Writers and Russian Roulette

People always ask me if I know the end of my next book. I always reply yes,  because I do, and that I know the beginning. However, the middle 250 or so pages is sometimes a different matter. It's like being able to see a house on a faraway mountain, but the valley before it is shrouded in mist. As a writer, having promised a book to a deadline, this kind of feels like Russian roulette, because there's a chance that the inspiration simply never comes...

After 66 Metres and 37 hours, which have the same protagonist (Nadia) but are slightly different books in style, I wanted the third one also to be different. For about a month I was keen to start the next book, but after writing the Prologue I stopped, because I couldn't see the twists and turns I would need to make this one stand alone from the others and not simply be 'more of the same'. Mostly, I couldn't see the overall arc of the protagonist. If you've made it to the end of 37 hours, you pretty much know what Nadia needs to do. But what challenges would she have this time, possibly her last? It had to be something new. Luckily for me, my Sony laptop broke (the keyboard - I get carried away and sometimes I can't type fast enough) - and I had to wait 10 days for a replacement (a Mac - 10 days? I live in France - just don't ask).

And then, following in the great footsteps of Archimedes, I was sitting in the bath one evening thinking about nothing in particular, and the plot came to me. Just like that. Like it was hiding in plain sight and I'd missed it all this time. I got out, vaguely dried myself and began scribbling notes. This went on for 10 minutes, then I sat back. It would work. Already the shape of the book started to form, the clouds lifting from the valleys, and I could see the road, the places Nadia would travel, the obstacles in her way, and how it would change her.

Click.

I don't know how other writers get their ideas and do this 'macro-plotting'. It's their business. But the mind is a strange and wonderful thing. Now I just have to write it all down...

So I don't leave you empty-handed, below are the two 'by-lines' used by the publisher for the first two books, and a new one for the book I am now writing.

The only thing worth killing for is family (66 Metres)

Now Nadia has killed once, she knows she can kill again (37 Hours)

 Nadia saved a city. Now she is public enemy number one (15 days)

Five rules for a sympathetic killer protagonist

These days many thrillers have protagonists who, if you stand back for a moment, are only marginally better than the people they are hunting down or trying to escape from. This is particularly the case when they are cold-blooded killers. Most of us as readers would never dream of killing anyone, and wouldn't hang out with killers. As an example, if you were in a tight and dangerous spot, you'd be forgiven for wanting Jack Reacher on your side. But if things were going just fine, I'm not sure you'd want him to come babysit your kids every Thursday...

As a writer the trick is to make such characters 'sympathetic'. This is writing jargon for 'likeable', or at the least, forgivable. It means you can relate to, or admire, or simply respect something about the character, which means you care what happens to them. Don't care = stop reading.

Take Jack Reacher, for example. On the one hand, once he gets going, he's a lethal killing machine. But on the other hand he can be very respectful and non-judgmental with ordinary people, and absolutely a gentleman with women, never assuming anything, never taking advantage. He is also entirely self-reliant, and never blames others for his misfortunes.

For my own protagonist, Nadia, I was inspired by Stieg Larsson's The girl with the dragon tattoo, and his world-famous female protagonist Lisbeth Salander. But I wanted to explore Nadia's transition from normal country Russian girl, to killer, while still keeping her sympathetic. In the first book, during the prologue, she is trapped into working for a gangster, Kadinsky, and from that point on, she finds herself in increasingly dangerous situations where the easiest way out is to kill, the one thing she does not want to do. At the very end of the book, she accepts her fate, and having crossed that line in order to save her sister, is promptly thrown into a secret prison.

So, at the beginning of book 2, I needed to do two things: introduce her, and make her sympathetic, even though she is now a killer. I employed 5 rules, based on everything I'd ever read about hard-nosed heroes who had a dark side:

1. Make her fiercely independent
2. Make the odds stack up against her
3. Don't let her blame others for what has happened
4. In the event of a 'fight or flight' situation, she always chooses fight
5. Show the reader how she can nevertheless be fragile

I then wrote the following short scene where we first meet Nadia, at the beginning of the novel 37 Hours:


Nadia heard the familiar rattles and clanks down the corridor. Steel bar gates unlocked, opened, locked again. Distant footsteps. Coming her way. She stopped her third round of push-ups and sat back on the wooden bench in the cell she’d barely left in almost two years. No visitors, no phone calls, no internet, no television, no papers. Books occasionally, classics. Minimal human contact.
They kept her in the dark, because they still weren’t convinced she’d given up all her secrets, and had classified her ‘need to know’ status as zero. They kept her hidden, afraid she’d talk about the Rose, and shame the British government over what it had created and almost let loose on its own kingdom. Afraid she’d let the public know they’d narrowly dodged a nuclear war with Russia. The government could invoke plausible deniability. Just another foiled conspiracy. But it wasn’t over. Cheng Yi was dead, but the unknown client was still out there. The threat was still real.

He would try again.

Maybe they’d keep her there for good. She’d killed two people. The world was better off without them, but British justice took a dim view of unlawful killing. British justice… She’d not seen a lawyer, nor been charged as far as she was aware. No visitors. She tried not to reopen that particular can of tarantulas; it never helped.

In the first six months, the thought of someone visiting her, Jake, maybe, or Katya, kept her going. But after a year the pain became unbearable. Nobody came. Nobody cared. And so she worked out, she read, and the rest were just bodily functions. She often sang the Cossack lullaby before lights out, just to practise using her voice, and to reach out to her older sister who used to sing it to her when they were young, soothing her while their parents screamed at each other downstairs. Nadia prayed Katya was all right, and comforted herself that above all, Katya was a survivor.

