With All Undue Respect

Zoë Sharp

“From what I've seen of you, Zoë, you treat people with a respect you somehow do not expect to receive yourself.”

This was said to me a month or so ago by someone I’ve known for a long time, if not closely. I had no idea he’d observed me well enough to form such an opinion one way or another.

My first instinct was denial. Or not quite denial but certainly qualification. Respect is not something that can be expected—not in the present world.

It has to be worked for, earned.

And once you have it, you can’t simply hang it above the fireplace like a dusty stag’s head trophy and expect admiration from all comers. It has to be carefully maintained or the moths will turn it into little more than a memory.

“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking of me … All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”―Jackie Robinson

Respect is a living entity, always shifting, always in motion—much like the stag before someone shot and stuffed it.

One false move, and it’s gone.

I respect someone who has a no-nonsense competence without allowing their ego to enter the equation. It should be possible to be good at what you do without making yourself thoroughly unpleasant in the process.

But it seems to me that modern society will break down not because of some great catastrophe, but because of a series of tiny personal injustices. How many times recently have you experienced the following?

~Watched someone pick up a piece of litter they did not drop?

~Been let out into traffic by someone who had to inconvenience themselves to do so, rather than because they had to stop anyway?

~Been thanked by someone you’ve let out into traffic when you had to inconvenience yourself to do so, rather than because you had to stop anyway?

~Have a door held open?

~Had a car slow down to pass you walking along a wet road so you weren’t splashed?

~Been invited to go ahead by the person before you at the supermarket checkout because they’re shopping for a siege and you have only a few items?

These may seem like trivial examples—and indeed they are—but they are also the niceties of civilisation that make us human.

So, ’Rati, what petty injustices have you witnessed recently, or what random small acts of kindness?

Instead of a Word of the Week, this time round I have a selection of quotations on the subject of respect—or lack of it.

“You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.”―Buddha

“They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”―Mohandas K. Gandhi

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”―Richard Bach

“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”―Malcom X

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”―Winston Churchill

“I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.”―Rodney Dangerfield

“Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.”―Marilyn Monroe

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”―Lao Tzu

“I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”―Edward Gibbon

“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”―Voltaire

“In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.”―Salvador Dali

“I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.”―Javier Bardem

“Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.”―Laurence Sterne

“I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts.”―Martin Ritt

“I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse.”―Stephen R. Donaldson

“If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.”―Mario Vargas Llosa

‘“With the greatest respect,” I said. Always a nice phrase to use when you intend to speak without any.’―Charlie Fox

And on a slight note of BSP, <cough> this week saw the US publication of DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten.

"Zoë Sharp is one of the sharpest, coolest, and most intriguing writers I know. She delivers dramatic, action-packed novels with characters we really care about. And once again, in DIE EASY, Zoë Sharp is at the top of her game."—New York Times best-seller, Harlan Coben

More bang for your buck

Zoë Sharp

September marks the end of the first year of my Great e-Book Experiment. I can hardly believe that only twelve months ago I had none of the backlist Charlie Fox books out there in digital format. Now I have five of the books and a short story e-thology out on Kindle, and am just about to launch into all the other e-pub formats, plus my first foray into printed editions.

It’s been a hell of a year.

For me as a writer, the real joy has been to see Charlie’s story available again right from the beginning. So many readers wanted to start at book one, and I could see their enthusiasm waning when they discovered that only collector’s first editions were available, often at mind-boggling prices.

The first e-book I put together was FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection. It was a huge, huge learning curve, during which I have many people to thank for putting up with my innumerable stupid questions. In many ways, it still IS a steep learning curve, but more on that later.

A short story anthology — which in e-book form I refer to as an e-thology in an attempt to bring the word into common usage! — was very different proposition from the first of the books themselves, however.

One of the things that immediately struck me was the layout. A traditional book often has a pre-title page (with just the book’s title on it), then the title page itself, copyright page, list of the author’s previous publications, a dedication, acknowledgements, maybe even the author biog. Only THEN do you reach the story itself.

With an e-book, where a prospective reader might well download a sample first before deciding to buy, those intro pages all eat into the sample. So I put the dedication on the title page, shifted the copyright, acknowledgements, and an extended author biog to the back of the book, but instead added a short synopsis — what would be the jacket copy on a printed book — so the reader is reminded of the story as soon as they open the file.

In addition, some brilliant writers were generous enough to do swap excerpts with me — Brett Battles, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Timothy Hallinan, and Libby Fischer Hellmann. I put a taster of one of their books in the back of one of mine, and they did the same for me. Plus, of course, an excerpt from the next book in the Charlie Fox series, just to whet your appetite for more.

