I'm a writer. My first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, has was published this year in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. The German, Dutch and Finnish translations are out there too ( Japanese, French, Greek and lots of other translations are in the works - but they're not quote read yet!) I'll be writing here about how the novel came about, about some of the cool and interesting people I've met in publishing and film this year (Trewin, Bickmore, Byng - I'm looking at you) and posting news updates, extracts, notes and deleted scenes from the book.
The wonderful people at Blueprint Pictures are also working to get a Raw Shark film off the ground, so I'll post regular updates on that too.
I hope you'll drop by again and check out the blog as it evolves. Raw Shark Wiki ... The Raw Shark Texts discussion forums
- Here's the blurb from the back of The Raw Shark Texts:First things first, stay calm.If you are reading this, I’m not around anymore. Take the phone and speed dial 1. Tell the woman who answers that you are Eric Sanderson. The woman is Dr Randle. She’ll understand what has happened and you will be able to see her straight away. Take the car keys and drive the yellow Jeep to Dr. Randle’s house. If you haven’t found it yet, there’s a map in the envelope – it isn’t too far and it’s not hard to find.
Dr Randle will be able to answer all your questions. It’s very important that you go straight away. Do not pass go. Do not explore. Do not collect two hundred pounds.
The house keys are hanging from a nail on the banister at the bottom of the stairs, don’t forget them.
With regret and also hope,
The First Eric Sanderson
Here's the amazing Tilda Swinton starring in a videobook clip of the novel (videobook being kinda like audiobook but with film and, well, more 21st century ;)
You can also read... the first chapter of The Raw Shark Texts here
And.................. the fourth chapter here Here are some of the nice things people have said about my novel so far*: "Steven Hall is an inventive, funny and extremely smart writer . . . I practically fell off the couch with admiration."
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife"The most original reading experience of the year . . . A novel that genuinely isn't like anything you have ever read before." Independent“Damnable weird, beguiling bastard of a novel.†Clayton Moore, Bookslut "Paced like a thriller, the book thinks like a French theorist and reads like a deluge" San Francisco Chronicle "A pychological thriller with shades of Memento and The Matrix and the fiction of Mark Danielewski; page-turning, playful and chilling by turns." Guardian"An absurdly confident and intriguing debut . . . Move over Damien Hurst." Esquire"Leaving your heart pounding both with the agony of lost love and the fear of being hunted by a giant shark . . . clever, touching and utterly thrilling." Marie Claire"If Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami collaborated on Moby-Dick crossed with The Wizard of Oz, they might produce something like Hall's deliriously ambitious debut, which mixes profound themes with playful plot twists ... a narrative feat of hallucinatory imagination." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Radical and entertaining." BoldType"A horror-dystopic-philosophical mash-up that has critics drawing comparisons to Borges, The Matrix and Jaws.†The New York Times Magazine "I think I’m going to jump into the deep water with my hands around my bent, tucked-in legs and say that this is a 'wonderful book'." Paul Ewen, 3AM"Clever, exciting, funny . . . and, finally, moving." The Sunday Times“The Raw Shark Texts manages to reach the loftiest goal of speculative fiction: making its outlandish situations illuminate real human emotion." USA Today"[A] cultish thriller. A suspenseful psychological mystery, filled with surreal twists." Vogue “Undeniably very clever, highly intellectual but never highbrow, and surprisingly suspenseful for a novel that traffics in Big Ideas . . . A thrilling ride.†Chicago Reader “A postmodern odyssey.†New Statesman "“Advance publicity describes this intelligent and inventive novel as “Jaws meets The Matrixâ€. A better joining might be “Jaws meets Alice in Wonderland†which captures its blend of terror, whimsy and involuted geography." Times Literary Supplement"Playing with the concepts of memory and death and self, [Steven Hall] carries us along in a headlong rush to test the very edge of what a novel actually is." NPR“Jaws by way of Jung.†New York Times Book Review"[The ending is] spectacular . . . so bold and unfeasibly breathless that it feels like the last great dice-roll in a game of cat and mouse. . . . The balance of tone and direction coupled with variation in pace makes for a glitteringly ideal mix. It isn’t hard to be engrossed. . . . It is true and moving, completing a book in which heart and head sing in tremulous balance. Steven Hall’s brilliance aspires to Bach.