The sounds drew nearer, the telltale rattle of iron keys on a large ring. She knew the routine. She wiped sweat from her forehead with a mouldy towel, and stood to attention at the end of her cot, next to the washbasin. No mirror, no glass anywhere, a metal sink and lavatory in the corner. Light filtered through the misted glass and steel bars. She faced the solid metal door. Maybe she’d get coffee today. It would be cold, but that didn’t matter.

Footsteps grew closer. Two sets, not one. Another routine medical inspection? There hadn’t been an interrogation for months. Jake’s ice-bitch ex-lover and current boss, Lorne, had come regularly in the first nine months, until she could extract nothing new. Initially Nadia had played tough, until Lorne showed her photos of Ben’s funeral – the man who had helped her so much in the Scillies, yet asked for nothing in return – whereupon she’d cracked and told Jake’s MI6 handler everything she knew.

Lorne informed Nadia she would receive no visitors, because no one knew where she was: some British military high-security facility. Probably not even on the books. Nadia doubted anyone would visit even if they did know, after what had happened back in the Isles of Scilly. Unless it was to spit in her face, something she’d welcome after two years of solitary. But Jake must have known, and yet he never came. That was a kick in the stomach. And inevitably, she’d become angry. Now, after two years, it had cemented into a deep resentment. She might just lash out at the first unfortunate soul who came to see her.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door. A double-clank as the deadbolts retracted. A small scratchy noise as someone slid the latch and peered through the glass eyehole. The door didn’t open. Nadia stayed absolutely still. Come on, you bastards, give me my bloody breakfast! The routines of each day were sacrosanct, propping up her sanity. Still the door didn’t open. Voices, muffled, she couldn’t make anything out. A high-pitched cry, female, stifled.

Nadia was suddenly gripped by panic. What if they were going to kill her? Take her outside, shoot her and bury her? Nobody would know; no one would care. She clenched her teeth and fists, suppressed the fear. This was England, not Russia. But her arms and legs tensed like coiled springs, just in case.

The heavy door swung open slowly. She smelled her sister Katya before she saw her, the perfume she knew so well. Katya walked around the door, into full view, tears sliding down her cheeks as she held out her arms.

‘God, Nadia, I’m sorry it took so long.’

But Nadia was already in her arms, squeezing her, gripping her, two years of pent-up emotions erupting. The anger fled, chased away by a deluge of relief. She shook so much she couldn’t speak. Katya whispered soothing noises while the guard waited patiently. Nadia’s face was wet, like the rain she hadn’t felt in two years. She gathered herself, knowing this visit would be kept short. She wiped her eyes and cheeks, and spoke to her sister urgently, taking in every line of her face, details she might have to remember and savour for another two years.

‘How long can you stay?’ Nadia asked. ‘How long have we got?’

Katya bit her lip then pulled Nadia’s face tight to her chest, struggling to get the words out. ‘Time to come home, my Cossack,’ she said.

Nadia’s legs gave way.

66 metres here
37 hours here
Now working on the third instalment...

Write what you don't know...

About 18 months ago I was at the York Writer's Festival pitching my book 66 Metres to three agents, who all roundly rejected it. One of them took me aside, and said, 'Look, this book is about a young Russian woman. You're not Russian, you're not a woman, and let's face it...' He told me to write about what I knew. I decided to stick to my course instead, and a year later 66 Metres was published by Harper Collins.

But ever since that conversation, it got me thinking about the adage 'write what you know.' What about all those crime writers? Are they all murderers and serial killers in their spare time? What about science fiction writers? Do they all have spaceships locked away in their garages?

I like Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. To say I'm not alone is a whopping understatement. How does he convince the reader that this fiction could be reality? The answer is detail. Pick up any Jack Reacher book and what you see on every page is details that ground the book, as if you're there. You have the feeling that he knows his stuff. There is an authenticity about his writing. Not only is there information, it feels as if this is 'insider' information, the kind of info you don't find by simply clicking on Wikipedia. Take a look at the opening of Gone Tomorrow, the one I'm reading right now, and you'll see what I mean.

But even doing deep research can only get you so far. Reading and doing aren't the same thing. Sometimes you need to know what something feels like, physically and emotionally, or else you'll never draw the reader in.

When I had to write a scene where Nadia fires a magnum .45 in order to save her sister, I realized I'd never fired a handgun. I wrote the scene anyway, but even to me it seemed flat, false even. So I went to a gun range and did some basic training for a few hours, firing various pistols until we finally got to the big one. It is quite spectacular - the recoil is extreme, the muzzle flash is scary, and the noise absolutely deafening. It feels like you're firing a cannon. I rewrote the scene, put it at the start of the book, and arguably I think that very scene was what won over Harper Collins.

Of course there is stuff I do know a lot about - same goes for any of us - we all have deep expertise. Mine happens to be scuba-diving. So I can put details in there that only instructors know - little tricks of the trade they don't normally teach you. And I know what it is like to black out underwater, because it happened to me, as well as narcosis and close encounters with large sharks. Most readers say the book really comes alive and is most intense in the underwater sections.

Diving is also a big part of my motivation for writing this series. Although there are exceptions, often when I read thrillers where there is any diving at all, I wonder if the author has ever put their head underwater. The technical details are all off, and the experience doesn't ring true. I guess they
get away with it because most readers have never dived either. But I'd like to set the record straight.

But back to the agent's comment. First, I'm not a woman, and the protagonist (Nadia) is. I based her on a blend of a fictional character and a real - and somewhat exceptional - woman I know. Nadia is not very girly, and is to some extent the son her father never had but always wanted. I do admit I had to talk to some women to get the sex scenes right, as men and women really don't see things the same way when it comes to sex.

