newsletter: november, 2001
It’s been a while since I updated this newsletter, largely due to the fact that I’ve been busy trying to complete a novel. I achieved this finally:
The Last Darkness is the title, and it will be published in the spring by HarperCollins (UK). The book reprises a character from The Bad Fire, Lou Perlman, a Detective-Sergeant working in Glasgow. The plot is intricate, and I wouldn’t want to begin to detail it here - it’s probably enough to say that it’s about family secrets, revenge, and international embezzlement.
The fun part of writing a book like this - for me anyway - is when I come to pieces of action that surprise me, because I hadn’t foreseen them, or when a character decides to do something I basically don’t want him to do. I know it sounds crazy, because these people are products of my own head, but often they rebel against the control of the author and take over, and the ghost of plot I had in mind when I started takes off in another direction.
A lot of writers like to blueprint everything before they start. I don’t. I want to sit down every morning and let the unfolding of the story surprise me. Sometimes it does. My feeling is that if it surprises me, it will probably surprise the reader too…
I’m enjoying the ongoing development of the character Lou Perlman, who first featured in The Bad Fire and who now has a central role in The Last Darkness. He’s good-natured, sometimes grumpy and caustic, and is defiantly proud of his lack of dress sense. In a way, he’s pure Glasgow; as tough as the city itself, and just as disheveled, and yet good-hearted too.
It’s my plan to feature him in at least one more book, because there are elements of his character that appeal to the explorer in me. I have the specter of a plot in mind…
The memoir, I Hope You Have A Good Life, is being published in the USA in Spring 2002, by Three Rivers Press.
Thanks to all the nice people who send email to me. I truly appreciate it. It’s a great way to kickstart a day with a note or two from readers, and I enjoy the communication. It’s a self-centered life writing books, and feedback from the outside world is welcome…
contents©2006 Campbell Armstrong
web design + hosting:
