The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

My phone chirps beside me; my colleague shifts uncomfortably; we both know its going to be ugly.  The familiar number can't be ignored and so I make my excuses and say it won't take long - this I know for sure.

These calls can start in any number of ways but rapidly reach the same conclusion.  The best ones start with something like "I've opened the blog, pasted in the text from Word but how do I insert the picture?"

Others start with the more ominous "the computer's gone funny what do I do" or worse still "I'm in London and Desmond (he is the Sat Nav but curiously has a female voice) has gone mad which way do I turn - quickly the lights have changed!"

From then on the conversation goes rapidly down hill, we may be able to progress the problem - with me desperately trying to remember all the commands for whatever the problem is but we usually end up with a seriously hissy fit and lots of bad language. I have to promise to fix it later when I get home.

Now I've deployed the best technical firepower available from Mr Gates and Mr Jobs; we have thin client hot stand-bys; SaaS, IaaS, Remote Infrastructure Management, Cloud Computing and most other technical wizardry you can think of.

But a curious question remains; why can't she who twists a plot a thousand times and still untangles the threads into a satisfactory conclusion sort out a few buttons on a machine that always does what you tell it to?

Mr B

PS. For the curious the Sat Nav question is easily answered - the answer is always left regardless of destination - in the hope this minimises the chance of an accident.

It's World Book Day today and the children at my son's school have to dress as their favourite characters from literature. Friends' offspring are planning to be: Alice in Wonderland, Angelina Ballerina, The Cat in the Hat, Winnie the Witch. My pride and joy insists he will be nothing but one of Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters.

'Cos, that's not a difficult costume to put together in a couple of days, is it?

It's also another reminder of what I've been worrying about for some time. My son is a whole lot darker than the average 8 year old.

So far, I think I've been able to keep this dark side contained. (I put my foot down when he wanted his last birthday cake to feature a mutilated Terminator.) But I've always known there'll come a time when I have to be a whole lot more careful about what he's exposed to.

I suspect that time might have arrived.

Earlier this week he needed some geography research material, so I printed a few pages off the internet and sent him to school with it. I really should have checked the reverse of the paper. I use paper twice, you understand, and I'd filled my printer's paper tray with a draft version of my latest book. When he got home that night, I discovered exactly what I'd sent in to my son's Roman Catholic primary school: the scene that deals with gang rape, knife crime, drug taking and lesbian sex. Jesus wept! (to use an expression rather frowned upon by said school)

Luckily, I don't think anyone spotted it, but if the expulsion papers arrive in the next week, I'll know otherwise.

He knows full well that mummy writes books he's not allowed to read until he's 21. And that I have a lot of reference material he's not allowed to look at either and so far, he's been very good about it, even letting me know when I leave things lying around. But there'll come a point when curiosity gets the better of him.

I guess this is a problem crime writers come across a lot. We deal with some very dark subject matter. We often have young children. Keeping the two separate can be a challenge.

It might be time to invest in a big cupboard with a strong lock.

Perhaps not surprisingly, everything we needed to put together a superb Death Eater costume was in the house and assembled within five minutes. Another reminder, as if we needed one, of the prevailing culture Chez Bolton.

It took me ten years to get published. That's a whole decade from sitting up in bed with my laptop on my … - well, my lap, I guess - to signing that all-exciting first contract with Goldmann Verlag.

I mention this, because I've just been asked as part of a blog spot I've been invited to take part in. Together with Adrian Magson and Sue Moorcroft, I get sent a weekly question from writers' website SpikeTheCat as part of its new Ask The Author feature. This week's starter for ten: How did I first get published and how long did it take?

I was introduced to SpikeTheCat earlier this month by its founder, Richard Hallows, when I gave a talk to the Swan and Penn literary society in Buckingham. Richard believes a lot of good writers never get chance to be published and SpikeTheCat is his way of trying to redress the balance a bit.

As I understand it, it works like this:

SpikeTheCat runs short story competitions, mainly in the detective or space adventure genres. Writers are invited to submit entries with a £3 fee per story. The best twelve (ish) stories in each competition get published (at no further cost to the authors) in books with names like Someone Has to Die and Adventures in Time and Space. The best two stories in each competition also get a cash prize.

Now, I can't write short stories to save my life, so SpikeTheCat probably wouldn't have helped me much, but I find myself rather excited by it all the same. It's simple, honest, practical and, I'm sure, hugely encouraging to those writers who get stories accepted. Judging by the fact that it gets several thousand hits a month, I'm obviously not alone in feeling this way.

The other new initiative I want to applaud (and give a massive big plug for, if I may) is LitFest10. A literary festival, believed to be the first in the UK organized by a publishing house.

LitFest 10 will be held in libraries across Hertfordshire from 25^th March to 27^th April. Topping the bill will be two heroes of mine, Lee Child and Joanne Harris. Other authors will include Channel 4 "TV Book Club" pick Belinda Bauer, John O'Farrell and me. I'll be on a crime panel on 15 April. If you live in Hertfordshire, it would be great to see you at … come to think of it, they haven't told me where yet. Must chase that up.

Why is it all my research trips take me to city parks in the middle of winter? Last week, it was Victoria Park in London's east end - not a tea-room, band stand or large dog kennel to shelter me from the biting wind and freezing torrents. This week, Bute Park in Cardiff. Weather similarly bad. (Friends remain unsympathetic: "write a book set in the Caribbean then, you dozy mare," is the typical response should I dare grumble.)

