A Taste for Malice, the first review

We were very impressed with Michael J Malone's 2012 debut crime novel, Blood Tears, which introduced the highly dysfunctional protagonist (even by the standards of the genre) Detective Inspector Ray McBain. So we approached A Taste for Malice with some trepidation: would Michael J Malone be able to produce a second novel that lived up to the promise of the first?

The answer is a clear "yes": he has. He has also produced one of the more unusual detective novels we can remember reading. Most crime novels kick off with a dead body within the first few pages, and build from there. What is particularly fascinating about A Taste for Malice is that the story does not revolve around the tracking down of a killer or serial killer. Yes, there is a murder between the covers, but it's very much "off stage", and DI McBain's involvement is only peripheral (though it is also critical). But the central story, which develops in two parallel strands that steadily converge as the book moves towards its climax, deals with something altogether less wholesome.

We first encounter DI Ray McBain as he returns to work after the events in the earlier novel. The physical scars he has been left with are healing, but the mental scars still run very deep. McBain has other problems. His superiors do not wish to risk his fragile mental health by exposing him to the full rigors of the work of a Detective Inspector, so he is attached to a team led by a man who used to be his junior officer, and tasked with administrative tasks that have little interest and no challenge for him. One of the files he looks at deals with the harming of two children by a woman the family thought could be trusted to look after them. Then another similar case emerges. McBain sets out to discover whether the two cases are linked, behind the backs and against the wishes of his senior officers. Meanwhile his personal life is as chaotic as ever, and he also begins to fear that his nemesis from Blood Tears may be waiting in the shadows.

In parallel we follow the story of a family having difficulty coping with the mother's loss of memory in an accident, and their befriending by a young woman. The reader's suspicions that all is not right build steadily, and the two strands of the story come together very satisfyingly in a conclusion that offers some genuine surprises.

Courtesy of Undiscovered Scotland

New from Five Leaves, A Taste of Malice by Michael J Malone

Here's the first of our new crime books to be shown here in their new livery, courtesy of JT Lindroos, who is something of an expert in saying "no, your idea doesn't work but if you do this, this and this..." and so we get a type of wood any self-respecting teddy bear or even teddy boy would be best advised to avoid.
The book is our second Malone book, both in the Scottish hard-boiled genre and featuring Ray McBain. The story starts with him in filing hell, where he realises two unsolved cases could be linked, but nobody wants to know. And both involve women who insinuate themselves into vulnerable families. Children get hurt and unless McBain can get someone to listen more children are at risk.
Malone's first book Blood Tears was our best selling book so far. I think this one is better. I'm not knocking the first book but one particularly critical review really helped us iron out some difficulties with Malice. Even bad reviews (and mostly they were not!) can be useful!
We also had fun again with Michael Malone's natural Scottish diction. We want the book to retain a Scottish flavour but not lose any English readers. One pre-publication reader was American, who reminded us that not only Scottish diction can lose readers, but so can English lose American readers. What do Americans call ladders on their tights? (The "on" is Scottish, by the way.) We did not have fun with mixing past and present tenses. It seemed like a good idea at the time but caused the author and me a great deal of editorial toothache.
But we have a great book and those who have read it so far agree.
Scottish Waterstones is behind this one, especially Ayr of course, as is Blackwells in Edinburgh. You won't find many copies in English bookshops - not yet anyway - but English (and American) readers really can enjoy Scottish crime novels and, like Rankin and MacBride, our Scots almost speak proper English ...sae dinna be feart.

How to sell more than 600 ebooks a day (for a short while)

Five Leaves debut crime author Michael J Malone discusses the marketing tactics that got his first novel Blood Tears into the top five on the Amazon Kindle chart... First printed on the blog of another good crime writer Damien Seaman who blogs at http://damienseaman.posterous.com) and is published by Blasted Heath (http://blastedheath.com/?p=2958).

