tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35076264493682867542023-11-15T10:56:20.320-08:00Matt LynnFinance and Military Thrillersmattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.comBlogger400125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-82910579479217469072013-12-17T03:41:00.000-08:002013-12-17T03:42:32.402-08:00Search Is Free Today<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Search-Matt-Lynn-ebook/dp/B00H1BNVBQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1387278652&sr=1-1&keywords=search+matt+lynn%5D%23">Search</a> is free on Kindle today. Hard to beat that as an offer. mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-83886271372358083522013-12-03T08:55:00.000-08:002013-12-03T08:55:21.875-08:00Search Is Published<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yikEPfOAVGU/Up4MDxI9u0I/AAAAAAAAAbU/ph2R9NTOiLY/s1600/Search.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yikEPfOAVGU/Up4MDxI9u0I/AAAAAAAAAbU/ph2R9NTOiLY/s320/Search.jpg" /></a></div>
For the last few months, I have been working on something a bit different from the 'Death Force' series. Search is a techo-thriller, much close in spirit to the early thrillers I wrote, but bang up-to-date. It is a story about a guy called Luke Turner, who suddenly inherits £20 million from a half-brother he never met.
The plot revolves around his determination to find out where the money came from.
I will be blogging about it a lot more in the next few weeks, but for today just wanted to mention that it is out - and you can ever<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Search-Matt-Lynn-ebook/dp/B00H1BNVBQ/ref=cm_cr-mr-img"> buy</a> a copy. mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-67674164165597970062012-05-08T07:41:00.000-07:002012-05-08T07:41:51.133-07:00An Olympic Thriller….<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RJUTli6aNHk/T6kwi9L3rSI/AAAAAAAAAFw/a-2RbZMTg4w/s1600/olympics-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="214" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RJUTli6aNHk/T6kwi9L3rSI/AAAAAAAAAFw/a-2RbZMTg4w/s320/olympics-2.jpg" /></a></div>
The Olympics will be the biggest event in London in most of our lifetimes. Thousands of athletes, tens of thousands of spectators, and most of the world’s leaders, all gathering in the same place.
But it will be something else as well - probably the greatest single terrorist target in the UK in recent history.
We’ve already seen lots of stuff in the papers about the planning by the security forces. Missile bases on roof tops across East London. Speed boats on the Thames. Hundreds of extra police and soldiers flooding the area.
And that is just the stuff they are telling us about.
No doubt there is a lot more going on behind the scenes.
So it seemed to me a natural subject for a thriller. What if there was a terror plot to destroy the opening ceremony? And what if there was a sleeper within the security forces themselves? A man who had stayed hidden for years, who would strike when the moment was right.
That was the starting point for my new e-book ‘Black Ops: Olympics’.
The great thing about the new brand of e-novella like this one is that you can rip them straight from the headlines, and get them out to people while an issue is still topical.
