On saying nothing…

When I read my first Jack Reacher novel (61 hours, by Lee Child), one phrase struck me. It’s in every Reacher novel, sprinkled sparingly into the prose like a subtle spice.

Reacher said nothing.

Usually it’s in the midst of tense dialogue, at a point where nineteen out of twenty people, and thus most readers, would have said something. But Jack Reacher held his tongue. Not because he was afraid to speak, quite the reverse. It made me, as a reader, re-evaluate what I would have said, and come to the conclusion that Jack was right, it was better not to speak at this point. …

88 North -Coming soon…

After a month of gruelling editing, I sent the final manuscript back to HarperCollins a couple of days ago. Now there is just copy-editing, and then it’s done and dusted, and will be released on December 14th. It’s already got pre-orders in three figures (thanks!) which is great to see. There will be a blog tour 11-18 December to get some early reviews…

The final Nadia outing has less diving, but the diving is more extreme, both in terms of depth and what is down below.…

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.…