That moment a story becomes Untouchable

Once upon a time, in my days running an early-stage startup, I had the privilege of having a great designer report directly to me. This designer was very predictable. He’d wait until he’d created something as good as he could possibly make it before showing it to me. If it was good, and it often was, I’d praise it and sign it off: it was time to hand it to the developers.

The next morning, without fail, I’d arrive at the office to find he’d decided he could do better, much better, and had worked on it through the night - was still working on it, in fact. Needed more time, and more coffee. The conundrum, always, was: when is something good enough?

With software, you can keep tweaking it even when it is out and about in the hands of your customer. In fact, you’re encouraged to, since you can learn quickly what works, and what doesn’t. “Ship it!” is the cry of product managers everywhere.

If only we could do that with books. With books, the story becomes fixed as if it was chiselled in stone the moment it first officially goes out into the world, only rarely revisited by the author in a twentieth anniversary edition or some such. TV and film adaptions are the only really opportunities to fix any broken buts, usually to a chorus of disapproval from fans, but the printed edition itself is pronounced Untouchable.

All this is whirling around my head as I work through my second book, Futilitytown. This Christmas, I printed up some nice hardcover copies for a special group of trusted alpha readers. Every single one of those readers enjoyed it. Some of them said they’d prefer reading a sequel to Futilitytown than to my debut, Artificial Wisdom. A couple did note, however, that they didn’t quite enjoy it as much as my first book. It wasn’t quite as jaw-dropping.

I’d always intended to write a simpler book. Artificial Wisdom is (mostly) loved by readers (we’re at 4.6 on Amazon UK after 219 reviews and 4.35 on Goodreads after 254 reviews). But it’s not a simple book. It deliberately aims to leave you thinking. There are twists and turns galore. Three main points of view. Big themes. So, for my next book, I wanted to write something that was a more straightforwardly fun ride.

Mission accomplished, right?

Except I’m not satisfied. Not yet. I’m like my old designer. When I printed up the alpha read copies, I was pretty certain I was done, minus a few tweaks. Even when all of the feedback came in, I was certain the work ahead was minor.

But then I woke up the next morning, and decided I could do better, much better, and I still wanted to work on it. I want to see people as blown away as they’ve been by Artificial Wisdom. This means taking it from a straight forward thriller (albeit a very sci-fi thriller) to making more of some of the bigger twists I’d tried to push into the background.

This is frustrating, because I also have, in progress, sequels to both Artificial Wisdom and Futilitytown itself, and part of me wants to focus purely on these new stories. But when you put a book out in the world, it’s Untouchable, isn’t it? So, I have to get it right.

There’s a lot of other things going on too, not the least of which is the US launch of Artificial Wisdom (now out in ebook and Audible, hardback coming soon). This has been anything but smooth, and I can tell you know I’ve learned more about the inner workings on Amazon’s back end than I ever really wanted to know. It’s like being a devout carnivore and visiting an abattoir (and not the high-end kind, either).

It’s a good time, though, to seek inspiration. The only book I’ve read recently that I couldn’t put down was the excellent Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree. This is a cozy fantasy about an orc setting up a coffee shop, which doesn’t exactly provide much scope for inspiration, as if the marketing pitch for L&L is “low stakes, high fantasy”, my books try and deliberately explore the biggest stakes possible.

I’ve turned instead to TV. Researching loan sharking for a subplot (via a recommendation from a friend) led me to the excellent Tokyo Vice, and the non-fiction book it is based on, where an investigative reporter tries to write difficult stories about the Japanese mafia (yakuza). I loved every minute of this: it brought Japan in the late 90s very much to life and had some fascinating insights on how different the relationship between the police, the mafia and the press were in Japan to what we’re used to the UK, US and Europe.

It also led me (also via two family recommendations) to The Gentlemen, the new Guy Richie series on Netflix. Richie has a wonderful ability to give a unique take on bits of society you probably have no idea about, as well as building some incredibly eccentric characters, and happily punishing any character seeking to do the right thing. I’m obsessed with it. The end of the first episode made my jaw drop, and it takes a lot to move this jaw. I have a particular affection for a crazy Liverpudlian preacher gangster in the second episode, who has a habit of saying something that on paper is very polite - “Do you think I could keep hold of that gun for a while?” - but in a sudden blast of volume that is aggressive, scary and off-putting. This incongruity is something I tried with a character in my second book, but it’s hard to do it well in print. Enjoy this chance to see it done brilliantly on the screen.