Just as I sat down to write my blog yesterday, I turned on
the TV to distract myself – a typical writer’s ploy.I shouldn’t have done it because there was breaking news of
another mass shooting in the USA.This time at the unlikely place where San Bernadino County in California
helps people with developmental disabilities.At that time, twelve people were feared dead.
Another mass shooting?The 355th one this year.Yes, more than one a day.How depressing.
And there was more breaking news: ISIL had just beheaded a
Russian journalist as an up-yours to Putin.
And Putin had just accused President Erdoğan of Turkey, of helping
ISIL by allowing the sale of oil through Turkey.
How the hell, I wondered, does anyone know whose side anyone
else is on?Do we even know whose
side we are on (whoever ‘we’ are)?
I sank further into depression.
Then I read that the UK parliament had okayed the Royal Air
Force to bomb ISIS targets.And
just the other day, the USA had increased the number of on-ground combatants to
fight ISIL.Don’t we ever learn? I
thought.Isn’t that what these
madmen want?More excuses to
recruit more people looking for virgins in heaven.
My depression deepened.
Then I wondered what I would do if I were Obama or Cameron
or Merkel.Easy to criticize, I
thought.Not so easy to come up
with a solution.I’ve no idea what
I would do – much easy to know what not to do.
As I became more and more depressed, I gave up all thoughts
of writing.It would end up making
me even more depressed and would likely be unreadable.
So I did what I often do when I am down and deep in a hole.I listened to music I loved a long time
ago.Thank goodness for YouTube!
Here is my anti-depressant playlist, pretty much in order of
when I fell in love with them.Do
they do the same to you as they do to me?
I said Mr Purple People Eater, what's your line? He said eating purple people, and it sure is
fine But that's not the reason that I came to land I wanna get a job in a rock 'n roll band.
5.The
inimitable Flanders and Swann with Have some Madeira, M’Dear.
One thing missing from this recording was
part of the line, "He slyly inveigled her up to his flat - to see his
collection of stamps - all unperforated", that all allunperforated was
delivered in the raunchiest tone imaginable!
I blame Jeff and Stan. They ambushed me in the bar at Bouchercon last month. One minute we were recounting
our favourite Flanders
and Swann songs, with much juvenile giggling, and the next I’d been talked
into joining this illustrious little gang. I’m still not entirely sure how we
got from there to here.
I don’t even drink.
But, here I am, nervously smoothing down my hair and straightening
my Sunday-best frock, trying to remember my lines and hoping not to be met
with, at best, a blank-faced stony silence.
And it occurred to me that I really ought to introduce myself
properly to my new bloggers and bloggees. So here goes.
I took a weird path into the writing game. Is there a normal one? I
wasn’t a noted student, opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve
and did correspondence courses until I was legally old enough to go out and get
a job. The local authority sent me to see a careers advisor when I was fifteen
or so. I told him I was interested in writing. He said, “We’ll put you down for
clerical.”
I’d already written my first novel by then. It still sits,
unpublished, in a folder in the attic. A children’s story, but no fledgling
Harry Potter. My father threatens every now and again to dig it out and see if
it will fly on eBay. I have it well hidden.
A few years later I ended up at my local newspaper, selling display
advertising — the ads in the front half of the paper, rather than the
classifieds. A soulless job if ever there was one. Everybody suspects that half
the money they spend on advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which half
so they resent spending any of it. I lasted six months of impossible targets
and nail-biting deadlines and picked up a temporary heart murmur for my pains.
Towards the end, my manager — knowing I wouldn’t stay past the probationary
period — asked the editor if there was any chance the editorial side would take
me on. I’d already written advertorial copy and he knew that’s where my
interest lay. The editor turned him down flat. “No qualifications.” They fired
me.
I'm the idiot clinging to the back ...
I looked at getting those qualifications. Seven years of study just
to become a cub reporter. I gave it up. Instead I sold pensions, delivered
yachts, taught people to ride horses, and did a few other things I probably
shouldn’t talk about too much. During this period I acquired my first car — a
broken-down Triumph Spitfire MkIV wearing more different colours of paint than
Joseph’s coat, with a six-inch nail holding one of the front brake calipers in
place. Not my first choice but the best I could get for the money. I rebuilt
it, worked out how to make it go round corners, resprayed it Brooklands green.
And started to write about it.
Before I knew it, I was writing for the classic car magazines. In
1988, with an arrogance that frankly shocks me now, on the basis of a couple of
accepted articles I gave up my job — no loss there — and turned freelance full
time. It was four years before one of my magazine editors asked me what
qualifications I had. By that time I could tell them they’d been sending me
cheques for four years. What more did they want?
The freelance market was good, the rates reasonable, so I expanded
the scope of my work. An editor asked could I supply words and pictures? I
borrowed a camera and gave it a try. My fiction writing ambitions went on the
back burner, until something happened to revive them.
I was sent to see a bloke in south Wales to do an interview. But
when I arrived it soon became clear that the car collection I was supposed to
be featuring didn’t ... actually exist. And he looked kind of shifty when I didn’t
turn up alone. The bloke made some sort of lame excuse and we left, annoyed at
the wasted trip. It was only afterwards that I started to wonder what he had
planned. I’d made an appointment, so he couldn’t claim he wasn’t expecting me.
The only thing that had thrown him was that I hadn’t come alone. And what then?
Say no more.
A couple of years previously, Brit real estate agent Susie Lamplugh
disappeared after going to show a prospective buyer round an empty house. She
was never found. It struck a chord. Especially when, after that abortive
interview, every time my picture appeared alongside a regular column I was
writing in one of the classic car mags, I received death-threat letters.
