Publishers Weekly review and some nice proofs

Great advance review of Killing Season in the States from Publisher's Weekly:

Cross’s engrossing debut, the first in a new crime series, introduces Carter Blake, a man without a home and with no personal ties, but with a knack for finding people who don’t want to be found...The body count grows as Wardell goes on a rampage in several states. The suspense builds all the way to the breathtaking ending. Readers will look forward to seeing more of Blake.

It's interesting that Booklist, Kirkus and now PW have all commented on the high bodycount with approval. I hadn't thought too much about it, but now I'm happy that The Samaritan also happens to be fairly death-heavy.

Only a few short weeks now until The Killing Season makes its American debut on February 15 - can't wait to see how it goes down with readers.

 

Orion has produced an amazing limited-edition slipcase containing the advance proofs of The Samaritan along with the Killing Season paperback. I feel really fortunate to be getting such a big push from my publisher on these latest upcoming releases, although seeing my name alongside some of these luminaries is a little daunting.

I'm still writing book three, and at the moment, simultaneously going through page proofs on Samaritan, which is the last time I can make changes before it's published in May.

I can report that it's no less daunting waiting for the second novel to come out.

Booksellers, burgers and buses

Quick update about my recent trip to London, where it finally dawned on me that despite visiting The Big Smoke more often than I've been to almost any other city, I've barely scratched the surface of the tourist trail. I've never been to the Houses of Parliament, or Big Ben. I've never been on the London Eye. I certainly haven't done any of the shiny new stuff, like the Shard. I didn't tick off many of those touristy things this time either, but I did do some other cool stuff. Like get on a London bus for the first time.

Even more exciting than that, though, I visited my publishers at Orion House and chatted to the sales team about The Samaritan. It was lovely to meet some members of the team I hadn't spoken to before, and to see how enthusiastic everyone is about the book. I also got a very early preview of the paperback cover of The Killing Season, which already looks great even in a rough draft. I caught up with my editor Jemima and got to meet my paperback editor Jo for the first time. I even got to meet David Young, the CEO of Orion, who said really nice things about the first two Carter Blake books.

Orion has its own building

Fancy foyer too...

and some good-looking books in reception

 

I also got to meet some of the local booksellers, guided by expert sales rep Linda. We zipped around central London on foot, by bus, by tube and by cab  (I've definitely ticked off the full public transport package) to some independent bookshops like Goldsboro Books (who have signed hardback first editions if you're in the market) and various branches of Waterstones, including Picadilly which is the biggest bookshop in Europe, and Trafalgar Square. Little did we know we were there mere hours before the #waterstonestexan would walk in and begin his spell in captivity.

 

The idea was to meet some of the people who'll be selling the book, and to hand out advance copies of The Samaritan. These were hot (well, warm by the time I touched them) off the presses, and were what is called 'rough proofs'. Every day is a school day - I didn't know about this before. The rough proofs are printed up locally on much heavier paper than standard books (they weighed a ton), so we could have super-early advance copies. Even in this format, though, they looked great. The cover really pops, and I'm really glad we decided to stick with the title.

 

We met lots of nice booksellers, including Chris at Piccadilly and Rowan at Trafalgar Square, and gave them advance copies.

I can't wait to see what the team comes up with for the proper advance proof, after the excellent ARCs for The Killing Season. After all that, I had a short window before my train home, so I managed to squeeze in some very basic sight-seeing:  

 ...as well as a lightning-quick stop at Five Guys, naturally...

Five Guys narrowly beats Shake Shack for me

...before it was time to head homewards. After trying out the plane and the hell that is the overnight bus in my younger days, I always take the train now. Door to door, it takes the same time as flying and there's a lot less waiting around / being frisked. It also gives you time to work on new projects.

Of which I hope to tell you more very soon...

Back at Glasgow Central

***placeholder for embarrassing pun***

I am really bad at coming up with relevant titles for blog posts.

 

For some reason, no matter the topic, I always end up reaching for the most obvious, groan-inducing pun. Maybe, somewhere deep inside me, there lives a frustrated tabloid journalist. Example: I came very close to calling this post 'The Proof of the Pudding', because it's about me receiving the bound proofs of The Killing Season.

 

Get it?

 

So from now on, I'm going to try really hard not to attempt punning titles in this blog. Apart from the name of the blog itself, which is a bad pun. If you catch me doing it, please feel free to slap me.

 

Anyway, now that I've got that awkward confession out of the way, I'll get to the point. The bound proof is basically the prototype. It's the version of a book publishers use to make sure it hangs together as a physical object; that the design, colour and any special enhancements on the cover work; that the typesetting for the interior pages is right. It's also a great way to spot any remaining typos or glitches in the text before it's too late. Finally, it's something the publishers can send out to advance reviewers that's a bit more manageable than a giant stack of paper, and a bit more special than an e-book.

 

The marketing team at Orion have really outdone themselves on these. As a complete newbie to all this, I'd assumed the proofs would be a rough mockup, thrown together as a fairly basic package. What I didn't expect was an exclusive promotional cover design, high-quality die-cut card and embossed foil... actually, I think it's technically debossed. (I only know the terminology because I bought a lot of comics in the 1990s.)

 

So we have a teaser promotional cover...

 

 

 

...underneath which is a secondary cover with lots of lovely quotes about the book...

 

 



 ...and then we get inside the book and... it's an actual book. Which I wrote. Wow...

 



Finally, the back cover of the proof displays the awesome cover art that will go on the real hardback when it comes out in April. I've gushed previously about how much I love this cover, so I don't need to do that again here, but suffice to say I'm very pleased with it.

 

 

The first thing I did after pawing the book for a few hours was to slot it into an actual bookcase. (I have a lot of work to do before I really belong among any of those names).

 

 



So that's it. It may be a dry-run for the real thing, but it sure feels a lot more like I'm a real author now. I can't get over how cool the experience of flicking through an actual, physical book and seeing pages and pages of stuff you made up is. 

 

Which reminds me, I still have pages and pages of stuff to make up for Carter Blake book two...