Second, I'm not Russian. I spent some time diving with Russians in Egypt a few years ago. I was the only non-Russian in the resort. They took me in and I got to understand them a little. I also met someone who was almost certainly Russian Mafia. I have a lot more work to do on this, I freely admit, but I now have a fascination with Russia and Russians.

Third, I'm not as young as I used to be. Okay. But I still think that way...

So, can you write what you don't know? Yes, but you need to blend it with something you do really know about. Then you're more likely to have the reader give you the benefit of the doubt about the part you don't truly know.

My next book, 37 hours, comes out 17th March, and is set in four locations: Murmansk, a remote island off the coast of Borneo, Chernobyl, and London. It involves diving a submarine, a stolen nuclear weapon, a vicious shark attack, advanced interrogation techniques, and radiation poisoning. Do I know about these things? Strangely, more than you might think. I wasn't always a writer...



[P.S.> a reader who recently read the prologue to 37 hours commented that it read like a Jack Reacher novel. I don't actually think mine is to the same standard, but I couldn't ask for more!]

On being drunk underwater - nitrogen narcosis

You know that feeling when you're blissfuly happy, and you feel super-confident? Maybe you're in love, or high on something? Well, you can get that feeling easily when scuba-diving underwater. It's called nitrogen narcosis - the narcs - and it can get you killed...

First the basics. When you're diving with air in your tank, you don't normally get it above 30 metres (100 feet). Below that depth, the partial pressure of nitrogen starts to affect our brains, and it's very much like getting drunk. One of my most memorable dives was diving to 50 metres in Indonesia with a large school of tuna. I had the narcs for sure. and actually felt like I was a tuna. I swam with the school, turned when they turned, and was on the watch-out for sharks. My buddy stayed at 40 metres, watching me (in hindsight, not much of a buddy, no chance of rescuing me if i'd have gone deeper). 

When you get the narcs you believe you can go deeper. Then the narcosis will increase. The happy-go-lucky feeling can then change into panic and disorientation. I used to train divers to show them what it was like. I'd get them to tie a knot called a bowline on land, next to a quarry filled with water. They'd do it easily, without really having to think about it. Then we'd descend to 30 metres - the bottom, as it happens - and after five minutes I'd ask them to tie it again. They couldn't. Then they'd start laughing, and it would be time to go up. 

If you dive a lot, you get a kind of immunity, as your brain adapts. This is what divers call doing 'build-up' dives. If you do a couple of dives at twenty, then twenty-five, then probably 30m will be no problem. But you have to watch the signs. One of the golden rules in diving is 'Plan the dive, and dive the plan.' This is because on land you're stone cold sober, whereas underwater you might decide to change the plan, and maybe it's not such a good idea. 

There's even a sign between divers to let someone know you have the narcs. You point your index finger to your temple, and then draw a circle. If your buddy gives you this signal, you should go up. Often you don't need to go to the surface, maybe ascend just 5 or 10 metres and suddenly your mind will be perfectly clear as again. But if you ignore it. well... It is like getting drunk. There's a period when you realise you are getting drunk, and have the choice to stop drinking. If you don't, you tend to think you are no longer drunk, and that you are actually making perfect sense... 

Here's an extract from 66 metres, where the heroine, Nadia, gets narcosis. She's an experienced diver, and should know better, but she's under stress: she has to retrieve an object called the Rose, at 66 metres, or the Russian Mafia will kill her sister...   

Ben shut off the engine completely, the world suddenly silent barring the slip-slops of wavelets against the hull. ‘The prow is directly beneath us, at twenty-five.’

Jake nodded, squirted a little liquid soap into his diving mask, smeared it round with his finger, then leant over the rubber tube and rinsed the mask in seawater. Nadia did the same, looking into the green-blue water below, knowing the Rose was down there, waiting for her. Maybe she could retrieve it today. Why the hell not? Ben opened both their tank valves fully, then she and Jake sat on opposite tubes facing each other, masks on, regulators in their hands.

‘We stop at the prow,’ Jake said. ‘To check we’re both okay. Do you want to go inside the wreck?’

She didn’t. She wanted to plunge straight down to sixty-six, grab the Rose and come back up again. But he’d already said fifty was the limit, and she wasn’t dived up yet, and would get narcosis. Maybe if he went inside then she could go down alone…

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Then stay close,’ Jake said.

Ben counted down. ‘One, Two… Three!’

She rolled backwards off the boat. The water hit the back of her neck and flushed into her wetsuit, warming up almost instantly. She sucked in a lungful of air and righted herself, and brought her head above the surface. Jake was already next to her. He gave her the OK signal then the thumb-down signal to descend. She returned them both in sequence, then held up her inflate hose and dumped air from her jacket. She sank beneath the water, the last airside view a rippled one of Ben leaning over the side of the boat, watching them disappear.

Jake dove down ahead of her, streamlined, occasionally twisting around effortlessly to check she was following. The water was featureless, and she felt like a parachutist dropping through green-blue sky. Keeping her breathing even, she cleared her ears every five metres or so, and studied his technique: Jake had his arms folded in front of him, the computer on his left wrist so he could read it, his right hand holding the inflate hose, jetting air into his stab jacket every seven or eight metres. Poetry in motion. She adopted the same position.

They fell through sheets of green-blue water fading to grey, the visibility about ten metres, the strong sunlight above gradually leached out by the depth. She couldn’t see anything ahead except Jake. Then a shape emerged, dark, pointed, big. Her heart rate kicked up a notch. Not everyone loved wreck diving. Some preferred ‘scenic’ dives with lots of fish. She didn’t get it. Wrecks were scenic and full of fish.

