The Intel: Mason Cross Reloaded

Crime Thriller Fella is taking a much-needed summer break. But, chin up – we’re going to meet up again right here sooner than you could possibly hope. However, in the meantime, do keep coming back. Over the last year there’s been all sorts of stuff we’ve enjoyed plonking on the internet, and which you may have missed, such as this Intel interview with one of the talented new kids on the block… Mason Cross.

We love it when there’s a buzz about a new author. Thriller writer Mason Cross is picking up all sorts of great reviews for his gripping story of a FBI manhunt for a deranged sniper.

Crime Thriller Fella reviewed The Killing Season only last week and now, as promised, Cross gives us The Intel on new-hero-on-the-block Carter Blake, and on his own path to publication. If you’re a writer quietly plugging away at your craft, I strongly suggest you take a read…

Give us the lowdown on Carter Blake – he’s kind of a mysterious guy…

Ahh – that would be telling! He is indeed a mysterious guy. Suffice to say that he has a past that has furnished him with the skills and experience he now calls upon to do his job. That past occasionally comes back to haunt him, and we’ll find out a little more about it in the next book…

Blake hunts for a deranged sniper in The Killing Season – what is it about random killers that so fascinates us?

I think we do have a morbid fascination with serial killers. It’s probably because, while we can perhaps understand acts of violence committed in the heat of the moment, the impulse to cold-bloodedly take a human life is utterly alien to most of us. Thankfully, most of us don’t have that faulty gene. A sniper is particularly chilling, because they can strike from afar and you’ll never see them coming. It’s also the only type of cold-blooded killing that can be a legitimate profession: the military will actually train you up and pay you to do it.

How do you get inside the head of a man like that?

I suspect there may be some crossover in the psychological profiles of serial killers and crime writers; a little more overlap on the Venn diagram than is normal. Again, there’s a grim fascination for a writer in the idea of plotting and getting away with murder, although fortunately for society, we tend to keep our murders on the page.

In The Killing Season, I found that writing the villain was similar to writing the hero in a lot of ways: both are very driven, very methodical, very professional. They’re intelligent, capable men doing what they do. Blake would probably make a very good serial killer if he was that way inclined.

How did the idea of The Killing Season come about?

The initial idea was to pit two equally matched adversaries against one another. A hunter who can find anybody versus a lone wolf who’s adept at evading capture. I was interested in this idea of a very personal one-on-one contest amidst the backdrop of a massive multi-agency manhunt. The rest of the plot developed from that.

What kind of research did you have to do?

I read widely about serial killers, snipers, and police and federal manhunts. I read a book about the Washington Sniper case from 2002, and a couple of other books that dealt more with the history of snipers and the psychological warfare aspect of killing from a distance. A book I happened to read on J Edgar Hoover and the birth of the FBI turned out to be unexpectedly useful. I did a lot of local research into the locations I wanted to use. I spoke to my American friends to pick their brains and run ideas past them, and called on my own experiences visiting the States.

Perhaps as importantly as any of the direct research, I read a hell of a lot of thrillers, from the old masters to the authors who are in the bestseller charts today. I got to know the clichés to avoid, I stole some techniques I liked, and generally learned to avoid some of the common pitfalls. It’s interesting that the core elements of what makes a great thriller haven’t changed too much over the course of a century.

The Killing Season is your debut novel – what was your journey to getting published?

It involved a huge amount of luck! I’d been submitting stories to various magazines and competitions for a few years with occasional success. My story ‘A Living’ was published in the Quick Reads Sun Book of Short Stories, which encouraged me to keep at it. Some of the stories I posted on Harper Collins’s Authonomy site. A few months later, they got in touch to tell me that an agent, Luigi Bonomi, was interested in getting touch with me based one of the stories I’d posted.

I was sceptical at first, as it sounded too good to be true. But when I did a bit of Googling, I quickly realised that not only was Luigi the real deal, he was one of the top agents in the business. Luigi and his colleague Thomas Stofer were really encouraging about my writing and suggested I develop a novel. Fast forward a couple of years and we were ready to send The Killing Season out on submission.

