Turkey On The Hill - The Joe Craig Blog

Jimmy Coates: Blackout in the neighbourhood...

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:42:00 +0000

If you've read the first Jimmy Coates book, you'll know there's a big chunk of it set in Finchley, where I grew up and where I was living at the time I wrote the book.

Well, I haven't lived in Finchley for a while, so when I wrote Jimmy Coates: Blackout it was time to move on to my new neighbourhood... Kentish Town.

One of my favourite websites chronicles the past, present and future of the area. It's always a beautifully written and researched site so I'm particularly proud to have contributed a piece about the locations in the Jimmy Coates series, including several that feature in the new book. (If you want to soak up the atmosphere of Jimmy Coates: Blackout, just take a walk up Kentish Town High Street.)

There's also a new extract from the book, if you're into that kind of thing...

Check it all out at The Kentish Towner.

http://www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2013/05/22/wednesday-picture-spies-in-kentish-town/

Keeping track of snacks in Jimmy Coates: Blackout

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Sometimes you have a habit of doing something and you assume everybody else does it as well.

Here's something I never really thought much about, but I think I always assumed every writer did it. Turns out they don't.

When I'm working on a draft of a book in one of my notebooks, I start by writing the title of the book I'm working on and the date. So far, pretty normal. Then I write where I am, something about the general conditions (my mood, the weather etc.), then what I'm listening to and what I'm snacking on.

This is obviously the most important thing about writing and the one tip I would give to anybody who wants to write a novel: always make a note of what you're snacking on.

Here are a couple of pages from my first draft of Jimmy Coates: Blackout. To me these headings are completely sane and essential.

Jimmy Coates: Blackout comes out in the UK on June 6th.

He calmly replaced a screwdriver with a gun... Jimmy Coates: Blackout notebook stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:12:00 +0000

A lot of Jimmy Coates: Blackout was planned and written in this notebook:

I'll be posting a few images from my planning and writing between now and the book's release on June 6th. Here's an early one. I do little diagrams in which I try to encapsulate the entire plot of the book, working out how all the tensions and conflicts between characters will interact with each other.

One more for now. This is a page of raw writing from the middle section of the book. It caught my eye because there's a particularly revealing correction. At one point I seem to have written:

He calmly produced a screwdriver...

Then immediately crossed it out and replace it with:

Instead of producing a screwdriver he pulled out a gun.

I think you're going to enjoy the book. More from my notebooks soon.

Jimmy Coates: Blackout - some teasers...

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:20:00 +0000

Jimmy Coates: Blackout is coming out on June 6th and to help with the publicity I've got some designers working on alternative covers for the series. So far what they've come up with has been fantastic and I'll be sharing some of their designs here closer to the release of the book.

Meanwhile, one of the designers was in touch this week to ask for a few more details about what's in the book.

I thought it would be mean of me not to share these little titbits with you, so here's what I told him:

Jimmy Coates: Blackout is about a power struggle and corruption in a general election. It takes place in the 24 hours before and the 24 hours after the election and it's all set in Britain - mainly in London.

There's a big set-piece action sequence at a place called Chisley Hall which is based on a real-life place called Chichely Hall, so maybe google that and take a look at images of it if you like. There's also a final climax action sequence at a club that I called in the book 'Loco' but in real life it's based on a venue called The Forum in Kentish Town, North London, so maybe google that one as well and take a look.

Apart from that there's also a big chase sequence at Heathrow airport that ends in a plane getting blown up. Obviously.

As for objects... the one that springs to mind is a hard-boiled egg coloured black as a signal to an assassin. Also, there are codes in su-doku puzzles.

Finally, here's a cheeky montage of little slivers from these alternative cover designs while they're still works-in-progress. See which bits you like...

OK, no more secrets from me today.

Guest Blog on Words, Death & Dilemmas

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:14:00 +0000

I'm in the middle of a frantic schedule of school, festival and library events to get the momentum going for the June launch of Jimmy Coates: Blackout.

So I've shared a few thoughts on what I learn from my audiences over at the superb 'YA Contemporary' Blog. You'll find my little piece here:

http://www.yacontemporary.com/2013/03/joe-craig-on-words-death-and-dilemmas.html

Check it out and see what you think.

Jimmy Coates: Blackout - new book, June 6th

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 01:48:00 +0000

This is your official announcement. Put your official face on...

It's been 4 years since the last Jimmy Coates book came out. In that time, despite no new publication, the series has grown and grown. I've had messages every day - every single day - by email, facebook, twitter and even hand-written letter, asking me when Jimmy Coates: Blackout would be released.

That kind of support is incredible. It's overwhelming. Parents, teachers, librarians and readers all over the country have kept up the enthusiasm for my books even while there was nothing new to shout about. Without that, we wouldn't be here. That includes YOU, readers of my blog. A big thank you for the support that has made this possible.

And here it is. On June 6th, JIMMY COATES: BLACKOUT will be released.

I hope this book rewards everybody's dedication to my series. I think it's worth the wait. I'm also excited about a whole new generation of readers discovering Jimmy Coates for the first time.

Don't worry if you haven't read the rest of the series (or can't remember what happened). This one should stand alone. (It's set 6 months after the end of Jimmy Coates: Power - a longer break in time than between any of the other books.)

I'm pretty sure it's the best thing I've written. It's a little darker than the others (as the title suggests) and it's also a little closer to home (some of the scenes are set at locations within a minute's walk of my house).

This one, even more than the others, shows a huge Robert Ludlum influence, I think. (He wrote The Bourne Identity, as well as many other excellent thrillers).

And a major character dies. Obviously, I'm not going to tell you who. You'll find out in June.

Over the next few months I'll be doing a lot of events to support the publication, including some that are open to the public.

If you're in London, you can come and see me in Camden on Sunday 10th March at THIS event.

On Sunday 21st April I'll be performing at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. Click HERE for more about that.