And in KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one, I was also able to include the amazing Foreword by Lee Child, and my own Afterword, as well as two previously deleted scenes that I felt helped to fill out Charlie’s back story for what was to come. There’s also a short biog of the character, and the jacket copy for the other books in the series with suitable links.

In October, the next book in the series will be ready to go. Called DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten, it sees Charlie facing her toughest challenge.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, a celebrity fundraising event should have been the ideal opportunity for Charlie to piece together her working relationship with Sean, who has woken from his gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters. But the simple security job turns into a nightmare when an ambitious robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation. Charlie is forced to improvise as never before, and this time she can’t rely on Sean to watch her back.

I’m already putting together the extras for the e-book version. And my question is, what else would you like to see in an e-book that there isn’t the space or opportunity to include in a printed book?

I’ve always loved the extras available on a DVD, and an e-book is now the literary equivalent. So, would you like insights from the author about the writing process, or asides about continuing characters giving you a little of their back story, or research notes that didn’t make the final cut? In DIE EASY, for example, I did an enormous amount of research about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, but only a fraction of that made it into — or was relevant to — the actual story. Would you like a bonus article on that?

I’m open to suggestions and fascinated to know what you all think! And I hope you’ll forgive for continuing to ask stupid questions — it’s how we learn :)

This week’s Word of the Week is epeolatry, meaning the worship of words. It comes from the Greek epos meaning word, and -latry meaning to worship.

I’m away this week, doing some very serious and labour-intensive research on a boat in the Mediterranean, but I’ll try to get to comments as soon as I can!

Zoë Sharp's FIFTH VICTIM

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Today I have the great pleasure of interviewing my blog sister, Zoë Sharp, on her new book, the ninth in the Charlie Fox series: FIFTH VICTIM.

 

To introduce the interview, I started thinking back to the first few times I met Our Zoë.  And I realized when I first met her, I was intimidated. Now, that’s not something you’ll hear me saying often, about anyone. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I was intimidated because I knew I couldn’t fool her. Writers are perceptive people as a species, but even so I think most people tend to buy my public persona.  Which is not NOT me, it’s just not ALL of me.  With Zoë – I knew that wouldn’t work, not for two seconds. There was going to be no hiding anything from this woman.  I didn’t know how I felt about that, so I hung back until I knew her better.  (It was worth the wait!)

Zoë’s heroine Charlie Fox is that way. You cannot get anything by her; she sees to the core of people and also to the core of situations. She has a wry sense of humor and she can take the piss out of anyone (how’s that for British?) without even trying. But she also has this aura that is pure, white-hot power. You do NOT want to mess with this woman.  You especially want to be careful when she gets still. And if you were in trouble, this is the first person you would want to have watching your back.

Just exactly what you would want in a bodyguard.

We sat down over our computers, transatlantically, to talk about the book.

FIFTH VICTIM  

On Long Island, the playground of New York’s wealthy and privileged, Charlie Fox is tasked with protecting the wayward daughter of rich businesswoman Caroline Willner. It seems that an alarming number of the girl’s circle of friends have been through kidnap ordeals, and Charlie quickly discovers that the girl herself, Dina, is fascinated by the clique formed by these former victims.

Charlie worries that Dina's thrill-seeking tendencies will put both of them in real danger. But just as her worst fears are realized, Charlie receives devastating personal news. The man who put her partner Sean Meyer in his coma is on the loose.

She is faced with the choice between her loyalties to her client and avenging Sean, but the two goals are soon inextricably linked. The decisions Charlie makes now, and the path she chooses to follow, will have far-reaching consequences.

Alex: So how do you research the habits and habitats of the wealthy and privileged?  Enquiring minds want to know. 

Zoë: My day job used to involve a lot of writing about classic cars – often very expensive and rare vehicles that were, by their definition, owned by people with a lot of disposable income. Spending any time of time around these people tells you that the rich are another country – they do things differently there. For the families I describe in FIFTH VICTIM, I guess I just built on that experience and took the next instinctive leap forwards.

Alex: Well, I love how completely unfazed Charlie is by all of it - her dry nonchalance is a riot. Also I noticed Charlie's pretty comfortable around horses and slings that terminology around like a pro. Did you grow up riding?  Do you still?

Zoë: I confess that I did grow up with horses. In fact, my only professional qualification is as a British Horse Society riding instructor. It struck me when I started planning FIFTH VICTIM that I’d  never used this knowledge in any of the books, and yet I’d made mention  of Charlie having horses in her background, so I thought I’d like it to  play a larger role. Besides anything else, it fitted into the story so nicely, in a way that tennis lessons, say, simply would not have done.

Alex: Wow, I didn't know that about you, although you do have the aura. I thought it was clever how Charlie uses the horse in that one fight scene. So obvious, and yet I've never seen it before.

