By Jay Stringer

By now readers will have come to expect that I'll stray off topic quite often here at DSD. But these last couple of weeks it's served a good purpose. With Old Gold coming out last month -and all that entailed- I knew I needed to think a few things through and see how my views on publishing would change as I...well....got published.

It turns out that having your first book published is basically like going through puberty a second time. The emotions get a little heightened, your sleep pattern gets weird, you grow a silly looking beard, and you develop a new line in self-doubt. So I should say a quick thank you to the support network. There were a lot of people who did their bit last month, from people who fielded crazy emails, to the many bloggers, reviewers and interviewers who spent their own free time helping me get my name out there.

Another thing I should say is that anyone who won competitions, or who was otherwise promised signed books, sit tight- they are signed and ready, and I'm making daily trips to the post office.

Something that Joelle commented on once, I believe, is the change from being a writer to being an author. It's one thing to be told that will happen, it's another to experience it and think, whoa. There are so many things to do that are not writing; interviews, promotions, posting, selling, copy-editing, phone calls. Each one is a fun experience in it's own right, and no author should moan about them, but they can also be a large distraction from the job of putting words on a blank page.

More than that there is a change in your thinking. Where once my agent would get random emails from me talking about story ideas, character names, or strawberry milkshake, now it's about sales figures, plans to diversify my career, and the best time of the month to give interviews.

Again each one is a fun and welcome experience, but each one takes time away from the words-on-a-page thing.

And here's where I realised something.

We're all familiar with the debates that the internet likes to have over publishing. And we're all familiar with the cast of characters who take part in these debates. One of the roles that has to be filled is the self-publishing author who seems more obsessed with marketing and sales than with writing and story*.

I used to think that the hardest challenge I was going to have to face in this here career was learning when to let go. And I was half right. I thought it would be about the content of the book; when is a story finished? How often can I return to rewrite it? When do I click 'send' and make it my editors problem? What I've found is that 'letting go' has a whole other dimension to it, and I think this is where the above 'role' comes from.

Writing a book is not something you do for instant gratification. It's a slow and muddled experience, piling words up higher and higher above you and making sure to do it in such a way that they won't collapse. Depending on your process it can take anywhere from a month to a year, and can be very hard to feel like you're accomplishing anything, especially when you're stuck in the mire of ACT 2 and each step forward is followed by two steps back.

That all changes once the book is out there.

There are sales ranks and reviews. You can make a comment on twitter and see an almost instant reaction. You have people sending you messages to say that they're holding your book in their hands, or that they've just ordered it. You can find a sense of achievement every day, just by selling another copy, or seeing another interview get published, and by thinking up new ways to market your work in real-time.

And far more than any of the other distractions, that can be a difficult thing to pull away from. It's far more tempting to sit and send out tweets and watch your Amazon sales rank change in response, than to sit with that blank page and start again from scratch. It's fun to ride that train for a time, but you have to learn to step off and get back work.


*Note, this isn't me calling any particular person out for that, or saying that all self-pubbing authors are like that (I have a self published ebook myself) but I do think it's fair to say that role exists, and gets filled each time one of the debates comes up.

By Jay Stringer


So I have a book out this week. But you already know that. You already bought it. Right? RIIIGHT? Good, we're cool.



When my wife is in music journalist mode, she'll often ask me if I want to listen to whatever new act or album she's writing about. Sometimes I'll say yes, sometimes I'll shrug and pick my nose, sometimes I'll threaten to burn down the flat if she ever brings that band near me again. An act that I'll always say yes to hearing is Dave Hughes & The Renegade Folk Punk Band, and they have a new single coming out so you can all say yes to them too.

By Jay Stringer


One of my earliest posts on DSD,  back in 2009, was a three way discussion between myself, Russel, and honorary DSDer Ray Banks. We were hammering away at whether P.I. fiction can work in Britain. Each of us had a stake in it; Russel has a great series starring Dundonian P.I. J Mcnee, Ray had written four Cal Innes books in which he wrestled with the idea and me...well....my stake was vague.

OLD GOLD was out for submission at that point, but I couldn't really call myself a P.I. author without feeling a bit like, well, a dick. Here's the first couple of paragraphs from that old post (though you should go and read the whole thing);

We all know the tradition on the PI in fiction.
Even the mention of it evokes certain images. Mean streets and trench coats, strange camera angles and seedy Motels. Maybe it evokes New York hotels with introspective alcoholics, crazy Colombians and Irish gangsters. One of the most lingering images for me is of a beach trailer and a gold car, and in the last few years it’s begun to conjure up poetry and whiskey in a rain soaked Galway.