Finally, you need a link so you can pre-order the book, right? OK. But don't forget it'll also be available from actual BOOKSHOPS, including many fantastic independent stores who've done great things to support me and the Jimmy Coates series. So please consider buying my books from them.

Meanwhile, here's the blurb:

"Jimmy Coates can only trust one man to bring the country back from the brink of chaos. When that man disappears, Jimmy must battle the shadow of corruption. But the shadows are darker than they seem, and the darkness reaches further than Jimmy could ever imagine."

To pre-order JIMMY COATES: BLACKOUT right now, here's the link to Amazon.

JIMMY COATES: BLACKOUT - coming, June 6th.

Spread the word. Tell someone about the series, send them this blog, tweet it, facebook it. Make a video, do a little dance. All that good stuff.

Help me get the word out there and put Jimmy Coates back on everyone's lips.

A Writer's Research

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:59:00 +0000

Here's an interview that rather grandly talks about my "research techniques". I wasn't aware of having any techniques, really, just some "things that I do". The people at Writers' Forum Magazine were kind enough to show an interest and here's a picture of the resulting interview...

I enjoy interviews. I might resurrect my popular series, "Answers to Somebody Else's Interview Questions". For now, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on how I research the Jimmy Coates books.

And if you're very observant, you might spot a bit of news about Jimmy Coates: Blackout...

EDIT:
For those interested, I've found my notes from the discussion about toxins in shark meat, mentioned in the article. Here's the discussion that bounced between me and my editor after I'd seen the copy editor had wrongly changed 'trimethylamine oxide' to 'uric acid':

Page

39 Not uric acid. That’s different. Please keep as ‘trimethylamine oxide’. Eek! Fact dispute - the copy editor checked this and made a long note about the trimethylamine oxide being non toxic. The flesh is toxic due to high concentration of uric acid which the shark uses to make the t-oxide. Would you mind double-checking? And if you still disagree, I’ll change it back.

I think the confusion here is because there’s one fairly commonly known fact - that shark meat contains uric acid and that uric acid is toxic – and another, much less known fact, which is the one relevant here. It’s the first fact that you’ll find most written about on the internet, for example. But the shark meat in the book is from a different type of shark. All shark meat contains uric acid, (and incidentally I think for uric acid it makes no difference whether you cook the meat or not – I can’t remember that specifically) but Greenland Shark (from which Hakarl is made) is dangerous when raw because the trimethylamine oxide (non-toxic in itself) produces the toxin trimethylamine when ingested.

Uric acid is still present in cooked shark meat and if you ate enough of the stuff every day you’d eventually die of it, but that’s not relevant here, and I think that’s what’s confusing the issue. What I’m talking about here is a different effect: Greenland Shark has a far higher concentration of trimethylamine oxide than other sharks (apparently something to do with the fact that it lives under ice most of the time) and that’s what is toxic when the meat is eaten raw or untreated – not the uric acid.

That’s the longish answer. Short answer: here it should definitely be ‘trimethylamine oxide’, not ‘uric acid’, because it’s a different type of shark, even though it’s also true that in ALL sharks there’s uric acid, which is toxic.

If that makes no sense at all give me a ring and I’ll try rambling more successfully out loud!

"If you put me in charge of the country..."

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

A journalist called Carlotta Eden has interview me for her website. I didn't expect her to type up all my verbal tics and rambling gibberish, but she did and I think the world is richer for it.

Read the full interview here:

http://themaninmybrain.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/interview-joe-craig-author-of-jimmy.html

Story Shapes

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:12:00 +0000

There's a particular poster I've seen on classroom walls around the world. It's not always exactly the same, but it shows the same thing: the shape of a story.

Usually, the poster shows some kind of roller-coaster. And that roller-coaster always follows the same shape. It looks a bit like this:

This is a terrible shape for a story.

I said this at a lovely school I visited recently and once I explained why, within a few minutes the teachers removed the poster. Impressive. If you have a poster in your classroom with this story shape on it, I encourage you to take it down too.

If you specifically wanted a story to be boring, this shape is second only to the completely flat line.

First, it's got a long, dull beginning. Look at it. The start of the story is completely flat. (In this particular example, it drags on for almost half the story.) Even if you think the first thing in a story should be 'set-up' (which is not true), that 'set-up' doesn't have to be a flat line. In fact it should be anything but a flat line.

This story shape does have a climax. That's good. It comes about 60-70% of the way through. But what happens after that? Boredom. After the reader has slogged through the first 40%, which was a flat line, there's a brief period of interest and rising intensity, but the final third of the book is one long anticlimax. It's the deflating of a balloon. It's flaccid. By the end of the story you'll be lucky if the reader remembers the interesting bit.

Also, and perhaps I'm nitpicking here, in this particular illustration (and there are different versions of the same shape) the climax itself is a little flat. It's not a peak, it's a plateau. I prefer a sharp climax. A definite point of focus - perhaps even a twist.

I have a challenge for you: find me a single successful story that follows that roller-coaster shape. A book or film or short story or poem or cartoon or ANYTHING.

It's a terrible shape.

Compare it to this story shape:

It wouldn't make a very good roller-coaster, but it's a much better story.

Now, I know it's unreasonable to expect primary school kids to be writing 3 act stories, but why not introduce them to the idea that openings to stories should be exciting? Why not talk about leaving your readers on a high instead of a long, dull trailing-away?

The three-act story shape is very similar to the structure I start with when I'm planning my books. I want to grab you on the first page. On the last page, I want to leave you gasping for more, totally gripped. In the middle, I'll plan ups and downs, ebb and flow, so that each peak is more intense than the last and each revelation spins you into the next act with a new momentum.

That's the plan.

Surely there's a way to introduce THAT idea to kids, rather than a story shape that seems designed to be boring.

