Mark Billingham is one of Britain’s well established writers. His DI, (Detective Inspector), Tom Thorne novels have been spectacularly successful in the UK and abroad.  He was the opening speaker on the Friday morning session of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate.  He was also the winner of Best Crime Novel 2009 prize, awarded in the opening ceremony the previous night.

Early career

He was introduced by the author and Guardian crime fiction critic Laura Wilson, who quickly gave us Mark’s background.  He was brought up in Birmingham, trained as an actor and appeared in a number of minor roles in episodes of TV showsDempsey & Makepeace, Juliet Bravo, Boon, and The Bill.^] Afte finding himself playing a variety of “bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper, or a bent copper”

He then moved into standup progressing from 5-minute, unpaid “try-out” spots to 10-, 20- and 30-minute paid slots. Within a year he played The Comedy Store on several occasions, where he also appears regularly as a Master of Ceremonies.  This combined with a number of appearances on TV and radio, such as the only human face on the  Spitting Image, “the taller half” of top double act “The Tracy Brothers” and appearences on the radio version of The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

In 1988, he was seen on the children’s comedy series News at Twelve, in which the central character “broadcasts his own (imaginary) TV news bulletin every evening.  This led to his getting a part in Maid Marion and her Merry Men, which opened the door to his writing career.

Mark played the part of Gary, one of a pair of Sheriff of Nottingham’s  henceman.  With his colleague Graeme, played by David Lloyd, and were the “bestest mates”.  Mostly they were extremely affable, but in the tradition of clever villains with idiot sidekicks, not very clever most of the time. They are often very friendly with the Merry Men, who tend to return the sentiment, except when Gary and Graeme are doing what they’re paid for.  Graeme tended to enjoy things like torture and teasing the villagers more than Gary does, though Gary would challenge Graeme for the chance to do executions.

Although a children’s programme it was much appreciated by many adults, and has been likened to Blackadder, not only for its historical setting and the presence of Tony Robinson, but also for its comic style. It is far more surreal than Blackadder, however, and drops even more (deliberate)anachronisms. Like many British children’s programmes, there is a lot of social commentary sneakily inserted, as well as witty asides about the Royal family, buses running on time, etc.  interestingly the show was brought by American TV and shown at an 11:30 evening slot.

Moving into writing

Mark was actually paid to this erm – work.  While on the set he got interested in writing and with the encouragement of Tony Robinson he developed his skills and contributed to the scripts.  He then moved into writing scripts for children’s television.  With David Lloyd he wrote and acted  in episodes of Harry’s Mad (based on the book by Dick King-Smith) and with Peter Cocks wrote and co-starred in Granada TV‘s Knight School.

He described, with a lot of humour, his writing career.  He reckons he owes a lot of his writing skills to his acting and particularly his standup experience.  His main protagonist:  London based Tom Thorne.  He talked for quite a time about the getting the character right.  It is cliche that a policeman investigating murder is flawed, but that is the reality of the job.

Structuring a book

The structure of a book is important and building tension as is bringing in unexpected twists. he gives a good example in the film Silence of the Lambs.

• Towards the end of the film we see the SWAT team has got the address of the serial killer.  They move into place around the house.
• Meanwhile Jody Foster, FBI agent, is going out to finish off a couple of loose ends, to tidy up the paperwork.
• The head of the SWAT team press the doorbell.
• We see the killer come from his basement up the stairs.
• We see the serial killer start to open the door.
• The SWAT team look tense.
• Then we realise that it is Jody at the right house and in serious danger.

This is a great example on film on how to throw the viewer.  Writers need to do something similar to keep the interest in their books.

Characterisation

Mark described his main character anvil shaped, as in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  Ton will retain the shape of the anvil after it has fallen on his head.  Thorne has the psychological equivalent.  A bad experieince will affect and develop the character over the series, which is a good reason once you’re hooked on the books to start at the beginning of the series with Sleepyhead and gradually progress with Thorn’s troubled life.

Research

Mark talked about research.  There are certain things a writer has to get right.  The characters in particular have to be believable.  He will make a lot of effort to understand say how Alzheimer affects the individual and the family and friends of the individual.

However, he, and I strongly agree, dislikes authors who write the great ‘see my research’ tracks of their books.  He quotes, and I also agree, though my wife will kill for saying so, that Kathy Reichs spends four pages describing the difference between cat hair and dog hair. (In the book I read there were at least four pages on blood splatter and why o’ why did a sensible heroine go by herself, without backup to a drug dealing, biker’s bar – calm down Paul.)

Mark does warn that research is probably the greatest excuse not to write.  He  feels that some detail are not so important, such as ‘checking whether you can take a left turn at a certain point’ or as mark ruefully admits that there is not a Starbucks in Brixton.  He does get complaints from readers, but as he points out – it is only a story.

He was asked how he research things he doesn’t know.  He says he just asks people.  He says he has a friend who is pregnant and he goes around and asks her how she’s getting on.  ’Sore nipples’, get out the notebook write it down.  ’Leakage’, get out the notebook and write it down.

Bad experience

Laura got Mark to talk about his most frightening experience.  He was staying in a hotel in Manchester with his writing companion Peter Cocks.  They decided to stay in one night and ordered beer and pizza.  There was a knock on the door and three men wearing balaclavas burst in, beat them up and got the cash cards and pin codes.  They were held over midnight so that the gang could  maximise the withdrawals over two days.   The crime was bizarre, the Manchester police had not come across a simialr incident.  It was clear that the crime was an inside job and Mark suspects that the attackers thought they were possibly closet gays.