†Scotsman"Hall has a youthful, unjaded enthusiasm and an excited love of books, stories, language and modern culture... drunk on the power of the word, of reading, textual reality and meaning, his story is a rambunctious, daring journey into the territory of postmodern literary theory; the triplets -- deconstructionism, semiotics and hermeneutics -- meet Jaws." Toronto Globe and Mail "A great debut – clever, funny, touching, strange and highly original" Al Alvarez"The star of Steven Hall's rousingly inventive The Raw Shark Texts is its villain - always a good sign in a thriller ... Raymond Chandler famously said, 'When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.' Hall one-ups Chandler by sending in a shark." Washington Post“Texts is exhilarating.†Entertainment Weekly Like its protagonist, this is a book that emerges out of unconsciousness and bursts into dazzling life ... a killer idea, fearlessly pulled off and Steven Hall deserves his new-found status as a Big Fish." Sydney Morning Herald "A truly innovative debut novel." largeheartedboy.com“Hall’s imagination is endless, and his ability to pull together these provocative details and incidents into a coherent whole is remarkable. . . Every so often, a work of imaginative fiction arrives — such as Gibson’s Neuromancer in 1984 or Stephenson’s Snow Crash in 1992—that shakes things up and opens up a new universe of possibilities. The Raw Shark Texts is one of these books.†Blogcritics.com "The biggest phenomenon in publishing since Harry Potter first strapped on a broom." The Big Issue“His work is wild, his work is wicked, and his work is unlike any other work you have ever read . . . Hall catches where catch too often can’t, and in the doing he’s digging a deep that’s as blue as it is menacing.†Miami Sun Post "Extraordinarily fecund imagination and sure-footed plotting make this a dizzyingly exciting novel." BBC Collective"An emotionally gripping, page-turning roller coaster that becomes even more draw dropping as 'what it all must mean' begins to dawn on you." Baby Got Books"Hall constructs the novel so that it travels close to the abyss, always with the sense of imminent disintegration. It has the sick exhilaration of the scariest carnival ride." Newsweek "A cult in the making." Time OutHall . . . write[s] so vividly that you can imagine ideas themselves coming alive. . . . Finishing the story makes you wonder if the whole thing, the book and your reading of it, was a dream (and fiercely hoping it wasn’t).†Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Raw Shark Texts is so much more than a clever, playful book, though it is both those things. Steven Hall has worked hard to build on the work of his intellectual ancestors. . . . Paul Auster, Philip K. Dick, Haruki Murakami, Steve Erickson, Ursula K. Le Guin — to say nothing of Beckett and Borges and Kafka." Los Angeles Times"I'm thinking of Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, William Gibson's Neuromancer or Joyce's Ulysses: those shockingly original works that make the reader look at the whole notion of the novel in a new way, and other writers enviously wonder: "Why didn't I think of that first?" Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts will one day, I feel, be included in this company." Irish Independent “A thriller that will haunt you. Pass it on to a friend. Commence debate.†GQ “Holy fucking shit." - Randomville.com
www.rawsharktexts.com
Online reviews & interviews:
Scotland on Sunday .... Bookslut .... Scotsman .... Independent .... 3AM (1) .... 3AM (2) .... Times ...
Publisher's Weekly .... Marie Claire .... Telegraph .... bookmunch
.... Amazon.co.uk customer reviews .... Irish Independent (free registration required) .... 100 Books in 2007 .... laurahird.com .... Yorkshire Post Online other stuff:
The Raw Shark Texts in The Guardian's books of 2007 , The Raw Shark Texts in The Belfast Telegraph's Hot reads for2007 , The Raw Shark Texts in New Statesman's books of 2007 , A great Raw Shark overview @ Squidoo , The Herald reports on The Raw Shark Texts in print and in Hollywood , Amazon.com Bookstore's blog talks about The Raw Shark Texts , The Vampire Wears Prada
Editions...
...UK Edition - out now!
Order a signed first edition of the UK Raw Shark Texts from Goldsboro Books!
Order the UK edition from Waterstones.com
Order the UK edition from Amazon.co.uk
...US Edition - out now!
Order from a local independent bookseller via BookSense Order the US edition of The Raw Shark Texts from Powells.com
Order the US edition of The Raw Shark Texts from Amazon.com
Order the US edition of The Raw Shark Texts from Barns&Noble.com
...Canadian Edition
Canadians can get a first look at The Raw Shark Texts for free here!
...........................................Shark Conservation.............................................
Sharks have existed for over 300 million years. Sadly, these amazing animals are not as indestructible as they look…
The Shark Trust ........................... www.whiteshark.co.za ...........................
Bite-Back
Sharklife ......................................... Stop Finning Petition ........................... Adopt a Shark!
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* What? You'd rather see some of the worst things people have said so far? Well, you'll have to do your own legwork then, won't you...? ;)
