Yes, I'm just being silly. It's just that subjecting myself and squandering some life on The Da Vinci Code has left me very depressed.
Quite understand - it depressed the hell out of me, too. And it took me a while to get my bearings back. I am trying to do what I'm advising you do (though I don't think it's 'transference' - it just makes sense), as it seems to me silly to spend a lot of time and effort doing something you love and not at least have a go at making money from it at the same time - that's the ideal situation, surely. So I've thought rather a lot about this stuff, the 'thriller market' and so on.
A friend of mine said to me the other day 'You're not just doing it for the money, though, are you?' Slight concern in his eyes. Terribly English question, the immediate equation of earning money with shame. I enjoy writing non-fiction articles, too, and currently do that for a living. But nobody ever asks me if I'm just doing that for the money. I do it for money, yes - different thing. I digress. My conclusion on THE DA VINCI DUPLO is that it succeeded *despite* abysmally clumsy prose, an entire lack of characterisation, heavy-handed and irrelevant exposition and so on, simply because it tapped into a vein of conspiracy theory people were hungering for. Thrillers sell for different reasons.
One of the things I was slightly worried about when reading the opening of JUST ANOTHER KILL was whether or not you had enough of a handle on *pace* for the commercial market. (Nice of me to show concern, I know! Who the hell am I? Please forgive the presumption of all this - just think of me as a voice in the ether.) I read the first chapter, and left off because I want to read the whole thing in one go. But it also has a rich, leisurely opening, even though you start with Bond staring down a sniperscope. With this novella, all such thoughts vanished. Perhaps it's something of a tic that you start this way, to establish a sufficiently Flemingian tone. At the risk of enraging you, look at your very first sentence:
'Naples he had never cared for and, in the manner in which its persistent May rain had assaulted him as he had crossed the Piazza del Plebiscito, James Bond knew the feeling to be mutual.'
Imagine an alternate you writing a review of this offical IFP novella written by someone else. Might you not say that that's a slightly portentous opening sentence? In the comfort of us not knowing each other, perhaps I can be the one to suggest that something shorter, snappier, and less passive, might still have plunged me into a rich Fleminginan 1966, but plunged me there a mite quicker.
'James Bond had never cared for Naples, and as he had crossed the Piazza del Plebiscito, assaulted by the May rain, he had known the feeling to be mutual.'
Or something. We don't need to know the rain's persistent - it's assaulting him, and that in itself is persistent. Is it really the manner in which the rain assaults him that makes him realise the feeling's mutual? Could it conceivably have rained buckets on Bond in a slightly different manner for him not to think that? Yes, kick me and despise me.
But it's the sort of thing that you would point out in a review of this, I think.
Back to the point: including your chapter title, it's precisely 1,000 words until the word 'collision'. There's some wonderful stuff in there. It's laconic, amusing, intriguing, atmospheric and all that jazz. I wonder if some of it couldn't go later, though - if we're talking big bad world of selling millions of copies of this kind of thing. Regardless of whether or not you agree (you don't, I'm sure!), for me the story really kicks off with the following sentence:
'The telegram was unmistakable in origin, brevity and meaning.'
And from here until the end I was hooked. Perfectly paced stuff (the ending bit already discussed). Top-notch writing, and top-notch thriller writing. Were it not for the problem of it containing a copyrighted character and all the problems you know only too well with the literary reception of that character, this is critically acclaimed but selling buckets territory, and you don't put a foot wrong, in my view. Which is why I've written all this cobblers.
Haven't read Akunin yet, but will.
There's a story that at one point the Camorra pinched a Soviet nuclear submarine or two and parked it in the Bay of Naples / invited the Russian navy to park them there. I'm hazy on the details, but something of the like appears to have happened. Isn't that fantastic? I have no idea why and little memory of when but there's a story in there, somewhere. You never know.
Sounds fascinating, and would love to see that come in.
And even less so when I've just relentlessly and hard-heartedly abused the stuff, if not the man.
I thought you might say something like that. It's not hard-hearted, but perfectly valid. And it was done with humour and plenty of self-deprecation. Writers have to develop hard hides, and wash off silly nutters on the net criticising their work - as you are learning.
I just wonder how sustainable that would be.
Yes, perhaps it isn't. It was just an idea. I didn't say it was *easy* - it was just a starting point for a thought process. But imagine the net in 1951, and on www.thesaint.net a new member by the name of NavalSadist posts a novella-length piece in the fan fiction section of the site, in which Simon Templar briefly becomes involved with British intelligence. Imagine another member called TactlessFool advising him that he'd be better off reimagining the Saint character to the extent that he had his own. The novella captures Charteris very well, but goes beyond it, and has its own characteristics. Draw some of those out. Use your own life. And so on. 'I can't!' says NavalSadist. 'I'm fine on the story, but the concept's quite something else.' The concept isn't Fleming's - he's just developed the Saint, Bulldog Drummond, Sax Rohmer, Le Queux and all that lot. And it's continued until now.
I meant to write a short post this time. Oh well. You don't know me.
Perhaps I should stop, though - setting you thinking is all I really wanted to do.
