My Forgotten Book(s)

Patti Abbott, doyenne of all things that need that kind of thing, has been asking strange men (and women) to post about books that you might have overlooked in your rush to snap up the latest James Patterson. *cough*

The idea is to unearth shining jewels from the dungheap of life, that all our souls may be enriched with shiny goodness. Just make sure you wash them first, otherwise there may be a lingering aroma that will spoil your reading pleasure.

Anyway, as I traditionally don't pay too much attention to the rules I'm going to indulge myself a little* and post about not one book, but two.

The first is SHOOTING DR. JACK by Norman Green. I discovered it in a crappy bookshop in San Francisco back in 2004 - the kind of place where it looks as if they've just rented out a big empty room for the week, stuffed it full of cheap tables and then heaped those tables with random titles in no particular genre or alphabetical order. The sort of place where they're probably going to be selling knocked-off electrical items next Wednesday. And the person operating the till has a face full of spots and a mouth full of gum. And they look at you as if to say, "You're buying a BOOK? Jesus, what a looooooser." That kind of bookshop.

But SHOOTING DR. JACK was well worth the hour and a half we spent rummaging through the self-help nonsense and two-curlingly awful fantasy novels. It tells the tale of what happens when things go seriously wrong for Stoney - an alcoholic junkyard owner in Brooklyn. Aided and abetted by his business partner Tommy 'Bagadonuts' Roselli and the strangely talented, but staggeringly naïve Tuco; Stoney gets caught up in the worst kind of drug-related shenanigans**. It's fast paced, brilliantly observed and very, very readable.

The second book I'm going to recommend is Adrian Hyland' brilliant debut, DIAMOND DOVE. It's one of those rare books that really takes you somewhere new - in this case the Australian outback as seen through the eyes of Emily Tempest, a young aboriginal woman, as she tries to return to her mob's traditional home of Moonlight Downs. DIAMOND DOVE has it all: Murder, intrigue and some truly stunning dialogue.

It won the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for best first novel and Christ knows why it isn't better known over here. Excellent book.

I liked it so much I actually wrote my first ever review (for Shotts Mag) and even got Adrian to submit to one of the most unprofessional interviews you're ever likely to come across. But at the UK publisher's request, my paltry efforts won't be going up on the website until the paperback comes out September.

Right, and now I'm going to crawl back under my rock, before I start ranting about Gordon Brown and the Kingdom of the Unfeasibly High Petrol Prices. Cock-weasel.

* Not like that, you filth merchants.
** Oh, come on - how often do you get to use the word 'Shenanigans' when talking about a crime novel?

It am completed

Book Number The Fifth still doesn't have a name*, but at least it's not lounging about the house any more, eating everything in the fridge, never picking up its socks, leaving the top off the toothpaste, and drinking all the booze. For today BNTF went off to live with it's aunties in London for a while.

Knowing my luck we'll just have got the stains out of the carpet and it'll be back again with a bin-liner full of dirty washing, and every sentence will begin with, "When I was in London, Aunt Sarah let me [insert unlikely scenario here, probably featuring hard liquor, tattoos, and potato scones]..."
And I'll be all, like, "Get a haircut, you lazy book!"
And it'll totally freak. "I hate you! I wish I was never written!"
And I'll be, like, "What-ev-er. Go to your room. And don't leave your jacket lying on the floor: this isn't a hotel."

Honestly.

Oh, I know it'll probably mature a little during the second draft, but right now it's all spots and surly attitude. Why can't it be like its big brother COLD GRANITE? Not only has Book Number The First moved out and got its own place, it even sends money home from time to time.

And while it will probably run off with some floozy librarian and refuse to look after She Who Must Be Placed In A Secure Residential Facility Where They Won't Give Her Access To Knives Or Short People and I in our dotage, we can take pride in the fact it won a school prize when it was little and isn't still hanging around making the place look untidy.

* So far it's known as either, 'Hey, you!', 'Book Number The Fifth', or 'BLIND [insert word here]'... That may well be why it has behavioural difficulties.

Sawbones

I was going to have a big, long, elaborate whinge about how I can't write for toffee, soor plooms, sherbet flying saucers, or any other form of childhood confectionery, but as I know that kind of thing bores the pants off you, I won't. After all, it's important that you keep your pants on. Nobody wants to see your sinful nether regions at this time of day. Or any other time of day, come to that. It's enough to put somebody off their Pot Noodle, so it is.

So, instead of the scheduled whinge, I'm going to answer Grant's timely and completely unprompted question "Hey Stuart, what is Sawbones? There is no description on the linkey page."

