Lost in wrecks – hardcore wreck-diving

One of the motivations for writing 66 Metres was wreck diving. I’ve dived wrecks in many different parts of the world, and I am always fascinated by seeing these graveyard ships, imagining how they were before, and witnessing how nature colonizes them, turning even warships into havens for fish and coral.

But they are often spooky, approaching out of the gloom. And there is always an amount of added danger, from becoming lost or getting trapped inside one, to catching a limb on a jagged edge and cutting yourself (never a good idea in shark-infested tropical seas), to finding poisonous fish (e.g.…

Inside a killer’s head

When writing a thriller, there needs to be a sense of jeopardy for the protagonist. Perhaps a killer is after her, maybe more than one. The killer can be left vague, abstract, distant, and this allows the reader to imagine how terrifying they can be. [nice image by Jiceh, by the way]

Or…

The author can go inside the killer’s head, show the reader what is in there. This approach is less followed, for several reasons.

(1) The writer is not a killer (well, usually, one hopes), and writers should ‘write what they know’.…

Writers on the edge…(Genius)

Yesterday I watched the film Genius, in which Jude Law plays the utterly driven writer Tom Wolfe, and Colin Firth plays the (genius) editor Max Perkins, who also edited Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both portrayed admirably in the film.

I think writers should go watch (or rent) the movie. Here’s why.

Wolfe has been rejected by every publishing house in town, until Max sees something in his work. Most writers, even successful ones, had a rough start, or have not yet even had that ‘lucky break’, which seems lucky when it happens to others, and hard-earned when it finally happens to them.…