Okay, maybe none of those things. There are a number of writers doing interesting things with the PI at the moment, and some of them are on this very website. But what I’m getting at is that all of the images that spring to mind when you mention the phrase “Private Eye” seem inextricably linked with America. And, thanks to writers like Bruen and Hughes, Ireland. I’ll take that a step further, and say that the images that spring to mind are “anything but British.”


I didn't agree with the proposition even back then, but it had felt important to make that case at the top of the discussion before getting on with disagreeing with it. I've had a few years to think about my position, and I have a book coming out in 12 days that is also thinking about the same question. OLD GOLD is not a traditional P.I. novel, but it is in part the result of me trying to figure out how a PI works in British fiction.

First, I'll make the argument, stealing from people who've made it better than me, for why the character doesn't work over here.

The P.I. is a lone wolf. Raymond Chandler wrote; "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."  He's The detective of Chandlers mythology, and in one form or another survives to this day with some tweaks and revisions. The gunslinger. He's the man with no name riding into town and having to time for the corruption or the system. He's a fundamentally American myth, and that's said with no intent to patronise.

British fiction, on the other hand, is all about the system. It's all about knowing ones own place. Detectives are cops, reporters or little old ladies, and they all work in service of maintaining the status quo. The nod towards any kind of maverick detective within this world is to have a character who is actually better at preserving the status quo than the people around him (or her); their methods may be wild and their reputation may be as a loner, but ultimately they're working to the same end, to put everything back in it's place.

It's almost tempting to make a different comparison, based on the mutual respect between Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming. The Private Detective is the American, written by Chandler, and is the man of individual integrity and agency, the man who walks down the mean streets and is not afraid to take on authority. The British end of this comparison is a spy, a cruel and skilled killer hired by the government to do their work. He has integrity and humour, and shares many of Marlowe's traits, but his job is to upset someone else's  authority in order to maintain the status quo.

I don't disagree with any of this line of thinking. I don't doubt that this version of the Private Detective is fulfilling a role that doesn't seem to fit easily into a British setting. But I think that's only half the argument. First I think it's interesting to note that Chandler was a mix of both cultures, he was born and died as a United States citizen, but spent many years between as a Brit (on paper at least) and it could be argued that his mythical Private Eye was formed as much on my side of the Atlantic as his. Perhaps he cast an eye back towards figures like Robin Hood, and a time when our fictional characters operated outside the system? There is a forgotten tradition in British culture of making heroes out of some nasty people. Warlords become noble kinds. Petty thieves become folk heroes. This changed somewhere around the French Revolution, but that's a story for another time. By the same token, it's important to note the relationship Ian Fleming had with the United States, and to argue that Bond was perhaps formed as much by American pop culture as British. Marlowe is an American filtered through Britain and Bond is a Brit filtered through America. And neither of them are realistic, but both were brilliant to read.

The other thing to mention here is that the version of the Private Eye we talk about in these conversations, the honourable cowboy(as opposed to Le Carre's honourable schoolboy) overlooks an other important writer. It's easy to mention Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe in the same breath, but they were very different characters. Spade was aware of his place within the system, and was willing to lie, cheat and manipulate to get his own way. I think Spade is a character who would fit very comfortably in the British tropes that I've mentioned.

So while I agree that the honourable cowboy detective is a character who doesn't fit easily into British fiction (though there are writers who manage it) I would argue that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just as that character says something about the culture he spawned in, we simply need to find ones that say something about Britain. Jack Taylor works (in addition to Ken Bruen's brilliant prose) because he says something about Ireland, not because he's honouring Chandler.

My first point of contention would be to ask that British writers stop apologising for so many things. "Oh yes, we're British, we can't really get away with certain things". I come from a region rife with guns and gun crime, and live in a country that is genuinely struggling in it's most built up areas with large drug and gang problems, yet we forever seem to want to fence things off, shrug our shoulders, and say "of course, there are certain things we can't write about because we're British."