If you're a teacher and you're used to the idea that stories begin with a passage of 'set-up', go and look at a real story. That's not how they start. There's mystery or intrigue or humour or a puzzle or SOMETHING. And they ALWAYS start with CONFLICT. You can fill in back story later. You can develop the world as you tell the story.

So please remove your roller-coasters from your classroom walls.

An aside:
Even a very basic diagonal line from bottom left to top right would make a more interesting story than the roller-coaster. It would make a story where every page is more exciting than the previous one. Every line builds the story to a peak of interest, intensity and exciting. Tension mounts. If you're writing a short story, that's a good story shape. Perhaps it wouldn't work if you tried to sustain it over a whole novel, but for a classroom wall it might be better.

That's the Bolero of story shapes. (Or, if you prefer, You'll Never Walk Alone.) Constant build-up. Go out on a high.

Like THIS.

Hehe.

"Synonyms for said?!" he said...

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:51:00 +0000

There's a great twitter account that provides resources to help primary school teachers with creative writing lessons. One of their latest tweets caught my eye. You'll find it here: https://twitter.com/tesPrimary/status/287946810478174209 but if you can't be bothered to click through that's OK, it's a link to a teaching resource called...

"Synonyms for 'said'"

I've seen this kind of thing in classrooms all over the world. Otherwise brilliant teachers go crazy when kids use the word 'said'. One teacher, one of the best primary school teachers I've come across, even had a word cloud written on the window to show that she and the class had agreed to throw these words out of their stories. In the middle in large letters: SAID.

This is no kind of training for a young writer. Ask any author and they will point you towards Elmore Leonard's 10 rules of writing (http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/304)

Rule 3: Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue.

'Said' is a wonderful word. It's adaptable, dependable and if you use it with skill it becomes invisible. No other word can do that.

I admit to breaking Elmore Leonard's rule every now and again, but only reluctantly. I think you can get away with 'asked' sometimes, or perhaps, very occasionally, 'replied' - but only if you're too lazy to go back and edit your conversation so that you don't need it.

Time for an example to explain what I mean.

Here's a passage from early on in Jimmy Coates: Killer, my first book. I'm not holding this up as an example of perfect writing - far from it - I'm just using it as a handy way of showing you how you don't need to use any word other than said. Look out for where I've used 'said', how many times it's repeated without sticking out, and where I've avoided using any other word for 'said' by using no word at all.

Two men have just turned up at Jimmy's house and here's the conversation:

“Oh, it’s you,” Jimmy’s father said, “I didn’t expect…”

“Can we come in, Ian?” It was a man’s voice, deep and flat.

“Erm, of course. We weren’t expecting you.” His father sounded nervous, and the other man cut him off.

“Thanks,” he said. The floorboards creaked and the door opened. The man who walked in was tall and broad, taller even than Jimmy’s father, and obviously in much better shape. He was tanned, and good-looking, but only smiling with one half of his mouth, a small smile that scanned the room and found Jimmy.

“Hello, young man. You must be James.”

Before Jimmy could answer, his mother jumped up between them. “Please,” she said with her hand out to distract the man’s attention. “Sit down. Please sit down.”

The man looked at Jimmy’s mother and straightened his tie. It was a long black tie, thinner than the ones Jimmy’s father wore for work, and the man’s suit was the same black. “Helen, how lovely to see you again,” he said, and sat where Jimmy’s father had been sitting.

“Jimmy, go upstairs,” said his father, who walked in and sat down awkwardly.

“No, he can stay, Ian,” said the man in the suit.

“You haven’t…” started Jimmy’s mother, but the man cut her off.

“We’ve come for the boy.”

There was silence.

Remember, this was the first thing I'd ever written, so it's not going to be perfect. I look at it now and I really regret that "started Jimmy's mother". It's icky. It's in the way. I'd rewrite that now.

Here's a chunk of much simpler dialogue from a book I wrote 5 years later, Jimmy Coates: Power. It's simpler because there are only two people talking, which is always easier, but hopefully you can still how much better it is to use 'said' and only 'said' or nothing.

Jimmy is on the phone, conning a receptionist into revealing where he can find the mysterious Professor Wilson:

“Hello,” he said, twisting his voice without intending to into the voice of an old man. “I have an appointment with Professor Wilson, but I didn’t write down the time. Could you check it for me, please?”

“Professor Wilson?” said the receptionist.

“Yes, that’s right. Professor Zigmund Wilson.”

“There’s no Zigmund Wilson at this hospital.”

“Oh, is this the Hollingdale Institute?”

“No, this is St Thomas’ Hospital.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy, a smile breaking out on his face. “I must have the wrong number. Do you know how I can reach the Hollingdale Institute?”

“I have the number here, hold on one moment.”

Jimmy slipped into the mouth of an alley between two boarded-up shops and peered back round the corner to check the street. He was constantly aware of the threat of being tracked, and every second that this phone was in his hand he was even more vulnerable. At last the receptionist came back on the line and gave Jimmy a number.

“And that’s in Hackney, isn’t it?” Jimmy said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“No, no, that’s wrong,” replied the receptionist. “The Hollingdale Institute is in Mill Hill. It says here that it’s on the Ridgeway, Mill Hill.”

Jimmy snapped the phone shut, slipped it down a drain and ran north.

And again, I wish I could go back and change something. Get rid of that 'replied' and put in 'said' instead. Much smoother.

Sometimes I really wish I had the confidence to follow my own advice.

So here's a new classroom resource:

USE 'SAID' AND NO OTHER VERB TO CARRY DIALOGUE.
READ HOW OTHER WRITERS USE IT.
LEARN TO USE IT WITH SKILL.

Letter to Year 4

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:26:00 +0000

I've been hanging out on twitter (where all the worst people waste all their best time) and a teacher (Mr Walker) asked whether I could write an email to his Year 4 class. So I did. Here's what I wrote:

HELLO MR WALKER’S YEAR FOUR CLASS.

