element of surprise, not to mention a crushing force, that makes them so effective.  Joe learnt this surviving his walk home from Bootle Strand station in his oh-so-posh Carmelite Convent school uniform.

Why people get in to fights is important within the wider narrative.  Unless we’re dealing with a complete psychopath, then there’s got to be a good reason why it’s all kicked off.  And sitting on a yacht yesterday as we raced seven other boats around a blustery Windermere I saw all too readily how things can lead, rapidly, to blows.

In short, a complete tosser broke a few rules and put our boat in jeopardy.  Because it was a race and his competitive dander was up he wouldn’t yield, arguing the toss with our skipper who was far more experienced than him and could recite the rule book backwards.

The two boats collided and our man was, frankly, ready to smash the other’s fellow’s head in.  Good job they were on different boats as that is precisely what I think would have happened.  To be fair to our man he calmed down and apologised to the paying guests (me and my clients) who witnessed it all and was pleased when we backed him up.  Not, I hasten, on his desire to visit violence upon the fellow, but on the points of sailing law and his right to get angry with the arrogant pillock for causing the problem in the first place.

That said, it would have been rather nice to see the other bloke at least holding a bloodied nose.  In the Laws of Blokedom he deserved it, to be honest.

 

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Being the generous type that I am I’ve posted The Sanctuary Stone on Amazon today, Thursday, and tomorrow free, gratis and absolutely fer nowt.  You’ll find it here.

As a professional marketeer (a degree in the subject, plus membership of my chartered institute) it’s a fascinating experience seeing what works and what doesn’t in terms of acquiring new customers.

And the bottom line is, it’s giving away books for free to encourage people to try my writing.  We marketing types call it sampling.  Time was that you only gave people a bit of the product to sample, otherwise you’d devalue it by giving it all away for free.  But in this new digital age where there is no cost of production, giving a product like The Sanctuary Stone away is a good move.

Buy The Sanctuary Stone today and it’s yours for free. Can’t say fairer than that.

Why?  Because on average, ten per cent of those who download it today and tomorrow will go on to buy my other works.  So, with no cost of sale I’m in essence acquiring a bundle of new readers and fans for free.

Thus far, nothing else has worked at this level.  As a businessman, too (I run a mid-sized PR agency looking after a range of major consumer and business-to-business brands) I’m clearly refining my tactics from experience.  Put another way, I’m dropping things like blog tours as, for the effort, they don’t yield the results.

So, go fill your boots as we say in Liverpool and download The Sanctuary Stone.  If you like it, then by all means leave a review on Amazon.

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I enjoyed a little bit of a plug on the esteemed Jennifer Blood’s website, BloodWrites, last week, with a gentle tickle for sales of Put Right in the US.

Jen kindly noted that it “reads beautifully from the first…”, which is flattery indeed from an independent author of her standing.  Thank you, Jen.

Meantime, fans of murder and mayhem should check out her web site: it’s a veritable repository of news, reviews, insights, tips and opinions on the gory and glorious world of crime writing.

She loves well-written gore, does Ms Blood.

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For those unfamiliar with the sense of humour in Liverpool, it’s best described as visceral: a cutting, rapid-fire wit that can crush the unwary.  A bit like New York’s humour, and with the same complete absence of deference.

So readers learn that the Liverpool workforce at the headquarters of the giant Bell Group, around which my novels are based, have given the firm’s CEO, Sir Meredith Bell, the sobriquet Merry Ding-dong.

No offence intended to Sir Meredith – honest – but my kids have just named our new kitten Merry.  And there’s a right Merry ding-dong  now that she’s home.  Talk about personality.

To be fair to the enobled Mr Bell, she’s not named in his honour, but Merida’s – she of Brave fame, which the kids went to see the other day.

It’s good to have a cat back in the house – the ultimate stress-busters, your average moggy.

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Regular readers will know that my forthcoming novel, Take the Soup, is set in Ballina in County Mayo – or, at least, the first half is.

Much of my inspiration for the setting and the opener for the novel came after a very enjoyable stay at the lovely Mount Falcon Estate, so I was delighted to see that it has merited a full four page review in this week’s Shooting Times, focusing on its stunning salmon fishing.

Better still, the very stretch of the River Moy where you’ll find Joe Delahunty at his most gallant best is photographed.  Having fished it myself I can vouch that it’s a lovely spot – worthy, indeed, of an act of selfless heroism.

You heard it here first.  Subscribers to my mailing list will be getting a sneak preview of the cover and opening chapter in a few weeks’ time…

If you were to take the soup, they do very fine grub here, that I promise you.

 

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Among the many lessons I’ve learned in life, the one about the kindness of strangers never ceases to please and amaze me.

