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\"\"I was 14 years old when I read my first work of grown-up\"\" fiction (Leslie Thomas’ The Virgin Soldiers) and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. It only took 50 years to achieve that ambition of writing (hopefully) entertaining novels, although I’ve written a stack of other books in between.<\/p>\n

At time of writing (July 2023) I have written 18 books and had 17 of them published, with Mole Creek<\/em>, due out on August 1, on Echo Books.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Prior to that, in 2018, Affirm Press published Tunnel Vision<\/em>, the second of my Danny Clay trilogy\u00a0 – hey, I can dream! By the way, I write all this not to boast, but to encourage other writers to keep going, even when the odds seem stacked against them.<\/p>\n

Writing Tunnel Vision<\/em> was interesting because the previous novel, Perfect Criminals<\/em>, had taken about three years to write, on and off (mostly off). It had begun as an idea which I then used for the 20,000 word submission that got me my MA (Writing).<\/p>\n

Having written 25 per cent of the number of words required for an average commercial novel, I decided to keep going but when it was finished, the search for a publisher was so frustrating that I briefly had it up on Amazon as a “Publish on Demand” and ebook publication.<\/p>\n

However, just when I was ready to give up, Affirm Press came along and I had a two-book deal for not very much money. But I had a deal.<\/p>\n

More importantly, I had a strong idea for where I wanted to take these characters and I knew how to pace the book so I wouldn’t have to cut 13,000 words out, as I did with the first one.<\/p>\n

Having decided to set it in Saigon, I realised that, although I know the city pretty well, I needed to spend some time there being neither a tourist nor a tour guide – both of which I have done a lot.<\/p>\n

So I spent two weeks just scuffing around Saigon, doing the occasional tourist trips – like street food tours on the back of motorbikes – while visiting parts of the city that Westerners are advised to avoid.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All the time, I was writing and as a result, Tunnel Vision<\/em> took only three or four months to finish and it benefited greatly from that sense of immediacy and urgency (I think). Anyway, it’s a better book and I hope you get the chance to read and enjoy it.\u00a0 Click here<\/a><\/em><\/strong> if you want to buy it online from Abbey’s Books.<\/p>\n

Its predecessor, Perfect Criminals<\/em>, is a crazy romp through television and crime by my hero Danny Clay, a former army engineer turned scriptwriter.\u00a0 I tell people both books are written in the style of Carl Hiaasen. I know, I should be half as talented.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was something I didn’t even realise I was doing until I rewarded myself for finishing the book by reading his latest novel. Aha! \u00a0So\u00a0that’s<\/em>\u00a0what I was trying to do.<\/p>\n

A reviewer in the Sydney Morning Herald<\/a> said Perfect Criminals was “punchily written, packed with hard-boiled humour [and] a ride into the underbelly of the entertainment industry.” Another review in the Melbourne Herald-Sun said “an action-packed and hilarious crime caper, navigating its way through the dark side of the entertainment industry here and abroad.”<\/p>\n

You can judge for yourself by buying a print copy (if you can still find one) or ebook here in Australia\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0or on Amazon<\/a> elsewhere.<\/p>\n

My previously published books include two sporting biographies, two books about sappers (Army engineers) in Vietnam, one about sappers in Afghanistan, one memoir about my co-writer Sandy MacGregor (who introduced me to the sapper stories), \u00a0and one true crime book which turned out to be too true for someone\u2019s comfort.<\/p>\n

There are also two illustrated children\u2019s books, a book about apartment living and another about \"\"buying and selling real estate, and two self-help\/inspirational books that I\u00a0wrote for my former agent (and from which I have been edging away for years, on the grounds that I am the least qualified person I know to give anyone life advice).<\/p>\n

The 17th<\/sup> book – the unpublishable rather than unpublished one – was my first attempt at a novel about 25 years ago.\u00a0 I gave up after my first rejection slip. I am a bit more tenacious these days.<\/p>\n

The new book, Mole Creek,<\/em>\u00a0had a much longer gestation than the other books and started life as a sprawling political novel set in the USA. It was only when I realised that the “McGuffin”, the device that motivated the plot, was actually what the book was all about, and I cut it back by about 50 percent and relocated it to Tasmania, that I got it published.<\/p>\n

You can find out more about all previously published books by going to this page<\/a> and clicking on the links.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was 14 years old when I read my first work of grown-up fiction (Leslie Thomas’ The Virgin Soldiers) and decided that was what I wanted to do with my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[50,52,54,56],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-books","tag-books","tag-fiction","tag-non-fiction","tag-novels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}