It worked for Black Ops: Libya. And I’m sure it will work for this book as well.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-34596719736364078652012-02-02T10:43:00.000-08:002012-02-02T10:45:59.399-08:00Location, Location, Location<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BE3nK76wnbg/TyrZxM3JjfI/AAAAAAAAAFk/XIPYt1xpcks/s1600/black%2Bops%2Beldorado.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BE3nK76wnbg/TyrZxM3JjfI/AAAAAAAAAFk/XIPYt1xpcks/s320/black%2Bops%2Beldorado.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5704611317307510258" /></a><br /><br />In the estate agency business, they always say location, location, and location are the three most important factors when choosing a house. I’m starting to think the same thing may apply to writing a thriller as well.<br /><br />I’ve just published the second in Black Ops series of e-novellas – Black Ops: El Dorado, the follow-up to Black Ops: Libya. Thriller locations, and indeed plots, have a tendency to be all the same. The Middle East. Russian gangsters. Al-Queda terrorists. Plots to blow up the White House. To be honest, we’ve read most of them already. <br /><br />But a few months ago, I read a story in the New York Times about how the drugs cartels in Columbia had switched from cultivating cocaine to illegal gold mining – because the gold price was now so high it was more profitable for them.<br /><br />Gold? Drugs cartels? Illegal mining? <br /><br />What more could a thriller writer ask for?<br /><br />All of a sudden I had a really original location for a short action-adventure story.<br /><br />And one that hadn’t been done to death already.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-44638807915140132762012-01-21T10:04:00.000-08:002012-01-21T10:05:17.709-08:00The Real Cold WarI did a blog for The Spectator last week about setting Ice Force in the Arctic, but for anyone who missed it, here it is again.<br /><br /><br />The Cold War produced some of the great classics of British spy fiction. From the gadgets and babes with exotic Eastern European accents of the James Bond books, to the non-stop action of Alistair MacLean or the dark treachery of John Le Carre and the intricate office politics of Len Deighton, it served as the perfect vehicle for just about every type of story a writer could imagine. More scenes were set in the few yards around Checkpoint Charlie than anyone could keep track of. <br /> But now there is a new type of cold war – one that is more literal than metaphorical. The Arctic is perhaps the most compelling region in the world to set a thriller in 2012 – which is why I chose to set my new novel ‘Ice Force’ in the frozen wastelands around the North Pole. <br /> What makes a great location for a thriller? Well, there needs to be intrigue, of course. And conflict as well. The Arctic has plenty of both. The world’s last great untapped reserves of oil lie under the Arctic Ocean – about 25% of the world’s remaining fossil fuels, according to the latest estimates. But who owns it? For the last few hundred years, no one cared very much. There was nothing out there, apart from a few polar bears. Now everyone wants a share. The Russians claim that much of the Arctic is their territory, and have been provocatively planting flags wherever they can. The Americans – via Alaska – claim a chunk. So do the Canadians. And so do the Danes (via Greenland). <br /> And oil, of course, is power in today’s world. Russia is already the largest oil producer in the world, pumping 10.5 million barrels a day. Add together its existing domestic production with all the oil potentially in the Arctic, and the Kremlin would effectively control the world’s energy supply. Nor would it be afraid to use it. Vladimir Putin has already shown he regards oil as just another weapon in big power politics. It is no great surprise then that the race for the Arctic oil has been described as ‘the new great game’. <br /> Next, some hardship helps. The more rugged the terrain the greater the test you are setting for your characters – and the more peril you can put them in. Nowhere in the world is rougher than the Arctic. The temperatures drop to fifty or sixty below zero. Ice forms inside your sleeping bag as you sleep. Water freezes inside its bottles, and engines have to be re-heated bolt by bolt with blow torches before they will start. The ice breaks up, creating ravines where you can fall into the freezing water. It is the most brutal, inhospitable place on earth. <br /> Finally, your setting needs to be different. What readers really want is to be transported somewhere different. To go somewhere they’ve never been before, and may indeed never get to. To be taken to a different world. Easyjet can fly us most places for a few pounds. Not to the North Pole. It really is a completely different place, and one of the pleasures of reading a thriller set there is that you get to learn about the terrain, and how to survive it. <br /> It ticked all the right boxes. The research was fascinating, and an education in itself. The weather is more likely to kill you than your enemy. Nothing works. You need a specially adapted gun, for example. Wearing thick gloves your finger won’t fit into the