The Making of Lullaby of Lies...

Here's a little bit of film that inspired some of Lullaby of Lies. If you've read it, you'll know exactly which bit. If not, I hope you enjoy two of the most adorable actors in existence...




So, to give you a bit of background, and in no particular order, ten things:

1, I knew what the plot of this was going to be before I finished Song to Wake to. I was inspired - partly - by another, very successful YA paranormal story. I won't say which, though...

2, I started writing it in December, but in January and February I hit some kind of wall, and spent hours staring at empty computer screens... or playing around on wikipedia. Somehow I picked up the pace again, it may have been when it stopped raining...

3, Most of it was written at my dining table, though significant bits were written on a trip to the Jordanian desert, by the Red Sea at Aqaba, in Istanbul and Amman airports, in a car on the highway to Petra, and the first draft was finished in the parking lot at the entrance to Jesus's baptism site at the river Jordan. It was polished in front of the TV, showing the Olympic swimming, at JFK airport, in a Starbucks on 31st and 6th, and on my sisters sofa in Dalston, East London ...

4, I proofread it 3 times. My number one wish is to be able to afford a professional proofreader, until then I have to do it myself, which is quite possibly my least favourite part of being a writer. However, it's possible you may find mistakes. If you do, let me know, and I'm sorry...

5, Linked to the above, I've decided (and this is possibly an absurd decision) to make the language and spelling of the Levels series 'mid-Atlantic.' I say sidewalk for pavement, and asphalt for tarmac, and couch for sofa, BUT I spell tire tyre, center centre and realize realise. I'm trying to be inclusive, but it's possible I'm annoying everybody...

6, This may be the last of the series written in first person. With more and more characters it's getting too difficult to tell the story properly. One of the most important strands of this story is the introduction of Hurley, but it was very hard to show what he's really like from Maddie's point of view. If you've read Lullaby of Lies you'll know that there's the promise of a whole team of new characters, and there's no way I can tell their stories only looking through Maddie's eyes. Changes are coming...

7, The next Levels book will be released in 2013, before that I'm going to bring out the first two books of a different series, called THE WATER BOOK. It's from a boys point of view, it's not paranormal, and it features an age-old obsession of mine. Watch this space...

8, Before that I'm going to have a little contest on the blog, with a $30 Amazon voucher prize...

9, Jon Esmere has turned into one of the most interesting characters I've ever written. He constantly surprises me, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how he develops, and how his relationships with the other characters (one of them in particular) changes.

10, The other character I'm growing to love is Hurley Laker. I like him so much that I'm writing a little short story about what happened to him, Jenna, and somebody else, when Maddie was distracted. I'll be giving it away to all readers of Lullaby of Lies.

That's it for now. I'll leave you with a bit more of Emma and Ryan. No reason, apart from them being so pretty and so funny. Enjoy...

New Release!

After quite a lot of work, Lullaby of Lies is AVAILABLE.
Americans can get it HERE
Brits need to go HERE

Obviously I'm biased, but I think it's quite good. I'll post in the next couple of days about writing it. In the meantime, get 'em while they're hot...

Lullaby of Lies

Is on its way. I'm squeezing final editing around an epic summer vacation (New York, London, and now Bucharest) which I'll hopefully write about here in the autumn. In the meantime I've got some more work from the legendary Olly Prentice. Here is the draft cover...

and here is a little taste of the content...

Flames blossomed from the windows of the boarding houses. Screaming children ran from burning doorways, but the grass they ran across erupted into fire. A boy chased a football across the field, before realising that flames were chasing him. He stumbled, and fire enfolded his entire body

The Clockwork Prince, Levels latest, Euro 2012 and Ronaldo in tears

The last month has been all about teams. I've been reading the Infernal Devices and watching the European Championships. It's been dramatastic.

Beautiful young men, running around trying to save the day, while gorgeous girls watch them with bated breath and vicious villains hack them to the ground. Crowds of remorseless enemies attacking like robots and success and failure balanced on a knife edge.