My second argument comes with another quote. I recently read some words by George Orwell in which he somehow -in then first half of the last century- managed to sum up exactly what I'm trying to say. he noted that the English (he was more pre-occupied with Englishness than Britishness, but I'll expand it for the sake of my argument) novel was full of rules and primness, whilst the American novel was busting with noise and violence. He questioned if the difference was down to there being a spirit of freedom alive in the American psyche that no longer existed in British culture. He closes out the argument with;  "...the hero of an American novel is presented not as a cog in the social machine, but as an individual working out his own salvation with no inhibitions." That was in 1936, but it says everything about the argument I'm making today.

He also points out that the sense of freedom in the American psyche is perhaps no longer reflected in reality. That's a much deeper issue than I want to get into here, but I raise it to make another point; So much great American crime fiction of the past twenty or so years has been more pre-occupied with the bigger picture, I'm thinking of things like CLOCKERS and THE WIRE, works that made a cliche out of the phrase, "The Dickensian aspect." The idea that the fiction explores the whole and not just the lone wolf. At the same time we're seeing more British writers turning to the Private Eye rather than go the long way around with a maverick cop or a rogue reporter. This is no doubt down to our cultures bleeding into each other, the cross over that we're all experiencing in our language and customs. But to me it also shows that some of the rules we've thrown up over the years are false.

The British P.I. can very much exist. He's a character who reflects the existence of the machine, and is aware of his status as a cog within it. Down these mean streets a man must go who is himself mean, and into this machine a man must go who is aware of the machine. Perhaps he spends his story trying to break free, or perhaps he spends it trying to make his own life easier. Perhaps in great noir tradition he is doomed to fail, or to be reminded of his place or even comes to love big brother.

I think there is a lot of room for a British Private Eye who brings with him that, "Dickensian aspect."

By Jay Stringer


My novel OLD GOLD comes out in under a month. You already know this, because I've been mentioning it in every other post since December.

The story takes place in the region where I grew up, in the Black Country of England. It's a region that took it's name from coal mining and industry, so you can imagine how kind the last thirty years have been to the people there.

I'm aware that buying a book by a first-time author can be a bit of a thing. The reader is having to place trust in that writer in a way that they don't have to for an established author, and at hard times like these that's a choice to gamble with your hard-earned money.

I decided to give people a primer. I've had work published online and in print, short stories here and there, and I've been blogging and writing for websites for a few years now, but I wanted to give people something specific to OLD GOLD.


FAITHLESS STREET is a prequel of sorts. It contains four short stories that set the scene for the novel. Each one features a character (or characters) who show up in OLD GOLD. It adds back-story to these people, and fleshes out the world that you'll be walking in if you buy the book. The novel is narrated in first person by Eoin Miller, a particularly mixed up individual, but he only shows up in one of the prequel stories, so it's a chance to get into other peoples heads. Do we trust Miller as a narrator? Well, that's up to you.

In THE DARK KNIGHT, Heath Ledger's Mr J says, "If you're good at something, never do it for free." But that begs the question, how can people judge if you're good at something? People on my mailing list have already had a week to take a look at an ARC version of the collection for free, and now I'm opening it up to you guys. You'll see it's priced at 0.99 at the moment, but from tomorrow until tuesday it will be 0.00 (unless I've set it wrong....) so that everyone out there can share the free.

Why start out straight away with free? Why not try and make some money first? Well again, I want to get this out to people. And, let's be honest, I want people to buy the novel. I figure giving you all a chance to try out my writing for free for a few days now is better than asking you all to buy a whole book just on faith. Try it out, and if you like it, tell other people while it's still free. Let's share the free with as many people as possible.

And while we're talking about that magic price point, Dave White's brilliant Witness To Death is free right now. Action? Spies? Torture? Go click, do it now.

And one final thing. I've prepared a Spotify playlist. I have to stress that I don't have permission from any of the musicians (although Franz Nicolay kindly allowed me to use his words as the epigraph to the book) so I can't claim this is in any way the official soundtrack album. But it's music that reflects the moods and flavours of the book. Most of it, you could imagine, is the kind of moody guitar music that Eoin Miller would pick, but thrown in there are selections that reflect each of the main characters and the region of the Black Country.

If you don't already, follow me on twitter (@JayStringer) because that's where I'll be announcing when it's gone free tomorrow and when the promotion ends.

If you don't have a kindle but still want in on the free stuff, tweet me before Tuesday and we'll see what we can sort out. 

