In case you haven’t been on my Facebook page, Twitter feed or passed by any of the rooftops I’ve been shouting it from, I have a new book hitting the streets on September 8.
After four Davie McCall books, I decided a change of pace was called for. After all, writing Davie can be somewhat draining. He is, as regular readers will know, on the taciturn side. Everything about him is internal and his one-liners are rare enough for conservationists to tag them and track them in the wild.
Dominic Queste, the central character in THE DEAD DON’T BOOGIE, is different.
Where Davie is tight of lip, Dom is so loose ships at sea issue Maydays.
I like to write dialogue and I like to add some humour. In the Davie McCall books it was the supporting characters who had all the fun, particularly Bobby Newman, Frank Donovan and Jimmy Knight.
With the Dominic Queste books (and I do hope there will be more) I can give full rein to my love of fast-flowing banter while also throwing in hefty dollops of action, mayhem and, because it’s me, darkness.
There is more of me in Dom than there is in Davie. I’ll leave it to those readers who know me to work out what parts of him are me and what parts are the way I’d like to be.
To be honest, I’d rather be more like Davie. He never says anything he doesn’t mean, he seldom says anything out of place (being taciturn does have its advantages) and he has a very direct way of dealing with those who annoy him. There are times when I wish I would just shut up. I’m sure others feel the same. That’s something I share with Dominic.
The Davie McCall books were thrillers that took a gritty, grounded-in-reality approach to story-telling.
With Queste the sky’s the limit. The first one is an action thriller designed to go like a Duracell bunny on laxatives. I didn’t burden myself by second guessing if an action scene was plausible, I just did it. So if I wanted to have a shoot-out in an east end park or a riverside car park, I damn well had them.
The approach also made me cut back considerably on the swearing. I’m sure there are people who are glad to hear that. The body count remains high, though.
(ABOVE – Three peaceful views of Glasgow’s Alexandra Park. Each of these locations features in the new book. They’re not peaceful for long)
I hope you enjoy the first Dominic Queste book. I hope you buy it.
Otherwise I’ve wasted my time these past few months writing the second one, TAG – YOU’RE DEAD.
THE DEAD DON’T BOOGIE (Contraband) will be launched in Waterstones Ayr on Thursday September 1, with Michael J. Malone in the chair, and then in Waterstones Argyle Street, Glasgow, with Caro Ramsay wielding the clipboard, on Thursday September 8.
