The next few weeks are going to be massive for Tom Cain and the whole Accident Man project.



Last Monday I delivered the draft manuscript of the next Samuel Carver novel. In the UK paperback (see below) it's plugged as 'The House of War', but it looks like it's gonna be called 'The Sole Survivor' instead. It's pretty wild stuff ... once you get over the fact that the hero spends the first 100 pages in a hospital bed!



This monday see the publication of the UK paperback of… Continue

Up at Harrogate, I was filmed by Transworld, talking about, and reading from The Accident Man. The films are now up on You nTube. All I can see, when I look at them, is my double chin. I am now going to go away and drop 20 pounds. But if you want to see what happens when a middle-aged author tries to hook up to the 21st ventury, watch on… Continue

Okay ... so The Accident Man has been out for about 10 days in England and I am going slowly nuts. It's like waiting for exam results. I've done everything I can. Now I've got to find out my grade. So far, I'd give it a low B ... The first chart week I'd only been out two or three days and I crawled in at 42 on the UK hardback fiction list. Second week, I staggered up to 20. The publishers are reasonably satisfied, but they're still wanting that big breakthrough moment, maybe from a piece of… Continue

Well, Jeffrey, you were crazy enough to ask. So ...



Just over two weeks ago, I headed off to what was supposed to be a writer's paradise in the South of France, just north of Nice ... a beautiful villa, with a pool, for free. How much better could it get?



But you know what they say about the non-existence of free lunches? Well, there was just one catch ... the builders had not actually left the property. So they were banging, crashing, drilling, cutting tiles - bedlam! And… Continue

Back in the day, when albums were only 40 minutes long and came on vinyl in fold-out cardboard sleeves (cue brief pause for nostalgic reminiscence among the over-40s), people used to talk about That Difficult Third Album. That was the one a band had to make when it had run out of all its original material, was burned out from being on the road and had to deliver No.3 to satisfy the record company, usually within about 18 months of their debut.



Then CDs came along and albums were… Continue

I've always been baffled by the way that album covers are the same all over the world - because artists naturally want to project the same, consistent image - but book covers change in every territory, because publishers believe that only they know what works in their market.



I think that's nuts. Seems like an incredible waste of effort and it harms authors' ability to create their own personal brand. BUT ... it does have the advantage for a writer that tyou get to see how lots of… Continue

Okay, here’s my first entry … and it’s a long one! It’s basically like one of those ‘previously, on 24’ catch-up sequences. Once it’s out of the way, the next entries will be wa-a-ay shorter, I promise. So …



How many unpublished manuscripts does that average wannabe author have stuck in his or her hard-drive? Me, I’ve got at least six that I can think of – there are probably more, but I can’t face the shame of actually diving into the disk and counting. Still, it only takes a… Continue