Fortunately for me, Jemima Forrester at Orion read and loved it, and they offered me a deal. I was particularly pleased about signing with Orion because they have such a great track record on thrillers, and publish so many of my favourite authors.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I have a day job, so I normally have to fit the writing in around my other commitments. Luckily, I’m able to do that fairly easily – I’ve trained myself out of the habit of sitting around waiting for divine inspiration. I can write anywhere: planes, hotel rooms, cafés, pubs, libraries, park benches… I’d say my ideal writing environment is actually a quiet train carriage with no wifi. I would be unbelievably productive if I lived on a train.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

Too many to mention them all, but off the top of my head I’d have to include Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler, Michael Chabon, Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Tom Wolfe. All of the above have one thing in common – it’s a physical effort to stop reading them once I’ve started.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

Sometimes you have to get rid of the bits of a book you really like, either by editorial mandate or because you know it just isn’t working. It’s tough, but often necessary. The other really difficult thing for me is, once I’ve got what I think is a reasonably finished version of the book, to let anyone else read it. That’s the most terrifying moment, because you’ve spent months flitting between thinking the book is fantastic and thinking it’s terrible, and you know you’re about to get an outside opinion on exactly where it falls on that scale.

How do you deal with feedback?

Generally pretty well, as long as it’s someone who knows what they’re talking about. I’m possibly unusual in that I quite enjoy the editing process – stepping back from the book, messing about with it, deciding what works and what doesn’t and reassembling it so that it runs as smoothly as possible.

I’m lucky to have an agent and an editor who both have excellent instincts about what makes a thriller work. It’s rare that what I’ve written can’t be improved by listening to some knowledgeable advice and having another go at it – it’s always better after a rewrite. I also like to get reviews from readers – a book either works or doesn’t for someone, and it’s useful to know why in either case.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

Friends, family, work, travel, death, love, children, good experiences, crappy experiences – it all feeds in. Another writer told me it’s essential to have spent some time doing a regular job and having a life before you can be a writer, and I’d definitely agree with that. It all comes down to writing convincingly about people and places, and to do that you need experience of as many different kinds of people and places as possible.

Give me some advice about writing…

Keep going. Try to write every day, even if it’s only 500 words. Finish things. Invest some time in plotting, but be open to change – it’s important to have a path from which to wander. The internet should be avoided during writing and embraced during research.

And read a lot! Everybody says that, but that’s because it’s true – not just to learn from the best, but to learn why some things don’t work so well so you can try to avoid making the same mistakes.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace?

Be lucky! I’d definitely recommend trying to get an agent, as mine has helped me so much beyond the usual business of dealing with the publisher; giving me support and encouragement and invaluable feedback on early drafts. Think about the market, but try not to over-think: don’t write something you don’t like just because you think it will be marketable, because it probably won’t end up being very good. Play to your strengths. Try to be pleasant to work with and professional – it only started to happen for me when I began treating writing as a job. Read a lot.

What’s next for you?

Right now, I’m really looking forward to launching The Killing Season at Waterstones in Glasgow and doing the whole reading and signing thing. The next Blake book – called The Samaritan – is just about done (there’s an excerpt in the back of the first book) and I’m thinking a lot about book three, where we’ll learn more still about his shadowy past.

Aside from that, I’m really excited that one of my stories is going to be published in a forthcoming issue of Ellery Queen, which was one of my long-standing ambitions. I’m going to be on three panels at Crimefest in Bristol, and I have a couple of other festival appearances later in the year that I’m not allowed to talk about yet. When I get the okay, I’ll be sure to let people know at my blog.

 

Guest Post: William Shaw On Writing

In this tiny part of the internet we like to get between the ears of novelists.

We absolutely love doing The Intel Interviews because it gives us a sense of how writers sit down and, well, write – and it’s different every single time. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. Take a look down the sidebar – down, down, thats it, there, you got it – and you’ll see there are a million ways to write a book.