The prow of the Tsuba loomed out of the grey. A single spotted dogfish patrolled it while a small school of black bream hugged the sloping foredeck. Ben was good, he’d dropped them right on target. Jake slowed. She jetted air into her stab a little late. While he stopped centimetres from the rust-laden prow, hovering as if in space, she rammed it, and had to brace herself against it with outstretched arms. To recover, she let her momentum spin her body and legs around vertically, like a gymnast doing an underwater handspring, so she ended upright, one hand on the prow’s edge, the rest of her body parallel to the deck. As if she’d intended it that way all along.  

Jake gave her an appraising look, followed by the OK signal, which she returned. He then pointed to his air gauge. She looked at hers – one eighty bar – then showed it to him. He returned the favour. His was still at a pressure of two hundred atmospheres. Rule was, you surfaced when it got down to fifty bar, though she’d often left it much later than that. Jake aimed a flat vertical hand down the deck, and she started to descend the ship, tracing its steep seventy degree angle.

Good visibility wasn’t always best for a wreck dive. It was awesome to see an entire wreck underwater, but sometimes poor viz meant discovering a sunken ship bit by bit. The foremast emerged out of the grey. She glided in slow motion over two cargo holds, shining her torch down into them, illuminating a fog of tiny fish in one, rusted spare engine parts in another. The bridge beckoned, four steps and two metal railings inviting her inside. She turned to Jake and he nodded, so she went straight through the open hatch, careful not to bump the ragged metal sides, the rusty edges brilliant shades of orange in her torchlight.

The upper floor had almost completely eroded, so they finned up a few metres, and she found the helm, a classic antique ship’s wheel, most of the wood gone but enough of the brass fittings left to discern its original shape. Like any wreck diver she couldn’t resist grabbing it and staring out towards the mast, just visible. She realised she was grinning, and wondered if it was narcosis setting in. No, she was simply enjoying the dive.

Jake headed aft and she followed, descending deeper into the bowels of the ship.

Her thoughts became sluggish, as if she’d had a few vodkas. She watched his fins undulate in front of her as they entered a narrow black corridor. She could fin faster, show him how Russians dived. Without warning she kicked hard and thrust ahead of him like a torpedo. She misjudged it and her tank grazed the ceiling. She rebounded and ricocheted towards the floor. She let go of her torch to brace herself, and her hands disappeared into a thick layer of sludge coated with powdery sediment that plumed up in front of her mask. She could see nothing, and was still descending. Dammit, the walls were narrowing.

She tried to turn around, banged her head against solid iron. Shit! She couldn’t think straight. Panic rose in her chest, her breathing loud in her ears. Her torch hit the side of her head, its light lost in the black sediment, as if she was in a coal mine. Stop, dammit! Just stop moving. He’ll find you. But where was he? She tried to think. Had she turned left or right? Her breathing rasped ever louder in her ears.

Without warning she was tugged backwards sharply. Jake must have grabbed her fins. His hands pulled her around in the semi-darkness, her torch beam flailing wildly like a beacon in fog, still attached to her stab jacket by its thin cord.

Jake brought her close, right in front of his face, mask to mask. She breathed heavily. He put two straight fingers in front of her eyes, waggled them as if they were walking, shook his head once, then put them tight together, unmoving. She got it. Don’t fin.

He put an arm around her waist, just underneath her stab jacket, and kept eye contact with her. She had to fight her normal instinct to struggle free and be independent, which would only get them both into trouble. She stayed still. Jake edged them back out of the soup, pulling them along with one arm, and suddenly the water cleared, and they were back on the bridge. Her panic vanished. Narcosis was so depth-dependent: one second exhilaration, the next all-out panic, but a few seconds later and ten metres higher and her mind was clear as a bell. Jake studied her, and she nodded as if to say she was fine, gave him a clear OK signal to verify it, and he let her go. She followed him back outside the ship, and checked her air. Ninety bar. She showed it to him. He looked at it but didn’t show her his.

She’d blown it. Not nearly enough air left to go down to the sea floor and start searching, and in any case the narcosis would return straightaway. Fucking hell! The Rose was down there, waiting. She wanted to punch the wreck. But you can’t punch anything seriously underwater. At least she was alive. Next time she might not get narked at all.

Jake moved away from the Tsuba, and she followed him, close to an eel that slithered off in the direction of the underwater pinnacle propping up the wreck. She and Jake slowly ascended amongst lush green ferns, flora she normally spurned. Fish skittered over mossy boulders, and she tried to take her mind off this catastrophic dive. As they rose above the promontory, the prow of the Tsuba loomed into view again. A cuttlefish, changing colour mid-water, calmed her down a little. Her computer said she’d touched forty-eight metres, and required a decompression stop for five minutes, probably more by the time they arrived at six metres.

She gazed down the disappearing length of the ship. The Rose – her and Katya’s key to freedom – was down there, and she’d been less than twenty metres above it. 

It might as well have been a kilometer.

66 Metres available digitally everywhere. Please don't read your kindle or iPad underwater...

Xmas Teaser: 37 Hours

Happy Xmas everyone, especially to readers of 66 metres. Here's a teaser, the opening of the next book - 37 hours - due out in March. The book takes place in four locations: Moscow, a remote island off the coast of Borneo, Chernobyl, and London. Expect plenty of fast-paced action, gritty scenes, tough choices, a chilling villain, and some twists you won't see coming... 

This is how it starts. Some of you might guess who Vladimir is...