And then there's the Infernal Devices, Clockwork Prince, one of the best books I've read in a really long time. The breadth of characterisation and the complexity of the plot is breathtaking. The romance becomes perfectly complicated, and the mysterious ambitions of the Magister become ever more twisted. The setting is fantastic, Victorian London and Yorkshire and there is such attention to detail. There are minor characters - a slightly deranged old Yorkshireman, and a gloomy Irish kitchen maid who are beautifully drawn and much more than walk on parts.


My one problem with the book is that the reason Will Herondale is like, well, like Will Herondale, is revealed and for me it didn't quite work. It requires the reader to believe that a series of quite odd actions and convictions are possible, and more than that, they can continue for years with nobody finding out about them. I'm sorry if this sounds a bit cryptic, but I don't want to give anything away. if you've read the book, you'll know what I mean.

Returning to my original point,  The Infernal Devices divides its readers into teams. Team Will, or Team Jem, while the book itself is jammed with teams, there's the Magister crowd, there are the Shadowhunters and the Downworlders - themselves split between the Lightwoods and the Institute crowd, and werewolves and vampires. And they all play against each other.

Which of course, the footballers don't, they face off one at a time. The Greeks and the Germans in an occasion crammed with drama, tragedy, a bit of austerity. The English and the Ukrainians, mistake fuelled and cagey. Every night ends in tears. Fat, shirtless men wipe their eyes in the stand. Tonight the Spanish and the French. Each occasion is loaded with excitement, but it's only ever a two-way affair.



And this is why the Infernal Devices beats football. It's just more complicated. Though, at the moment I could do with it being much less interesting and the football itself being very dull indeed. I've got  ,  Song to Wake to to release in paperback and as a free eBook in a week's time and Lullaby of Lies to polish. The 3rd Levels book will hopefully - like Clockwork Prince - split readers into Team Eddy and Team Jon.

No time for distractions!

Rainman, Belle Dame Sans Merci and Lullaby of Lies

Writing first drafts of novels can turn you a little bit into Rainman. You start off, and it's all about the small numbers. You go as fast as you can to get to a hundred words, three figures. Next is 111 ( you need to get rid of the zeros) next is 125 (an eighth of a thousand) 200,  222, 250, 300, 333, 400, 444 and 500.

That's ten results to celebrate before you've written five hundred words. If you know what to say, if there's nothing on TV and you can stay away from the internet for long enough, you can do it in twenty minutes.

The first five hundred words of Lullaby of Lies is mainly preface. It's going to be re-written, of course, but it includes this line, that I like enough to be fairly sure it will still be there when it's finally available.

'Morgan’s fingertips brushed against the wall and two fingernails fluttered to the ground, like the pale wings of a dying moth.'

It's all the same on the way to 1000. From then on, the thousands are the milestones. They're the excuse to stop and have a cup of coffee and stare out the window. But of course there are new super milestones. 1111, 2222, etc. These are cool, as are 2,500 and 7,500, up to 10,000 then you add 11,111 to the mix, as well as the mega-super milestones, 25,000, 50,000, and 75,000.

Which is where I am now with the first draft of Lullaby of Lies. 75,000 words. Hopefully today I'll get to 76,666 and tomorrow 77,777. How awesome will that be? To be honest, if you're not completely sunk in this thing like I am, not very awesome at all, but like I said, writing novels makes you even odder than you are to start off with.

This is going to be bad news for those of you who are waiting eagerly for Lullaby of Lies, and I'm sorry. When I finish the first draft I'll set a definite release date, but I guess it'll be August. Between then and now, though, there are going to be some pretty exciting Levels events and give aways, so watch this space. In the meantime, here's the last sentence I wrote, including word 77,777.

'I ran back towards Kieran. His face looked like a hideous skull with the jaw strained unnaturally wide and all his teeth gleaming as he forced out the end of a dying scream.'

What do you make of that? 

Oh, and one other little clue. take a look at the picture at the top of this post. 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci.' It's not there just cos it's pretty...

