The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

All is not well Chez Bolton. In the first week of the school holidays, small (and far too adventurous) child fell off the monkey bars and shattered his elbow. As I write, we're waiting to hear whether the joint will mend itself or require surgery sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Summer plans are now in complete disarray, with hopes of enjoying our first long haul holiday since arrival of said child in more pieces than his elbow. We won't now be spending next week on a yacht in the British Virgin Islands, instead increasingly bored child and I will be stuck here in semi-rural Bucks, trying not to drive each other nuts. Nor will we be meeting up with friends in Devon for a week pretending to be swallows and amazons, because semi-disabled children and water sports just don't mix.

Oh, I had such high hopes for this summer!

Safe to say Mr B is not at his most sanguine. Neither am I. Holiday plans aside, I had two major deadlines to meet before we flew off to Tortola but the various summer camps and activities I'd planned to entertain child while I was working have also been cancelled. Looks like the final edit of Book Four and the detailed synopsis of Book Five are going to be fleshed out between the hours of ten and midnight.

Still haven't come up with a title, by the way. And lets face it, Book Four on the cover is hardly going to fly off the shelves!

Still, every cloud as they say.  We were cheered up considerably a few days ago by a phone call from She Who Is About To Glide Gracefully Down The Aisle. The Crime Writers Association have just announced the shortlists for the 2010 Daggers (also known as The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards) and Blood Harvest is one of eight books up for the very prestigious Gold Dagger. On 9^th August the list of eight will be whittled down to four finalists, with the eventual winner being announced at a televised ceremony in Grosvenor House in early October.

The annual daggers are a crime writing institution in the UK and the first tranche were announced a couple of days ago at the Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. I'd have struggled to judge the Dagger in the Library this year, as three writers I particularly admire were all on the shortlist: Simon Beckett, Mo Hayder and Ariana Franklin. (Of course, they're all with Transworld - all the best thriller writers are!) Ariana won it, with Simon being highly commended. Mo can hardly sulk though. Her latest, Gone (my favourite Hayder book so far) has been shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, also to be announced in October.

I love my readers. Well, not the mean ones who post snide reviews on Amazon, obviously, but the ones who enjoy the books and are kind enough to let me know. Funny thing this, I've read voraciously for years, hero-worship more than one household name writer, but I've never once got in touch with any of them to tell them how much I've enjoyed a book, or to thank them for their work.

Which makes me now a bit ashamed of myself, as though for the same number of years I've been going to parties and to friends' houses for dinner without ever bothering with a thank you note. Because lots of people write to thank me and I can't tell you how lovely it is to get these cheery little notes in my inbox.

I can't say they make it all worthwhile, because it would be more than worthwhile anyway, but they certainly are the icing on the cake.

My favourite reader of the moment, though, is without doubt Carolyn from Texas who, whilst enjoying Awakening, felt the ending didn't quite hit the note she was looking for. So, and I'm sure only an American reader would think of doing this, she tore out the last ten pages, re-wrote it and sent it back to me.

And you know what - her version wasn't bad.

Spoiler alert - don't read on if you haven't yet (and might one day) finished Awakening.

Carolyn felt the ending didn't quite hit the romantic note she'd been hoping for. Not enough for this reader that heroine Clara has battled venomous snakes, resurrected corpses and saved the man she loves from a flesh dissolving end. She needed plucky Clara to be rewarded with a snog.

So in the new version she is. And for all those of you who found the ending of Awakening just that little lacking in warmth, here is Carolyn's re-write of pg 390.

Somehow, we'd moved closer. I could smell the wool of Matt's jacket, warm in the sunshine, his skin, his hair.

'What about your girlfriend, Matt?' I asked.

'Erstwhile girlfriend,' he replied, covering my lips with his. It was a slow, deeply satisfying kiss. Too soon, he pulled back and looked at me. With the barest touch, he laid his fingertips alongside the scar on my face.

'Are you OK?,' he asked.

Actually, Carolyn isn't alone. A lot of readers expressed their disappointment that the romances in both Awakening and Blood Harvest weren't tied up a little more neatly.  With Blood Harvest, in particular, I had an alternative ending in mind, much warmer and sexier, and had even written three quarters of it in my head. But when it came to it, in both books, the events leading up to the final pages were just too grim to tie either story up with a twee happy ending.

The other problem with having your characters ride off into the sunset, is that it's then so much harder to bring them back for subsequent books. If characters achieve a happy ending, I like to leave them there. On the other hand, if the events are resolved but not the relationships, there is scope to revisit.

I've just taken Evi Oliver out of her box, dusted her off and am trying her out for a leading role in book five. I wasn't too keen on Evi, all the time I was writing Blood Harvest. I found her a bit unwieldy, less interesting that my previous two lead females. In all fairness to her, though, she's bringing book five to life. Will she have her happy ending in Book Five? I suspect not, anymore than Lacey (whom you have yet to meet) will.

Book four is still with She Who Is About To Become A Vision In White and we've just heard that James Patterson has stolen my preferred title for it: Tick Tock. Honestly, that man! So, the race is on to find a new title for a book that is a modern take on the Jack the Ripper case before the cover design has to be agreed. Usually, that's sometime in … June! Ooops, my schedule is slipping.

By the way, if anyone fancies rewriting the endings of any of my books, feel free! I'll post the best ones here on the website.