Hi.

I’m a writer. But I wasn’t always a writer. At school I was a bit of a muppet, then I became a university student (which I was OK at if you include all the fun stuff), then I became a musician (which is what I’d always wanted to be, apart from a bit of a muppet).

For a year or so I wrote songs for other people to sing and I wrote music for films, TV shows and plays. Mainly plays. I was pretty good at that but it was exhausting, so I often ended up on the sofa whining about how hard I was working. WHINE WHINE WHINE. I’m sure you can picture the scene. PICTURE IT. Good.

My mum had a really good way of dealing with my whining. Every time it got too WHINEY she threw a book at me. There are very few things that cannot be cured by a good smack in the brain with a book. They were usually light books, and fortunately my mum doesn’t have a very powerful throw, otherwise this would be a very different kind of story. It would be a DEATH BY BOOK/FACE IMPACT story.

Sometimes (but only occasionally) my mum threw the book at me accurately enough for me to be able to pick it up and read it. That’s a good thing to do with a book. I recommend it. This is how I read the Harry Potter books.

This was not dangerous at all for the early Harry Potter books because they’re quite light, but as the series went on the books got bigger and heavier and more deadly and my mum’s throwing was starting to get a bit too accurate for life on the sofa to be safe. So I thought I’d better get off the sofa and DO SOMETHING.

By the time I’d read all of those books that had been thrown at me, the SOMETHING that was on my mind was TELLING A STORY. I wanted to have a go. More importantly, I wanted to have a go at telling a story that had nothing to do with MAGIC or WIZARDS or WITCHES.

I like action, mystery, twists, suspense and all that good stuff. But I don’t like it when magic comes along and solves everything for a character. It feels unsatisfying. It’s cheating. The Harry Potter books kept me interested despite the problems with magic so I had a long think about how that was possible. I started trying to work out how great stories are constructed. I read more books. I watched movies. I listened to people telling stories and I tried to learn how they did it. How did they keep the audience on the edge of their seats?

Gradually I was piecing together the ideas that turned into my first book: Jimmy Coates: Killer.

It contains no magic. But it contains a huge amount of action, suspense, twists, mystery and all that juicy awesomeness.

I will now tell you how I did it and I continue to come up with ideas for new books (and films – because I write those too) in my life now:

I read.

I write without worrying about how good it is.

I deliberately write something rubbish so I can rewrite it later.

I plan out my stories so I know what the ending is before I start. Sometimes I can only work out where to start once I’ve worked out how to end.

I make sure that every day there is some time where I can just sit and do nothing. This isn’t time like I spent on my mum’s sofa whining, this is time when I’m actually doing a lot more than whining – I’m thinking. I’m letting my head wander about without restrictions and without guidance. I don’t look at my phone. I don’t have the TV on. I don’t look at stuff on the internet. I just sit there with NOTHING (except sometimes a pen and a notebook) and I challenge my imagination to come up with SOMETHING.

SOMETHING from NOTHING is what being a writer is all about. So everyday I have to find some NOTHING TIME. It’s actually my favourite part of the day (apart from breakfast which is SO COOL. I love breakfast. I mix loads of different cereals together in a secret blend that I’ve perfected over several years then I pour hot water on it - NOT MILK NEVER MILK, OK? Yeah, breakfast rocks. Sometimes I have breakfast twice then go back to bed but that’s cool because I’m a writer and I can pretty much do whatever I like.)

I will now end my ramble about my life. It has been a DELIGHT to talk to you, Mr Walker’s Year 4 class. I hope you are all having a splendid day. Be kind to each other. Smile a lot – I mean A LOT: smile more than you think any non-crazy person should ever smile. It’s a wonderful way to go through life.

And tell each other stories. Practise that for a few minutes every day. You’ll learn what keeps an audience’s attention and if you start now then by the time you’re in Year 5 you’ll be amazing at it, by the time you’re in Year 11 your teachers will think you’re some kind of genius and by the time you leave school you’ll be performing at the circus as THE AMAZING STORY-TELLING MIRACLE CHILD. Or you’ll be a writer.

Best wishes,

Joe Craig

www.joecraig.co.uk

Monkey Wearing Glasses

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I don't know how you found my blog. Were you searching for 'bald baby monkey'? Somebody was. And somebody else found this blog by searching for 'typed monkey'.

I don't even know what a typed monkey is. An old-fashioned version of a word processor monkey?

And if that were that, then, as they say, that would be that. But it's not.

Because more than one person - in fact SEVERAL PEOPLE - found this blog by searching for 'monkey wearing glasses'.

I can't help feeling I've let my readers down. I so rarely talk about monkeys wearing glasses.

But the disappointment doesn't end there. Because now we turn to some of the most popular search terms that bring people to my blog. These aren't just freakish mistakes, remember, these are among the most popular search terms that bring people here.

The top one is 'Jimmy Coates: Blackout' - that makes sense. Loads of people want to know when it's coming out (and there's some exciting news about that coming very soon...), but here are some of the other MOST POPULAR SEARCHES that bring people to... me:

- "building a hotel up on a hill"
- "burlington arcade whistling exception"
- "cartoon pictures of monkeys for kids"
- "hot chinese massage"
- "russian chocolate"

What a picture that paints of the way I live, up on a hill in the fancy hotel I built for myself, whistling where nobody else is allowed to whistle, while a hot Chinese masseur feeds me Russian chocolate and we laugh about our favourite monkey cartoons.

I can't complain. It's a life.

The Chinese Massage

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:33:00 +0000

I've discovered that my bravery extends exactly as far as my ignorance. If I have no idea what a thing is, I will probably be up for it. This is why I must say to you here and now: if you're ever offered a Chinese Massage... woah mamma, that hurts. A small Chinese man called John has delved into my very soul with just his thumbs and plucked out my innocence.

