On editing and music
I’ve just started the first major edit of the next novel, and it’s at times like this that I use music to help the editing process. As with all my previous books, I choose a new singer/group that I’ve never really listened to, It helps me stand outside my comfort zone, and see the words on the screen differently, more objectively. The music has to somehow relate to the protagonist. With Nadia, in the last book, 88 North, it was Siren’s Call by Cats on Trees, as the heartfelt way it is sung reminded me of the way Nadia felt about Jake, and how desperate she was to save him.…
Crafting an ending
I’m near the end of the first full draft of my new novel, The dead can lie. It’s about Greg, a criminologist whose wife was killed by a serial killer known as the Dreamer. A year after her death, Greg has no new leads, and is close to ending it all, when he receives a phone call that changes everything. But he is then framed for his own wife’s murder.
I didn’t intend to write this book, I had something else in mind, but it kind of insisted.…
In the footsteps of Nadia…(Hong Kong)
Over the summer I went to do some tai chi training in Hong Kong, which happened to be where I sent Nadia and Jake in the final book, 88 North. When I wasn’t training, I spent quite a bit of time re-tracing their steps in Wan Chai, Central, the Peak, Victoria Park, etc. It was like doing research after the writing. Upon my return, I was asked by a local Paris magazine (Panache) to write about Hong Kong and Taichi, so here’s what I wrote.