Mo Hayder Blog
Thursday 11th February 2010
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The last day! I'm getting tired, I don't know how other authors do those incredibly long tours you hear about. At least in the UK you get small breaks during the day - if you go to other countries they pack every second with work - once I was even interviewed on a connecting flight. It's truly exhausting and takes a good week to recover from. This has been much more gentle, with much more chance to talk to readers and to the staff in the bookshops.
Today I've been in the west country visiting various places in Bristol and to Bath. I dropped in at Toppings in Bath which used to be my local bookshop. I'm very fond of the place - the staff are marvellous and it's got a great atmosphere. You can just pop in and have a cup of coffee, browse, have a chat. And increasingly it seems to be doing dual service as my personal publicity studio - last week I filmed a section for Sky TV in there, and today I sat in the back room - the arts room - and did a radio interview down the line with the BBC. Then off we went to my last signing session, in Salisbury. Someone told me that the cathedral is on a flood plain and therefore is built on a series of rafts made from rush. I've never actually found out if that's true, but whenever I'm in Salisbury I always feel a little ill at ease - as if might shift at any moment. Fortunately it didn't happen tonight, we got out alive. Does anyone know if this raft thing is a myth?
Anyway - I'm going to sign off now, thanks for stopping in on this tour by proxy. Hello to all the fascinating people I've met on the road. Back now to my four walls - wish me luck.
Mo x
Wednesday 10th February 2010
Hi again - ooh it's a glamorous life, being ferried around in the Bradmobile. Although my blog last night got Bradley's phone ringing - Lynne, his wife, panicking at the stuff about the near fatal collision yesterday. He'd omitted to mention it to her - though to be fair I think he didn't take the incident quite as seriously as I did. He was perfectly calm, indulged in a bit of very professional bit of evasive driving when White Van Man tried to mow us into the hard shoulder, while I, firmly believing in always making a drama out of a crisis, was all in favour of a spot of revenge road rage (ie I sat in the back screaming CHASE HIM CHASE HIM) Of course Bradley's too cool for that.
Today we came through the driving snow (it's FREEZING down here) from Portsmouth through Wickham and Southampton ending in Bournemouth. The police Underwater Search Unit that have helped me with their research are based in Bristol but because the Hampshire and Dorset police forces don't have their own search teams the Bristol unit covers this area and everywhere we drive I see places that they've done jobs - rivers they've pulled bodies out of, beaches they've searched for murder weapons etc. Not far along this coastline is West Bay - the place I watched the team searching the sea for a car. A young woman who was known to be suicidal had disappeared and the next day a walker noticed a buckled stanchion on the cliff edge and debris from a car that matched her missing car. So the team had to search the sea below. On that occasion they didn't find her, in fact she was discovered almost a year later several miles down the coast where her car had been moved by the currents, so not a successful outcome on that occasion. However another of the jobs the team did in this area was successful. It happened off the pier of Bournemouth - another suicide sadly, but this with a twist. A man who had planned to kill himself took flying lessons to the level he could fly solo and on his first flight he ditched the plane in the sea. The search unit found his body and couldn't extricate it from the wreckage so the whole aircraft had to be lifted out by crane. When I talk to an audience I describe a lot of the work the police divers do, but I was dubious about talking about this one because we were in Ferndown just outside Bournemouth - the area it happened. I was concerned a friend or relative was in the audience, and so I apologised in advance if I offended anyone. As it happened there wasn't anyone who knew him, but a young man named Kevin, approached after the talk and said he'd been handling the air traffic control the day of the suicide and recalled the incident vividly. It's a small world, that's all I can say.
I've signed more than three hundred books in the last couple of days and have advice for any wanna be writers out there - DRESS ACCORDINGLY. Dangly bracelets and flouncy cuffs are real no nos when you're going for some heavy action in the pen department. Oh and sound engineers will not thank you for a lot of ear and neck shrapnel either because they don't mix with microphones.
Well that's all for tonight - time to put my feet up and pass the responsibilities over to Bradders (vicar's wife). Drive on James.
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Tuesday 9th February 2010
Hi everyone - thanks for stopping by for the next instalment of my life in the saddle. I was in the Portsmouth area tonight, starting at Portsmouth library and ending at the Ashcroft arts centre in Fareham. It's an odd thing for a writer to get out on the road and meet people - you get so used to staring at the same four walls that it feels really unnatural to suddenly be facing an audience and quite often I have no idea what I'm going to say unil I'm there. Luckily today we drove through the Sapperton area on our way down to Portsmouth - right past the under ground canal which features in Gone - and I started thinking about the weird places that police divers have to work - canals, sewers, grain silos, slurry pits etc. By the time I arrived in Portsmouth my head was full of the canal (it's such a weird place) and I was fairly convinced the audience would be at least as fascinated by it as I was. So I wittered on endelessly about the canal and the tunnel giving the audience facts and figures, facts and endless figures until someone on the back row nodded off. Had two lovely audiences - it's so nice when people in the audience treat the whole thing like a casual conversation - a few people stopped me as I was speaking and asked questions and I really enjoyed that - it makes the whole thing so much more fun.
But it's been a good day - sushi on the hoof, a near collison on the M4, and the company of the vicar's wife of course (see yesterday's post). I'm starting to enjoy touring. Must order myself an embroidered bomber jacket.
Monday 8th February 2010
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Hi everyone. As promised a message from the far side. I'm on tour! So rock n roll. Being driven round the country in a proper Men in Black car with tinted windows and a dodgy looking driver. That dodgy looking driver is Bradley Rose who is known and loved by all the authors at my publishers. (Read Lee Child's tour blogs for more of Brad) Brad is one of those once met never forgotten characters. So memorable that he's been immortalised by some of us. Tess Gerritsen put him in her book Keeping The Dead as a serial killer and I reversed his name for GONE to create Rose Bradley, the wife of a vicar whose daughter is kidnapped. Anyone less like a vicar's wife would be hard to imagine. But he is totally indispensable getting us all over the country on time.
Today we kicked off in London at the Aladdin's cave that is Goldsboro books - haven't heard of it? Here's the link: http://www.goldsborobooks.com/
After a swift stop off to sign stock in other London bookshops, off up to Birmingham Library theatre for my first event of the week. A lovely audience with some great questions for me like how do I separate being a mother from my job (found that difficult to answer because the truth is I can't always separate them). My favourite audience member? A beautiful honey labrador guide dog who sat in the front row as good as gold for an hour and a half without showing any signs of boredom.
Got to go now. Being driven home by the vicar's wife. More tomorrow.