Professionally done, with the words cut out of newspaper like a ransom note.
Telling me I was scum, telling me they knew where I lived and my days were
numbered. The police never tracked down who’d actually sent them.
As for my reaction, I learned self-defence from a little black belt
karate and kyushu jitsu instructor with a benevolent smile and steel fingers. I
did not, as has been erroneously
stated in the past, learn to shoot in order to protect myself. I could already
shoot to competition standard.
But I did start to write fiction again. Maybe it was a form of
escape, of regaining control. Maybe it was a desire to create a world where the
bad guys died screaming. I wanted a strong female lead who wouldn’t buckle when
she was put under threat, and one day Charlie Fox turned up on the doorstep of
my mind, fully formed, with an attitude and a motorbike, a traumatic past, a
failed military career, friends who loved her. She said, “I’ve got a story to
tell. You might want to write this down.” I didn’t argue.
The result was KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one. To date, there have been another nine series books, a short story e-thology, plus a novella, and this summer my first standalone, THE BLOOD WHISPERER came out. Over the winter I'll be working on book-number-the-eleventh.
And, in one of those little tweaks of fate that so rarely happen,
several years after I turned freelance I got a call from the publisher of the
newspaper who’d sacked me, offering me the editorship of another paper in the
same group. I let them take me out for a very nice lunch to discuss the
position, then turned them down. Maybe I should have told them I simply wasn’t
qualified ...
It’s been my habit to have a Word of the Week every time I blog. For
this one I’m going for absquatulate,
meaning to leave abruptly or quickly, or to flee. As opposed to levant, which means to run off without
paying a debt, or abscond, to run in
order to evade capture or justice, usually taking something or someone along
with you. If your dog gallops out of the house and hot-foots it down the garden,
he’s absquatulating. If he has the Sunday roast clamped in his jaws while he
does so, he’s absconding.
Stan and I completed the midwest leg of our book tour for DEATH OF THE MANTIS on Friday.We had a super time: visits to Chicago, Milwaukee, Ann Arbor, Urbana, Iowa City and, of course, St Louis.At the book signings people were fascinated by the genuine Bushman hunting kit Stan acquired forty years ago.We take it to almost all the events, and it wonderfully illustrates the cultural backstory of the book. We had an amazing time meeting old and new readers and old and new friends, and Bouchercon was simply spectacular.More of that next week in Stan’s MIE combined post on our impressions of the event.For now, suffice it to say that we’ll be in Cleveland (and Bristol for that matter) next year.
Celebration for the end of the midwest tour
After four more events in Minneapolis after we finished the road trip, we decided that it was time for a bit of a celebration.So after our event in Wayzata, we had dinner with friends at a restaurant near the bookstore - and found 1922 Madeira by the glass on the dessert menu.Speaking of backstories, there’s one here too.Some friends have been trying to get an old bottle of Madeira for Stan for a birthday present for several years.One obstacle after the other prevented this from happening.A bottle like the one at the restaurant is available from a few specialist wine stores – if you have a spare $350!So it was a fitting finale to the trip to celebrate with a glass at the end of the meal.The waiter willingly loaned us the bottle for the picture, but he kept a firm eye on it during the proceedings!
Vineyards on beautiful Madeira
Madeira wine has an interesting history.First of all it comes exclusively from the Portuguese island of the same name situated to the west of North Africa. The island was supposedly discovered in 1419 by sailors exploring for Prince Henry the Navigator and settled shortly afterwards.About fifteen years later it started being referred to by its current name: Ilha da Madeira (Island of Wood after its rich forests). And it was ideally situated as a stopover for ships en route to and from the New World and the East Indies.In the sixteenth century there was a well-developed wine industry .Ships would stop to pick up “pipes” of wine. (A pipe is about 125 gallons.) Much of it spoiled on the long hot voyages so the vintners started fortifying the wine (adding first cane spirit and later brandy) to stabilize it.
The four major styles
But the heat of the journey still caused some strange developments in the wine and some pipes were rejected and sent back to Madeira.To the initial surprise of the winemakers, the somewhat cooked and oxidized wine became very popular.It has a distinctive rich taste and freshness assisted by the extra alcohol and mild pasteurization of the heating.Pretty soon the vintners worked out a way of getting those effects without shipping the wine halfway around the world and back.It’s called estufagem and essentially involves heating the wine to around 130 degrees Fahrenheit for considerable periods of time. It’s always at least ninety days, but for the best vintage wine it may be done naturally in sun-warmed rooms for twenty years!
We were amazed by the freshness and liveliness of the wine, nearly ninety years old.The taste was a sort of cross between port and sherry with hints of caramel but not sweet.The waiter was a bit concerned that the bottle had been “open for some time” as “there wasn’t much call for it”.He shouldn't have worried: the wine must be open for at least a day before you drink it and can be fine after it’s been open for as long as a year.Maybe we’ll have another glass after Cleveland in 2012.
Madeira wine has a long association with the US too.Jefferson enjoyed it and it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence.Washington and Franklin were also partial to it.A major event on the way to the Declaration was the British seizure of John Hancock’s sloop the Liberty on May 9, 1768. Hancock's boat was seized after he had unloaded a cargo of 25 pipes (3,150 gallons) of Madeira and a dispute over import duties followed. The impounding of the ship led to seething riots in Boston.I always wondered about all that fuss over some tea. Now Madeira is another thing altogether.Maybe the Tea Party should consider a name change? Wine Party has a nice ring to it.
