Yesterday, I sent out a final edit of my next novel--not The Cairo Affair (due out next Tuesday), but All the Old Knives, due out next year. As is not so strange in the world of traditional publishing, I wrote the very first draft more than a year ago, in the summer of 2012, a few months after finishing the first draft of The Cairo Affair. So despite revisits to tinker with it along the way, it had been a long time since Id read it when I sat down a few weeks ago for this final look, my editors comments in hand. Happily, I was pleased with it. Though dealing as much with spies as any of my other books, its a different beast, focusing largely on a dinner in California between ex-lovers, one CIA (stationed in Vienna), the other retired. Its also shorter--about half the length of my usual books, but just as complicated. And while its as dark as--and sometimes darker than--my other books, acts of violence are kept at arms length until the final scenes. Its also one of the few books Ive written with a very specific inspiration in mind. In this case, I was living in California (briefly) when on PBSs Masterpiece I stumbled upon a dramatization of a Christopher Reid poem, The Song of Lunch, starring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Its absolutely mesmerizing (as is the source poem), and I thought--Id love to tell an espionage story set entirely over a single meal. While my final version cheated a bit with flashbacks to Vienna six years earlier, I accomplished what I set out to do in that moment. Which is a wonderful thing--so seldom do we follow through on moments of pure inspiration; when we do, we should pat ourselves on the back.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:55:32 +0000