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Pinch, Punch, First Of The Month
Meanwhile, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS is proceeding apace - I'm over 30,000 words in after just nine days' work, which puts me over my self-imposed target of 3,000 words a day. The first big action sequence is done, which involves pirates - not the wacky, Captain Jack Sparrow kind, but the murderous modern variety armed with AK-47s rather than cutlasses. This being one of my books, it won't be much of a spoiler to reveal that several of them come to outrageously gruesome ends - and since Eddie has just tracked them to their lair, I'll be writing plenty more of them tomorrow!
Chloe, We're Running Out Of Time!
Wasn't That An AC/DC Song?
So why was I mentioned? The picture below will explain all! (Click it to embiggen.)
That's right: Number One with a bullet, baby! Yay, me! Better yet, because the paperback of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS only went on sale on the Thursday of that week, it managed it with just three days of sales. So hopefully the first full week's results will be even better! (Just to freak myself out still further, I worked out that 6,654 copies sold in three days means that on average, one and a half copies were sold every minute of those three days. If I can keep up that same rate of sales for a year I'll sell over 811,000 books... though somehow I think that's the fever dream of a madman. But then, I never imagined I'd sell 6,654 copies in three days, so who knows?)
Away from genuinely stunning paperback sales figures, the trip to Cambridge went very well (over 80 hardbacks of THE TOMB OF HERCULES signed!) and I got through my radio interview on TalkSport without making an arse of myself! I was incredibly nervous, however, so it's probably a good thing that it was only a short segment - I can't help thinking I was on the brink of babbling at the end...
Final news: I plan to start writing my fourth novel, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, on Monday. (I'll be taking the weekend off to play Metal Gear Solid 4.) Expect further progress reports soon!
Celeb!
Also, a quick 'thank you' to Lilah and Caroline from Fayard, who organised my trip to Paris to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS last week. The Eurostar is a very civilised way to travel!
The Chart Show(-Off)
Ready For Launch
So, on Wednesday the 11th I'm going to Paris to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS for publishers Fayard, which should be an interesting experience - as a former journalist I'm used to being the one asking the questions, not answering them! Tuesday the 17th I'm doing a signing at Heffers in Cambridge (time to be confirmed), and also at some point that week I'll be doing a radio interview with Paul Hawksbee and Andy Jacobs on TalkSport (date to be confirmed). On top of all that, on 19 July I'll be a guest at the Readers' Dinner at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Oh, and as well as preparing to start writing novel #4, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, I also have the first proofs of #3, THE SECRET OF EXCALIBUR, to read through. Busy!
But the biggest day for me is Thursday 12 June, when the paperback of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS and the hardback and trade paperback of THE TOMB OF HERCULES all go on sale (though you may be able to find it early in some places; I saw HERCULES in the Bournemouth branch of WH Smith this morning). It'll be nerve-wracking in some ways - even though ATLANTIS has apparently done pretty well in hardback and trade sales, the paperback edition is key, so I'll be keeping all crossable body parts crossed that it's a success.
I'm buoyed by the confidence of my publishers, Headline, though - they wouldn't have given me a second two-book deal if they didn't think I had potential! So I'll take this opportunity to thank everyone at Headline for the fantastic support they've given me, with special shout-outs going to Joanna (for her brilliant work with all the foreign-language sales), Becky (your new employers are lucky to have you) and Ross (for getting my books out to the right people, and also for inviting me to some rather good parties), and of course my editor Vicki (for always-constructive criticism, plot-hole spotting and, by no means least, being the one to champion my books in the first place!) It's been a great experience working with everyone there so far: long may it continue!
I Believe The Appropriate Response Is "BOO-YAH!"
I'll quote the best bits here as well (hee hee):
"The Hunt For Atlantis introduced McDermott as a writer of rare, almost cinematic talent. Where others' action scenes limp along unconvincingly, his explode off the page in Technicolor, IMAX-scale, Dolby digital surround sound. And like The Terminator, they never, ever stop - until you reach the last page and collapse, exhausted, onto whichever seat you've been glued to for the past few hours."
"...the story reaches its, quite literally, shattering and explosive conclusion. The kind Hollywood would love to show you but can't afford to."
"[Andy McDermott's] intentions, he says, are to write books that provide the same pulse-racing, hair-raising reactions as a blockbuster movie. Well, he's done it."
See if you can guess which part I'll be plastering across the front page of the site...
Tribal Dance
They've been discovered just as the paperback edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, in which a lost tribe in the Amazon jungle plays an important part, is about to go on sale - how's that for timing? I wonder if they've got an ancient temple hidden beneath the trees nearby...
The Italian Job
It even has its own website, so if you can read Italian, take a look.
Over the weekend, THE TOMB OF HERCULES was outselling ATLANTIS on Amazon for the first time - and by quite a big margin. Since those are all pre-orders, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for even better results when it actually goes on sale!