trigger, but if you touch metal with your bare fingers they will drop off. So you need the right sort of gun (the Swedish Army specialises in them, in case you were wondering). Or else you need to saw off the underside of the trigger. Even then, you need an array of special oils to keep your weapons working. You need to wear night-vision goggles through the long Arctic winter. For half the year, there is practically no light. And you need to watch out for the animals. Polar bears have a great sense of smell, and they are always hungry. They will creep up on you – and their hides are so well insulated, only a few traces of their breath will be visible on your night-vision equipment. If you do get into a scrap with one, though, thump them from the right – polar bears are left-handed, so that is their weaker side. <br /> There North Pole might never become as familiar to thriller readers as Checkpoint Charlie was. But in the next few years it might well become a small genre of its own – and rather like Robert Peary, it is nice to have got there first.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-4897562247671319792011-12-04T08:50:00.000-08:002011-12-04T08:51:02.273-08:00What People Actually ReadIf you look at the Kindle chart and the traditional charts, you’ll notice something quite interesting. They aren’t at all similar. The UK Kindle chart today is topped by Phil Rickman, who is hardly a household name, followed by Damon Galgut and Kerry Wilkinson. The physical chart is led by the latest Wimpy Kid, followed by Jamie Oliver, Lee Evans and Michael Connolly. <br /><br />Why is that, I wonder? After all, these are all books. Of course you can probably discount Wimpy Kid and Jamie Oliver. Most kids don’t have e-readers yet and cookbooks aren’t a natural for the Kindle. Even so, if you look at the Kindle charts, the ‘big authors’ don’t do so well. PD James and Kathryn Stockett are in the Top 10 and Patricia Cornwell in the Top 20. But heavily hyped writers like James Paterson don’t really do that well. In my own corner of the market, military adventure, I don’t sell as well as Chris Ryan and Andy McNab in the bookshops, but on Kindle I am regularly out-selling them. <br /><br />One reason might be that the Kindle audience is slightly different from the mainstream audience. It is probably slightly more male – hence the number of thrillers in the chart – and a bit more techie. It may also be more adventurous in its taste. <br /><br />But the real reason, I suspect, is because it is a much more level playing field. Some books get more push than others online of course. But going into the Kindle store is nothing like going into a bookshop, and nothing at all like the books section of a supermarket. The choice is vast, there are no in-your-face promotions, and word-of-mouth (in the form of reader reviews) is everywhere. <br /><br />So what we see on the Kindle chart may well be a far better guide to what people actually want to read. I’m not sure the publishers have quite realised that yet though.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-12202061239653094182011-11-28T08:17:00.000-08:002011-11-28T08:18:30.626-08:00How Many Kindles Are Out There?At the moment, I’m spending a lot of time setting up my new digital publishing venture, <a href="http://www.endeavourpress.com">Endeavour Press</a>. One of the things that interests me is, how many Kindles are out there. Amazon reported today that over the holiday weekend in the US it had sold four times as many Kindles as it did last year. But, rather irritatingly, it doesn’t actually say how many.<br /><br />Figures are surprisingly hard to come by. For 2010, the estimates from the analysts are that five to eight million Kindles were sold. Let’s take a median figure, and called it 6.5 million. If Amazon has quadrupled those sales this time around – and based on anecdotal evidence, that sounds realistic – then it should sell around 26 million this year. <br /><br />Add in the 2010 sales, and, after Xmas there could be 32 million Kindles out there globally. That’s about half the population of the UK. More significantly, I bet nearly all of those people are keener than average readers. After all, there isn’t much point in getting one if you only read on James Patterson book a year. You need to be a 5-10 books a year minimum reader to make the investment worthwhile. <br /><br />So what proportion of heavy book readers will have a Kindle by 2012? I’d estimate about 40%. That’s what makes this market so fascinating.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-1035645294661722632011-11-19T03:41:00.000-08:002011-11-19T03:44:21.781-08:00The Return of Pulp FictionThe most interesting thing happening in writing right now is the way the Kindle is breaking down old barriers. It is creating a lot of new space for writers, and, rather surprising, it is also bringing back some old forms. <br /><br />One is the long essay, which is really just a recreation of the polemical pamphlet. The other is the e-novella, which is really the heir to pulp fiction.