Losing that bestseller appeal

Not the original

Every April through 1999 to 2010, I either found myself in a book store or waiting on an Amazon parcel, eager to get my hands on that year's Lee Child novel. I always bought the hardback because that was the only option. The books were consumed within 48 hours with a review posted to Amazon shortly after. Followed by weeks at least of the verbal 'have you read the latest...' buzz that accompanies the rise of any bestseller.

Save for these annual two day reading indulgences at the hand of Lee Child I'm seldom plugged into just one book at a time. I can barely recall a time these last two decades when I've not been humping two or three books around in some obscenely heavy slung over the shoulder bag. Although I admit half the contributing weight will have been a laptop and associated gadgetry. This weighty state of affairs was endured because there was no alternative, it was the only way to meet my insatiable need for reading and technology.

Reviewing my account history at Amazon I can see I ordered my first Kindle in August 2010. It was the 3rd generation Kindle and the first to be sold in the UK. It arrived in September and my reading perspective forever altered. The revelation was that reading no longer required hefting a stack of books with me during my lengthy daily commute, or keeping tabs on the books so I remembered to take them with me. I simply made sure I had a Kindle device at all times. As that increasingly encompassed my Smartphone, iPad, MacBook and work PC, I was never going to be without the book I wanted to read.

In 2011 it was Autumn that saw the release of Lee Child's latest book and I paid a few pence less than the cost of the hardback for the privilege of downloading it on the Kindle. It was on my device at midnight the day of launch and I was still reading it at 3AM. The review was written and posted the following day. I was more than a little put out the Kindle version was SO expensive - more than twice the price of a normal Lee Child Kindle edition. And through the subsequent year I missed being able to swing around in my chair and see the hardback amid my dedicated Reacher shelf. All of which contributed this year (2012) to me swapping back to the hardback, though this was mostly because it was CHEAPER than the Kindle edition. I deliberated this in my Crafty Bastards post back in June - it seemed Lee Child's publisher's were going out of their way to make me buy the hardback. I decided to see whether their desire for me to do this correlated with my reading needs as a fan and avid reader. 'A Wanted Man' hardback arrived at work and I managed to squeeze it into my narrower and less voluminous bag before heading home. I pulled it out and sat in my study and started reading that night.

The next morning I dropped my MacBook and iPad into my bag, checked the Kindle was in there and had the hardback in my hand before realising just how heavy it was in contrast to the other devices. It now seemed an excess akin to packing a mantel clock to check the time through the day. With barely a thought I left the book on the hallway table to read that night instead, a thought I repeated each morning for the rest of the week, always with a mind I'd catch-up with it that night. It was the weekend before Lee Child's latest Reacher got picked up again, spending the Saturday morning reading in the conservatory, where it stayed through several weeks as chance and the weather didn't bring me back. I looked for the hardback through the house but like many things outside of my main focus its whereabouts remained elusive. I later found it efficiently stacked in a pile of magazines and newspapers and at some point it got transported back to the hallway because I saw it there amid a different stack of letters and magazines. I have so far not finished it, not even picked it up to read since that Saturday morning. It's not that I don't want to read it, I really do, but my reading world is no longer focused around a single book. My perspective is all about a few devices that give me access to my whole library, whenever and wherever I am. My books effectively follow me, not the other way round. I will probably finish the Reacher novel the next time I'm at home for any length of time, which will probably be Christmas.

For me part of the fun of being a fan is reading a book on launch. I don't mind paying a premium to do this but paying twice the price isn't going to happen, not even for a Lee Child. If the publisher continues to do this it means there will be one less fan eagerly awaiting Lee Child's future book launches.

John Potter is the author of Chasing Innocence, a 3x award winning and bestselling Crime Thriller. UK US

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Emotional Content

An emotional baseline?