The Hero Is Back (Again)
One of the reasons why I wrote THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS in the first place was to get that feeling of excitement and exhilaration a great action-adventure can provide, the breathless sensation of being thrust along by events, desperate to see what happens next... and I didn't just want to experience it as a reader or viewer, I wanted to create that feeling. Since it was pretty unlikely that Hollywood would hand me hundreds of millions of dollars to do so in movie form, a novel it was (which had the advantage that I could include colossal temples housing 60-foot-high golden statues or speeding locomotives colliding head-on or people being thrown into helicopter blades, without worrying about budgets or the need to get a PG-13 rating in the States). ATLANTIS had many influences, but when the story follows a globetrotting archaeologist, it's not hard to guess that foremost among them was one Henry Jones Jr.
So the return of the fedora-sporting obtainer of rare antiquities was a big thing for me. Could it live up to two decades of expectations? Would it succumb to the temptations of lazy self-parody for cheap laughs? From a purely mercenary point of view, will it help - or hinder - sales of adventure novels? And most importantly, is it entertaining?
The answers, in turn: mostly; occasionally; hopefully the former; and a big fat yes.
I don't want to spoil anything - the film only came out today, after all - so I won't give away any specific details, other than to say my problems with it were that the extensive (and fairly obvious) use of greenscreens and CGI rather than real locations and vehicles in the big chase saps much of the tension, some of Indy and co's escapes go way beyond preposterous into outright cartoony (there's one sequence involving a tree that could have come from Road Runner - you'll know it when you see it), and the climax... Well, it'll depend on whether you can accept the switch from mysticism to science fiction. I could, more or less, but it did remind me of the endings of (in decreasing order of quality) The X Files Movie, The Mummy Returns and Mission To Mars, which is not really a good thing.
But... so what? The more important thing is that it's a new Indiana Jones movie, something I've waited 19 years to see. And it works. Harrison Ford may be a pensioner, but watching him beat up guys half his age somehow never looks anything but right. The booby-trapped tombs, the nasty creatures, the gunshots that sound like small explosions, the punches that sound like small explosions, the fedora, the whip, the fear of snakes... they're all there. Is it as good as Raiders? No, but few things are. Is it as good as the other two movies? I'd say yes. Indy's back, and it's like he never went away.
So that was me looking at the film in my old job of film critic; what about as a writer of adventure novels? Right now, I'm in the final stages of preparing my fourth novel, THE COVENANT OF GENESIS, and fortunately the two stories have nothing in common in terms of plot. But there's one thing I may have to tweak before I start writing - Indy makes a comment near the end of the film about the nature of the treasure, and in my current outline I have Nina saying almost exactly the same thing, word for word!
Early Takeoff
The Secret Is Revealed
So what is the secret of Excalibur? Well, I'm not going to give that away yet - you'll have to wait for the book!
Monsieur Bertillon Est Un Douanier
Chase's 'catchphrase' in French was translated as "Nom d'un chien, on n'est pas dans la merde!" Which my appalling schoolboy French tells me is something to do with a dog and, er, the stuff that comes out of a dog!
Look Polish, Everyone!
I also got my first finished copies of the hardback and trade paperback of HERCULES this morning, and they both look fantastic. Can't wait to see them on the shelves!
Alphabet Soup
Flaming June
It's still mildly annoying, though: firstly because I'm an impatient type of chap who wants everything now (three weeks before I can play Grand Theft Auto IV? Over a month to wait for the new Indiana Jones film?), and secondly because I get paid on publication!
The (Re)write Stuff
I also recorded a short video interview for my Italian publishers, Longanesi, about In cerca di Atlantide, which should be appearing on their website soon.
Herculean Sales
In addition, I might be taking a trip to France to promote the French edition of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS (or as it'll be called across the Channel, A la poursuite de l'Atlantide) sometime in May! More details once they've been finalised, but it's all rather exciting...
Where's My Book Going To Be Sold? In-Donesia!
Back From The Void
Right To Romania
So now I know the German word for "hunt"! It'll be interesting to see how Eddie's 'catchphrase' translates...
Ex-calibur
However, I can't kick back and relax just yet, as no sooner do I finish proofreading one novel than I have to proofread another - in this case, THE TOMB OF HERCULES. It's the last chance to spot any mistakes which may have crept in during the typesetting process - like one I found today, the sentence "Chase flashed him a grin" somehow turning into "Chase flashed him again", which makes the scene very different!
Busy, Busy, Busy
Two bits of news: the first is that Headline has sent me the final cover for the hardback and trade paperback editions of THE TOMB OF HERCULES, which I will now present...
Anything else since my last update? Oh, just that THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS reached Amazon.co.uk's Top 10 Thrillers chart... (#7, in fact: now to see if it can get any higher!)
Happy New Year!
Anyway, Happy New Year to you all - it's certainly got off to a promising start for me! THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS not only reached #174 in Amazon.co.uk's sales rankings today, its highest to date, but also made the top ten of all thrillers on Amazon. And there's more - the book has just been sold to Bulgaria and Turkey, bringing the total number of countries to 18.
I've had quite a lot of emails from people all around the world telling me how much they've enjoyed the book, so thank you to everyone - and look out for THE TOMB OF HERCULES this spring! |
In other news, the paperback release date of THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS has been moved back a few weeks, to 12 June. (THE TOMB OF HERCULES is still coming out on 15 May.) 12 June also sees the release of the 
Pretty cool, eh? And the second bit of news is that there's a full-page interview with me in issue 11 of