The quote is from Miles Davis’ autobiography, where he reminisces about seeing his idol, Charlie Parker, in the flesh for the first time. In 1944 a teenaged Davis, freshly arrived in New York, spent months scouring the city’s clubs, looking for his idol. When Davis eventually found Parker, he was shocked at how bedraggled his […]
Here are some bits and bobs from the research I did for ‘The Mobster’s Lament’. Hopefully they give a sense of the book’s atmosphere. Its backdrop is New York’s nightlife in the late 1940s. A noirish world of rainy nights, neon lights, basement jazz clubs, artist’s lofts, choirines and wise-guy detectives. The quote is from
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I use Excel to plot my stories (something my mates all make fun of me for). In each draft of each book I mess about with the order of chapters and scenes, add and delete whole sections. ‘Dead Man’s Blues’ had seven drafts. I took screenshots of each draft’s plot as I worked it in
What editing looks like… I think this is from a round of edits on the 6th or 7th draft of the new book. The published version will be the 9th draft. Much of the stuff I’m cleaning up on this page ended up getting cut from the final version anyway. My process is massively inefficient.
I opened up my sketchpad to start making a bubble map for book 4 of the quartet and found the one I did for book 3…
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