Further to my recent post, The Demise of the Mass Market Paperback, I have now decided to try and see if I can learn to love the tradeback. If I don't do this, I'll soon have no new titles to read. I've already made the first few steps by buying two tradeback books in as many days.

So Walkers want us to come up with a new flavour for them. A simple task you might think, but I spent... well, far too long put it that way, on their site the other night. This is great, I thought. There I was submitting flavour after flavour - chicken tikka massala, salad cream, crispy duck... until I noticed they had a search feature for checking out the flavours already suggested. All the flavours just mentioned had page after page devoted to them. So I decided I'd stand more chance of winning if I suggested flavours that no one else had thought of... I couldn't come up with a single, unique flavour for the whole time I was there.

Don't believe me? Try it. As long as you stay with sensible and do-able flavours, I bet you can't come up with more that two unique flavours in under an hour.
Do Us A Flavour Comp

I buy mass market paperbacks, and mass market paperbacks only. So bad is my obsession that I have 'gone without' books I really want, on several occasions, because I've been unable to find them in mass market. Trade paperbacks are taking over the world and I hate them with a passion I cannot express.
In case you're sat there wondering what the difference is, I can tell you that it's quite simply size. Mass market paperbacks are a beautifully compact, user-friendly and handy 17.5cm (H) X 11cm (W) while trade are an ugly, cumbersome, wrist-snapping 19.5cm (H) X 12.5cm (W) - sometimes bigger, but that's another format again.

In my opinion the mass market paperback is dying because of snobbery. Mass market PB are associated with the kind of trashy novels only available through the big supermarkets and the literary snobs out there (you know who you are) needed something that said, 'Look at me! I'm reading intelligent literature,' and so the trade PB was born to help distinguish between the two.

At this rate there won't be any books available for me to buy soon!

Related posts: fictionaddictionblog.com, rlaneri.blogspot.com, Guardian

This isn't classic Gregory, I have to say, and will seem like quite a departure for anyone that happens to have read any of his other works. Nevertheless this is an immensely enjoyable addition to your Gregory collection. The climax - which builds beautifuly from about the half way point - is an absolute edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster and wonderfully constructed. Gregory's first novel, The Cormorant, was adapted for televsion by the BBC, and boy is this latest offering crying out for the same treatment!

A few months ago I conducted an interview, via email, with Stephen Gregory, author of The Cormorant, The Woodwitch, The Blood of Angels, and most recently, The Perils and Dangers of This Night.


Q1 Where does the inspiration to write so evocatively come from?
For the settings, for the background of a story, I’ve always been inspired by living in the countryside and looking closely at the little details of the natural world. Since I was a boy, I’ve had a special interest in wildlife, and I love the weather, the seasons. There’s something about the autumn I like best … it’s my favourite time to start a new writing project.

Q2 Your writing style seems effortless. Is this really the case?
Effortless, no. But enjoyable and exciting when it feels as though it’s going well. I re-write a lot, and then re-write. So no, not effortless … it feels like a craft, an art, something truly worthwhile working at and getting as right as possible … not always successfully, but worth working at and thrilling when it feels like it might actually come together in the way I’d planned it …

Q3 Of the four, which novel are you most proud of?
I’m kind of pleased by all of the books, although I can see big and small things wrong with all of them. There are some parts of Angels which are better than I could have dreamed of, surprising and good. It’s a book I think a reader could always find a lot of odd and true things inside.

Q4 Who's your favourite author?
I’ve really enjoyed Ian McEwan and William Boyd. I loved reading Hardy, and DH Lawrence, especially when I was working overseas and was feeling nostalgic for England and the countryside and seasons and weather. A favourite book has always been Women in Love … and TH White’s The Goshawk.

Q5 When did you first believe you could make a living from writing?
I don’t know about ‘making a living from writing’! There are good times when a cheque or two come in, and I made some money when I was hired by William Friedkin at Paramount Studios. There are leaner times too, and I have to ‘work’ for a living … ie not writing!