The Lord of the Rings, Dirty Dancing, why it takes so long to write a story, and Mali.

Aged thirteen I would spend Sunday evenings... 

doing what? To find out, pay a visit to Vamps, Weres and Cassay to read the GUEST POST I WROTE...

Alternatively you can read about Mali.

Mali
i
/ˈmɑːli/, officially the  Republic of Mali  (French:  République du Mali,  French pronunciation: [maˈli]), is a
landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the
Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over
1,240,000 km² with a population of 14.5 million. Its capital is Bamako. Mali consists of eight regions and its borders
on the north reach deep into the middle of the  Sahara, while the country's southern part, where the majority of
inhabitants live, features the Niger and Sénégal rivers. The country's economic structure centers around agriculture
and fishing. Some of Mali's natural resources are gold, uranium, livestock, and salt. About half the population live
below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
[5]
Present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled  trans-Saharan trade: the  Ghana
Empire, the Mali Empire (from which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire. In the late 19th century, during the
Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as
the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the  Mali Federation.
Shortly thereafter, following Senegal's withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the
independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new
constitution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali

Stories Long in the Making

In Britain, book shops with cafe tables in amongst the shelves were unheard of. Twenty one years old, I left and went to live in New York. Barnes and Noble was a marvel. I worked in a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, and every day, on my way back to the Gershwin Hotel, where I lived, I would call in at the enormous store between 22nd and 23rd and read from EMMA WHO SAVED MY LIFE. Sadly the store is now GONE  but the book is still a solid recommendation.
It was in the lovely store on UNION SQUARE, though, that I once saw a woman, so striking, that I had to write a description of her on a napkin.
That was my writing in those days, notes of description on napkins, and scraps torn from paper bags and waitress pads. Eventually I came back to the UK with my stack of descriptions and laboured to find a plot to cram them all in to (plot, oddly, was my biggest struggle in those days). I bought HOW TO WRITE A MOVIE IN 21 DAYS and from it learned the first nuts and bolts of story. I also, incidentally, produced a complete filmscript in 3 weeks, mainly at a table in the Rat and Parrot Park Street, Bristol, between shifts. How proud was I? It was rubbish.
Following on from that, I used the last of my New York restaurant tips to buy a second hand laptop, and used Microsoft Write to produce a short story called 'The Songbirds Egg', which I then recycled into a novel called 'The Cloud Ceiling.' Both of them heavily influenced by ROSAMUND LEHMAN and Lawrence Durrell's incomparable ALEXANDRIA QUARTET.
The stories were lumpily written, heavy on sentiment and awkwardly poetic description. But they had a character called Madeleine, and the description of her face, copied from the New York napkin, isn't bad.
It's not bad, and so, with so many of these things, it will be recycled into Lullaby of Lies. Most of the words I write have an awkward ancestry of some sort, but these - randomly - will be known. These lines will be pared down and will crop up in chapters nine and ten. Hopefully you'll read them there...

She is nineteen, preoccupied, a steep and selfless beauty.

Madeleine's hair is dark and as she talks swings, smooth as glass. The straight grain lightly crossed by paler, coppery strands in lazy half curves, like lines of water snaking across a car window.

Her skin is so pale and her features dark and finely drawn. Thick lashes and clear curving brows. Her face never blurred. Clean lines on white like crisp type on new paper, symmetry like the phrasing of verse.

Her eyes dark, lower lids heavy with strong vertical surface, into the vertical planes of her cheekbones. Lips restrained but tilted upward along the tiny seam between lip and face.

Fine half circles under each eye, and a crease along the middle of each lid. They make her eyes seem even larger, with an extra layer of focus. They make the light in the black ringed irises stronger through her gaze and the whole was even more beautiful.

Madeleine's hair flickered behind her and then twisted under her chin. Squinting, she tried to hold it away from her face. I gathered it in one hand and held it at the nape of her neck. She leant toward me and this was how the photograph was taken. Her hair was very cool, soft, straight as pouring water.