Bolt Action (38 page)

The captain eyes them carefully, keen to make sure they know what they’re letting themselves in for. Waving his arms dramatically. ‘Maybee we go ‘ome to ‘urope . . . maybee nixt munth,’ he says. ‘You passenger, no talk . . .’ He zips his lips with a wild hand movement. ‘‘Til then, high seas feeshing. Big wave. Up, down . . . feeshing always. Cod, plaice, shrimp. Out there.’ He waves off towards the east, beyond the poster of a pouting Jenna Jameson. ‘Nobody see us, ‘til nixt munth. Seeeks week even.’

Sounds absolutely perfect.

Acknowledgements

This is a debut novel and one of the things the self-help books and writers’ groups say is, Be Very Careful About Using Family Members As Critics. Thankfully that does not apply in my case. For the person who contributed most to the book that is
Bolt Action
is my Mother, an extraordinary woman who also does not care one bit for the thriller genre that I aspire to. Nonetheless, through endless hours of jotting and read-throughs she hacked at, sandpapered down and generally purged my writing of all the stuff my daughters would describe as, Icky. If you’ve got this far in the book and generally had an acceptable time, my Mum is the reason.

The process of getting a book printed has never been easier thanks to self-publishing and the encouragement, hand-holding and advice available everywhere from college courses to the internet. Yet it also has never been harder. Harder still if, when you started, you were truly awful, as I was. One agent who saw my first completed manuscript said, You Write Like You Have Never Read a Book in Your Life. Then
click
, no advice, nothing, just conversation over.

From rejection after rejection to, lo and behold, publication is a grinding study in loneliness, and putting one foot in front of the other again and again, until you get somewhere. That this book was published is because of three crucial people who sustained me.

Jo Frank was the person who saw my writing at its very worst and, yet, was able to carrot-and-stick me in such a skilful way that I wanted nothing more than to write and write some more, and prove everybody wrong. She has no equal like that.
Patrick Janson-Smith was an enormous and reassuring ally, somebody who left the High Court after testifying in the Dan Brown/Da Vinci Code case to call me,
me!
, to say he loved my work and was 100 percent convinced I had what it took. Crikey.
Me?
And finally, the irrepressible Charlie Viney, who never stopped believing. He took a manuscript completed just as the world was tipping into global financial chaos and emerged triumphant with a deal from a publishing industry that otherwise was cutting, trimming, axing and sacking right across the board. He laughs at impossible odds.

At Hodder, this book has been the subject of the most excellent care and nurturing encouragement from Nick Sayers and Anne Clarke. They pointed out a lot of obvious ways to make the book better, which I should have thought of, but didn’t, and several that weren’t obvious at all, but had just the same effect. And it has been Kerry Hood, the best in her business, who has taken on the hardest job of all for an unpublished author: Getting Out The Good Word.

There were many people who contributed to
Bolt Action
but the most constant source of advice and comment was Jimmy Hurley, for whom Ward 13 was an actual stopping off point, at one time. For the avoidance of doubt, he is not Tristie Merritt, but he could be any one of the other members of her team, except that he gets hay fever, doesn’t like jungles, isn’t very happy with heights etc. etc.

Several people have also happily offered answers to gormless technical queries of mine but asked that I not reveal their names. Others who were of the greatest possible assistance include, in Fiji, Jimmy Samson, Jamie O’Donnell and Sharon Ferrier-Watson of Air Pacific, Dick and Kelera Watling, Dominic Sansom of Samba and, of course, Mere Samisoni, John, Selina, Philip, Ili and Alisi; in the UK and elsewhere, Ben B., Dr Chris Jones, Chris Roberts, John Wright and Ben Herter. I would love to pretend that any mistakes were their fault, but that would not be true and I alone carry the can.

Spare a thought too for Jules Bromley who has read all of
my scripts (or at least pretended to) for the last five years, and to my fellow Arvon Foundation students from that one-week course in 2006, and Cath Staincliffe and David Armstrong too, plus Andrew and Sarah Clark, George Manners, Mark Fenhalls, Jon Higton, James Evans and Charlie Ponsonby – who have been great allies along the road.

Finally, there is no way on earth that this incredible journey could have started – let alone concluded – without the support, love and encouragement of my wife Vanessa who has backed me to the hilt and more, having seen something in me that, Lord only knows, remains a mystery even to this day. As to my wonderful children, (tip of the hat to PGW) without the never-failing sympathy and encouragement of Jack, Coco, Leila and Lucky, this book would have been finished in half the time. But it is for them that I write, and it is their dreams that make me want to go to work each morning.

Malton

North Yorkshire

March 2010