So I’m very pleased to say that William Shaw is contributing a guest post on how to expect the unexpected when writing. As you know, we reviewed Shaw’s second Breen and Tozer novel,  A House on Knives, earlier in the week – scroll down, a bit further, that’s it – and by crikey, I believe we liked it a lot.

Here’s William’s experience on how to catch literary lightning in a bottle and, at the same time, keep writing fun:

William Shaw © Ellen Shaw

Whatever you do, write a plan before you start on a thriller. That’s what they say.

It seems to be the right way to do it. Plots are complex. You need to control them, so the reasoning goes. “Plan your novel thoroughly in advance” comes the advice from all quarters. Why wouldn’t you use a map when setting out on a difficult journey?

A successful thriller writer friend once was struggling with a particularly complex book a couple of years ago, he showed me his outline for the novel. It was about twenty pages long, each page divided into five or six columns.

“It’s fantastic,” I said.

Just looking at it made me feel ill. Carefully outlined, there were scenes, descriptions, character lists, plot points, mood notes and estimated word lengths. The whole thing was practically a novel in itself. It was forensic in detail and the end result was destined to be a chart-topping best seller.

And I was intimidated by its thoroughness, because the truth is, I don’t plan. I’ve tried, honestly I have. But every time I do I tear up my plan and write something else.

For the first Breen and Tozer book, A Song from Dead Lips, there was no plan. In fact, I hadn’t even planned on a book. I simply started writing the first scene and then a second, and before I knew it, one of the characters was a detective. Up to a third of the way through, I had no idea who had killed the victim. Really. It was as much of a surprise to me, as hopefully, it will be to you.

I was slightly more disciplined when I came to the second; A House of Knives. I had written a one page précis for my editor. I knew who had done it, at least. But again, but beyond that, there was no actual twenty-page plan.

I’m currently finishing the third in the series. Determined to be more like my successful friend I wrote a long plan this time; three pages, at least. But as I near the end of the book, I have to admit, what I’ve ended out writing bears little resemblance to those pages.

There is a reason for this.

For a start, thrillers have to surprise. That’s part of their job description. And if they surprise the writer, I think that’s a start.

But it’s something else too. Despite all the screeds of advice you’ll hear about writing, there is no right way to write a book. Michael Crichton hit a mind-boggling 10,000 words a day. Graham Greene managed about 600. Tom Wolfe? A paltry 135. Some write first thing in the morning; others late at night. Some people edit as they go along. Others leave all that to the end. Everybody does it differently.

Planning works for some. I start asking colleagues about how they write. Michael Ridpath, whose Traitor’s Gate received lavish praise last year, tells me, (entirely disengenuously) that he isn’t clever enough to think of brilliant situations, “So I plan a lot.”

Likewise, Peter May, whose superb Lewis Trilogy I’m currently reading, says he has to have a clear idea of structures and characters before he starts. Why? His background was TV, he says. “So I imported the techniques. If I know the story, I write better.”

But this doesn’t work for everybody. Stephen King famously shies away from the process of plotting. He just writes. “I distrust plot for two reasons,” he wrote in On Writing. “First, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible.”

It’s the second reason in particular that I like. Any writer I know soon becomes aware of the strange unconscious process of writing. You find a character suddenly says something totally unexpected. A minor event suddenly takes on a major significance.

For me, that’s the real fun of writing. In A Song from Dead Lips, my character Sergeant Cathal Breen suddenly abandoned his investigation to climb a tree catch a cat that was stuck in the branches. Why? At the time, I had no idea. None at all. He wasn’t doing what I wanted him to. But I realised, as I typed, that it was useful to give him the broken wrist he had from falling from that tree, because it made him more dependent on the brash young WPC Helen Tozer who had been assigned to him. I certainly hadn’t planned it; but I really liked what I’d written. Months later, my US editor liked the tree incident so much too, he made me expand it.

A House Of Knives has just come out in hardback and ebook, and the first in the series, A Song From Dead Lips is now out in paperback.

It’s the age old writing divide, isn’t it – there are plotters and there are pantsers. So how do you guys sit down to write stories? Do you write notebooks full of notes before you start, or pin up a complicated graph over your desk, or do you sit and wait for what Stephen King famously calls ‘the boys in the basement?’