 

Prologue

Vladimir Nikolayevhich was cuffed and hooded, but his guards had made a fatal mistake. His hands were behind him, but not attached to any part of the inner structure of the military van. A standard Russian UAZ 452 – he’d know those rickety creaks and the pungent blend of oil and diesel anywhere. The vehicle trundled towards some unknown destination where he would be interrogated, beaten some more, then shot in the back of the head.

Three of the four men chattered as they picked up speed down a straighter road. Their second mistake. Clearly they weren’t Special Forces – Spetsnaz – like he’d been until very recently. Regular army. He’d only seen the two men who’d taken him from breakfast with his daughter. But now he knew there were four – one other had engaged in the banter, another had remained silent but was referred to as the butt of several bawdy jokes. The hierarchy of the men was also clear. The leader was in the front passenger seat, the silent one the driver, leaving the two musclemen in the back with him. One beside, one opposite. He waited. They’d been driving for an hour or so, initially dirt tracks, now a highway, which meant they were on the E119 to Vostok. If they turned right, he had a chance, as they would have to cross the Volga river. Then he would make his move.

If they turned left, he was a dead man.

Vladimir wasn’t a man for options, or for hedging his bets. Not a question of making the right choice, but of making the choice right. In all his missions in the past twenty years he’d never cared much for  a Plan B. Leave too many options open, and events control you, inviting failure.

The van would turn right.

He needed to know if there was anything, a metal strut, for example, between him and the driver, in front on the opposite side. Nobody had talked to him since his arrest. Why talk to a hooded, dead man? But they were military, at least they had been at one stage or another, so it should work. He waited for a pause in their talk fuelled by bravado – they were probably wondering which one of them would pop him in the skull. He had a feeling they’d make the driver do it. A rite of passage. Probably a rookie, not yet blooded.

The pause came.

“Cigarette?” he asked, nodding through his hood to the one opposite. “Probably my last, we all know that.”

Silence, except for the van’s suspension creaking. He imagined questioning looks from the musclemen to the leader, the driver fixing his eyes on the road, maybe a glance in the rear view mirror. The dead man had spoken.

A sigh, the rustle of clothing, a pocket unzipped, the tap-tap of a cigarette being flushed from the pack. He could smell the nicotine despite the strong diesel fumes. A hand heavy on his shoulder – the muscleman on the same side – while the hood was pulled up by the other one just enough. He felt cooler air on his lips, the stale coffee-breath of the one opposite.

The smack in the mouth wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it stunned him all the same. He slid off the bench onto the floor, and while three of the men burst out laughing, he stretched his left leg backwards towards the rear edge of the driver’s seat – nothing in the way, no vertical metal support. But there could still be a wire mesh separating the rear compartment from the two in the front. He rocked back onto his knees, and addressed the one who’d hit him. He lowered his head, bychit-style, a bull about to charge, and spat out the words amidst spittle and blood.

“Mu dak, suka, blyad!”

This time the punch was fully expected. He railed backwards and upwards, travelling with the force of the uppercut, so that his head ended up in the gap between the driver and the leader, which cost him a whack from the latter on the top of his head. No wire mesh. Rough hands slotted him back where he’d been twenty seconds earlier. Profanities poured forth. Nothing he’d not heard or said himself. His face stung. He ignored it. Things settled down, and the banter resumed.

He began drawing long breaths, oxygenating his body. He was chilled, because he had no coat. The other men were wrapped in thick commando jackets. It was early spring, still cold. The Volga would be near freezing, maybe four degrees. Not a problem, he bathed in it every morning. For them, though, it would be a different story.

The van slowed. The tick, tick, tick of the indicator. They slowed down further. Stopped. A truck passed fast ahead of them, rocking the high suspension van in its wake. The leader bellowed a command, though he wasn’t stupid enough to name the destination. “This way, this way.” Another lorry – no, a tractor, given the smell of manure – the leader cursing the young driver for not pulling out sooner. The engine revved, the gear engaged, the van pulled forward.

And turned right.

 

37 Hours is due out in March 2017

 

66 Metres is already out!

"Massive page-turner!" "This author knows his stuff!" "Intelligent, fast-paced thriller!"

 

 

Underwater, running out of air...

When I'm diving deep I always glance up to the surface. Sometimes, as deep as fifty metres, you can still see it, maybe even the boat awaiting you. But often or not, you can't. And the thought occurs to me, what if I were to run out of air, right now? Could I make it?

You can increase the danger by going inside a wreck at depth. Now, if you run out of air, you are already inside a steel mausoleum, and have to find your way out before you can begin to ascend.

The one time this almost happened to me was in the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast. My buddy and I were inside a wreck, and I'd tied a line to the entrance/exit, so we could find our way out. It was about 40 metres deep. At a certain point, we both checked our air and decided we should head out and then back to the surface. But as I began reeling the line back in, it came too easily, and we both realized the unthinkable. The line had either been untied or had been cut. We were well inside the wreck, and I hadn't counted the twists and turns to get into its bowels. Our air was burning nicely at that depth, now aided by an adrenaline kick as we realized our predicament.

I stopped reeling the line in, and we simply followed it as far as we could. Luckily it got us close to the outside, and dim daylight guided us the rest of the way. I never found out who had untied the line or why. To this day, I prefer to think it was by accident.

I used the memory of this dive when I wrote the following scene for 66 Metres. In this part of the book, Jake has finally found the device that a range of killers are racing to find, the Rose, but is running out of air, and is beginning to suffer narcosis. Two Navy SEALs armed with spear guns are hunting him, and in order to hide, he enters the wreck...