By Jay Stringer

Not for the first time, my day has been changed by reading something that the mighty Chuck Wendig has written. His words will tip your head over onto your ass. It's also a scary thing; I have his novel Blackbirds next to my bed, but it has to remain unread until I've finished the first draft of my own novel, because I know his prose style and decisions would creep into my own work.

But on this particular day, it's a little different. He's posted on the subject of a meme that's doing the rounds on the facebook, and (whilst I'm in full agreement with him on the issue) It was inspiring a long reply from me. But hey, why post a reply on Terrible Minds when I had a DSD slot to fill? Cheers, Chuck!

And sure, some of my thoughts will overlap with things he's already said. But when he says them he has a beard, and when I say them I have an English accent. When he says them, he still has a beard, but I have the full authority of William Shakespeare and Alan Rickman. To be or not to be, thrown off the Nakatomi building. I might be rambling, have you noticed?

Anyway. Here's the meme that Chuck points to-


I'm not here to weigh in on the whole "indie author" thing -nor to try and grapple with what that phrase actually means- because I think it's a silly conversation. And that's not a dig at Wendig, he agrees on that too, I believe. And I'm not here to point out that the meme disproves it's own position. No, I'm here to weigh in on rejection.

Did I miss a memo? When did this become a bad thing?

One of my worries with the ease of publication in the modern age is that we're beginning to think that rejection is a step to be avoided. An inconvenience that we can all sidestep at the touch of a button. On this very subject Paul Cornell once wrote; "a boxer doesn't learn to fight by avoiding getting punched in the face." Show me a comedian who has never faced rejection and I'll show you one who has never told a joke. We learn to succeed by failing. We learn to walk by falling over often enough that we learn to miss the ground.

Looking at that list, the easiest thing in the world is to say, "pfffft, 22 people didn't know what the hell they were talking about when James Joyce showed them his work." But the honest professional writer looks at that list and thinks, "I wonder what state Dubliners was in for those first 22 submissions."

Here's the (open) dirty secret in writing; You don't sit down and write a good book. You sit down and fail at writing a good book. You show your work to people, you take criticism, and then you fail better.

The first person to whom I showed a completed first draft of Old Gold told me exactly what was wrong with it. (I won't name names, but he was an agent and novelist, and has recently added publisher to that list, and also is Scottish. And may or may not be named Allan.) After seeing a sample of the book he lead off with a compliment, "the writing is, on the whole, excellent." That got my ego up and told me what I already knew- I had written the best book of all time. But after luring me in with the praise he gave me a list of all the ways the book failed. (The word "failed," wasn't used, but only because he was being polite.) After another edit, and after many of those problems were fixed, he gave me another list. This one contained one of the most important pieces of criticism I've ever received, "if you want people to read it, you need to learn formatting." He the had to explain to me some very basic conventions of formatting a book. Until that moment I hadn't realised I was using my learning difficulty as an excuse- my brain doesn't do certain things and therefore I had decided I should get a free pass on them. Nuh uh.

The first short story I placed online at a crime fiction webzine was one that had already been rejected twice. Not because the first two people were idiots, but because the story wasn't ready. On the third attempt, and with some additional editing input from Elaine Ash at BTAP, the story got an award nomination and saw me wind up in a print anthology beside Rankin, Guthrie and Banks. Professor Weddle rejected a story of mine for Needle, and he was right- it wasn't a very good short story. It's looking like it may be a good opening to my current novel instead.

Hearing, "no," in any of it's forms is not pleasant. It's not a happy experience. But it's also vital. The meme above seeks to rob us all of this. It states that, "the readers opinion is all that matters," and suggests that each of the numbers in the list represents a failure of taste or decency. I look at each of those numbers in the list and see opinions that may well have helped the author, or strengthened to book. Even if it was an opinion that wasn't taken on board (because we each develop a sense of when to listen and when to hold firm) it's still a test, a moment that has helped the story stand on it's own to feet either through change or resilience*.

It would be lovely to sidestep all of this. It would be nice to sit and write thousands of words then simply walk away from them and call it finished. It would be lovely, but it wouldn't be writing. The above meme is really advocating not trying.

I give out writing advice as rarely as I can get away with, but here's one that I think needs to be said;
If you want to be a writer, you need rejection. You need to fail. Only then can you fail better.





*I'm pretty sure the list is wrong. As far as I know it's a total misrepresentation of the publication of The Diary Of Anne Frank. Though it would be odd to think -even after everything I've just said- of 16 editors saying that the book lacked drama and tension.