First was the pain. I've never been good with pain. And through the pain was the wonder that any human man could have thumbs so strong. Then as the pain really kicked in came a delirious fear that this iron-thumbed being was no human man.

But it's OK, I tried to tell myself, he knows what he's doing. Whatever pain he inflicts, it's for the best.

I think that was when he started pointing out of the window saying 'Oven? Oven? Oven?'

I could hardly lift my head from the massage table. John had pummeled me so hard my face was well wedged into the PVC ring. I had also lost all feeling in my neck. But I did manage to lift my head. I twisted my blearly face into an expression of bafflement, trying to indicate to him that I didn't understand why he was pointing out of the window and repeating 'Oven?'.

In fact, I discovered eventually, he was pointing at a picture of a man he thought was called Owen but was actually called Doug who he thought I knew but who I did not know after all. He went back to manipulating my buttocks.

One thing many people know about me is that there are some directions in which my legs simply do not twist. It was difficult for John to accept this.

His determination, as well as his thumbs: iron.

I am a new man now. Taller, wiser, with black holes in some parts of my memory. I am more wary of smiling Chinese masseurs.

I will never forget where his hands were when he asked my name, what I feared he would do if I didn't tell him, and, worse, what I feared he would do if I did tell him, because then we could really get to know each other.

Questions From China

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:32:00 +0000

I am still in China.

So far this week, the students at the International School of Beijing have been mind-blowingly brilliant. In particular, their questions have impressed me. Here are a few highlights, none of which had any context and all of which came from students in Grades 4, 5 or 6:

- Do you like Victorian justice?
- What do you think of the phrase "demonic frenzy"?
- Do you use hair gel?
- What's the tallest you've ever been?
- What happens when shampoo explodes?
- Have you ever flown a B2 bomber?
- Which is your favourite British-engineered car?
- Do you polish your shoes?
- Do you like a pie and a pint?

There have been many more. Long may they continue.

All the Cheese in China, with added jetlag

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:38:00 +0000

It's about 5.20am in China. I know this because I'm in a Beijing hotel room, snacking on my usual 5.20am cheese.

It's a very nice comté I had in my bag for the plane journey over here. Didn't finish the comté on the plane because I also had a packet of Parma ham and some figs.

Now I'm wondering whether I really do have cheese at 5.20 every morning. Everything is a little foggy. It feels right. Yes, cheese now feels very right.

But it also feels right to go to bed. Strange. And then again, it also feels right not to go to bed but to go and find more cheese.

All the cheese in China. That's a thing, isn't it?

I remember arriving in China. That was yesterday, I think. I remember a whole district of the city dedicated to tea. I drunk a lot of tea. Green tea, oolong tea, high mountain tea, puerh tea, more green tea, danchong tea...

All that tea can't have been a dream. I know it was not a dream because every hour I am producing enough urine to irrigate a farm.

I remember a dumpling.

Many dumplings. Yes, I don't know when that was, but there were many dumplings. Oh, and the dumplings were good. The best dumplings. My emotional memory is creating a splendid wash of pork and leek and dumpling-y joy. Maybe the dumplings were a dream.

I'm in China to speak about my books and run workshops at an international school. But really I'm in China for the tea and the dumplings.

Why is there a piece of cheese in my hand?

New 'Joe Craig Facebook' Thingy Address, Like, Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:04:00 +0000

Just a quick announcement so we can all keep things tidy and ticketyboo.

My facebook fanpage has a new address. I am no longer at the old one, but at the far more lovely and streamlined:

https://www.facebook.com/joecraiguk

The content is exactly the same. It's the same page. Nothing has changed. It's like the same house but I've pinned a prettier number to the front door. With blu-tak.

My Plan to Boost Sport, Create New Olympic Heroes and Win the World Cup Within 30 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:35:00 +0000

Remove all 'NO BALL GAMES' signs.

CHARACTER - Remembering the Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:56:00 +0000

I've been working on a new little story. Something fun and a little different - sorry, no details yet. I'm obsessively secretive about works-in-progress.

But eventually I do share a draft with my agent, who always gives really useful notes.

Today I was grappling with one note that I couldn't quite get to grips with:

"Bring out the characters more."

That's quite a big note. It's a huge note. It's a COLOSSAL NOTE. And I couldn't immediately see a way to fix it. Then, after a hot shower and a big steak and a little clear-thinking, I went through all of my options and eliminated them one by one. I was left with the basics. What brings out character? What does it even MEAN to 'bring out' a character?

I thought I'd share where I reached today in case other writers out there are in a similar sticky bit.

There are ways of telling your readers more about your characters. You can describe them, physically or emotionally, for example. But TELLING is useless. It has no power. It feels random, it is usually either much too vague or much too specific and is very dull to read.

So show it. But how do you SHOW something that 'brings out' the character? Suddenly we're stuck in world of writer-ly jargon. It's hard to pin down what all of that means.

In the end I went back to the basics of storytelling. What is the stuff that MAKES a character?

All together now: CONFLICT. I'd forgotten it for a few hours, but once I remembered it (about half way through the steak) it was all so obvious again.

In a story we only really get to know who a character is by watching them respond to a problem. WATCHING them, remember - not being TOLD how they respond. The writer has to show it.

And at last I knew what it meant to 'bring out the character' - it means TURN UP THE HEAT. Increase the conflict. Raise the stakes. Make the problem worse. Then show the character trying to handle that.

THAT'S where we get to see the real character.

FICTIVE INTELLIGENCE, Understanding the World by Reading Fiction, and LIBRARIANS

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:01:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I was asked to write a few lines about the importance of reading. I wrote this:

Reading a book is a direct injection of inspiration.

Reading shapes brilliant minds. It gets your brain throbbing and your heart racing.

It can bring you a thousand years of experience in a few pages.

Reading means bigger laughs, deeper feelings and a peek at the secrets of life.

We understand the world through stories. What we read makes people make sense.