 

The Intel: Mason Cross

We love it when there’s a buzz about a new author. Thriller writer Mason Cross is picking up all sorts of great reviews for his gripping story of a FBI manhunt for a deranged sniper.

Crime Thriller Fella reviewed The Killing Season only last week and now, as promised, Cross gives us The Intel on new-hero-on-the-block Carter Blake, and on his own path to publication. If you’re a writer quietly plugging away at your craft, I strongly suggest you take a read…

Give us the lowdown on Carter Blake – he’s kind of a mysterious guy…

Ahh – that would be telling! He is indeed a mysterious guy. Suffice to say that he has a past that has furnished him with the skills and experience he now calls upon to do his job. That past occasionally comes back to haunt him, and we’ll find out a little more about it in the next book…

Blake hunts for a deranged sniper in The Killing Season – what is it about random killers that so fascinates us?

I think we do have a morbid fascination with serial killers. It’s probably because, while we can perhaps understand acts of violence committed in the heat of the moment, the impulse to cold-bloodedly take a human life is utterly alien to most of us. Thankfully, most of us don’t have that faulty gene. A sniper is particularly chilling, because they can strike from afar and you’ll never see them coming. It’s also the only type of cold-blooded killing that can be a legitimate profession: the military will actually train you up and pay you to do it.

How do you get inside the head of a man like that?

I suspect there may be some crossover in the psychological profiles of serial killers and crime writers; a little more overlap on the Venn diagram than is normal. Again, there’s a grim fascination for a writer in the idea of plotting and getting away with murder, although fortunately for society, we tend to keep our murders on the page.

In The Killing Season, I found that writing the villain was similar to writing the hero in a lot of ways: both are very driven, very methodical, very professional. They’re intelligent, capable men doing what they do. Blake would probably make a very good serial killer if he was that way inclined.

How did the idea of The Killing Season come about?

The initial idea was to pit two equally matched adversaries against one another. A hunter who can find anybody versus a lone wolf who’s adept at evading capture. I was interested in this idea of a very personal one-on-one contest amidst the backdrop of a massive multi-agency manhunt. The rest of the plot developed from that.

What kind of research did you have to do?

I read widely about serial killers, snipers, and police and federal manhunts. I read a book about the Washington Sniper case from 2002, and a couple of other books that dealt more with the history of snipers and the psychological warfare aspect of killing from a distance. A book I happened to read on J Edgar Hoover and the birth of the FBI turned out to be unexpectedly useful. I did a lot of local research into the locations I wanted to use. I spoke to my American friends to pick their brains and run ideas past them, and called on my own experiences visiting the States.

Perhaps as importantly as any of the direct research, I read a hell of a lot of thrillers, from the old masters to the authors who are in the bestseller charts today. I got to know the clichés to avoid, I stole some techniques I liked, and generally learned to avoid some of the common pitfalls. It’s interesting that the core elements of what makes a great thriller haven’t changed too much over the course of a century.

The Killing Season is your debut novel – what was your journey to getting published?

It involved a huge amount of luck! I’d been submitting stories to various magazines and competitions for a few years with occasional success. My story ‘A Living’ was published in the Quick Reads Sun Book of Short Stories, which encouraged me to keep at it. Some of the stories I posted on Harper Collins’s Authonomy site. A few months later, they got in touch to tell me that an agent, Luigi Bonomi, was interested in getting touch with me based one of the stories I’d posted.

I was sceptical at first, as it sounded too good to be true. But when I did a bit of Googling, I quickly realised that not only was Luigi the real deal, he was one of the top agents in the business. Luigi and his colleague Thomas Stofer were really encouraging about my writing and suggested I develop a novel. Fast forward a couple of years and we were ready to send The Killing Season out on submission.

