Vote for my cover!

The Rap Sheet is polling readers for their favourite crime fiction book covers. It seems that A Gentle Axe is one of the nominated titles. Get over there and vote!

Fyodor's take on the Russian elections.

It's what we've all been waiting for. Well, I have, at least. Fyodor Dostoevsky speaks out, briefly, here.

The people's Tsar?

There was never any doubt but Putin's United Russia party swept to victory, despite accusations of dirty tricks. He can't be president any more, so what will he be? It seems the Russian people just can't get over their tsars, and whatever title they give him, a tsar in all but name is what he will be.

I found this quote from the Guardian story beautifully ironic:

The Bush administration has called on Russia to investigate claims the vote was manipulated.

I was watching the Blair Years documentary last night, in which Tony Blair confessed that the more unpopular he became, and the more out of step with public opinion (in other words, us the people), the more confident he was that he was right. Of course it was Tony Blair who famously called Princess Diana 'the people's princess'. I get the feeling he has a grudging admiration for his old mate Putin, and envies the way he can just hang on to power. Would have loved to be 'the people's tsar' himself, I bet.

I got a real understanding of the old 'power corrupts' tag watching him.

An interesting footnote to the Russian election, Lugovoi, the man wanted by the British security services for the murder of Litvinenko, got elected. As a member of the Duma, he will be immune from prosecution, a mere technicality as the Russian authorities were never going to go after him anyway.

New cover revealed.

More info here.

Lucky Lehane.

A friend sent me a link to this article about Dennis Lehane. Mr Lehane has had extraordinary success in having his novels turned into films. When asked why he thinks this is, he gave a very modest answer:

His talent is not, he insists, originality of plot, going so far as to say his plots "could be found on an episode of 'CSI' or 'Law & Order.' " He's merely happy to take credit for doing what he does very well, which is to write meaty, morally ambiguous, thought-provoking crime novels centered in the seamiest parts of Boston.

No, his explanation for his success is simpler: Pure luck. "I am just the luckiest guy on the planet," he says. (If you suspect he used a more colorful word than "guy," you're right.) "Because I'm Irish, I keep looking at the sky, waiting for it to fall."

I confess I haven't read any Dennis Lehane, though I decided I ought to when the Moscow/St Petersburg Times compared me to him in this review. (They said: "The Gentle Axe" is closest to a contemporary crime novel -- more Dennis Lehane than Dostoevsky -- in its evocation of St. Petersburg as a hive of criminal activity, much of it catering to forbidden sexual urges.)

I want to read him even more now that I realise what a modest, self-effacing guy he is.

Verkaufte Seelen.

The German edition of A Gentle Axe seems to have made it on to my German publisher's website. I didn't do German at school, so I have no idea how they have translated the title. Anyone care to help me out?

Interesting to see a totally different cover design. And it appears I'm Roger in Germany, not R.N.. This is all surprising to discover, but in a good way.

Dostoevsky today.

As imagined by the amazing Dostoevsky machine. Amazing.

The secrets of the Russian language.

Revealed here.

Bargain.

Amazon.com are now selling the hardback of The Gentle Axe (US edition, mailed from the US) for the knock down price of $7.99.

Perfectly priced for Christmas, I'd say! And according to the good folk at BookLoons, it would make a perfect Christmas present, as it's made it into their recommended reads of 2007. Here's the original BookLoons review by Tim Davis.

Lugovoi mocks MI6

It's the anniversary of the death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. It doesn't seem a year ago that everyone in London suddenly developed an irrational fear of sushi bars. Especially sushi bars with men speaking Russian in them.

I thought I'd check out the view from St Petersburg. The British security services' only suspect remains the multimillionaire Andrei Lugovoi, also a former KGB agent, and currently a candidate in the forthcoming Russian parliamentary elections.

Apparently the charges against him are making him something of a celebrity; I imagine they won't hinder his candidature.

He is not very impressed with the evidence against him, saying "they have no proof of any kind" and dismissing the allegations as "raving and barking from across the channel". As for Britain, according to Lugovoi, “Britain has always been a country that allows all sorts of bastards to seek refuge on its territory.” Wow. There's a politician who knows how to give sound bites.

Meanwhile President Putin, in a political rally that according to the St Petersburg Times "blended elements of a Soviet-era Communist Party congress with the raucous enthusiasm of an American political convention" branded his opponents Western-backed jackals. And a girl group in miniskirts sang "I want someone like Putin".