I found myself thinking of that again last weekend at an amazing conference for librarians from all over the country. I was surrounded by hundreds of the best minds in the country, the most passionate champions of literature. They get together at conferences like this one to share ideas about how to continue to inspire. How to blast through all of the obstacles that stand between any average kid and his or her first experiences with a book. How to guide them into a lifetime of reading.

And it matters. I said it up at the top there: we understand the world through stories. I really believe that. A brain that's used to being immersed in fiction can grasp more complex concepts and construct narratives to make more sense of problems in the world.

It might be a relationship thing, it might be a global economic crisis. Whatever it is, there isn't just one simple cause. There never is. There is a complex intermingling of events that comes together to create the STORY of what's happening.

In other words, the world cannot be explained and all its problems solved by tweet-length explanations. We need longer, deeper, richer understanding. We need brains that have been trained by reading novels.

I call it FICTIVE INTELLIGENCE. It's my name for the kind of understanding that can only come from reading fiction. It involves sustained concentration, greater empathy and an ability to see beyond the quick soundbyte to the many various forces that have contributed to the situation: the "accumulation of many small advantages" - or in some cases, disadvantages. The bigger picture, over a longer period. All the subtle shifts and their gathering consequences.

Every time I see a politician trying to sell us a quick fix or a news report that blames some mess on a single person or event, I know I'm looking at someone who didn't read much fiction when they were younger.

But at this conference, surrounded by the greatest accumulation of Fictive Intelligence I've ever seen in a single space, I realised that these people were not only able to see the world differently, they were the guardians of Fictive Intelligence for everybody else. Librarians are uniquely equipped to unlock a lifetime of understanding in every child.

For me, there is a succession of direct links that goes something like this: read fiction... develop the kind of deeper understanding of people and the world that I'm talking about (Fictive Intelligence)... see problems (your own and the world's) with a richer sense of how they came about... solve problems.

If the politicians who are making decisions to cut library funding, remove books from schools and sack librarians can't see that trail of links, then it's clear to me that what they lack is any trace of Fictive Intelligence.

They didn't read enough fiction and we will suffer for it. Because now they can't see the narrative they're creating unfolding into the future.

The future will involve as many crises as the past. What changes is our collective ability to handle those crises. A population that has been deprived of librarians is trusting to chance that enough people will somehow discover fiction they love and become lovers of reading and stories.

Chance is not enough. That population without librarians will quickly lose all Fictive Intelligence.

We won't have the tools we need to meet challenges we know are coming, let alone the ones we can't even imagine yet. And eventually we won't even see the pretty simple story of how it all went wrong.

Yes, I'm saying that to 'fix' problems we need more librarians: in every school, in every town... dammit, put a librarian on every street corner and you've got the best crime-fighting strategy you'll ever need.

Do it now. Give us librarians so we can create a population that loves reading, that understands stories, that sees the world for the rich and varied place it is, that doesn't shy away from complexity or subtlety and that can therefore face any crisis - even a crisis so grave as the one facing libraries right now, that not enough people seem to have noticed or chosen to care about.

It matters.

Bookbuzz 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Buzz.

Buzzy day.

I'm buzzing.

Bookbuzz.

Ooh, it's a list of books! And you can choose a free one - if you're a Yr 7 student this September.

So why am I all buzzy? Because my book, LIFTERS, is on the list!

What a wonderful thing that is. I will reward myself with a bowl of honey.

Here's the BOOKBUZZ list:

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/bookgifting/bookbuzz/

I'm a little stunned about this, to be honest. I wrote LIFTERS a little under-the-radar so I've been amazed by the support from readers, teachers & librarians who've discovered it. I hope this list means more people might check it out and find something they like in it. It's only a very short book, but I took as much care over crafting it as I have over any full-length novel (more, in fact). I hope there's as much meat in it as there is in those novels too. It just uses fewer words.

I'm very proud of LIFTERS, so a huge thank you to Booktrust for choosing it for the Bookbuzz 2012 list.

Honey time.

Some Words to a Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:30:00 +0000

I've been replying to emails from readers this evening. Sometimes I write a lot, sometimes a little. Here's a fairly typical one, but after I sent it I realise that perhaps, in the last couple of paragraphs, I was writing to myself more than to my correspondent.

This was in response to a teenager who generously said my books had helped him in a creative writing task at school and made him want to write more stories. Here's part of what I said in reply:

If you’re thinking about becoming a writer I wish you a huge amount of luck.

Read EVERYTHING. Just read whatever you can get your hands on. If you don’t like it, find something else to read. It really is the easiest and most amazingly effective way of becoming a better writer.

Write a little bit every day. It’s practice.

Don’t give up.

I could rant on and on about what might help you write, but basically it’s all up on my website if you click on the HOW TO WRITE page. You’ll find it. Check it out and read the various articles. There’s one about how to use a notebook which is useful (I hope!).

Anyway, thanks again for giving me a boost with your kind words about my books and good luck with all your writing.

Stay strong, be different, have fun, love what you’re doing and even when you don’t love it, push yourself to get to a point where you CAN love it. Writing is frustrating. Learn to love the frustration and recognise it as the fire that creates new ideas... eventually.

Give yourself time but don’t give yourself any easy ways out. Push yourself. Did I say that already? Make it fun, but also make it HARD. If it doesn’t feel a little bit hard then you’re just coasting. Bust a gut. Get your brain to the point where it might explode. That’s what writing feels like. I hate it, but I love it as well because it’s kind of exhilarating. Now go and write.

Exclusive Interview with 'Nuts About Hazelwood'

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I presented awards to the winners of the short story competition run by the Leukaemia Cancer Society. I'd judged the competition, so the whole thing was a delight and a triumph. For me. I have no idea whether anybody else enjoyed it, but very few people walked out or threw things during my speech. I took that as a good sign.