<br /><br />Pulp fiction flourished as the ‘penny dreadfuls’, lurid, sensationalist tales that filled Victorian and Edwardian railway bookshops in Britain, and in the ‘pulp fiction’ story magazines that were hugely successful in the US right up until the 1960s. <br /><br />Both specialised in genre fiction, usually written fast by highly professional writers. The stories ere disposable, shocking, and attention-grabbing. And they were sold cheaply. <br /><br />Look at the Kindle charts and you’ll see a lot of stuff is very similar. Lots of fairly sensationalist cheap fiction. <br /><br />In effect, new technology has bought pulp fiction back to life. <br /><br />The interesting point I think is that some great writing emerged from that tradition. The Victorian penny dreadfuls contained plenty of rubbish and so did the American pulp magazines. <br /><br />But those magazines also provided the foundation for some great writers. Raymond Chandler, Zane Grey, Rider Haggard, and many others. Upton Sinclair was at one point knocking out 8,000 words a day for the pulps. <br /><br />They allowed writers to write a lot, to develop characters, and push genres. At the moment, Kindle is allowing writers to do something very similar. There is a lot of rubbish, of course, but I suspect when we look back in fifty or a hundred years time we will decide that a lot of the most interesting work is being done for Kindle, just as it was in for the pulps in the past.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-74199768112956234582011-11-06T09:19:00.000-08:002011-11-06T09:20:44.378-08:00E-Books Are Blurring The Lines Between What Is ‘Published’ And What Isn’t:About the most interesting thing happening in the book trade right now is that the lines between traditional publishing and self-publishing are getting blurred. My Death Force series is published by Hodder Headline, but my <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005K08R1E/novelrank-21#customerReviews">Black Ops</a> series of novellas I am bringing out myself. <br /><br />More and more writers, so far as I can tell, are going down that road. <br /><br />One indicator of that this week was the decision by the International Thriller Writer’s Association to allow its members to post the details of their self-published work up on their website. Until now, they had only allowed work bought out major publishers.<br /><br />A hybrid model is emerging I suspect where writers do some work for major publishers, and some work for themselves, probably forming their own judgements on what mix will maximise their sales, income and creative satisfaction. <br /><br />Personally I like the combination. I value the prestige of the mainstream publisher, and seeing my books in the shops. But I like the energy and immediacy of doing my own thing as well. And, I suspect I’ll soon be making more money as well. <br /><br />But how exactly this is all going to work, however, no one really knows.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-17609662525014875372011-10-29T05:51:00.001-07:002011-10-29T05:51:49.429-07:00Will The Kindle Get Men to Read More?If you haven’t bough one of the new Kindles yet, I really recommend it. It’s lighter than the old one, which makes it completely portable, but it is just as slickly designed, easy to read, and simple to use. <br /><br />But I’ve noticed one thing about it. It fits perfectly into inside breast pocket of a man’s jacket. I’m a fairly averaged sized bloke – 42 jacket size if you must know – so I guess that is true for most men. <br /><br />This is a more important point than most people realise. Men don’t normally have anywhere they can carry a book around. We don’t have handbags. Jacket and coat pockets are two small for printed books (unless you are going for the intellectual look, in which case you might have a copy of Camus stuffed into a big, grey coat). Unlike women, we don’t have anywhere we can slip a book away that we can read on the bus, or waiting for a meeting, or whatever. <br /><br />On the whole women read more than men – that’s why women’s fiction sells more than men’s fiction. I’m not suggesting the Kindle is a male device – I’ve seen loads of women reading them on the train. <br /><br />But it might well encourage men to read as much as women – which can only be a good thing.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-55670703930393423272011-10-22T05:43:00.001-07:002011-10-22T05:43:54.129-07:00Authors as EntrepreneursWe tend to think of authors as fairly reclusive characters. The word ‘bookish’ summons up images of fairly self-absorbed, introverted characters, with a slight detachment from the real world. And from the authors I have met, I would say that is, in the most, a fairly accurate characterisation. Some were larger than life – Dickens, perhaps, and certainly Hemmingway – but they also led largely artistic careers. <br /><br />Now, however, something is changing. <br /><br />Authors are becoming entrepreneurs. <br /><br />The books industry has changed. Even when you are published by one of the big houses – Headline in my case – you still need to do a lot of marketing of yourself to make sure your book finds an audience. You need to build a website, get on Twitter, and give talks. There is no point in expecting the publisher to do it all for you.