Saturday, December 10, 2011

End of Year lists.

Considering I've never featured in any newspaper or magazine's end-of-year lists before, 2011 is turing out to be a pretty good year. First up was The Independent, which was brilliant, despite the fact they appear to have changed my name.

Then there's The Daily Telegraph. Another one I was delighted to see, even though they have me down as a Chelsea fan. I also got a mention in The Observer.

Another brilliant thing was getting totally unexpected recommendations from Danny Kelly and Freya North

Saturday, October 8, 2011

How I saved myself from a visit by the SAS

It all started when Lee put a post up on Twitter asking which of the three books he'd just bought he should read first.




Obviously, 32 Programmes would have been my recommendation. But seeing that one of his other choices was the latest offering by mysterious former SAS operative and soldier, Andy Mcnab, I decided this would be the best strategy:



Turned out I was right.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Do authors care about bad reviews?




You often read about writers who claim never to read reviews and even if they did, they don't care about what they say. I'm sure I've claimed the same thing myself on occasions. But the truth - for me, anyway - is that I read every single one. I can get a dozen good ones and think "Oh, that's nice", whereas it just takes one negative review, even if it's someone on Amazon, to ruin my day and make me decide that I'll never write another book. Ever.

This kind of slightly irrational thinking reached its peak late last month, just after the new book had got its second 'Book of the Week' in a national Sunday paper. I was feeling pretty good about life until I checked Amazon and saw that even though most reviewers seemed to really enjoy it, there was someone who really didn't like it. That was it. Completely wiped out all the good feelings and it was a couple of days before I felt like writing again.

Do authors care about bad reviews? Absolutely.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My morning at Transworld



One of the benefits of having 32 Programmes published by a major outfit like Transworld was that I got to visit their offices and have a look around. It got even better when I spotted a couple of Derren Brown books and pointed out that I was a fan. "Go on, help yourself" was the reply. This scenario was repeated about half a dozen times, when I confessed to being a big fan of, amongst others, Lee Child, Paul O'Grady, Jamie Carragher and Bear Grylls.


The highlight, though, was meeting all the people that had worked on the book, from Lisa who came up with the brilliant cover design to Vivien, the apparently unflappable production manager. The gentlemen in the picture are the ones I've been most closely involved with; on the left, the book's editor Giles Elliott, who made the whole thing happen AND came with me to a Bromley match, while on the right is Ben Willis, who never seems to stop promoting various books, including mine.

It was a fantastic day, capped off by a champagne celebration and a hugely flattering speech by Giles.