Afterwards, I was sent the following interview questions by a Mr Sam Ross of Hazelwood School, one of the schools that had taken part in the competition.

His school newsletter is called NUTS ABOUT HAZELWOOD. This delights me. Here is the interview. It's very deep.

How did you find judging the competition?It was tough but fun. There were so many good entries and some of them were so good that I forgot I was judging a competition and just got caught up in the story. So it was very difficult to pick the winners. I also wanted to make sure all of the entrants felt encouraged to keep writing, because even the writers who weren’t picked as winners showed loads of promise – much more than I showed at the same age and I’m now a professional writer!

What matters is persevering, practising, reading and believing you can do it. Of course, sometimes people believe they can do anything and they’re wrong. That accounts for most of the nutcases who audition for Britain’s Got Talent or the X-Factor. But you have to start off believing you can do something and keep going until Simon Cowell tells you you’re wrong, or life wears you down (which doesn’t happen until you’re 32, so don’t worry about that yet), or you get arrested for doing the thing that you believe you can do so well. Try to avoid being really good at the things in that last category.

Did you like the Hazelwood entries?Yes. I liked them very much. Based on the quality of the entries and what they were about, I started to get an impression of Hazelwood as a place. So in my mind, Hazelwood is amazing, full of bright colours and mystery and adventure and room after room of creative geniuses sitting on beanbags, holding their chins and looking up at the ceiling (which is painted blue with a couple of fluffy white clouds) and they’re all going ‘hmmmmm...’ in deep thought. Every now and again one of them (in a suit with an open-necked shirt) removes his square-rimmed glasses and shouts “I’VE GOT IT!” then uses a fat, green crayon to scribble something amazing in a giant notebook. Then he calls up Damien Hirst and says, “DAMIEN MY BOY GET HERE NOW I NEED AN ILLUSTRATOR.” That’s the impression I got of Hazelwood based on your entries.

According to the short piece about you on the back of the final book, you have a pet dwarf crocodile called Professor Sven. Is this true?Everything is true. Sort of. Or nothing is true. Or neither of those things is true. What is ‘truth’? Can there really be an objective TRUTH that stands alone, separate from the observer? What if the observer isn’t human? Could a squirrel see something and make it true just by looking? What if the squirrel is only looking for nuts and thinks that what it sees is a nut? And what if it isn’t a nut it’s a BUS? Is the bus a nut? Is that true? IS IT? Hope that answers your question.

Are you going to write any more books in the near future?Yes – I hope so! As long as publishers and readers continue to want new books from me, and as long as I can keep coming up with new ideas, I’ll keep writing. Actually, at the moment I’m working on a movie script, so if that goes well then I might never write another book again, but that would be a shame because I enjoy writing books and I think I’m pretty good at it. I also have two or three half-written books on my computer, so at some point I’d like to finish them off and perhaps even get them published. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing? In fact, I’d make that more likely to happen if I stopped rambling on with these answers to your questions and got down to some SERIOUS WORK. So... I’m going to do that. Bye. Thanks for the questions!

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick - a review

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:11:00 +0000

There's a really simple, satisfying structure to this book that revolves around killing people. You find out pretty early on how many people are going to be killed by one of the characters (an assassin) so for the rest of the book you're comfortable among the chaos, the pizazz, the shocks and revelations.

It's a very clever way of constructing a plot, but the book is full of all kinds of lovely touches that will make any thriller fan grin. I love those satisfying moments that make me feel like a story is oozing joy from the pages, through my fingers, into my belly. Nice work, Joe Schreiber.

I suppose I should tell you a bit about the plot. There's a crazy European Chick. Some people die. It's delightful. I won't tell you any more than that because I hate it when reviews give away any plot details of a thriller. The writer has worked very hard to give you the tingle of excitement that you get when you don't know what's going to happen next and you just have to find out. I'm the last person in the world who'd want to ruin that.

There's a bit of blurb on the back of the book that in my opinion gives away too much, so don't read that either. Just read the book. It also says on the back of the book that if you like 'Kill Bill' and 'Kick Ass' you'll enjoy 'Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick'. That might be true, but it's a lame comparison. This book is far more interesting. If you really want a movie comparison, it's a lot (a LOT) like 'Collateral', the Tom Cruise/assassin thriller.

As a writer of assassin thrillers myself, I welcome another angle on the genre. This one's a gem. It's loads of fun, genuinely exciting and funny. I think there's already a lot of hype around this one, but for once the book deserves it. The shame is that the hype (so far) seems to ignore the depth of the book. It's not just a book of blood, action, chase blah-blah-blah. It's much better than that. A proper good read.

What ho, more reading? Absolutely.

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:50:00 +0000

I promised Jeeves I would post something on here about each book that I finished this year. This isn't going very well. Every morning when he brings me my warm & hearty, he's been eyeing me in such a way as to strongly suggest he's been checking this blog on his ipad and come away empty handed.

This is not because I haven't been reading and not because I haven't wanted to blog. I just haven't yet read a book good enough for me to finish.

What an awful thing to have to say. I can't bring myself to tell Jeeves directly.

The latest disappointment (and it was a whopper) was the latest book by one of my favourite novelists.

If it weren't for Paul Auster, I would not be a writer. I might never have started reading novels again if I hadn't picked up his 'New York Trilogy' and I might never have been blown away by the amazing possibilities of storytelling if I hadn't gone on to read 'Mr Vertigo'.

I've read all his books. I think he's wonderful and if I could write or tell a story a tenth as well as he can I'd die happy. (How do you measure fractions of writing ability by the way? Never mind. It's an expression. As I frequently tell Jeeves whenever I see his eyebrow twitching at one of my more inspired turns of phrase, language must always trump logic.)

Anyway, this probably why reading Paul Auster's latest book, 'Sunset Park' made me so angry.