And quite right he was. As far as I'm aware there's still no linkey-flavoured description, but I have flavouring for you, naughty people. I have flavouring coming out of my ears!*



SAWBONES is a novella coming out in July from Barrington Stoke, and for once it's not a Logan McRae book. Hell, it's not even set in Aberdeen... Cue VOICEOVERMAN!:

"They call him Sawbones: a serial killer touring North America, with a thing for young women. The FBI and the police say they're doing all they can: following up leads, doing things by the book. Getting nowhere.

But Sawbones has just made the biggest mistake of his life: his latest victim is Laura Jones, 16, blonde, pretty... and her father is one of New York's biggest gangsters.

Laura's father isn't interested in the law, or due process – he wants revenge. And he knows just the guys to get it.

Sawbones is about to find out that this time, he picked on the wrong family."

So there you go. Sawbones is a racing-snake 18,500 words and I have to admit that it's one of the best things I've ever done. And if you're a regular at Casa Del Halfhead, you'll know that traditionally I hate everything I've ever written.

This might have something to do with the fact that where FLESH HOUSE took me four and a half months to write and five months to edit, SAWBONES was a mere two weeks in the writing. I edited it in two days. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! How could I not love it? It's the only book so far that hasn't sunk it's teeth into my arse and chewed off big lumps. I had fun! How freaky-weird is that?

And it's a mere £5.99! Well, that's the RRP, so you'll probably be able to pick it up for a lot less from the usual suspects.

I even have a blurb for it:

"keep[s] the tension wound up tighter than a tourniquet from an irate triage nurse"
Allan 'Horror-Bollocks' Guthrie

And you know Allan wouldn't lie to you... Would he?

[update-arama]

And now I have a fresh new blurb to go with the first blurb (which is a little older, but still within its sell-by-date and unlikely to give you food poisoning. Unless you have it with a side-order of mouldy coleslaw. And if that's what you're up to, you deserve all the vomit and diarrhoea you get.) :

"Only MacBride can turn a Winnebago ride through middle America into a violently depraved hunt for salvation."
Tamara Siler Jones


* Earwax is too a flavour!

I has got meaty goodness

Well, it's been a year and a bit in the making, but Book Number The Fourth - AKA: FLESH HOUSE (it's a house of flesh!) - has started generating feedback. And some of it is very strange indeed. Or at least, different to what I'd expected.

The lovely David Stenhouse wrote a piece in Scotland on Sunday where he took a long hard look at the book and declared, "MacBride has written a highly convincing manifesto for vegetarianism" I did? I honestly didn't mean to. Really, I like meat* I am a confirmed omnivore. Any vegetarianismistical overtones are purely accidental.

But they must be there, because while trolling the interweb, looking to see if anyone hated the book yet (or had even noticed it existed), I came across the following on a vegetarian forum:

...I can't remember HOW the dream progressed to this, but suddenly I was eating a human hand. With the fingernails still on and everything. I now feel slightly ill, because it was raw and the texture of raw meat.. ew. I do know that in my dream I pronounced it "better than pork". I think I'll skip breakfast today, I still feel a little queasy...

Followed up a few posts later by:

...think I had my dream because last week I read a book where a serial killer was butchering his victims and selling them to catering companies/butchers. It was a really good book actually, it's called Flesh House. Veggies should check it out, we can feel all superior that we'd never eat human flesh by mistake...

Which is nice... I think... isn't it?

And at least now my test reader can rest easy that she wasn't the only one the book gave nightmares to. It looks like it's the kind of book that's going to be generous that way.

* And no, I don't mean it that way, you filthy perverts.

All longlisty

I keep meaning to post some indecipherable rambles about the launch last week, but the loom of deadline beckons me with its pointy claws. Though technically it's more receding than looming. Look as it drifts further and further off into the distance! Bye bye, deadline...

Anyway, I shall post about the launch sometime soon, thus massaging my already overburdened ego with stories about how everyone loves me, because I'm so great. *ahem*

Meantime, I have been asked to point out that DYING LIGHT has been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2008. Now last year I got my backside roundly kicked up and down the bookshelves by Allan 'is that a squirrel in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?' Guthrie, so obviously I'm anticipating another crushing defeat. Ah yes, I'll be glaring in bitter jealousy from the audience at Harrogate this year, while someone else walks off with that wooden-barrel-o-fun. Oh and I'm planning on spitting in the winner's pint as well. You know, just for giggles.

Anyway, if you are so inclined, you can vote for who makes it onto the shortlist either by hauling yourself into your nearest Waterstones, or clicking on this item of linky goodness and doing it online instead.

Oh I am so going to get my backside kicked again.