Okay, since we’re kind of on the subject, when I blog and teach I'm always reminding my readers/students that people read books and watch movies for a vicarious experience. In FIFTH VICTIM you take us into the rarefied world of the Hamptons, the horse culture, the yacht culture.  As an author, do you consciously use settings like this to provide a fantasy experience for your readers? 

Zoë: Not especially, although for people to require close protection, often by definition they have the most to lose. The higher the stakes, the greater the conflict, and I like to put Charlie in situations of conflict.

Alex: Speaking of conflict, you've got a great love triangle going on in FIFTH VICTIM (I'm Team Parker, if you're wondering).

Zoë: Are you? Hmm, interesting. I thought you’d be more of a fan of Sean’s bad-boy image.

Alex: Maybe I hit my limit in real life. But what I was wondering was - did that complication surprise you, or have you been plotting the triangle for years, now?

Zoë: I’d love to be able to say it was all planned from the start, but the truth is that the awkward relationship between Charlie and Sean and her boss, Parker Armstrong, was one of those things that developed more as the series went along. When I came to write this book and I was looking back, though, I was surprised to realise that there had been little signs previously that Parker looked on her as more than a simple employee. So it must have been fermenting away at a subconscious level somewhere. 

Alex: I love it when that happens, actually!

All right, now I have to ask about Torquil. He’s one of those wonderful love-to-hate-him characters. Just that name! You can refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate you, but is he anyone you know?

Zoë: Actually, Torquil is nobody I know – honest. OK, so there might be one or two traits I’ve observed in various people who shall definitely remain nameless, but nobody specific. I think that all through this book I was working on a theme of people appreciating what they have – or failing to appreciate it until it’s too late and they don’t have it any more by which time it’s too late to go back. I wanted to embody some of that feeling in one character in particular, and Torquil was it. 

Alex: That is the way it played out – I never expected to feel sympathy for him, but I did. 

A completely different question, but fascinating to a non-series writer: I like the way your number titles are always actually significant to the story!  Does your series name concept influence your plots at all, or do you have the plots first and then figure out how to integrate the proper number in as a clue or significant phrase?  Is it a hassle or does it actually inspire you?

Zoë: It’s both inspiring and a hassle – and totally confusing, as FIFTH VICTIM is actually the ninth book, not the fifth. See what I mean?

Alex: Oh, yike. That is confusing.

Zoë: I wrote the first three books (KILLER INSTINCT, RIOT ACT, HARD KNOCKS) before the title FIRST DROP arrived from the rollercoaster reference. I  had absolutely no idea that my first US publisher would jump on that  and want the next book they took (actually book six, as ROAD KILL came  after FIRST DROP) to be called SECOND Something. I’m dropping the numerical sequence for the next one, a New Orleans-set tale called DIE EASY.

Alex: And you know I can't wait for that one! Tell us a little about your research in my favorite city. 

Zoë: There’s a feel and a texture to New Orleans that really interested me. Plus the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing aftermath give the city a stark edge. People there spent a long time looking into the abyss and you can’t go through something like that and not emerge unchanged.  I was in New Orleans in mid 2010 – five years after Katrina – and some parts of it still look as though people evacuated and never went back. 

And although you look at the tourist areas and it’s all business as usual, there felt to be something defiant about it, something ever so slightly forced. I found that contrast fascinating. As an outsider I also felt there was a great sense of betrayal. Coming four years after 9/11 I think there was an expectation that if something really bad happened – whether a natural or man-made disaster, the government would be ready for it. Katrina proved they were not. 

Alex: Not ready or not willing. But you don’t even want to get me started on the betrayal surrounding Katrina!

So what's next for Charlie—besides that complicated love life? 

Zoë: That’s a good question. I’m planning to take a little break from her next so I can write something new. In 2011 I had a pretty full-on  Charlie Fox year, what with organising getting the backlist to e-book  format, plus I did the short story e-thology for which I wrote a brand  new 12,000-word long short, Truth And Lies, and then did another  Charlie short in December, Across The Broken Line, plus DIE EASY. So, I’d really like a breather, just to take stock with the character and the direction she’s moving in. Having said that, of course, an idea for the next book in the series has already been forming vaguely in the back of my mind. I shall try to keep it in check!  I’ll keep writing about Charlie for as long as people want to keep reading about her. As long as I continue to have avenues of her character that I feel I can explore – as long as she has something to say to me – then the interest is there for me as a writer. I keep putting her under pressure, whether it’s physical, emotional, or psychological, and I see what happens. So far she’s always come out fighting. 

Alex:  Was your first Charlie Fox book your first novel, or did you have a few practice novels before that? 