I'm going to skip over the fact that it's written in the present tense. Everyone knows I hate this. I won't go into why here. Another time. Mustn't ramble. But it's worth saying that there are a couple of books (literally two so far) that have overcome the fact that they're in the present tense. I enjoyed them. For both of them I could see the point of them being in the present tense. It worked.

Sadly 'Sunset Park' has other problems.

Strangely, one of them is not the story. There's plenty of story there and it's all intriguing stuff. I always felt like I wanted to find out more, to delve deeper, to hear the next bit. (Especially if Jeeves was reading it to me and 'doing the voices', as he calls it.)

The trouble with 'Sunset Park' is that Paul Auster didn't seem to want to tell the story. Instead he was giving me a description of the story. There were very few scenes, just list-like passages of things that happened or had happened.

When I did settle into a scene I started to enjoy it, and that's what made me read on as far as I did (about 6 tenths of the way through. Fractions again. Don't lie - you love fractions.) But all the juicy character stuff was dumped on me as huge passages of lazy fact-filling. A lot of the story events were thrown in that way too.

Exposition City: a sprawling metropolis where huge signposts tell you something you want to find out by witnessing it yourself. Then the signposts fall on your head with a painful whack.

I'd have felt OK, I think, if the story being wasted was not worth telling. I think I'd also have been OK if I hadn't got the strong impression that this was all a deliberate stylistic decision by the author.

So frustrating.

The first thing writers get told (and usually over and over again) is SHOW DON'T TELL. It's a very annoying phrase. It's annoying because it's not as simple to understand as it seems, but it's also dead right.

No book has ever made such a swift journey as 'Sunset Park' from the bookshop, through my home to the charity shop.

After a succession of duds, I've been desperate to read something wonderful, something brilliant, something I had no doubt I was going to at least be able to finish.

The fact that I'm loving every sentence has been a bonus. I'm about to snuggle down for another night with a book I wish would go on forever. I can't remember the title. 'Something something Jeeves or somesuch.' It's by P.G.Wodehouse.

I always reply to readers, but...

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Craig) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:49:00 +0000

...sometimes I get carried away. Here's what I sent out last week to a 13-year-old reader who was writing on behalf of her school to invite me to visit, but sadly, like many schools, they didn't have the budget.

Dear ## ##, 13, of Alnwick, Northumberland (which I don’t believe is a real place. Wait, let me check... OK, I’ve just looked it up on GGGGOGGLE THE INTERNET MACHINE and I suppose it might be real. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. It just has a name that sounds made up. But then, so do you – ‘##’ – what kind of crazy name is that? Madness, I tell you.)

A big thank you for getting in touch on behalf of your teacher, who I’m sure is very interested in having me visit, but evidently unable to use a computer herself because of the difficulties of modern technology. I’ve sent a carrier pigeon to Alnwick, Northumberland, addressed to ‘TEACHER, A SCHOOL’. So she should get that message at about the same time you get this, unless my pigeon takes another detour to France or Blackpool like it did that other time (but that’s a long story and he’s been through counselling now so I’m sure he’s all better and will go straight to Arnlywick – I trust him completely these days).

You are very generous for inviting me to Alnwick without offering to pay me. Oh wait, no, that should have said: You are totally insane for inviting me to Alnwick without offering to pay me. But in a good way. I like insane. Sometimes a little insanity makes great things happen. So genuinely: I really appreciate you inviting me and taking the chance. If you don’t ask for something or set out to try to achieve it, how would you ever know whether it can be done?

Sadly in this particular case, the answer is a regretful ‘no’ – I can’t skip up the country from London to Allanwick (or hitch a ride on my pigeon, who isn’t fat enough to hold me anyway since the strict diet he adopted after his time in pigeon-rehab) without being paid. The simple truth is that I have a lot of schools asking me to visit them and I can’t fit them all in as it is – and they’re the ones who can pay me! So it wouldn’t really be fair to them if I took a day off to come and visit you for free. Also it wouldn’t be fair to my wife, who needs me to pay for stuff, and my dog, who needs me to pay for even more stuff, and myself, who needs me to pay for my own stuff. My pigeon is OK on his own. He has a business on the side selling ornate feathers to weirdos over the internet. Does pretty well out of it as far as I can see (but then, of course, he doesn’t pay any tax, and I think he gets the feathers for free from idiot birds who don’t realise he’s exploiting them, so obviously he does well out of it – anybody could do that. Well, any pigeon. He’s no genius, is what I’m saying.).

But one day I would love to visit Allwicky, simply to make sure that it does actually exist.

So if (one day) the school suddenly has funds that it can use to pay for visiting authors, you or your teacher should get back in touch straight away and I’ll be right there. I’ll shoot you to the top of the waiting list and make sure I come to visit you. Also if I came for free, too many schools would be able to afford me and I’d never have a day at home to do any writing.

Ah yes – writing. That’s probably what I should be doing now. But instead I’m drawing Terry Pratchett’s head on cartoon animals and making him dance around while a cartoon JK Rowling cackles and points. I also have a finger-puppet of Jacqueline Wilson but I never play with it. I just leave her under a box in the corner of my desk so I can always keep an eye on her and she can’t escape to do any more damage.

So there you have it, ## ##, 13, of Allan-wack, North-tumbly-land. Thank you for inviting me. Very sorry I can’t come. But let me know which school you’re at and I’ll send STUFF LOVELY STUFF – posters, cards and POSSIBLY a couple of signed books (one for you and one for your school library, just to make sure everybody at your school is learning to read OK. I like to check these things.)

Right. I’m going. BYE BYE ##IOV ##ONIAN.

From Joe Craig, 30-ish, of North London (different bits of it, but mainly FINCHLEY, a place of joy. You should all come and visit it. I won’t pay you, but you should all visit anyway.) CONSIDER YOUR REQUEST CONSIDERED (HOORAY!) But turned down (BOOOOOO!) But KEEP IN TOUCH (ummm... OK).