The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

Mr B was a bit disgruntled on Saturday. He'd had to fork out a tenner, so that he and small child could sit at the back of a hot sticky room and listen to me talk for an hour. (Even our eight year old complained he gets enough of that for free at home.) We were in Thame Town Hall, I on the thriller panel, they in the audience, as part of the inaugural Thame Arts and Literature Festival.

He's not fulsome in his praise, Mr B. This was the first such event he's been to and when I asked him afterwards how he thought it went, he said: 'You probably shouldn't have slagged off Stieg Larsson. He sells a lot more than you do.'

Well, I can't argue with that. But if I have to put up with people posting comments on Amazon about my "average and often clumsy novels", I don't see why I can't occasionally question another writer's phenomenal success.

And before you start muttering about sour grapes can I preface what I'm about to say by making clear that I'm a huge Dan Brown fan, consider JK Rowling to be a near genius, believe Lee Child to be almost as sexy in real life as his fictional counterpart, Jack Reacher, and if Stephen King were ever to ask, which I seriously doubt he would, the answer is a definite: yes, I will run away with you. I do not envy other writers' their massive success; as long as I believe it to be deserved.

Stieg Larsson though?

I've only read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I'm told the trilogy gets better as it goes along but, I'm sorry, that's like saying a book starts off weak but picks up a third of the way through. In this incredibly competitive marketplace, such a book has no business on the shelves.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo needed the attention of a thumping good editor, in my view. One like my own, for example, because there's no way a book with something like fifty pages of financial information would ever get past her red pen. Especially as it's not, ultimately, remotely necessary to the plot.

Holding, as you can see, strong views on the subject of Mr L, I'd been looking forward to meeting my fellow panelist in Thame, Barry Forshaw, author of the first biography of Stieg, called "The Man Who Left Too Soon."  Barry is a journalist, book critic and crime editor. He's also written several non-fiction books about the crime genre and has a close to encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. If anybody would be able to tell me what the fuss was about, it was Barry. Because as far as I could see, the only thing the book has in its favour is the, admittedly fabulous, main character, Lisbeth Salander.

She's completely wonderful, I agree, and I so wish I'd invented her, but surely even a truly superb main character isn't enough, in itself, to turn an otherwise weak book into a great one?

Barry's take on the Larsson phenomenon? His success was down to two factors. The wonderful Lisbeth. And Larsson's premature death.

So there you go. That's what I have to do to hit the big time. Invent an absolutely corker of a main character. And die.

Now I'll probably spend the rest of this exceptionally beautiful late June day imagining how such a death might occur. And if you want to take issue with my Larsson comments, please, feel free. I would genuinely love to know what makes this book deserve the success it has had. Convince me and not only will I read it again, I'll even buy it again.

I'm often asked if I get writers' block. Never, has been my rather smug answer to date. Somehow the sentences, some good, some needing work, just kept pouring out. I wasn't sure I even believed in writers' block. Wasn't it just another way of saying, "can't actually be bothered"?

Well, it's payback time, because I find myself suffering a serious case of bloggers' block. I knew it would end in tears, back in January, when I allowed myself to be talked into this blog. I'm a writer, I complained to anyone who would listen. My life is exceptionally dull. I write, I wander aimlessly around the house, then I write some more. The highlight of my day is school pickup when I get to interact with real people* for about ten minutes.

Plus this is that very difficult time of year when I'm "between" books. Number four has been sent, in second-draft form, to She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have a few weeks respite to plan number five. Sheer torture. Staring at a blank screen and knowing that before the end of next February it has to contain 130,000 words.

You see, as well as bloggers' block, I've had a critical attack of planners' block. I have a basic idea for a story that I know could be brilliant. I just can't for the life of me see how to turn that idea into a fully formed plot. The planning is hard. Even harder than the editing and that usually sends me running for the gin bottle by three o'clock every afternoon. During planning season, a whole day can go by and I've produced a paragraph of text and had one idea that might comprise half a scene.  It feels very unproductive and, compared to the writing process when I might have 3000 words to show for a day's work, extremely frustrating. And there's always that nagging fear at the back of my head: what if I can't do it again?

I was talking about this on Wednesday night to the very clever and articulate Tom Cain, author of The Accident Man series, in front of an audience of several dozen people at Feltham Library. Tom doesn't plan, he says. He likes to be surprised by his stories and his characters. Good for you, buddy. If I didn't plan, the only surprise I'd get is if words actually got written.

So apologies to all the regular visitors (I know you exist, even if you never talk back to me) if I maintain radio silence for a while. I haven't gone anywhere. I'm not doing anything exciting. I'm just staring at my screen, waiting to be inspired.

Oh, and Tom made me laugh. He says all books are masquerading as something else. Mine, he thinks, are ghost stories masquerading as forensic thrillers. His, on the other hand, are romances, pretending to be action thrillers.  You have to read a Tom Cain book to appreciate just how funny that is.

* I use that term quite loosely, but after several hours with just my own company, I'm easily satisfied.