Apologies for the tardy blog but last Friday myself, Matt Lynn and Leigh Russell were hard selling our books at Heathrow, Terminal 5.  Again, we had enthusiastic support from WHSmith and our contact, Tom, had set up a good display which declared its support for British thriller writers and included (thankfully positive) reviews of each book from staff.

We spent a few hours signing for the sometimes bemused but often enthusiastic passengers and again there were a few people who bought all three books.  We then enjoyed a good chat with Tom and discussed our good natured Dan Brown campaign - 'I Can't Believe It's Not Dan Brown!'

The YouTube clip has now been launched and you can view it below.  We hope it will be received in the spirit it is intended - a lighthearted antidote for what is sure to be Dan Brown's most productive month.

So if you're considering ordering a copy of 'The Lost Symbol' don't forget there is an alternative.  Click on link or paste into your browser or type 'I Can't Believe It's Not Dan Brown' into YouTube.

http://tinyurl.com/nskgy3

Yesterday saw a lively Curzon lunch in Oxford Circus which had to be accommodated by a larger table than previously booked.  We were pleased to welcome guest of honour, Barry Forshaw, Crime Time editor and reviewer for The Independent, The Times and The Express as well as author of many related books (including 'British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia' and 'Rough Guide To Crime Fiction').  His omnivorous reading tastes prompted some lively discussion on anything from Poe to Fleming and we quickly realised that, next month, an evening dinner appointment would be more appropriate given that gossip and Curzon business took us through lunch hour and into the afternoon.

We were also pleased to initiate (and obvioucly this clandestine process cannot be divulged here) a new member, Cyrus Moore.  Cyrus has a controversial city thriller, 'City Of Thieves', just out in hardback from Sphere which taps into the bonus culture downfall of the city and did so some years before it happened.  Needless to say, it's now selling well.

The Curzon Group Airport Tour was dissected and the consensus was that it had been a great success with a supermarket tour already being discussed for December.

We also talked over a potential Curzon compendium book and a Christmas party to be attended by bloggers, publishers and maybe a smattering of thriller authors. 

We're meeting up again in October and there's plenty on the agenda for the months ahead - more details on The Curzon Group site and on Twitter over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, here's an article that I wrote for the Conville and Walsh website about a subject very relevant to me at present.

HIGH TENSION

Richard Jay Parker

Narrative tension and character detail - it's a balancing act that I'm still trying to get right.

STOP ME has only been published a couple of weeks but judging by the sales on Amazon, Book Depository and at my signings the Vacation Killer and his deadly SPAM email seems to have captured the imagination of quite a few readers.  This is an auspicious start but, in the meantime, I'm obviously beavering away on the second book and trying to achieve the perfect balance of character depth and action.

My instinct is to move the story along at such a pace that the reader has whiplash before chapter four.  That's the sort of book that I like to read but I have to keep my own celluloid sensibility (from my script background) in check and tick a few more boxes that make the reading experience so different from the viewing one.

STOP ME has already garnered some good reviews not least for its pace but there's also been notes from editors about connecting more with Leo.  Some thought he was 'messed up' but 'endearing' some felt they wanted to know more about his inner cogs.

I've finished the first draft of my new thriller and it was a relief to have it greeted by Ben (Mason) with some positive noises.  Premise good, central relationship survives the critique intact.  No spine to be ripped out of the story, which is always a relief.  Rewriting is sometimes like being told you have to move house after you've only just unpacked your last crate.

There's always work to be done on the plot but it's the characters that I'll be focussing on.  The trick being to give the reader just enough but not so much that it slows the impetus of the story.

I've been catching up on some contemporary thrillers recently and some of them get straight to the meat of the plot without a pause for the reader to get to know the characters.  Sometimes these books end up being the equivalent of stage directions and I find my mind wandering as the writer attempts to choreograph detailed shoot outs/car chases in my head.  There does need to be more environment and character colour but how much before your thrill ravenous reader gets restless?   

Readers are just as prone to attention deficit and when you present a book that bears the moniker 'thriller' there's certainly an expectation for something that screws you to the seat of the chair until the last page is turned.  But every reader is different and demands different things from their reading experience.  I'll never cater for all of them but I can strive to insure that there's a mixture of story elements that don't cancel each other out.

That's all I need to do. Simple as that.  Take the rest of the afternoon off.

I hope my next self-contained thriller will have the right blend but I've a feeling it's going to be something I'll be perfecting for years to come.

If it's excitement you're after from a book what's your character criteria?  Some crave urbane secret agents armed with panoply of ingenious gadgets who indulge in a host of even more innovative sexual encounters, others will settle only for otherworldly goblins imbued with alchemical powers and a path that has already been foretold by the ancients.  Whatever pops your corn certainly depends on how high you want to raise the bar of your belief suspension but lately I've come to realise that it's the world of the everyday that interests me most as a writer.

The mundane and the characters that populate it is a great starting place for a story because, let's face it, we're all so damn familiar with it.  No maps need to be drawn, no scene embellishment necessary - just down to the serious business of finding something intriguing, eye-popping or deeply unsettling within it.

I've devoured books of all genres out of choice and, having read a bounteous amount for a literary talent scout, many I wouldn't have chosen but ended up being pleasantly surprised by.  Out of all these, however, it's always that first page that dumps me slap bang in the middle of familiar territory and then twists it or pulls something entirely unexpected from behind its facade that makes me want to read on.

This isn't me being pejorative about writers of any genre.  I've been transported to some bizarre places by some very capable hands but I suppose I admire more the work of writers who can create an alluring premise from a believable setting.  If you're presenting your reader with the everyday, however, the skill is introducing a plot that's exciting but still as plausible as the backdrop.

Personally, I've always been intrigued by my neighbours and the people you convivially nod at in the street and what goes on away from the those outwardly socially acceptable patterns of behaviour.  What are they really doing behind their front doors?  Who are they pretending to be when they log onto the Internet?  Everyone harbours secrets to different degrees and you've only got to turn on the news to hear about the extreme activities that are being perpetrated within ostensibly normal neighbourhoods.

It was these questions that interested me the most when I was writing STOP ME.  From Leo Sharpe, a normal Londoner who has to suddenly question the fabric of a life he assumed was secure when his wife vanishes during a Christmas shopping trip to John R Bookwalter, the character he engages with via the Internet who claims to be holding her captive even though he's never left his native Louisiana.  The biggest challenge was NOT turning them into bigger characters.

It's easy to be tempted towards cackling stereotypes for literary convenience but the concept of an everyman character like John R Bookwalter running his own website - a private, carefully calculated world of online commercial psychosis - was more interesting to me because it highlights a very real and worrying global situation where a society of outwardly civilised and polite people have an ongoing romance with the exploits of serial killers.    

These obsessives are the people we all sit next to in bars, the individuals who stand too close to us and breathe on the backs of our necks as we stand in line.  They're just like us and when writing about them it's a fine line to tread between the pedestrian that we can all readily identify and finding something at the heart of it that makes for a good story.  But carefully stripping away their manners and public personae is where some real intrigue lies. 

For the most part they're just as normal as you (?) but I wonder if you've ever held the door open for or shook the hand of a killer?  Odds are you just might have.  It's this probability that I believe keeps the belief suspension low and the potential for a gripping read very high.  So next time you're looking for story inspiration, consider the humdrum and what darkness lurks behind its repressed respectability.  It's often more terrifying than anything in fiction.