Radio interview with Fran Lewis

I had an extended radio interview the other day with BlogTalkRadio host Fran Lewis in New York, on the second book in the series, 37 Hours. You can listen to it here. The interview focused on what happened and why, the various locations of the book, and – inevitably – the shark attack scene. There are a couple of spoilers, so if you haven’t read it yet, just mute it for 30 seconds when I say the word ‘spoiler’. Otherwise, it was great fun, and I got to talk a little about the next book, 88 North.…

On fight scenes…

Are you ever reading a thriller, and in a key scene there is a fight, but you get confused: the hero or villain seems to have three arms, or is facing one way then suddenly another, or else you just can’t visualise what is going on, and you really want to…?

Me too…

It’s not easy writing fight scenes – they work great on the silver screen, but in a book it’s hard for three main reasons. First, most writers have probably never been in a real fight, and being in a fight is completely different from watching one.…

How to write a blurb…

There’s an old saying that a lawyer who defends himself in court has an idiot for a client. Similarly, I don’t think writers should write their own blurbs. We’re too close to what we’ve slaved over for months or years. Better if someone else does it for us.

Last Sunday a fellow writer was asking me about blurbs, and I showed her the one I’d written on Amazon for the forthcoming book 88 North, as an example of how not to do it.…