Q6 What's your routine during the writing of a new novel; strict office hours or more flexible?
I try to have a routine when I’m working on a book, although a lot of that depends on what’s happening with ‘other work’ which can seriously get in the way of writing! But when I’ve had the good fortune to be writing full-time, yes I’ve had a routine of writing in the morning, re-writing in the afternoon, planning and thinking about the next day’s writing in the evening … aiming to achieve a certain block of writing each day and hitting a target.

Q7 When I last spoke to you, a number of years ago now, you told me that you had no plans to write another novel. What changed your mind?
I think it was a few years ago when I said I hadn’t got another novel planned, when I was hired to write stories and script in Hollywood and I was seriously distracted from doing what I really like best. The Hollywood adventure was a huge thrill and I loved it all, but it took my eye off trying to write good, strong, sustained prose. I learned a lot from writing at Paramount and admire the amazing professionals I was working with. It’s good to be writing novels again.

Q8 From idea to final draft, how long did it take you to complete your latest book?
Perils started life as an idea for a screenplay, over 10 years ago. I wrote it as a script, re-wrote it and developed it, re-wrote it again and again, dropped it. Then a year ago I had the sudden idea to write it as a novel. The actual novel writing process was an 18 month period, with several drafts and versions. But the whole thing has been a ten year journey!

Q9 My lack of discipline means I'm never going to make it as a writer. How difficult do you find this aspect of writing?
The discipline point isn’t really an issue. If I have a clear idea and work it through in my mind, do lots of planning and the necessary research, then the hardest part is suddenly starting and writing the first few sentences, paragraphs and pages. If I can get into it, get a first chapter finished, there might be a brilliant feeling that it’ll gather pace and momentum and there won’t be a reason to stop until I reach the place where I always knew it was going to end!

Q10 What is your writing process; one sentence leading to another, meticulous planning, a single idea that kick starts your imagination?
Of course it starts with ‘the idea’, something which makes me think I might be getting the very exciting first strokes of a story. If it still feels good after lots of scribbling and pondering, I’ll do weeks and weeks (months?) of planning, work out the whole plot from beginning to end, work out the ‘beats’, chapters, drive towards the climax and resolution. I need as much certainty in my mind as possible, about the characters and their motives, what they want and need and how they go about getting it. The story has to be rock-solid, on paper, an outline or a treatment, before I can start really writing it.

Q11 Will there be a fifth novel?
A fifth novel? Yes, I’m already writing it

I can now confirm that the book mentioned in my last post, is indeed written by the same man who penned the sublime, The Cormorant, The Woodwitch, and The Blood of Angels.
I emailed Mr Gregory yesterday to ask him the specific question and he replied today with conformation of the above.

Anyway, onto the blurb;

A throwback to classic psychological horror stories, The Perils & Dangers of this Night is a tale of revenge and retribution set in the bleak winter isolation of Foxwood Manor, a boys' English prep school in the woodlands of Dorset. The stage is set when Martin Price, an arrogant former pupil, inexplicably shows up with his girlfriend, Sophie, joining the headmaster, his wife, and Alan Scott, an abandoned student, as the only residents of Foxwood on a frosty Christmas Eve. As the snow falls, a web of half-truths and innuendoes emerges, and things evolve into a bizarre game of hide-and-seek through the halls and dormitories of the old manor. As events progress throughout the night, shocking revelations emerge, culminating in a stunning conclusion on Christmas morning.

My mouth's watering just reading that. Not at the boys' English prep school, I hasten to add, but at the Dorset woodland setting. Mr Gregory also tells me it's set in the 60s - even better.
Roll on August, fans.

A member of a forum I frequent posted a link today, to a forthcoming novel titled The Perils and Dangers of this Night. The author is credited as one Stephen Gregory.
Now for anyone familiar with the three, existing Gregory novels; The Cormorant, The Woodwitch, and The Blood of Angels, this is very exciting news indeed. His last book, Blood of Angels, was published way back in 1994. Is the wait finally over?

I cannot find any confirmation, as of yet, that this forthcoming title is indeed written by the same man. I emailed him some years ago to ask if he had anything in the pipeline and he replied with a very definite no. Not that he was rude or short in any way, quite the reverse. He was delighted and touched that I should contact him.
I've emailed him again, in light of this news, to ask if this new novel is indeed his own. If and when he gets back with an answer, I'll post an update here.