hello,

haven't blogged here for a long time. 3rd novel of Italian Trilogy almost finished. If you're interested I'm moving over to Twitter - 140 letters less pressure!

Neil
x

Despite changing user name and password, I think I'm still being hacked and used for spam. Let me know if you've received anything from me in the past 7 days - I haven't sent anything - and I'll just ditch the page.

Many thanks,

Neil

I haven't written here for a while. Autumn is a very busy period at work, especially with an office move. I haven't even had time to write a Guardian blog and they pay me!

Anyway - my agent Simon let me know I've been longlisted for this years Impac award - the worlds 'richest' literary prize. The longlisted novels are chosen by libraries throughout the world. Every novel in, or translated into, English is up for it. Bizzarely I was selected and put forward by a libraray in Tanzania.

Longlist, all 137, on link below.

http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2008/longlist.htm

more comments than I usually get, but most is a conversation between two readers about something entirely different to the blog entry.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/08/status_envy.html

Reviews for paperback have been mixed, in the sense each one (with an exception), have given with one hand only to take back with the other. The problem is that it's being reviewed by crime reviewers and half the time they wonder why they've been given a book like mine to review. You can read their perplexity. It's my fault, a novel with a detective, a stolen painting, police procedure ought to be a crime novel. A novel with a plot to retrieve a great painting from the mafia underworld should be a thriller (a sub genre of the crime novel). If you read the novel as either of these things and only these things, it will disappoint. If you read it for both, but enjoy a novel grounded in ideas, you should be satisfied. Most have done the former; only one the later. The Glasgow Herald:

 

'The novel starts slowly, but builds layer by layer into an atmospheric thriller, saturated with intelligence, culture and superb characterisation.'

 

Note the first clause – responsive patience clearly rewards.

 

In fairness I should post some of the negative stuff, but it's really just this first clause as the whole criticism.

Just wanted to say that the finest writer of prose in the English language is James Salter. His masterpiece is Light Years, which charts the marraige from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies. Be warned there is little story. It is all character and nuanced sentences, the evocation of a world of felt experiences transmuted into light. It is a marvel.

mass market paperback of Saving Caravaggio was published yesterday - available in most good bookshops...

it's part of promotion at Borders / Books Etc.

But please, also support independent booksellers.

 

I've compiled a top ten books for the guardian. Shame it's not in blog form because then others could approve / disapprove. Feel free to do so here.

 

http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,,2118291,00.html

I'm sure I've written about this before, but then writers often repeat themselves, it's what we like about them, or why we like who we like.

I've discovered if I write between 6pm and 8pm, I'll get as much done as if I start at 8am and write through to 6pm. And not only in quantity terms, quality is much improved. I am it seems an early evening or dusk writer. I don't get to do it much (writing, that is), because that's precisely the time the kids have dinner, a bath and then endless stories before bed. I might add a third consideration, and perhaps the most important, I enjoy it more. It's been a long time since I enjoyed writing - perhaps ten years. Maybe I just haven't been doing it at the right time. Or perhaps, the glass of red wine helps.

I haven't blogged here for awhile. Been working on something for the Guardian which although only 1300 words has taken the time of short novella. It should be up on the GU site during the week of paperback publication of Saving Caravaggio. Speaking of which, the book shop orders are high, which is nice. Borders / Books Etc. will have it in a promotion all summer, so you can buy it and get another half price, or indeed, get it half price if you buy another, as it were.

Hoping for some review action as well, because it missed out when first published, and the Costa shortlist has made lit. eds. a wee bit curious. Or so I'm told.

Also, I'm reading at the Big Chill House on 24th June - it's an all day book slam. I think Toby Litt is reading as well. Please come along. What else?

third novel is going very well suddenly; almost a pleasure to write. and that's from someone who takes almost no pleasure in writing, only in the thought of writing, or maybe just the thought of not doing other things. Basically, I just like being alone at my desk.

reading James Salter for the first time. Wow.