Fortunately for me, Jemima Forrester at Orion read and loved it, and they offered me a deal. I was particularly pleased about signing with Orion because they have such a great track record on thrillers, and publish so many of my favourite authors.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I have a day job, so I normally have to fit the writing in around my other commitments. Luckily, I’m able to do that fairly easily – I’ve trained myself out of the habit of sitting around waiting for divine inspiration. I can write anywhere: planes, hotel rooms, cafés, pubs, libraries, park benches… I’d say my ideal writing environment is actually a quiet train carriage with no wifi. I would be unbelievably productive if I lived on a train.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

Too many to mention them all, but off the top of my head I’d have to include Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler, Michael Chabon, Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Tom Wolfe. All of the above have one thing in common – it’s a physical effort to stop reading them once I’ve started.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

Sometimes you have to get rid of the bits of a book you really like, either by editorial mandate or because you know it just isn’t working. It’s tough, but often necessary. The other really difficult thing for me is, once I’ve got what I think is a reasonably finished version of the book, to let anyone else read it. That’s the most terrifying moment, because you’ve spent months flitting between thinking the book is fantastic and thinking it’s terrible, and you know you’re about to get an outside opinion on exactly where it falls on that scale.

How do you deal with feedback?

Generally pretty well, as long as it’s someone who knows what they’re talking about. I’m possibly unusual in that I quite enjoy the editing process – stepping back from the book, messing about with it, deciding what works and what doesn’t and reassembling it so that it runs as smoothly as possible.

I’m lucky to have an agent and an editor who both have excellent instincts about what makes a thriller work. It’s rare that what I’ve written can’t be improved by listening to some knowledgeable advice and having another go at it – it’s always better after a rewrite. I also like to get reviews from readers – a book either works or doesn’t for someone, and it’s useful to know why in either case.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

Friends, family, work, travel, death, love, children, good experiences, crappy experiences – it all feeds in. Another writer told me it’s essential to have spent some time doing a regular job and having a life before you can be a writer, and I’d definitely agree with that. It all comes down to writing convincingly about people and places, and to do that you need experience of as many different kinds of people and places as possible.

Give me some advice about writing…

Keep going. Try to write every day, even if it’s only 500 words. Finish things. Invest some time in plotting, but be open to change – it’s important to have a path from which to wander. The internet should be avoided during writing and embraced during research.

And read a lot! Everybody says that, but that’s because it’s true – not just to learn from the best, but to learn why some things don’t work so well so you can try to avoid making the same mistakes.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace?

Be lucky! I’d definitely recommend trying to get an agent, as mine has helped me so much beyond the usual business of dealing with the publisher; giving me support and encouragement and invaluable feedback on early drafts. Think about the market, but try not to over-think: don’t write something you don’t like just because you think it will be marketable, because it probably won’t end up being very good. Play to your strengths. Try to be pleasant to work with and professional – it only started to happen for me when I began treating writing as a job. Read a lot.

What’s next for you?

Right now, I’m really looking forward to launching The Killing Season at Waterstones in Glasgow and doing the whole reading and signing thing. The next Blake book – called The Samaritan – is just about done (there’s an excerpt in the back of the first book) and I’m thinking a lot about book three, where we’ll learn more still about his shadowy past.

Aside from that, I’m really excited that one of my stories is going to be published in a forthcoming issue of Ellery Queen, which was one of my long-standing ambitions. I’m going to be on three panels at Crimefest in Bristol, and I have a couple of other festival appearances later in the year that I’m not allowed to talk about yet. When I get the okay, I’ll be sure to let people know at my blog.

 

The Intel: Steve Worland

We like writers here. And we’re keen to learn from them. Steve Worland is the writer of the action thriller Velocity, and its sequel, Combustion, and he’s currently writing his third book.

Steve has worked extensively in film and television in Australia and the U.S.A. He has written scripts for Working Title and Icon Productions, worked in script development for James Cameron’s Lightstorm and wrote Fox Searchlight’s ‘Bootmen’, which won five Australian Film Institute Awards.

​Steve also wrote the New Line action-comedy telemovie ‘Hard Knox’, the bible and episodes of the action television series ‘Big Sky’ and the Saturn award-winning ‘Farscape’. ‘Paper Planes’, a children’s adventure movie Steve co-wrote, begins production in late 2013 for a Christmas 2014 release.