He has used the fear in his second book Scaredy Cat illustrating that ‘the power of fear is a very powerful weapon, and if you are prepared to instill it, you have a very powerful weapon that is every bit as dangerous as a gun or a knife.

Help for others

Besides writing books Mark is very active with the crime writing community.  As I went around the Crime Festival I noted Mark organising people, encouraging, introducing and working quite hard behind the scenes to make sure the event was a success.  He was also very active in Creative Thursday, the event for what people like my self, who are now called, prepublished authors.

Mark’s writing career to date

The first book, Sleepyhead, published in 2001, was an immediate bestseller.

The second novel, Scaredy Cat was published in July 2002 and was followed by Lazybones, The Burning Girl, Lifeless, Buried and Death Message. The newest novel, a standalone thriller called In The Dark is published in August 2008. Mark is at work on the next Tom Thorne novel called “Blood Line”

Links

Mark Billingham’s website

Wikipedia Mark Billingham

The rain stopped and I dragged myself out. I quickly found that I was in an areas with lots of nice restaurants.

The Biscaya Bay was particularly attractive with a distinctive Spanish colouring on the outside. For some reason the photos I took did not work. So I’ll go back tomorrow and take them.

Inside I got talking to the chef, who is Basque, and I told him I had worked with a number of really nice Basque students and that my wife and I keep planning a trip along the northern Spanish coast through the Basque and Galicia regions.

The food was good a crayfish salad.

I enjoyed the food and ever so often the chef and the waiter would come and chat with me about Spain, holidays, the crime festival and of course the rotten weather.

So I have a great meal of lamb cutlets with vegetables.

And the bill?

£34 including two glasses of wine and coffee. A really good deal.

Biscaya Bay website

Crime scene on Harrogate Station which I saw on my way to the Old Peculier Crime Writers’s event.

Then it rained and rained and rained. Arghhh

So I had to take a taxi.

Seems OK now – just the odd shower – ten minutes from now, no doubt, when I’m out in the open.

Hotel is quite nice.

Crime scene on Harrogate Station which I saw on my way to the Old Peculier Crime Writers’s event.

Then it rained and rained and rained. Arghhh

So I had to take a taxi.

De-kindle: The arrogant removal of what was thought, by the purchaser, to be a legitimate purchase by ‘Big Brother’ technology

Amazon’s Kindle as most will know is a portable, electronic device for reading books. It differs from most of its competitors by the fact that it attached to to a wifi system, so that books can be downloaded through the air ways. It has the plus that as you commute to work you can also import sections of newspapers and magazines.

In the last week purchasers of two of George Orwell’s books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, have suddenly found that the books have been removed from their Kindles and their accounts reimbursed the outrageous $9.99 charged for the books.

There used to be one good reason not to buy a Kindle, but this now gives me two reasons:

You don’t own what you buy

OK the reason that the books were withdrawn, removed, deleted, erased, eliminated or de-Kindled is that the publisher has decided that they do not want to sell electronic versions of these books. Fair enough. In future no copies of these books should be sold. But these have already been sold.

From Friday the 17th of July, the ‘De-Kindle Day, Amazon should have put the block on the books, removed the books from the catalogue and that would have been that.

But what is objectionable is that the many people have paid their $9.99 for one of the books. They have downloaded it. They maybe half way through reading the books. As they have bought the product then they should be entitled to use the product.

The publisher and Amazon should have been professional enough, business like enough and ethical enough to accept that they had entered a legal contract:

1. with an offer to trade, the Amazon online catalogue
2. an agreement, obviously both Amazon and the purchaser went through the purchasing process without mishaps
3. a consideration, Amazon charges the purchaser’s credit card, the purchaser gets the book

In addition Amazon and the publisher must have had a mutually beneficial contract or Amazon would not have had e-book version of the books.

Now if the purchaser had gone to a book shop and purchased a book, which maybe sold at a discount, which the publisher decided was wrong. Would it be right for someone from Amazon to climb through a window into the purchaser’s house, remove the book and leave a pile of money in its place. I think not.

E-books are drastically overpriced

Kindle and other e-reader systems are aimed at selling electronic versions of books with all sorts of levels of security. So when you have an e-novel or e-business book it is difficult to transfer the book to other systems in the way that a p-book, book printed on paper, can be handed around or lent to others.

If you look at the price of these main stream e-book sales we find that they are priced, generally, only slightly less than a conventional p-book. E-books costs are low compared to a p-book costs as that have to be printed, stored, distributed, put onto shelves into book shops, with high commercial rents and business taxes, managed by dedicated employees, who get paid, admittedly a pittance.

The publishers and the distributors of e-books are clearly exploiting, unreasonably, the early adopters of this e-reading technology. The are holding back the development of this new technology as many, such as myself, feel the whole thing is overpriced.

Implications

I am deeply concerned that this move by Amazon will be the start of a trend. If Amazon gets away with this, then others will follow.

Nobody reads the terms and conditions of software downloaded on their computers. Once a package is installed on a computer, laptop or mobile phone you just use it.

However, if condition in the small print section 199, paragraph XiV, clause c which states the the vendor, large, greedy corporation, has the right to remove said piece of software:

1. after three years, unless payment is made
2. providing purchaser does not use a competitor’s software
3. annoys vendor’s support team

Conclusion

Amazon has changed the rules. E-books bought through the Kindle are no longer a direct sale. The sale can be terminated at any time by Amazon and the poor bloody user has no other option but to accept it.

Commercial e-books are over priced and the greed, and short sightedness, of publishers and distributors are harming the development of the e-book market.

Picture Credits
Image on Flickr by UnusualImage
Almost 9,000 quality images of quality graffiti.

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I took these photos while walking around Richmond a few days ago.

[picasaView album='Richmond July 2009']