<br /><br />And, more and more authors are turning to Kindle as well. They are bringing out their own books, and promoting then themselves, either entirely on their own, or in conjunction with traditionally published books. They are in effect setting up small businesses. <br /><br />One consequence, however, is that the books we all read will be increasingly produced by people who are as much entrepreneurs as writers. That may well not be a bad thing. A lot of fiction in the last half-century has been very inward-looking. It doesn’t have much of the energy and involvement in the world of Victorian fiction. <br /><br />But it certainly means that the types of books that get written are going to be very different.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-14999703696492129102011-10-06T07:18:00.001-07:002011-10-06T07:18:46.435-07:00Making It WorthwhileThere’s always plenty for writers to moan about. Not having our books prominently displayed in the bookshop for example. A miserable sales ranking on Amazon. And that’s before we even get started on the publishers and agents.<br /> But every so often something comes along to make it feel worthwhile. <br /> A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from a women who’s son was very unwell. He wouldn’t be having much of a birthday, she said, and his situation made it hard for him to get out and meet people. But he was a big fan of my first two books, Death Force and Shadow Force. And he would really like it if I sent him a birthday card. <br /> In fact, I sent him a signed copy of Shadow Force. <br /> It’s nice to know your work has got through to someone enough that they would be pleased to hear from you, even though they don’t know you. I guess that is what all writers aspire to. <br /> I hope he has a good day.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-44479628124470982982011-10-01T08:23:00.000-07:002011-10-01T08:25:39.552-07:00A Stupid Tax on E-BooksE-Books are the best thing that have happened to writers since…well, probably the invention of instant coffee. Sure, there is a lot of nervousness among publishers and bookshop owners and that is understandable. But for writers, they can only be good news. At the flick of a switch, you have a global market. Far more of the money generated goes to the writer. And it opens up markers for all sorts of new kinds of work. <br /><br />There is one glaring injustice, however. E-books carry VAT, whereas printed books are tax-free. <br /><br />That is just short-sighted greed on the part of the Treasury. A petition has been started up on the government’s website calling for its abolition. As it rightly points out, e-books are far more environmentally-friendly than the old, paper sort. No trees get cut down. No vans drive them around the country. A book is a book, regardless of the form of delivery. It is crazy to discriminate in favour of one kind through the tax system. <br /><br />I’d add another point. I bet e-books can be a huge industry for the UK. We have great writers, English is the world’s language, and we have the editors and entrepreneurs who can seize the market. And yet the Government is taxing e-books unfairly – which almost certainly means the industry won’t develop as fast as it otherwise would. Bonkers. <br /><br />I’ve already signed the petition, but there are only 2,500 so far. So <a href="http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/114">click on the link </a>and add your name today.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-9894282679673476752011-09-20T08:58:00.000-07:002011-09-20T08:59:14.320-07:00Swearing in BooksI had an e-mail this morning from a reader who said he was a big fan of my books, which was nice of course. But he also pointed out that the characters in the Death Force series used the word ‘sodding’ all the time, and it got a bit repetitive. <br /><br />He’s right, of course. They do, and it is. <br /><br />There is a reason, however. They are soldiers. In real life it would be fu%£kig this and f!c£king that. And for some reason, I don’t think swearing works very well in books. I don’t have anything against it in real life, and it can work fine in films, but I print it somehow falls flat.<br /><br />So I use sodding instead.<br /><br />But maybe that doesn’t quite work either?mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-29975807865815372052011-09-01T03:42:00.000-07:002011-09-01T03:44:07.406-07:00Real-Time Story-Telling<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--HcEkKkg8ys/Tl9h7V0b42I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/B5fRUChE7vQ/s1600/blackopslibya.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--HcEkKkg8ys/Tl9h7V0b42I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/B5fRUChE7vQ/s320/blackopslibya.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647340129843143522" /></a>
<br />The Kindle is a huge opportunity for writers. It is not just a new way of distributing our work. It is also an opportunity to tell stories in a new way. I’m just launching a new series of e-book only novellas called Black Ops. The first one is called Black Ops: Libya, so it is fairly obvious where it is set. The idea, however, is to tell stories ripped straight from the headlines, and put them out instantaneously.