Here’s how Steve gets words on a page.

What’s your writing process? What comes first – plot or character?

For me the high concept plot idea comes first. For example, the log line for my latest novel ‘Combustion’ is: What if there was a virus in the air that didn’t affect humans but destroyed combustion engines?

Of course having a high concept is not enough on its own. You must then create compelling characters to drive the story. They must be fresh but relatable and have a point of difference that makes them interesting. Also, there must be scope for conflict between every character, even the ones who love each other. Conflict is the life blood of satisfying fiction. There is nothing more boring than characters standing around, furiously agreeing with each other.

Take us through a typical writing day for you.

When I’m writing a first draft I like to hit a minimum number of words a day, every day, no matter what. At the moment I’m writing my third book while prepping the release of my second so my time is split. I usually write late at night and won’t finish until I have reached my set world count. At the moment I’m writing a 1000 words a day. My books are usually a little over 80,000 words so a first draft will take about 3 months.

Who are the authors you love, and why? 

Stephen King, specifically Different Seasons. Four tightly structured plots, vivid characters and that ability of King’s to cut to the emotional core of big issues. I read it as a teen and it really stuck with me, especially his use of regional patios.

Tom Wolfe, specifically The Right Stuff. Wolf didn’t glamorize the Mercury 7 astronauts but gave us a truthful look at the group of deeply flawed, morally ambiguous ex-fighter jocks who were the first Americans in orbit. This book sparked my long standing interest in the US space program.

Michael Tolkin, specifically The Player. Written by a screenwriter, it’s the novel I’d always wanted to read (and write), a sophisticated page turner with the pace and brevity of a screenplay without the inherent time, length and detail constraints. I learned how to write succinct, punchy dialogue from this book.

What is the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

You can lose a great deal of precious time trying to be a screenwriter, time that is better spent writing novels. Yes, my writing style was honed as a screenwriter but getting movies and TV shows into production is a very time consuming and difficult process. You can create these amazing stories but very few people will ever read them, and then if they are produced it often has less to do with the quality of the writing and more to do with the financing and casting arrangements. Also, let’s not forget that screenplays are a blueprint for someone else’s work of art, which isn’t very satisfying if you’re not the director.

How do you deal with feedback? 

You must embrace it, no matter how difficult it may be. There is always something constructive in there that will make the work better. But it is a balance. You need to hold on to your vision while being open to improvements. The thing to do is to keep an open mind and be polite. The people giving you the notes have their reasons for thinking something doesn’t work. You need to hear them out. Sometimes they may not be able to pinpoint what is wrong exactly, but you need to find it. It is hard but always makes the work better, and that’s the point of the exercise after all.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing? 

I use everything I have experienced as often as I can. If you can draw on an emotion that is truthful, that you have experience with, it always reads well. If you have a feeling or thought, try and jot it down so you can use it in your writing later.

Give me some advice about writing.

You pay for the heart with the funny.

That means if you want the readers to care about the characters at the end, when the stakes are at their highest, then the readers must love (or at least like) the characters, and the best way for that to happen is for them to make the readers laugh at the beginning. It doesn’t have to be laugh out loud funny, but the characters must endear themselves to the readers early on. It’s like real life — we all like to be around people who make us laugh.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace. 

Find a compelling central concept and create interesting characters. Also, before you send a manuscript to a publisher or an agent, hire a reputable, experienced editor to go through it. It won’t cost that much but it will be money well spent. It will increase your chances of success ten fold. Do this even if you are going to self-publish. The book will be better for it and you will learn a great deal from the experience, which you will then use when writing your next book.

What’s next for you?

I’m writing an action adventure novel set in the world of Formula One for 2014. Also a movie I wrote is shooting at the end of this year. It’s an Aussie kids adventure, in the vain of ‘Stand By Me’, called ‘Paper Planes’. We don’t make many Aussie kid’s movies so I’m really happy Screen Australia funded it. Robert Connolly (The Bank, Balibo) is directing.

You can connect with Steve at steveworland.com or twitter.com/StevenWorland or facebook.com/StevenWorland