People the world over are generally hospitable, kind and happy to help.  For all our cultural, religious and political differences it’s the basic instinct of most people to want to rub along with their fellow man as best they can – and random acts of kindness are all part of making life more civilised and bearable.

There’s a clever little ad campaign on the London underground on that very notion and, I suspect, it’s having an impact.  As a denizen of the Piccadilly Line I can tell you that the underground is a far more considerate place than it used to be.

People like Melysah make the world go around.

Today’s random kindness has been extended to me by The Lit Critic, otherwise known as Melysah, far away across the pond in Atlanta, Georgia.  She’s kindly allowed me to offer a guest blog, here, which I hope her regular readers will enjoy.  Melysah doesn’t know me from Adam, but she must have checked out my blog and my Amazon page and thought I was a good enough egg to allow near her dear readers.

So thanks, Melysah – I appreciate it.  If you’re in Liverpool, London or Dublin any time soon let me know – there’s a Guinness on me.

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We do rather live in a bubble, stuck out on a limb on the far northwestern edge of Europe.  And for all our protestations to the contrary, our knowledge and understanding of ‘Europe’ can be sketchy at best.  (I love the way we talk about Europe as though it’s somewhere else.  In fact, I often wish it was).

Here’s a test, then (and be honest): who’s ever heard of Avila?

Thought not.  My missus hadn’t either, and she’s been around the block a bit.  For the uninitiated, it’s about an hour and a bit north west of Madrid.

Avila, near Madrid. Never heard of it, have you?

We’ve just spent a week nearby in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama and I can tell you that it’s one of the most remarkable cities I’ve ever visited.  The walls that you can see above were built in the 11th century and are the longest in the world.  The city within is a mediaeval gem – and a prosperous one, at that.

It’s Spain’s highest city, at nearly 4,000 feet above sea level, so the temperature is pleasant in summer, as we discovered.  And for those of you who remember what the nuns taught you at school (shame on me!), it was home to St. Teresa, whose remarkable convent sits just outside the city walls.

I lived in Spain for a year in 1988 and the knowledge I acquired from that experience (and countless subsequent visits – thank you, easyJet) helped inform my writing for The Blood Puzzle.  It’s an incredibly diverse country, with five official languages (Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Gallego and Occitan) and countless unofficial ones, such as Mallorquin and Aranese.  It’s also Europe’s second most mountainous country (after Switzerland), a fact to which I can attest having trekked a good deal of the way across the Pyrenees via the wonderful GR11 path.

So, next time you’re thinking about Spain for a holiday, consider staying in-land, near one of its ancient cities.  It’s miles cheaper than the coast and far more interesting.

There endeth the lesson.

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In the convoluted way that Amazon classifications work the opening book in the Redemption series, Put Right, is number 5 this morning in its Free/crime/mystery/British detectives section.

That’s as a result of the free promotion yesterday and today, so thanks to everyone that’s downloaded the book and given it a go.

I’ll now have to think of a clever way of weaving that in to the promotion of all the other books in the series, but it’s a nice start to authordom and an interesting lesson for yours truly in how the whole book promotion game works.

Anyhow, if you like what you read, pass the word on and get stuck in to the other books. The Blood Puzzle and The Sanctuary Stone are my favourites…

The post Amazon Top 5 for Put Right – and free for another day appeared first on Tom Paver.

The first Friday of December each year yours truly and a gang of disreputable pals* head to Dublin for three days on the gargle.  This is our twenty third year.

Tour Rules prevent me from revealing anything too juicy, though suffice to say there have been all manner of scrapes as we have drunk our way around that fine city, taking in sundry bookies, ‘chippers’ and dens of ill repute along the way. 

Home to a thing of beauty, as described in Put Right

We sustain a steady pace, only drinking Guinness of course, which is soaked up courtesy of random scoff-stops along the way in the likes of Abrakebabra.  Classy it isn’t.

One afternoon a good few years back we were admiring a row of fine, settling pints of the black stuff in the Hairy Lemon when I was struck with a poetic turn, raised my pint and noted that it was a thing of beauty.  It’s been our signature phrase when on the Guinness ever since.

So next time you see a Belgian company advertising a gassy, urine-coloured confection called Wife Beater with the attendant strapline ‘a thing of beauty’ you may (a) shout at the television that it is no such thing; and (b) note that Tom Paver was first to the punch with that particular line.

I feel like sending them a bill.  Or a lawsuit.  But I’ve got another book to write…

It’s worth noting that the phrase features a couple of times in Put Right, not least in its memorable ending.  A case of art imitating life, perhaps.

Tom Paver.

*They are, of course, no such thing – a great bunch of micky-takers and musketeers, virtually all of whom run their own businesses and take huge risks to employ people in these difficult times. I doff my cap.

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