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<br />The e-book allows us to do that. Traditional publishing takes a year at least to get a book to the market. So the instant thriller, which is what the Black Ops series aims to be, takes advantage of the technology to tell a story that has the advantage of immediacy. It is real-time story-telling.
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<br />In the first one, an ex-SAS guy called Alex Marden and a former Navy Seal called Jack Rogan are dropped into Libya by NATO to retrieve a document in the hands of the old regime that would be hugely embarrassing to the British and American governments if it fell into the wrong hands.
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<br />But they soon get themselves caught up in the fighting and chaos as Tripoli falls to the rebels.
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<br />It is a cracking adventure story. And the first time anyone has taken advantage of the e-book to try something like this.
<br />mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-13146899451764396752011-08-15T11:58:00.000-07:002011-08-15T11:59:04.791-07:00The Possibilities on KindleThe Kindle is one of the most interesting things happening in publishing right now. Not all of it is good, of course. The publishing industry may end getting destroyed the way the music industry was. But it also creates possibilities.
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<br />There is a fascinating <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/a-novel-updated-for-e-book/">story</a> in the New York Times about the thriller writer Richard North Patterson. He has a book out featuring Osama Bin Laden. But by the time it came out, the man had already been killed, which rather ruined his book. So he went onto the Kindle edition and changed it - just like that.
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<br />One of the things the Kindle can do for us is create that kind of journalistic immediacy. In fact, it is a possibility I am working on right now. But more on that later....mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-12070183078555887652011-07-20T02:59:00.000-07:002011-07-20T03:00:14.791-07:00Summer ReadingI'm off to Cornwall at the weekend with the kids, so I need to choose a few books for what I hope will be a relaxing week. I've already got a copy of Hunted by fellow Curzon-ite Emlyn Rees, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, who I know a bit from our work on Bloomberg, and American Pastoral by Philip Roth, who I have got back into since attending the Man Booker Prize dinner a few weeks ago in his honour. That seems like a pretty good range - some light fun, some art, and some serious stuff.<br /><br />Hopefully a fair number of people will be taking 'Shadow Force' with them on holiday. I think of my own books as summer reading. But what makes a great story for the beach?<br /><br />I think it needs a number of qualities. It needs a rattling good story that grips you from start to finish. It needs some jokes - no one wants to be too downbeat on holiday. It needs some escapism - a holiday is all about getting away from things, and we want a book that does that as well. But it also needs to tell you something serious, and educate you in some way, because a holiday is one of the few chances we have to fill gaps in our knowledge.<br /><br />I try and touch all those bases in my own work. And I always keep in mind that that is the recipe for a great holiday read.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-18808604241806431692011-07-18T08:37:00.000-07:002011-07-18T08:53:26.090-07:00The History of the Greek CrisisI've done a piece of History Today about the Greek debt crisis. You can read it <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/matthew-lynn/greek-economics-drachmas-debt-and-dionysius">here</a>.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-46343620209938181162011-07-18T08:29:00.000-07:002011-07-18T08:34:34.385-07:00Invest in Stable Democracies....In my MarketWatch column this week, I've been arguing you should invest in stable democracies - there are more of them all the time. You can read it <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/put-your-money-in-emerging-stable-democracies-2011-07-13">here</a>.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-6382651332741964502011-07-18T08:27:00.000-07:002011-07-18T08:29:32.998-07:00The IMF Isn't Worth Any More MoneyOn RealClearMarkets this week I've argued that the IMF shouldn't be given any more money. You can read the piece <a href="http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/07/14/the_imf_isnt_worth_another_penny_of_anyones_money_99123.html">here</a>.