I want to write sci-fi and technothrillers for people that wouldn’t normally read sci-fi and technothrillers but have vivid imaginations and like imagining the future! And, as such, I want to make them accessible, action packed and combined with other genres they’d normally read, like crime thrillers and murder mystery.
Thomas R. Weaver – 5 April 2024
The Back Flap
SALVATION HAS A PRICE.
An enthralling murder mystery with a vividly realised future world, forcing readers to grapple hard hitting questions about the climate crisis, our relationship with Artificial Intelligence and the price we would be willing to pay, as a species, to be saved. Perfect for fans of Blake Crouch, Neal Stephenson, Philip K Dick, Kim Stanley Robinson and RR Haywood.
It’s 2050, a decade after a heatwave that killed four hundred million across the Persian Gulf, including journalist Marcus Tully’s wife. Now he must uncover the truth: was the disaster natural? Or is the weather now a weapon of genocide?
A whistleblower pulls Tully into a murder investigation at the centre of an election battle for a global dictator, with a mandate to prevent a climate apocalypse. A former US President campaigns against the first AI politician of the position, but someone is trying to sway the outcome.
Tully must convince the world to face the truth and make hard choices about the future of the species. But will humanity ultimately choose salvation over freedom, whatever the cost?
About the book
What is the book about?
I like to say it’s a murder-mystery technothriller. In 2050, the nations are forced to elect a global dictator to save humanity from an impending climate apocalypse. The choice lies between ex-US president Lawrence G. Lockwood, the frontrunner, and Solomon, an AI governor of a seaborne city-state, the wildcard. Marcus Tully, an investigative journalist, uncovers evidence that a catastrophic Persian Gulf heatwave that killed millions, including Tully’s wife, was caused by geo-engineering ordered by then-President Lockwood to avert a crisis on US soil. To expose this could risk humanity’s last chance of survival; to hide it might lead to the election of a corrupt candidate against whom Tully has ample reasons to seek revenge. In the midst of his investigation, an unexpected murder makes his search for the truth an impossible one.
When did you start writing the book?
In March 2020, the early days of the pandemic lockdowns here in the UK. I’d recently exited my startup a few months before, after selling it, and had been taking some time out to be creative and learn to draw and paint, essentially doing anything but open a laptop. Then, when we couldn’t go anywhere, I found I couldn’t pick up a pencil anymore, so I picked the laptop up instead.
How long did it take you to write it?
Technically, I was still rewriting minor bits right up to when the audiobook narrator and I sat down and finalized some tweaks, in August 2023. After that, I knew I couldn’t touch it anymore! In reality, I’d say the manuscript was complete and in it’s current form (minus tweaks) by around December 2022.
Where did you get the idea from?
I don’t think there’s a single idea to point to and say, this one defines the book. There are a number of big ideas in it. I tend to think creativity is about the combination of those big ideas in novel ways. I’m always writing “what if?” notes to myself on my phone, and will often pull on those notes when putting something together. For Artificial Wisdom, I think the first major “what if” note that influenced the book was written six months prior to writing my first words, in September 2019. And it is, verbatim:
“What if civilisation, splitting apart in polarisation, puts their fate in an AI leader in a Brexit style referendum?”
There’s a few other lines below this, exploring it. Some of the ideas survived in the final book, some evolved, and some of them were discarded from the start (for example, I’d recently read the original novel of House of Cards and thought having a reporter covering the referendum could be an interesting focus of the book).
At the time, I was thinking a lot about the political climate, how polarized the US in particular was getting, how manipulated many people felt after the Brexit vote, and not to mention what a mess we were in from things like climate and war. I ended up focusing on the climate theme, linking it more directly, but in that early stages I was just as worried about the potential a new World War could have on humanity.
Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
I found writing my main character, Tully, the biggest struggle. A lot of characters flowed onto the page quite easily. For a long time, I couldn’t work out who Tully was. He seemed too bland, to me. I had a sense from the start that I didn’t want a character that always played nice, and that he should be very driven to find out the truth, but I would say I very much discovery wrote him, and he evolved over multiple drafts.
I also hit a stage where I’d been writing 3,000 words a day for a month prior to Christmas 2020 and was getting close to the end of a first draft, maybe fifteen thousand words from the ending. I had to break for Christmas… and on the other side of it, I couldn’t get going again. I read what I’d done, and hated it. It took four or five months to get going again.
What came easily?
Livia, my second POV character. I knew who she was from her first words. I really enjoyed writing her, and at one stage thought I might replace Tully with Livia as the protagonist of the book.
Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?