Jake watched the fourth tank zip past, sounding like a torpedo, a jet-stream of small bubbles in its wake. It meant things weren’t good topside. The SEALs had arrived with a sled – he should have seen that coming – and must have left someone in charge on the surface. Ascending now would only serve to deliver the Rose to whoever was up there. He had to descend. Nadia’s air had been so low her only option was to reach the hang-tank under Pete’s boat at ten metres, so he’d sent her up.

The hut at fifty-two, where he’d left the smaller, 'pony' cylinder of air – that was his destination. But he chased after the larger tank, looking for the bubble-stream – his own tank would be empty imminently, and the pony wouldn’t last long at depth. By descending again he was going way off the deco-tables, but decompression sickness was preferable to what the SEALs would do to him. Besides, it bought Nadia time, and she was resourceful.

Legs locked together, he dolphin-kicked hard, holding his breath, the speed of his descent pressing his facemask back against his forehead and cheekbones. For a moment he lost the stream of bubbles from the tank and slowed, circling to find them, then continued downwards. Whoever had dropped the tanks had tried to make it land on the Tsuba, and as he passed the wreck’s funnel he saw a familiar grey aluminium cylinder lodged against one of the shed-like structures on the ship’s aft section. As soon as he reached it he shut off the valve. There was no way of knowing how much air was in it, but a diver never wastes air, and the valve had only been cracked open a quarter of a turn, so he reckoned it was at least half full. Anchoring himself by placing the ends of his fins on the sloping deck, he picked it up, still barely breathing – determined to leave no trail for the SEALs – and swam to the hut where he’d left the pony. He entered the wreck.

He’d been inside this part of the Tsuba twice before, but years ago, so he didn’t remember it too well. Rather than switching on his torch, he reached into his stab jacket pocket and took out a thin plastic tube the size of a cigar, and bent it till the mid-section snapped open. The light-stick began to glow a dull fluorescent green, casting a ghoulish light on his surroundings: a corridor straight ahead and up, then a staircase leading deeper into the ship. He took a short breath and headed in.

At the foot of the rusted metal stairs was a square room, algae-encrusted pipes lining floor and ceiling. The room had a single opening at the lower end – too small to get through with all his gear on – and at the other end a sealed hatch. First things first – air – since his main tank would be empty soon. But it was hard to think. The inevitable narcosis made his brain feel like a sponge soaked in rum. Concentrate! Three tanks: one ten-litre half-full, one nearly empty, and the smaller three-litre pony cylinder. Two SEALs. What to do?

His brain wasn’t co-operating. It was like staring at words, unable to decipher their meaning. On the surface he could work it out in an instant. A light flickered above, and he knew he’d run out of time. Clearly the SEALs had a detector and the locator code for the Rose, even though it only worked over a limited distance. He swam to the hatch, tried to heave it open. Rusted solid. Light beams danced around the bottom of the stairs. He swam back to the smaller hole at the lower end of the chamber, and dropped the pony bottle, with its regulator attached, straight through. He heard a clunk two seconds later.

As he turned around the first SEAL appeared. Nice rebreather kit, he had to admit; serious, professional. Jake pulled out his diver’s knife – Sean’s knife – and faced him. But the SEAL aimed a spear-gun at him, and gestured for him to drop the knife, just as the second SEAL arrived, squeezing in next to his comrade. Jake knew he might be dead either way, so he turned his back and went to the opening, and shoved the Rose, inside its bag, through the hole. He heard it hit bottom.

He expected to be speared at any moment, but the two SEALs stayed put, one of them nodding to the knife still clasped in Jake’s hand. Their eyes looked clear, alert, whereas he knew his own would appear groggy, half-closed and bloodshot. He let the knife slide from his grasp. One of the SEALs handed his spear-gun to the other, then approached Jake, his own knife drawn, and pushed past him to the opening. He shone a torch into it, then grabbed Jake’s stab jacket, and began unbuckling it. He then backed away, pointed to the hole, then to Jake.

It took Jake a few seconds to understand. Two spear-guns. Two options. Retrieve the Rose, or be killed here and now, after which one of them would go and fetch it. Reluctantly he slipped out of his stab jacket and let the whole ensemble, stab and tank, drop to the floor, but he kept the regulator in his mouth. He felt naked. He checked his air gauge – thirty bar. At this depth, it would last a few minutes, tops.

Unbuckling the tank from the stab’s harness, he turned, relishing each breath, and faced the dark hole. It looked like a giant letter box. The only way in was to put the tank through first, then follow it. Without his stab jacket he’d sink easily, especially carrying the tank, and finning back up to the hole would be difficult. He pointed to the other tank lying on the floor, the half-full one. The SEALs both shook their heads.

So, that's how it was.

Clambering through the hole, tank first, Jake fell rather than swam down, the regulator mouthpiece tugging against his teeth. After five metres, during which he felt as if he’d just downed two pints, he hit the metal floor. The SEALs must be shining their torches downwards, as he could see everything lit up in stark twilight, small clouds of silt puffed up from the floor where he’d landed. A completely sealed room, no other way out, but there was a tall metal cupboard, mesh doors hanging off their hinges. He found the bag and could see the Rose inside, blinking innocently next to his pony bottle. He stood over the pony as he fished out the Rose, so they couldn’t see what he was doing, and moved the pony and regulator into the cupboard, along with the bag, then turned to face the two torch beams.

He kicked hard, causing a cloud of silt to mushroom up from the floor, kicked a few more times, then launched upwards, finning furiously to climb back up to the letter box, cradling the almost-empty tank in his left arm. He passed the Rose through to one of the SEALs, then held onto the lip of the hole, and heaved his tank through, sure it would give out at any moment.

