Soul Destruction: Unforgivable by Ruth Jacobs is released 29 April 2013. Available worldwide from all major online retailers in paperback and e-book. Pre-orders are available direct from Caffeine Nights.
Soul Destruction: Unforgivable
Enter the bleak existence of a call girl haunted by the atrocities of her childhood. In the spring of 1997, Shelley Hansard is a drug addict with a heroin habit and crack psychosis.
What’s your writing background? When did you begin writing and what inspired you?
I was always pritty good at England at school innit!
Seriously, as a spotty teen, I used to meet up with fellow Mancunian writer and school-pal, David Barber, and we’d chat about the books we’d read and writers we admired (while I beat him at pool). It was mainly horror, back then; namely, the late great James Herbert, Dean Koontz and Stephen King.
The doom-mongers have been running wild on Twitter with the news that Amazon is to acquire Goodreads. Much of that nonsense is typical (hysterical) Amazon bashing, or reflexive defense of the status quo.
I'm not going to deal with the Chicken Little stuff. I have less and less patience with people who claim that Amazon has or is striving for some kind of evil monopoly that will subjugate authors and readers when all the evidence to date is that they will treat authors better than any publisher and provide readers with cheaper books, a bigger selection, and a better customer experience than any other retailer.
Amazon Publishing said in a letter to literary agents Monday that it will start paying its authors royalties on a monthly basis, up from every three months.
"In this digital age, we don’t see why authors should have to wait six months to be paid," Amazon's VP of publishing Jeff Belle wrote in the letter. "Beginning with our March payment cycle, we will move to paying our authors on a monthly basis.
As part of my studies at university, I wrote an essay about the motivations of serial killers. Here, I expand on that essay to talk about serial killers in fiction and how the fictional measures up to the criminological studies carried out in reality.
This is meant to spark a debate, so please feel free to correct, discuss, and converse in the comments below...
Last night, for at least the third time in my writing career, I received the dreaded unacceptance.
The unacceptance may be the only thing worse than the rejection.
For those who don't know, the unacceptance happens when an editor/publisher decides not to use your story after issuing an acceptance email. Sometimes it happens after rounds of editing. Sometimes it happens after a contract goes out.
A couple of years ago, I was more than somewhat chuffed to have a story- GUNS OF BRIXTON - in the eighth edition of Maxim Jakubowski's prestigious Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime.
And I'm doubly chuffed that Maxim has accepted another yarn- WHO KILLED SKIPPY? - for inclusion in the 10th edition, along with some stories from a host of top dog authors, such as…
Having never read a Lee Child novel I was able to walk into the cinema and watch the movie with an open mind. Don’t get me wrong, I’d read the hype and all the stories that Child had sold out as Jack Reacher is supposed to be a 6’5” man-mountain of pure muscle. The thing is, Tom Cruise has that screen presence and acting ability to be able to pull the character off.
America may well be the official home of pulp and noir but the United Kingdom, long perceived as the land of tame Dame Agatha style cozies and stuck-up, Latin quoting police detectives, also has a grubby underbelly which has produced plenty of gritty crime writing. And there is a new wave of Brit Grit writers leaving their bloodstained footprints across this septic isle, too.