Entirely fictitious, though there may be splashes here and there of things I’ve observed. I do keep a little notes folder of things I see in real life that I can draw on, later. For example, every day I drive my kids to school, my oldest daughter and I see a boy running for this bus in a very particular way. I wrote it down as: “He was the kind of long-legged boy that ran with short steps.”
I just found a way to include that in my third novel, from the perspective of the “bad guy”.
The boy was idly flicking through a stack of old comic books, his fingers stained with ink. He was one of those lanky kids on the verge of teenagehood, all elbows and knees, that had grown so rapidly he still ran with short childish steps. A mop of unruly hair fell over his eyes, the kind of freedom denied to Vale, who had to keep his own hair too-short to avoid triggering his affliction. He despised the boy on sight.
We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?
Yes, three writers in particular.
First and foremost, Mark Leggatt, Scottish crime author of the wonderful book Penitent, who is also my editor and taught me to write from deep in the character’s viewpoint.
I also listened a lot to Joe Abercombie’s First Law trilogy. I loved the narrator, Stephen Pacey, and ended up hiring him to be my own narrator. Joe has a wonderful writing style, and is a genius at characterization. One thing I noticed was how when writing deep in a characters viewpoint, Joe uses “as if” a lot, to color in the perception of another character’s actions from the POV character’s perspective, such as:
She glanced back, just once, as if to check that he was still watching.
This, to me, was like a key unlocking in my brain. So much of our human experience is trying to figure out what’s really going on inside the thoughts of others. We know that words and actions don’t always line up with thoughts, and we’re obsessed by it. That small little “as if” not only gives a way of painting in the detail of a bit of action, but also tell you something about the POV character from the way they’ve interpreted it. It also keeps you deeply in the POV character’s head. If he’d have written:
She glanced back, just once, checking that he was still watching.
– The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie
That (in my view) would be further outside the head of the character, because how could the character know she was checking he was watching? Which is perfectly acceptable, just not the style I’m aiming for.
Finally, I’m not a massive fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books, but I think the first one, Killing Floor, is particularly well written, and the staccato, terse, impressionist style was definitely an influence for me too:
I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop. Light bars flashing and popping. Red and blue light in the raindrops on my window. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns. This was heavy stuff.
– Killing Floor by Lee Child, Chapter 1
Those three lines: “Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready. Two revolvers, two shotguns.” That was a revelation for me in again writing with a voice, and how even technically incorrect punctuation can be used to give a feel for the words – that first line probably technically needed a conjunction or a semicolon, like, “Doors burst open and policemen jumped out,” but it just wouldn’t have sounded right.
Do you have a target reader?
That’s something I’m thinking much more about with my second and third books. I want to write sci-fi and technothrillers for people that wouldn’t normally read sci-fi and technothrillers but have vivid imaginations and like imagining the future! And, as such, I want to make them accessible, action packed and combined with other genres they’d normally read, like crime thrillers and murder mystery. I’m particularly finding I have a 3:1 female to male readership in my first book and am leaning into that a bit more with my next ones.
About Writing
Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?
I see writing as a bit like painting watercolor: each draft is another layer. My loose outline is the pencil underlayer. My first draft blocks in the big shapes and the mood of the book, and I add more finite detail in later drafts.
Fortunately, unlike watercolor, I can erase large chunks that don’t work!
Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?
I outline the major plot points, the ending and the story-behind-the-story, but I’m a discovery writer (or “pantser”) for the rest of it, particularly when it comes to characters and the scene level activity. I can write significantly more words if I’ve thought in detail about a scene before I’ve written it. Maybe I’ve taken a few walks or a run to think it through, maybe I’ve sketched things out in my notebook or drawn on my whiteboard. Even then, these are the macro ideas for a scene and not the detail. Ideally, it’s some sense of what my goal is for the scene and what the central conflict will be. What’s the POV character’s intention, and what’s getting in the way? The detail, I find in the moment. I like to see how characters bounce off each other. Dialogue and action for me are where I like to start a scene, and sometimes how a character responds takes the scene in fresh directions. I also discover problems in the moment or things I don’t know, and will often let the character voice those problems. That in itself helps me solve it.
Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?
In my first book, I edited as I went, continuously polishing, and for sure that significantly extended the time it took to write the book. On my second, I’d allow myself a brief edit of the last thing I wrote as a kind of warm up before writing something new, but did a first complete draft before I allowed myself to properly edit it. This was a much better approach for me because I could see the full shape of the thing.
Did you hire a professional editor?