 It’s a brave new world, this world of E. A world where, it is said, authors shall publish and sell. And sell. Where Kindle millionaires are verily as many as leaves on the largest of trees and if that Konrath fellow is to be believed, Amazon will rule the world. And lo, it came to pass that my publisher thought it might be wise to make Blood Tears available for the e-readers. Did it work? Depends. Everything is relative, so it depends on where you are coming from. Would Stephen King’s publishers be happy with my figures? I think not. But we at Five Leaves have more modest expectations and we were kinda chuffed. The wheeze was thusly – actually I’m getting tired of the olde worlde speak now so I’ll stop – anywho, we had a chat about what our strategy should be and we decided to give the paperback a few weeks’ run before releasing in digital format. The Olympics were coming up. Why don’t we – I suggested – make Blood Tears available for free on the first couple of days, as an alternative for the peeps who can’t be arsed with all that sport? Then put the price up to 99p for another week, and then increase gradually until we get to a price that we are comfortable with for the long haul. So, Amazon was contacted and the promo was agreed at £0 for the first 4 days of the ‘lympics and 0.99p for the next few days. Sadly, we had to agree to exclusivity to Amazon for three months. However, given that they appear to be the only game in town at the moment, that didn’t feel too much of a problem. On reflection, I feel that this is one of the methods by which Amazon is cementing their monopoly and THAT worries me.
 Early days and the numbers were goooooood. Me and my peeps tweeted and FB’d and blogged and did what we could to bring it to the attention of the great unwashed. And Blood Tears rose up the rankings. By the end of the weekend BT was number 1 in the free crime/ thriller chart and number 1 in the general book chart. The number of downloads? Over 18,000. Which is not too shabby. And in actual fact, I don’t think that even Mr King’s publishers would have been upset with that little lot. I mentioned to a non-writing friend how many downloads we’d had. His response: some people will take anything when it’s free. Git.
Then the price went on at 99p. And Blood Tears moved in with the big boys to the paid chart, and the book rose up those charts as well. We made it to no 5 in the general book chart – sandwiched in among all the porn books. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for a few hours BT was the only non-erotica book in the top 6. Which is nice. For a few days we were selling over 600 copies a day. Again, not too shabby. We peaked there and began the slow, inexorable slide down the rankings. And from a point where I was checking the chart position every 5 minutes, I stopped checking altogether. It was kinda sad to see my baby being ignored. Now, we are left with a whole load of questions... How the feck did we manage to get all those downloads? There was a knock-on effect with the paperback – I know because people let me know they had bought it – what we don’t know is how many people
went on to do so.
Why did the sales tail off like that? Had I reached my entire prospective audience? Did everyone see it that should have – given Amazon’s famous algorithms? Will the follow-up, A Simple Power (tbp May 2013) benefit from this “increased awareness”? Will people remember who the feck I am? Will Prince Harry ever get his hands on the real crown jewels? Whatever happens, it’s fair to say it was a lot of fun while it lasted. And who knows, it might receive another surge of popularity. I just need to find a royal party that’s up for some strip billiards. Lo. Verily.

Check out BLOOD TEARS by Michael J Malone in the UK:
http://goo.gl/IE97k and here if you're in the US: http://goo.gl/6IQZf

The best things in life were free

By the time you read this, you are just too late to download a free ebook copy of our Scottish noir book Blood Tears by Michael Malone. For a short period the book will now be at 99p at Kindle before reverting to its normal price. There is a lot of debate in the booktrade, among writers and publishers, about the value of such offers with titles like the latest Alan Hollinghurst novel available for 20p. The critics say this devalues the book, and of course you can't make money on free. By and large I'd agree with that, not least as Amazon here (and even more in the USA) is awash with self publishing people who are desperate for any readership and offering their titles for free. How does the common reader wade through the acres of free books to know what is worth reading?
It's not good. But we thought we'd try offering a book for nowt to see if the Amazon algorithms lead to the book being promoted. We wanted to do this with a book that was within a genre where ebooks are popular (crime) and which was good. There are currently 22 five star reviews on Amazon and Michael Malone assures me that he is not related to them all! It will be interesting to now see if the buzz around the free ebook translates into a longer term interest in the book and the author. Michael is in this for the long haul, and his next crime novel with Five Leaves is completed. Our hope at Five Leaves Towers is that this promotion will mean that those who downloaded his first book for free might buy into his five book series, attend his events and generally think this is an author worth getting to know. 18,000 people downloaded Blood Tears during the five day free period, which put the book at number one in the Kindle free charts. Our first chart topper and we make not a penny... but the ebook market is "immature" (to use an industry term). We know from elsewhere that even books that top the Kindle paid-for charts don't necessarily do well in bookshops, but we thought this was worth a try as an experiment. It does not mean that all or any other Five Leaves titles will be free in the future. We'll see.

Notes from the frozen north # 2

It will be obvious to anyone who has spent time in Scotland, particularly around Glasgow, that the country is short of names. Many men seem to be called Jimmy and many women Hen. This lack of names clearly affects Scottish writers too. Five Leaves has five Scottish writers on its list, or coming onto its list. One is J. David Simons. That is is name but if it was just David Simons the J. would have to be added to avoid confusion with the slightly better known American writer David Simons. Russel McLean became Russel D McLean to prevent confusion with someone similar. And we now have Michael Malone from Ayr joining us, his first crime novel will be out in 2012. Unfortunately there is already a crime writer called Michael Malone so he, ie our one, will become Michael J Malone. So that's 60% of our Scottish writers needing to use an initial due to this acute name shortage. Something needs to be done. Michael Malone though will have some problems as he is already a published poet sans J. So there is now Michael Malone the crime writer, Michael Malone the poet and Michael J Malone the crime writer. Surely some enterprising literature programmer should put them all on the same bill, for an evening with Michael Malones.