Jake expected the worst. He wasn’t disappointed. They yanked the tank from him, tore the regulator from his mouth, and then he saw the tip of a spear-gun right in front of his facemask. He pushed sideways with his left arm against the opening, just as the SEAL fired. White-hot pain lanced through Jake’s shoulder. He spiralled down into the cloud of silt, banging his other shoulder against the bulkhead. Another spear phished past him, slashing his wetsuit, cutting his thigh, but that was minor, a flesh wound. The torch beams were scattered by the silt, two suns trying to break through cloud. Good, they couldn’t see. Come and get me.

He landed in darkness, knew they would be reloading. He clawed his way to the cupboard, groped desperately for the pony’s regulator, and found it. He gasped in air, but breathed out carefully, into the top of the cupboard, so the bubbles were trapped there. The torch lights continued to hunt him, but Jake knew the silt would take ten minutes to settle. Two more spears shot down, one clanging into the floor, the other striking the top of the cupboard. The beams waved some more, then it darkened. He heard a loud hiss from up above. They were emptying both his tanks.

Bastards.

Jake squeezed his eyes shut, dared to touch the short metal shaft sticking out of his shoulder, and immediately wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t in too deep – the spear’s momentum had been slowed by his neoprene wetsuit – but he had no intention of ripping his shoulder wide open trying to extract it.

It grew dark again, and he heard clangs as the SEALs departed, leaving him to die. He slumped down inside the cupboard, and breathed heavily from the pony. It wouldn’t last long, but it didn’t matter. This was it. He’d been beaten. He’d finally join Sean. Not the way he’d intended.

The pain burned. He was losing blood. Where was nitrogen narcosis, or for that matter, oxygen poisoning, when he really needed it. He sucked in a few more breaths, knowing these were his last. He wondered what Sean would say. But he already knew what his son would say. Get the fuck up! That’s what he’d say. Nadia and the others are on the surface depending on you. You weren’t there when I most needed you, you’d better be there for them!

His eyes blurry, Jake staggered out of the cupboard. He released his weight-belt and lowered it to the floor. He found the bag he’d used to carry the Rose, and breathed out into it, then swam a few strokes upwards, carrying the pony, his teeth clamping down on the pain from his shoulder. When he got through the entrance, he found Sean’s knife and sheathed it. Each time he breathed out, he did so into the bag, creating a small balloon.

Drunk with pain, he made his way outside the ship, and stood for a moment on the deck. What are you waiting for? Sean said.

Jake kicked off, hanging from the homemade balloon that billowed as he ascended, and as the water pressure reduced, the bag began to lift him. He could almost feel the nitrogen flashing out of his bloodstream, forming small bubbles, searching for his joints, his heart, his brain. Just another way to die underwater. At thirty metres the pony resisted his in-breath. Sudden, though not unexpected. He was out of air. Forget about it. Every diving instructor knew the physics. From here on the air in his lungs would expand, and he wouldn’t need to breathe in, just breathe out, as if whistling, and by ten metres, he’d need to exhale in one long continuous scream. That would come easy. He let go of the pony bottle, withdrew Sean’s knife, tilted his head back, and began the long exhale.

Praise for 66 Metres:

"A great read that kept me turning the pages right from the start. Fellow divers will love the detail the author has put into this, as well as the story itself. Thoroughly recommended!"

'Deep diving meets suspenseful underwater action!"

"It’s clear the author knows his stuff about diving."

"Massive page-turner, read it in one long flight!"

"Couldn't put my kindle down!"

My writing process...

Last week back in the UK I met up with a few fans who asked me about my writing process. I'm often questioned about this because people who know me also know I have a very demanding 'day job', one which involves around 50 hours a week and on average one international trip per week. Do I write when I travel? No. There's no time. I'm working all the time or socialising with work colleagues.

So, when do I write?

First, I get insomnia. Or I don't need as much sleep as other people. Or somewhere between the two. The net result is that every week or so I wake up really early (i.e. before 4am) and start writing, usually until 6 or 7am. For me this is an incredibly productive time. My mind is lucid and imaginative, and there are no distractions (no one is emailing me at that time in the morning!). I can get 4 or 5 pages done. It will of course need a lot of editing, but it's usually workable.

At the weekends is when I write most, both Saturday and Sunday. Usually Saturday is a couple of hours early in the morning, before I do something physical like the gym or Pilates, and then maybe in the early evening. Sunday afternoon is a good time to write, and it's nice to lock myself away for 2-4 hours and blitz on a chapter.

I never write at night. My mind isn't focused enough.

The second question I get asked most is about how I develop the plot. Do I know the ending when I start? Do I work everything out as I go along, or is it more 'organic'? 

So, I do know the ending. Not the details, but who is left standing, and how they have changed. I'm talking about the protagonist, and/or the main three characters. I also know the hook to the next book, as I tend to write trilogies, where each book is stand alone, but there is a link and one overall arc. That's because I grew up reading and loving trilogies. Single books are great but leave me pining for more, and endless series end up cliché-ing themselves (IMHO).

Knowing the end, I start the first few chapters just to get a sense of the characters, to push them, to find out who they really are and what makes them tick. I like prologues, but I make sure they are not info-dumps, they are mini-chapters that get the reader caring about the protagonist from the outset, and giving the stakes right up front, often on the first page. The prologues are also lean, fast and pacy, so the reader has a foretaste of what's to come. Here's an example from the book I'm working on now, from the very first page:

 

Vladimir Nikolayevhich was cuffed and hooded, but his guards had made a fatal mistake. His hands were behind him, but not attached to any part of the inner structure of the military van. A standard Russian UAZ 452 – he’d know those rickety creaks and the pungent blend of oil and diesel anywhere. The vehicle trundled towards some unknown destination where he would be interrogated, beaten some more, and then shot in the back of the head.