I've found writing my current book very challenging in almost every aspect, which admittedly was the intention. When I first came up with the idea it was one of those moments where the impossible seemed entirely probable. It has been said I'm  trying to achieve too much, trying to layer in too many themes. Quite accurately, I think. But that for me is part of the challenge. Writing any kind of book is an achievement for sure. I've learned a lot about taking a mind on a reading journey, now I want to push it further. The great thing about being my own publisher is I get to do what the hell I like. Writing TMWWRWs has been an incredible learning experience, similar in some ways to writing Chasing Innocence, because writing in a different perspective feels like learning to write all over again. This time around it feels so much more difficult. CI was, at least in my mind, very much about real people put in extraordinary situations. TMWWRWs is thriller, action laced with paranormal. It attempts to be ketchup (courtesy of Malcolm Gladwell) and it's got a soundtrack (thanks to Mr Gould). The characters at its core are real but born from my favourite comic and fiction heroes, without the costumes. Did I mention I've struggled mightily.

The struggles have been documented here in my monthly WordWatchers posts. These last two months though it has really felt like I've hit my stride, increasingly feeling at ease with the main character and the flow of the story. So much so I really wanted to get my head down during July and start thinking about the close of act two. I decided to impose a minimal daily word count.

I don't usually work to a word count because it's easy to get caught trying to move forward and lose sight of what you’re actually trying to do, which is enthral a wide audience. The word count was set at five hundred daily words, which is achievable enough to get me sat in-front of the keyboard, even with the distractions of summer all around, especially this summer. It has gone well. I hit seven thousand words in ten days. I've started to approach sections of the story I dreamed about way back when I first imagined a character called The Handyman. I'm at the bit where we pull together everything that's happened so far and turn the reader on a swell of emotion towards act three. Except I didn't. Instead I hit a very high and deep mental wall.

Emotions are a difficult thing. TMWWRWs is written in the present tense first person perspective. I keep mulling if this is the right perspective but every time I do I come back thinking it absolutely is. The knock for this type of POV though, is that it's very immediate with the reader right in there with the character's every thought. The problem is that I struggle to define or comprehend my own emotional thoughts, at least to write them down, let alone for a fictional character. While I can hear Marcus' voice in my head and I have a real sense for him as a man and a mostly moral human, I've struggled to calibrate his emotions. I think this is exacerbated by the very personal POV of the story. Despite Marcus being an ex-bodyguard once contracted to the US Government, a very physical and sometimes unnaturally capable human, he is in many respects an everyman. A uniquely skilled human trying to work out the world around him. He doesn't have all the answers, he doesn't have an out there IQ or a batcave or a butler. His journey is about trying to understand why the woman he loves was murdered, about realising the questions and hunting down the answers. Albeit in a action thriller setting with that dash of paranormal. 

My immediate reaction to this emotional problem was somewhat unorthodox - I decided to change perspective completely, not Marcus’ but mine. With a respectable word count already in the bag I mothballed my Windows NetBook and got me an Apple Macbook Air. It was a move long overdue and discussed here. It gave me a chance to order my thoughts without worrying too much about being unproductive. At other times a problem like this might have been resolved by reading a book or listening endlessly to Moby, or both.

In mulling the problem I looked long and hard about who I think Marcus is. He is not a guy that wears his heart on his sleeve but he is meant to be more human than many men in thriller fiction. Jack Reacher comes to mind as the a-typical one man army and police department and super-computer in a super sized and lethal body. Reacher is rarely driven by any emotion outside of retribution or his own off the scale sense of honour. As a Reacher fan I'm obviously influenced by Lee Child's writing but Marcus isn't Reacher - that would do a dis-service to everything I'm trying to achieve in this series. However, he's a lot closer to Reacher than he is me. So I sat down and started reading the Reacher novels again in the hope I could find Marcus' emotional standpoint. I read Killing Floor and Persuader, which are both written in the first person although not present tense. I'm glad to say I'd got it figured halfway through Persuader.

Armed with this emotional standpoint I decided now was a good time to go back and fill some of the vast, gaping holes at the beginning of the story that I left for the 'edit', as I pitched and rolled onwards with this first draft. Many of these were moments that defined the key characters, but I didn't know what defined them till I got to this stage. If that makes sense?  

These last few weeks have taught me a new set of very valuable writing lessons. Publishing my first book taught me how much of a good story is created in the edit. Writing TMWWRWs largely as an outline so I can get to the edit, has brought to me the realisation just how much of a good story is created during the first draft.