Yes. I work closely with a trusted development editor, who gets to see every draft, and I like to run by additional editors when I’m at later drafts because I find new perspectives really useful in getting my work to be the best place it possibly can be. I did that with a number of editors on Artificial Wisdom, because we went through fifteen drafts to get it to the state I was happy with it – not to mention copy editing and proof reading! My second book has only needed about six drafts and I didn’t need as much input, but still got some other reviews done by development editors I liked from my first book. and It’s not the most cost-effective way of doing things, but it works for me. I have high standards!
Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?
When writing, the two most important things for me are to avoid distraction, and to get in the right mindset for whatever I’m writing at that moment. Music is a fantastic way to get in the zone, but to avoid distraction, I make sure I’m listening to things with no lyrics. I’ll then pick music that matches the kind of scene I’m trying to write.
For Artificial Wisdom, when writing about dystopian parts, I’d listen to Hans Zimmer’s Bladerunner 2049 soundtrack. It’s eerie and nervous music. If I wanted to write something tense and worrying, Hans Zimmer’s Interseller soundtrack is incredible. Not all the scenes are like that though, and for more reflective stuff I really like this piece of Lofi Music by ChilledCow called 1. AM Study Session.
Occasionally I’d need a different kind of vibe. For one scene in my new book, I wanted something that felt a bit like New York in the 1940s, even though it was set in the far future, so I used Summertime by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.
Finally, my editor Mark introduced me to a couple of YouTube background sounds which are just fantastic to relax and write to. One is called Relaxing Train Sounds, and it’s just this sound of a train for 8 hours. The second is called Cozy Cabin Ambience.
About Publishing
Did you submit your work to Agents?
Yes. I found the experience much like trying to raise Venture Capital in startups: full of rejection and requiring a lot of determination to power through it and keep faith that you have what it takes to succeed. I had a few full manuscript requests but ultimately pulled out when I decided to go indie.
What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?
To paraphrase Hemingway: gradually, then suddenly. The whole process of traditional publishing was taking too long, for me. In the startup world, it’s important to ship products as quickly as they are ready, and start building a customer base. Obviously a book is more fixed than a piece of software, you can’t improve it later, but the idea of waiting additional years to see it in the hands of readers was frustrating me.
I was also starting to read a lot about how little budget traditional publishers have for marketing anyone but their top percentile of authors. If that was the case, I figured I’d be better investing my own money, and taking a larger part of the profit. I might not sell as many books, but I’d probably do just as well, economically.
The clincher: talking to a small publisher who’d loved the first chapters and was interested in printing it, giving them a number of weeks to read the full, and then on the next conversation finding they’d only read one more chapter – and had notes for me. They thought that we could probably do six months of rewrites. After fifteen drafts and a ton of top pro editors involved, I wasn’t convinced that it would add the value they thought it would, and it was time to go it alone. I also realized that I could replicate the same stack as they would: same printers, same distributors.
Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?
Professionally. I see it as crucial to marketing to have an amazing cover, and I have very strong opinions that the majority of covers, particularly here in the UK, are just bad and are trying to sell based on their similarity to other covers. But in this social age, if I’m to market online, I needed something to entice people. I worked with an incredible designer, Mecob, and I’m in love with what he came up with for me.
Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?
I work with two top book marketing firms, one in the US, one in the UK. They’ve been invaluable in shaping a plan.
I’d say I own the overall “phase 1” strategy, which is: focus on reviews over sales to build social proof and increase conversation when a reader reaches e.g. Amazon, then focus on digital ads to drive people to the page.
Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?
You’ve got to enjoy the business sides of things. I know writers who love the art of writing but want nothing to do with how it’s sold. Indie isn’t for them. I spend more time on the publishing side than the writing!
About You
Where did you grow up? / Where do you live now?
I’m from the UK, and moved around various parts of it before settling just outside of London in a county called Buckinghamshire. I lived in London during my 20s, then moved back to Buckinghamshire when I had kids myself.
What would you like readers to know about you?
I’m a tech optimist, continually researching the future and excited by it (as much as it can be scary, too, at times).
What are you working on now?
My second book, Futilitytown, is out with alpha readers and I’m just collating their feedback. I think it’s a pretty interesting “light” sci-fi setting (i.e. no aliens and crazy technology – if anything, the tech in the story has gone backwards from today) and I think it has potential to tell a lot of stories within the world I’ve created. The book itself is a crime action-thriller within this setting.
I’m also writing sequels to both Futilitytown and Artificial Wisdom, and working with my former startup co-founder on a bunch of interesting new startup ideas.
End of Interview:
Get your copy of Artificial Wisdom from Amazon US or Amazon UK.