The big question is will he step down, as he has promised, and as the constitution demands. I guess it's going to be hard when you've got girl bands in miniskirts begging you to stay on. He's only human after all.

I don't remember writing a technothriller

I'm amazed to discover that the paperback of Taking Comfort is the number two bestseller in amazon uk's technothriller chart. Just below a Michael Crichton omnibus and one above a Tom Clancy novel.

This is staggering news for a number of reasons, most of all because I wouldn't myself class Taking Comfort as a technothriller. Unlike this book. Or this one. Or this one.

Of course, by the time you check out the list I will have sunk back down into obscurity. But I enjoyed my brief moment in the technothriller sun. Alternatively, you could help me knock Michael Crichton off the top spot. Now that would be cool.

Oh! Those Russians!

I'm currently back in Russia. In my head, that is. Right now reading up on Tsar Alexander II inThe Romanovs 1818-1959. The Russian Imperial family of the 1860s make an appearance in the WIP. Well, I call it a WIP, but I haven't actually written a word of it yet. Perhaps I should call it a WIM. Short for Work In Mind.

I'm in the research phase, which always seems to involve spending a lot of time, and unavoidably money, in bookshops, panic-buying any book I think might vaguely come in handy.

This amazon list seems a good place to start.

The French succumb to the Axe (finally!)

I learnt today that I have a French publisher for A Gentle Axe. Actually, not just for Gentle Axe. The publisher, Univers Poche, have also acquired the next book in my Porfiry Petrovich series, A Vengeful Longing, which is due out in the UK in February 2008. Oh, and it seems they have also acquired the book after that, the title of which I shall be keeping under wraps for a little while longer yet. A three book deal then! The scary thing is that the third book, Title Under Wraps, is not yet written. I did write a synopsis, which I'm sure I must have lying around somewhere.

Looks like I'm going to be busy.

Writers, get a myspace page

Sometimes people leave comments on one or other of my myspace pages. Very occasionally, they're from readers. This one made my day:

"So here's a semi-interesting story:

I recently was in the hospital getting surgery on the tendon in my left leg. On my way home, I passed by the hospital's used book stand and immediately saw your book right on the front table.

I've had you on my friends list for a while now, and still haven't read your book until I saw it there in the hospital.

I find myself surprised because, I haven't read a book that didn't involve Doctor Who in months. I've actually stopped playing video games just so I can focus on reading your book.

If it weren't for you asking to be a friend on my myspace I probably would never have gotten the book, so thank you. You've made my recovery time much more bearable.

I haven't read Crime and Punishment yet, but that's the next book I'm going to tackle after I finish this one. (70 pages left)"

The St Petersburg perspective.

I've been logging into the St Petersburg Times for a Russian-centric take on the news. One reason is I'm planning another trip to the city. I was hoping it would be a combined research and promotional trip, as I had thought that the Russian edition of A Gentle Axe was due to be released this month. Unfortunately, it seems that there has been some kind of unexpected delay in the schedule, due to my Russian publisher U-Factory being taken over by a bigger publisher.

The big news in Russia is the up-coming election, in which it seems that hunky pin-up and state president Vladimir Putin will surrender power only to hang on to it. I may now time my visit so that I am there for that. It has nothing to do with the book that I am about to begin writing, the third Porfiry Petrovich novel, but it may make for a lively visit. I hope that I'll be able to meet up with my Russian friend Andrey, and maybe some people from U-Factory. It will be interesting to hear their take on the elections.

Another take on anxiety.

A very stimulating response to our navel-gazing about anxiety from Jenn Ashworth on her terrific blog Every Day I Lie A Little. Here's an excerpt:

I wonder if anxiety around writing is the same as anxiety about everything else, and just as un-useful? If it is an over-awareness of an imaginary audience, a kind of stage fright brought on by the assumption that making things up and writing them down is an important thing to do? So what if it isn't good, or no-one reads it? When it becomes important, for me, it gets stuck. When it is playing and I am only pleasing myself, this thing called 'flow' happens and I am more calm and content than I am when I am doing anything else. The inner critic whispers justifiably over things like punctutation and spelling, but because I can fix these things when I can be bothered, she is easily ignored.

Macmillan New Writers.

There's a new blog site for writers who have published with Macmillan New Writing. That includes me, of course. So I went over and posted something about writerly anxiety. But as usual, I find that what I wanted to say has been far better expressed by David Isaak, author of the brilliantly written thriller, Shock And Awe.

If you're a writer, why not pop over and add your own thoughts?

