The Special Relationship

Catriona writes: next month, I've got the huge pleasure of moderating a panel at Bloody Scotland, made up of three Celts - two Scots and a Northern Irishman - who all write thrillers set in the USA. However, me asking my old pal Gordon Brown to write a guest blog here at Casa Femme about the whys and hows of a Scot writing a thriller set in the USA is not, not in any way, not a bit, a sneaky attempt to make him do my moderating prep for me. Right? Glad we straightened that out. 

Now, it's my great pleasure to welcome Gordon Brown!

When Eric Campbell, the owner of Down & Out Books, and I first met, I was struggling to breathe. I was sitting in the lounge of the Cheyenne Mountain Resort with a fellow Scottish author, Craig Robertson. The hotel sits in Colorado Springs, some 6,000 feet above sea level and I was recovering from a session in the gymnasium (not something I’d recommend until you become acclimatized to exercising one mile up). Craig and I were on an exploratory mission.  As board members of Bloody Scotland (Scotland’s International Crime Festival) we were guests at the Left Coast Crime Festival and, in between deep breaths, I handed Eric a copy of my book, Falling. 

Two years later I signed a deal to publish Falling in the U.S. 

Set in Glasgow the book is peppered with Scottish colloquialisms. Phrases, descriptions and language are uncompromisingly local. Words such as ‘close’, ‘jiggered’ and ‘snog’ (the lobby to an apartment block, being tired and a long kiss) snuggle next to more common UK words, but less U.S. friendly ones; such as pavement and queue (sidewalk and line). But it was first and foremost written as a Scottish crime fiction novel and Eric wanted to publish it, warts and all.

Yet I still edited it, and edited it hard. Why? Well, blame America.

I didn’t edit it to remove or replace the Scottishness. Eric was clear on where he stood on that front. I edited it because my writing style had changed. And it had changed because, in the intervening years, I had penned another series of books that have, at their core, a U.S. protagonist called Craig McIntrye. 

The McIntyre books (The Catalyst and Meltdown) are U.S. based thrillers written from an American’s perspective, using U.S. spelling and language The books are fast paced and to help create this pace I adopted techniques such as shorter sentences, cliff hanging ends to chapters and backed action into action. If you compare Craig - ex U.S. military - to Falling’s main protagonist, Charlie Wiggs; a forty plus year old accountant who gets caught up in a life of crime – there’s not much similarity – one’s a trained soldier, the other is a trained accountant. So why hit the edit trail?

It’s now confession time. My real heroes in the literary world reside, in the main, in America. Authors such as Stephen King, James Patterson, Clive Cussler and Lee Child (I know Lee is English – it’s, in part, this very fact that convinced me that I could successfully set the Craig McIntyre novels in the U.S.) form the backbone of my paperback collection.

I only have to think back and remember my love for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murder in the Rue Morgue -  arguably the birth of the detective story (I read his entire works one summer while working in Canada). I grew up reading Franklin W Dixon’s Hardy Boys (I won’t mention that I quite liked Nancy Drew as well – Oh go on, Gordon – you’re among friends here – CMcP) and, although born in Russia, Isaac Asimov, as an American, introduced me to R. Daneel Olivaw – a robot detective. 

These authors, and more, gave me reason to stop, think and to experiment with my writing style. I discovered I liked this new style and, after a few false starts, I wrote McIntyre’s’s first two books with a third on its way later this year.

So when I had the chance to re-edit Falling I spent time working my way, line by line, through the whole novel. I changed nothing

in the core storyline. Charlie stills gets thrown from a forty storey (not story) building. He still ends up on the run from hardened criminals - with only an office maintenance man and the maintenance man’s girlfriend for help. He still has to decide if he wants to run, die, or fight back.

But using the learning from the McIntyre novels, I took the opportunity to inject Charlie’s world with a little more pace, smooth out some rough edges and iron out some kinks that had always bothered me. 

I’ve been told the book is the better for it.

When I recently took to the keyboard to write a sequel to Falling - something I thought I would never do, I had a fear that my dalliance with all things U.S. would blunt the edge of my Scottish crime gene. 

I needn’t have worried. Charlie appeared on page one, full of life and raring for me to heap more pain and misery on his life. He still tells people to ‘haud their wheesht’ (keep quiet). He doesn’t like ‘clipes’ (people who grass others up – Do American readers know what grassing up is? - CMcP) but does like a plate of ‘tatties’ (potatoes).  He speaks of bairns, weans and wee ones (all words for children) and when he’s very, very tired he tells everyone he’s ‘gubbed’.

So what does this all mean?

Falling is a Scottish crime novel written by a Scot. A Scot influenced by American authors. A Scot who turned to writing U.S. thrillers. Thrillers that changed the way he wrote, allowing him to go back and make his Scottish crime novel a better book. Simple really.

Have you ever read a term in a book that's thrown you for a loop? With me it was the credenzas in Lisa Scottoline novels. Everyone's got a credenza. I thought they were like tiaras till I looked them up. How about you?

 

Gordon Brown lives in Scotland. He’s married with two children. He once quit his job in London to fly across the Atlantic to be with his future wife. He has also delivered pizzas in Toronto, sold nonalcoholic beer in the Middle East, launched a creativity training business called Brain Juice and floated a high tech company on the London Stock Exchange. He almost had a toy launched by a major toy company, has an MBA, loves music, is a DJ on local radio, compered the main stage at a two-day music festival and was once booed by 49,000 people while on the pitch at a major football Cup Final. Gordon also helped found Bloody Scotland – Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival. For more see www.gordonjbrown.com

Comments

[Mark]

The first time I ran across snog was in the Harry Potter books. Stopped me cold until I figured out what it was.

[Elaine Viets]

Funny blog, Gordon. I now picture you with a credenza on your head -- which must hurt like hell. OK, what's a "butty"? Some kind of food, right? Or have I read the story wrong and it's about as tasty as a credenza?