Zoë: I did write a novel when I was fifteen, which I wrote long-hand and  my father, bless him, typed up for me. It did go out to publishers and  received “rave rejections”. I believe it may still be in a box in the  attic. My father keeps threatening to dig it out and put it on eBay. I  just threaten him at this point … Charlie was, therefore, my first real novel, and although I rewrote KILLER INSTINCT several times the basic  core of the book stayed true to the original idea.

Alex: And you've now got all the first Charlie Fox books up as e-books.  Can we get a list, in order? 

Zoë: To try to diffuse the confusion I’ve added the book order into the titles. It just seemed the best way to do it.

The full list is:

KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one

RIOT ACT: Charlie Fox book two

HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three

FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

ROAD KILL: Charlie Fox book five

SECOND SHOT: Charlie Fox book six

THIRD STRIKE: Charlie Fox book seven

FOURTH DAY: Charlie Fox book eight

FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine

DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten – coming 2012!

And today we're giving away an e book to a randomly chosen commenter - any one of the first five Charlie books, winner's choice.

Thanks so much, Zoë!

Just for the fun of it

Zoë Sharp

I hope you’ll forgive me this week if I repeat a blog I did over at Sirens of Suspense a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been rushing around like eejits for the past week or more, and although we expected to be home a couple of days ago … we’re not. Long story that involves builders letting people down and the prospect of houses not being finished for Christmas means our DIY skills have been called into service. And, weirdly enough, we rather enjoy it.

Part of the rushing around involved seeing our friend, fellow crime author Anne Zouroudi, doing two events for Kirklees libraries with Penny Grubb and Lesley Horton, plus a crime writing workshop also with Lesley, and interviewing the delightful Martina Cole at the 4^th Reading Festival of Crime Writing last Friday. So, if you’ve been wondering why I’ve been very quiet on these pages, that’s my excuse …

 

When was the last time you did something just for the fun of it? Or took a moment to really observe rather than just see your way through a familiar journey?

As a race, humans are becoming hardened to beauty, disconnected from the simple pleasures in life, and I find that very sad. As a writer, part of my job is to dig deep into the kind of emotions that drive us on a primal level. To do that, I need to be in touch with those kinds of feelings.

And maintaining a sense of wonder definitely falls into that category.

Andy (my Other Half) is as daft as I am about this. We rush to the office window to see a steam train passing on the other side of the valley, a low-flying Hercules transport plane lumbering overhead, or a particularly beautiful strake of sunlight on the hills behind our house.

I still build snowmen – and snow-bears, and snow-Easter-Island heads, and I was in the middle of a full-size horse last year, but the snow turned powdery and its head fell off, dammit. I know – what an excuse – the wrong kind of snow …

I still ride the shopping cart back to the stack after we’ve loaded up the car at the supermarket, still laugh like a drain at dirty jokes and whoopee cushions. But frost on leaves or winter mist or sunlight through a cloud leaves me breathtaken.

Because how can you hope to write something that will instil any sense of wonder if you don’t have it yourself?

We are not simply hardened to beauty in the modern world, but isolated from it. A fabulous cliff view will now have a safety railing to save you from yourself. Everything, we are told, would be better with our lives if we just had the latest gadget, a larger TV, a newer car, a bigger house. And it takes something drastic to make us realise that those things are not important.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to come out with some worn platitude about the best things in life being free. Whoever said that has never had to pay for meds, make the rent, or put food on the table. Those things cost money, and you better have it when the red bill arrives, or life is going to turn pretty ugly pretty fast.      

At the moment I’m caught between rich and poor in my writing, and it’s making me re-evaluate a lot of things. By definition, my bodyguard heroine Charlie Fox works for those wealthy enough to afford her services. In the latest book, FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine, she’s babysitting the rich and powerful of New York’s Long Island playground. She sees what too much of everything has done to these people, and it makes her reconsider what’s important in her life – love, health, happiness.

And just as FIFTH VICTIM is gearing up for its January 2012 publication in the States (sorry, but it’s been out in the UK since March this year) I’m also hard at work on the next in the series – DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten. For this book I wanted to set the ‘haves’ much more firmly alongside the ‘have-nots’. Where else was better to do that – where was the contrast more stark – than New Orleans, post Katrina.

OK, so the centre of NOLA looks very much as it always did, but some of the outlying areas are derelict ghost towns. It’s a fascinating setting for a book, and one that grabbed me from our first visit last year. As for the huge recycling plant – Southern Scrap – a crime thriller writer couldn’t ask for a better location for a confrontation, or a show-down.

But driving round the place it was hard not to be saddened and sobered by the destruction still on view. I came away grateful for what I have, and even more determined that as I pass the good things in life, I don’t want to miss them because I have my eyes in a text message and my ears in an iPod.

So, ‘Rati – what did you see today? And what will you notice tomorrow?

This week’s Word of the Week is innuendo. An Italian suppository …