I used to live in Cardiff. I used to live in Bute Park, come to think of it. In the Castle Mews. Once stabling for the Marquis of Bute's horses, some time over the last hundred years it was converted into sixteen flats for park workers. When I was there, fourteen of them were empty. The walls were solid stone, there was no heating. I learned the meaning of cold that winter.

But it was big on atmosphere. When night fell, it felt like I was alone in this cavernous stone building, in the middle of a large park. Who would hear screams? Certainly not Gerry and Gwen, in the only other occupied flat. They were in their seventies and deaf as posts.

So, when I needed a city park to set the opening, (very scary) scene in my fourth book, my thoughts naturally turned to Bute Park. True, it was over twenty years since I'd lived there but I could more or less remember it: the magnolia lawn, the fairy-tale elegance of the castle, the river Taff running through. Book four is all but done and last Friday was my final tick-all-the-boxes trip.

Now, they who must be obeyed without question (editor and editor's boss) have previously given me clear instructions that I need to broaden my commercial appeal and step away, a little, from the claustrophobic, bucolic settings of my previous three books. I need to become more contemporary.

I'm fine with that, honestly. I've enjoyed being the high priestess of English Rural Gothic but a girl has to cast off the purple mantle sometime. I was ready for something a bit more grown up - more serious - and I've enjoyed writing book four like no other.

So what do I find, at the exact spot where the "incident" in Bute Park has to take place? A bloody great stone circle!

Now, I swear it wasn't there when I lived here. Actually, it probably was but I swear I never noticed it. Or, if I did, I swear, it had gone completely from my mind. Whatever, it's there, and either I rethink half the novel or I bow to the inevitable, rewrite this scene in true Gothic fashion and send the purple mantle to the dry cleaners in readiness for a few more outings.

You can't fight fate!

We were deeply saddened last night, on the way back from Hampshire, to learn of the death of Dick Francis.  Husband (from a very horsey family) introduced me to him years ago and I've been a firm fan ever since. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. Few writers can pen an opening line like Dick Francis.  Open any of his books and you'll see exactly what I mean.

I work very hard on my own opening lines, trying to make them as impactful as possible. I'll try even harder in future, and I'll do so in his honour.

Thanks for the stories, Dick. We'll miss you.

Went to Paris this week. Sacrifice had made it through to the final three of the Prix Du Polar (European) for best detective fiction book published during 2008 in France. The winner was to be announced on 2 Feb at the Fleche D'or, one of Paris's trendiest nightspots.

Himself came with me (well someone had to carry the luggage and make Gallic grunting noises at the French people). It was his first time on one of these jaunts, and he exactly confirmed my own opinion of them several hours in with the slightly bemused comment: "It's like being in another life!"

And this is the really odd thing about being an author. For 50 weeks of the year, they who must be obeyed (editors) keep us locked in a garret, chained to a PC, allowed out once daily to walk the dog because it gets the ideas flowing. We become strange, twitching recluses. Then, in promotion season, we're expected to cast off the sackcloth and perform. We have to become glamorous, eloquent, witty, at ease with perfect strangers. We have to be able to take to the stage in front of multitudes and not dribble incoherently on the red carpet.

In short, we have to become complete imposters.

In return, we get treated as minor celebrities. Cars meet us at airports, receptions are held in our honour, journalists care about our opinions, champagne is opened, we are looked after and fussed over in the way I fuss over my child.

Now, I'm old enough and self aware enough (I hope) to see this for what it is: a pleasant diversion from the grunt of real life. But, I think, if all this had happened to me 20 years ago, I might have started taking it seriously. I might have believed it to be my due.  And I'm not sure what sort of person I'd have become.

A few months ago, one of my foreign publicists was telling me, in a just-between-us-girls sort of way, about one of her other authors (household name thriller writer) who is just plain mean. And I sat there, thoroughly enjoying the gossip and thinking, you sweet girl, it's your fault. You treat us like we're so special - sooner or later, we're going to start to believe it.

The Paris trip was wackier than most. Fleuve Noir, my lovely French publishers, went to a great deal of trouble to make us welcome and it was great to meet Deborah Druba, my French editor at last. Very sweet lady who, surprisingly, turns out to be German.

The award ceremony took the form of a mock trial, with a prosecutor in full dress robes, a handsome French actor to read extracts and a real lawyer for each of the authors to accompany them on stage and plead their case.

French lawyers are excitable beasts, I discovered, dwelling at great length on the blood, the violence, the gore and the sex.  Philippe, my lawyer, entertained everyone by acting out the murder scene from Sacrifice, stressing the intriguing mystery of the story and concluding by promising the assembled masses that Madame Bolton would reveal everything, absolutely everything, for the cover price of 20 euros.

Thank God they still have the net book agreement in France!

I didn't win Prix du Polar. I was pipped at the post by Saskia Noort of the Netherlands.  Well done, Saskia, and congratulations also, to the charming Gilles Legardinier, also of Fleuve Noir, who won the French language prize and who has been in touch a couple of times since.  Hi there Gilles - let's hope L'Exil des anges is published in English soon, then we can all enjoy what I'm told is a completely fabulous thriller.