The Greek edition.

By a bizarre coincidence, I just returned from Greece a couple of days ago only to discover that the Greek edition of Gentle Axe seems to be published. Cover above. Hmm. Moody, quite noire. Interesting.

The publisher is Psycholios and here's their website. That's me underneath the Greek Harry Potter.

Letter from Raskolnikov.

When I was researching my piece for the Guardian blog, I received an extraordinary letter from my friend the double axe-murderer Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. I had hoped that the editor of the Guardian Online books section would publish it in its entirety, but she didn't. So I reproduce it, with permission, below:

When the last page is read, the book closed and placed on the shelf, dust already descending on its cover mercifully shrouding the author's name and the work's title, is it really where the story ends? For those who care enough to wonder (and in my case to experience such question as a vital doubt) the answer will be 'No'.
I went to Siberia. I spent years imprisoned with those who, according to the zar's idea of what is 'right', broke the law. I was left aside by most of them. Scorned. Avoided. Yet i was not alone, ever. Myself, that is the ultimate prison i still haven't found a way out of. But i survived. I grew older. Wiser, maybe. For sure, I read the Holy Scriptures a lot. Out of boredom at first. Then in search of relief. Finally, as rule for self preservation. Words did save me. I don't think their alledged holiness did, but the fact that they provided my soul's chaotic, untamed, darkest instincts with a shape in which I could face them. And there was Sonja. She made all my efforts really make sense. Her presence, her voice, her touch on my feverish forehead were a proof. The proof that I was worth it: I was worth being forgiven. I was worth living again. Anew.
The fact that I can talk to you Roger is just another proof of my enduring presence in the lives of many, so many who were blessed with the gift (or damned with curse, if you prefer) of being uncertain. The doubt. The riddle. The edge. That's were I lived, and were I can always be found. That's were i've always been, even in my Creator's mind, when he, has anybody, found himself torn apart, split by an anaswerable question, in the vertigo of doubt.
I'm here in Myspace due to the devotion of someone not very different from me, a young man, a nervous man, a former student of law (yes, the Law so easily and so persistently breeds its own defiers) who met me before meeting his own pawnbroker to murder. I am proud of this, if of anything at all. My story, my life, my mistakes, my madness and my suffering were not in vain. Somebody not unlike me learned from my life the lesson that I stood to question. He became interested in the works of my Master, he studie Literature and eventually graduated: needless to say, his graduation paper was about me, someone he knew and he (surprisingly enough) admired. And thanks to him here I am, talking to you, Roger. My Creator, Fyodor Mihailovic, is on Myspace too, and I paid my respects to him of course. He has many more acolytes than I have, but in my experience, just one mind is deep and mysterious enough as it is.
I often think of Porfiry. At first i had mixed feelings about him. I found myself cursing his name and thinking that maybe everything could have ended very differently. Sometimes I clearly saw myself, free, back in St Petersburg, having gotten away with the murders of Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta, but then, always, I pictured him, Porfiry, and everything blurred back into reality. No, i don't hate him anymore. I remember him with a deep feeling of... well, of underestanding. Now, finally, I understand. And I know he had to do it. Not because it was his job, but because he was just. Not good, but just. I painfully learned the difference. The good forgives anybody, no matter what they do. The just doesn't forgive, he leads you as far as to forgive yourself. And he knows how long and hard the way is, and he doesn't lie about it, and he shows you the way. And if you're smart enough, you go. And i did so, and I thank Porfiry for showing me the way without pushing me, and without judging me. That, I can assume now, was justice.
To answer your question, I'll have to say that yes, sometimes I wish I could escape from my own head, but everytime I feel that way I end up realizing that my mind (though contorted, distorted, dark and twisted and scary) is the only place where I feel authentic, the core of me, whatever 'me' might mean. Exploring it is my final destiny, and for all my life it has been my constant goal, though sometimes it turned into a painful and treacherous necessity. And even now, I still face myself with horror at times, and I cannot express my frustration for going so far just to feel like I'm always at the beginning of another tour of my own private hell. But I imagine that this how it was meant to be. The fall into the bottomless pit of my soul doesn't seem to end, and I take it for what I suppose my Creator Fyodor Mihailovic intended it: a destiny. My own destiny? Unfortunately (of fortunately? I'll never really know...) it's not just my own....

Friends in high places.

A piece I did for Guardian Unlimited's book blog has just gone live. It's all about famous dead authors and their characters on MySpace. So today's blog entry is over here.