What I’ve been up to…
Ξ March 24th, 2009 | → | ∇ BLOOD OIL, My Diary, LIQUID GOLD |
It’s been a while since I’ve written here and there’s good reason - I’ve been VERY busy.
I was recently a guest at the Perth Writer’s Festival, where the stand out moment for me was a panel discussion I shared with Dame Stella Rimington, the former Director of MI5 turned thriller writer. It was one of those panels that really entertained the crowd — something so many novelists and festival programers seem to shy away from. So, thank you Stella for a wonderful time!
While there, I spoke with Robert Baer, former CIA case officer turned author of some great books on the Mid East. Bob seemed like a good guy, and he’s insightful as hell on what’s going down in and around his old sand pit. I admit, I expected him to look a little more like George Clooney, who’d played him in “Syriana”, but hey, I guess there can’t be two guys in the world as good looking as Clooney.
Anyway, be sure to go check out both Stella and Bob’s books, they’re all good reading.
The next Fox book is done!
Firstly, thanks to all who read BLOOD OIL and took the time to write to me via the contact page at this website and via my publishers. The response has been bigger than the previous books, and I’m thrilled at that. So many people found the journey of Fox in BLOOD OIL to be not just entertaining rewarding and insightful, which is somewhat humbling.
Likewise, many were happy to surmise the parallels of his personal journey and our own national journey of revenge in this War on Terror. While I never aim to use a sledgehammer in getting such points across, I was a little more direct with this kind parable than I’d been with the themes in FOX HUNT and PATRIOT ACT, and I’m glad that it was so well appreciated. It’s always a very fine line between what an author spells out and what to leave up to the reader to make their own story, and this was something that I felt maybe I’d done a bit too obviously. Not didactic as such, just not exactly subtle! Anyway, thanks again for buying, reading, and writing in.
So, my next Fox book is in with the publishers, titled LIQUID GOLD, and scheduled for release in Australia this August. I’m really happy with it, just about to do the edits. It takes place just a few months after BLOOD OIL and takes up some previous storylines. Takes the best of what worked in the first three books, and while it’s longer in word-count and page length than what has preceded it, it’s the shortest in terms of the book’s time-line and it rips along with constant action as the story in this one is a strong, fast, highly-tuned engine (just like Fox’s new motorbike). It’s perhaps a little less subversive that the previous books, and it’s a direct set up to Fox 5 which will be published August 2010… a book that is set just minutes after this one ends!
Writing the Fox books means I usually have a very busy summer, and I squeeze in going to the cricket and the odd day at the beach to recharge. Before this summer, I completed another project…
ALONE. I wrote this un-contracted, and I loved every minute of the writing process. ALONE is the first novel in a teenage series, to be published sometime next year. I’ll be doing a book a year in this series concurrent with my book a year in the Fox universe, for the next couple of years at least. I had been hoping that by the time I turned 30 (not long to go now!) I’d be slowing down, eg maybe a book every 2 years, but I’ve figured that while I have the time and energy to burn, why not get a few more things achieved?
THE COPPER BRACELET. This is a secret project that I will blog here about at a later date (sorry, not my rules!). Suffice to say, it’s a thriller, it’s big, and it will rock.
PICTURE THIS. A Pearson short story collection for schools, published… soon. My story will be a tie-in to the characters I created in ALONE.
LITERATI 2. I’m nearing the end of my PhD, about 3 years in the making so far, and I can’t wait to be on the other end of it. I’ll miss university, where I’ve been attending in some form or other for 12 years now, as for all its bureaucratic, back-scratching crap the payoff is that academic life is mostly a buzzing beehive of literate activity. A defining characteristic of the university is that is a place where people read, write, exchange and respond to a dizzying variety of texts in the context of disciplinary or interdisciplinary study. So, while I’m happy to be contributing to the wider field of learning via my PhD, and finishing will be bitter sweet, I definitely need a break from it prior to going back to do any teaching.
I’ll post another blog soon about what I’ve been reading and watching and listening too.
Cheers,
JP.
