May/June 2009

 

Dear guys and gals,

I’m back at my desk again having conquered Germany or at least several northern cities including Hamburg, Hanover and Stuttgart. The trains ran on time, the beer was suitably frothy and cold, and according to the latest bestseller list I have climbed to No.38 in Germany which would look much better without Stephanie Meyer occupying about twelve slots above me.

I was rather nervous about the tour, particularly the ‘readings’. Let’s face it, crime writers aren’t often asked to read and not to a full house in a foreign country.

I travelled with a wonderful German actor Ralf Bauer (I called him ‘Jack’ of course) who is famous for among other things for having kissed 5,100 women. Initially I lost something in translation and thought he had ‘bedded’ 5,100 women. Is that even possible? Let me do a quick calculation. If Ralf is 40 and lost his virginity at, let’s say, 16. That’s 5,100 divided by 24. So he has to have slept with 212 women a year, averaging a new lady (or lay) every 1.7 days. Wow! I’ve had the same woman for 25 years. I’m not even going to calculate how many days that is, but at least I can remember her name.

OK, I’ve gone and checked my facts about Ralf Bauer. (Mainly because I don’t want to suggest that German girls are in anything other than virtuous.) Ralf in fact kissed 5,100 girls in eight hours to make the Guinness Book of Records in 1987. If he bedded 5,100 women in eight hours he’d be dead or be a shrivelled up old man pushing around a drip on a stand.

 

 

 

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For the readings we performed as a double act. I read in English, Ralf read in German. ‘SHATTER’ has been renamed as ‘Dein Wille geschehe’ (Thy Will be Done). Because Ralf is impossibly handsome, I made him read the part of the psychopathic villain while I played Joe O’Loughlin the hero. I figured that by the time we finished not a woman in the place would fancy Ralf. Instead they were all looking at me thinking, ‘What sort of sick mind came up with this stuff.’

On our final night Ralf invited along a friend of his, the stunning Lisa Tomaschewsky, a model and Miss February 2009 in German Playboy. Is this the first time a crime writer has had a playboy model at one of his readings?

 

 

Before leaving the subject of Germany, I must thank Regula Venske, a celebrated German crime writer, who toured with me and was very generous with her questions and her time. I also want to thank Helga Mahmoud my publicist, who being typically German greeted every one of my questions with a shrug.
‘How was that reading?’
Shrug. ‘OK.’
‘Just OK.’
‘Yes.’
‘No better than before?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What about the standing ovation?’
‘It was OK.’
‘It went for six minutes.’
‘I’ve seen longer.’
‘I signed a lot of books.’
‘I wasn’t counting.’
‘Right then. I’ll try harder tomorrow.’
‘Whatever.’

 

The proverbial icing on the cake came when I received word from the US about Stephen King’s latest column in Entertainment News entitled ‘7 Great Books for Summer’. SHATTER was first on his list. The master of suspense wrote as follows:

SHATTER by Michael Robotham
Gideon Tyler, the deranged villain of this exceptional suspense novel, is a devil so persuasive he's able to talk his victims into killing themselves. His opposite number, psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, must match wits with Tyler to save his wife and child from deaths almost too horrible to contemplate. Don't get into the second half of this book before that Green Day concert, or you'll end up staying home to see how it all comes out.

OK, while I sometimes mention half decent reviews, I usually avoid outrageous displays of self promotion and spruiking because I figure anyone who finds these pages is probably already a fan (or a stalker). This is different. I can now die a happy man. I might even have ‘exceptional suspense novel’ tattooed across my chest. I can even imagine being in my dotage, perched on my rocking chair, boring my grandchildren with the story of when Stephen King, the master storyteller, doffed his proverbial hat to me.

FYI, you can read the rest of his list here:

 

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What other news?

I’m madly writing in a bid to deliver ‘BLEED FOR ME’ by the end of August, ready for a 2010 publication date. It’s another Joe O’Loughlin mystery, featuring Vincent Ruiz and Veronica Cray, but I’m not saying anything else until I’ve finished.

The French edition of ‘SHATTER’, which will be called ‘TRAQUÈES’ has been launched through the France Loisirs Book Club and will be available for general release at the end of the northern summer.

Meanwhile, plans are afoot to film ‘SHATTER’ for the BBC. Stay tuned and I’ll hopefully have more news in a few months.

That’s it for now. Jetlag is calling me to my bed and I haven’t seen the wife for three weeks.

Happy reading,

Michael

 

 

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WHAT I’M READING:

INCENDIARY by Chris Cleave ‘A brilliantly dark parable of love and loss set against a terrorist outrage in London’.

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WHAT I’M WATCHING:

List of films watched on the flight to and from Australia:

THE READER – ‘wonderful’.
DEFIANCE – ‘moving’.
AUSTRALIA – ‘cringe-worthy’. Could Baz Lurman have found any more clichés to milk?
7 MINUTOS – ‘a Spanish romantic comedy about speed dating’.

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WHAT I’M LISTENING TO:

GET ON BOARD by Eric Bibb, the acclaimed blues/roots guitarist and songwriter.