Three of the four men chattered as they picked up speed down a straighter road. Their second mistake. Clearly they weren’t Special Forces – Spetsnaz – like he’d been until very recently. Regular army. He’d only seen the two men who’d taken him. But now he knew there were four – one other had engaged in the banter, another had remained silent but was referred to as the butt of several bawdy jokes. The hierarchy of the men was also clear. The leader was in the front passenger seat, the silent one the driver, leaving the two musclemen in the back with him. One beside, one opposite. He waited. They’d been driving for an hour or so, initially dirt tracks, now a highway, which meant they were on the E119 to Vostok. If they turned right, he had a chance, as they would have to cross the Volga river. Then he would make his move.

If they turned left, he was a dead man.

After a few chapters, I decide the overall structure. The book I'm working on now, One Way Dive, the sequel to 66 Metres, is a 4-part structure. I decide where each section is going to take place: Sebastopol, Borneo, Chernobyl, and London. This anchors the different parts in my mind, and I consider the emotional arc of the protagonist during and at the end of each section, and the major event at the juncture of each part that will draw the reader deeper into the book.

I then work on each part. The first one usually goes quickly, but the second one has to be more grounded. I need to be able to plot the next five chapters. This is my working horizon, given that I know the endgame. So, for example, this weekend I've been plotting chapters 14-18, on paper, working out roughly what happens, where, to whom, who is left standing, who betrays who, what it means for the plot, what remains unresolved (hence maintaining suspense), and that all important heightening of tension for the protagonist. This section is also the first time the reader meets the arch enemy, who was hinted at right at the end of 66 Metres. This guy personifies evil and threat, and it has to make a big impact both on the protagonist and the reader. So, he must do something pretty terrible, but threaten to do something even worse (for the fourth section).

All this is done on small, scrappy bits of paper in almost indecipherable (even to me) handwriting. It doesn't matter. The fact that I write it down leaves a trace in my head, so I remember even if I can't read my notes!

When I write, I don't do it in a calm, relaxed fashion. I do it urgently, in a hurry, as if I can't type fast enough, as if someone has a stopwatch and a gun to my head. This is how I write 'page-turners' and action scenes. The cold-eyed editing stage comes later, but the first cut must be raw and bloody. The way I do this is by waiting, building up tension in myself before I write, thinking and re-thinking scenes without typing a single word. Then when I do sit down with my laptop, it floods out of me. Usually half a chapter at a time. Breathless. Later, I'll fill in, fill out if it is too fast, deepen, etc., but not this first draft.

Fire first, ice later.

Here's my favourite scene from the opening of 66 Metres (on sale here), with one of Nadia's defining moments:

‘You have grey eyes,’ Kadinsky said, wagging a finger at Nadia. ‘Like a fucking tombstone. Who’d want to make love staring into such eyes?’ He glanced at Katya. ‘Are you sure she’s your sister?’

Katya’s gaze dropped to the carpet. She nodded, her own eyes a deep blue, like her mother’s. Nadia had her father’s eyes. Killer’s eyes, he’d once joked, when she’d been too young to realise it was a confession.

Kadinsky swirled the ice in his whiskey tumbler with a pudgy index finger. ‘What else can you do, girl?’

Nadia never knew where her answer came from, possibly revulsion against a life of prostitution, but she thought of her father, and the words slid out of her mouth. ‘I can shoot. I never miss.’

Kadinsky’s thugs laughed. He didn’t. ‘I detest exaggeration,’ he said. ‘So American.’ His mouth moved as if he was going to spit.

‘Let’s see if you can really shoot. Give her your pistol,’ he said to one of the henchmen, the one with a pockmarked face – Pox, she named him – who immediately lost his sense of humour.

She took the weapon from his outstretched hand, weighed it in her palm. An old-style Smith & Wesson. God knows why the guy had it. Most blatnye preferred semi-autos, Makarovs or the older but higher-velocity Tokarevs. She checked that it was loaded, all six bullets nestling in their chambers. She glanced at Kadinsky, thought about killing him. But the other henchman, the fat one with slicked black hair – hence, Slick – had his Glock trained on her, his lopsided leer daring her.

Kadinsky waved a hand towards Katya, five metres away. He tilted his head left and right, then settled back against the soft leather, took a gulp of whiskey, and smacked his lips. ‘The red rose in the bowl of flowers behind her left ear. Shoot it. From where you stand.’

Slick’s eyes flicked toward Katya, gauging the angles. His leer faded.

Nadia stared at her sister and the rose. Most of it was behind her head. Only one leaf of the scarlet blossom was exposed. She swallowed, then lifted the revolver, and took up a shooting stance like her father had taught her. Right arm firm, elbow not fully locked, left hand under the fist, prepared for the recoil. She had to do it before anger built and disrupted her concentration. She cocked the hammer, lined up the shot, then spoke to Katya’s serene, trusting face: ‘Love you,’ she said. Then she breathed out slowly, as if through a straw, and squeezed the trigger.

Masonry exploded behind Katya. The crack was so loud that three other men burst into the room, weapons drawn. Kadinsky waved them back as Pox peeled the revolver from Nadia’s stiff fingers. Petals fluttered to the floor amidst a plume of white powder from the impact crater in the wall. Katya sat immobile, pale, the hair on the left side of her head ruffled as if by a gust of wind. A trickle of blood oozed from her left temple, and ran down her cheek.

Katya, lips trembling, beamed at Nadia. ‘Still alive,’ she said, her voice hoarse. She touched the graze with an unsteady forefinger.

Nadia began to shake. She folded her arms, refusing to give Kadinsky the satisfaction.