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-3453163464136521742011-07-18T08:23:00.000-07:002011-07-18T08:25:56.180-07:00Sterling Will Fall Again....I've made my debut as a Huffington Post blogger this week with a post on sterling. You can read it <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matthew-lynn/switch-out-of-sterling-wh_b_890049.html">here...</a>.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-73369525348002955592011-07-18T08:19:00.000-07:002011-07-18T08:23:21.795-07:00France Will Be the Next Eurozone VictimIn my <a href="http://www.moneyweek.com">Money Week</a> column this week, I argue that France may be the next country to fall to the euro crisis. Here is a taster. <br /><br /><br />The euro debt crisis increasingly resembles a teen horror movie. As soon as you think it is all over, the monster springs back to life. There is an unlimited number of sequels. And it usually ends up with a bloodbath. <br /> This week it was the turn of Italy to be in the spotlight. The country’s bond yields started to spike upwards, a serious issue for a nation that has vast debts to pay the interest on. After flying under the radar for much of the crisis, the Italian debt market looks close to unravelling. Spain is coming under increasing scrutiny as well. It might well be next. <br /> But in fact the markets are looking in the wrong place. True, there is plenty to worry about in both Italy and Spain. But the real testing ground for the euro is going to be their northern neighbour, France. It too is struggling to stay in the euro – and it, far more than Italy or Spain, has the potential to trigger a financial meltdown. France matters to the global financial markets far more than any of the other euro countries in trouble. <br /> Monetary union was, of course, largely a French idea. The country’s industrial and financial establishment had long been unhappy with floating exchange rates. As one of the major exporters within the European Union, they could see that constantly shifting currencies made life very difficult for their companies. While Germany primarily exports to the rest of the world, France is a euro-zone manufacturing hub. A fixed currency system was very much in its interests. Indeed, one interpretation of the creation of the euro was that it was a deal between the French and the Germans: the Germans accepted merging their currency with France’s in exchange for French support for the re-unification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is ironic, therefore, that it isn’t working out the way France planned. <br /> Could France seriously have a problem staying in the euro? After all, it is a big, successful economy. It is not a peripheral nation like Greece or Portugal, neither of which ever really industrialised, or a chronically financially chaotic country like Italy. Then again, Ireland was a successful, wealthy economy, and that didn’t stop the country going bust as a result of monetary union. <br /> In reality, France is steadily losing competitiveness within the euro. That was confirmed last week with the latest trade data, which showed a widening deficit. The April trade gap rose to 7.42 billion euros. The UK, by contrast ran a deficit of £2.8 billion or 3.1 billion euros in April. The French deficit now amounts to 3% of GDP, and has been hitting fresh records month-by-month. France’s trade deficit with Germany, its main trading partner, is now one billion euros a month. “Within euroland, France is losing competitiveness to Germany, and it has no option for devaluation to help itself out,” noted Hi-Frequency Economics in an analysis of the figures. “A potential rift between France and Germany on trade would be a far more serious challenge to EMU’s political fabric than a disagreement over how to restructure loans to euroland’s second-smallest economy [Greece].”<br /> Indeed so. There is no great mystery about what is happening. French wages have been rising at a faster rate than German wages, and their productivity is not as good. The country is steadily becoming a less attractive place to make things. <br /> The important point is that persistent and rising trade deficits are clear evidence that France is struggling within the single currency in precisely the same way as the Greeks – it’s the same explosion, just with a much longer fuse. As it runs bigger and bigger deficits, the money will have to be re-cycled through the banking system. Eventually that will lead to a financial crisis. <br /> It may happen sooner than anyone thinks. While a country such as Italy has a greater stock of out-standing debt, France is racking up new debts at a far faster rate. Last year it ran a deficit of 7% of GDP. French debt will total 90% of GDP this year and 95% in 2012 according to estimates by Capital Economics. That isn’t exactly running out of control – but it is getting very close. <br /> There are other problems on the horizon. A Presidential election is due next year. That may turn into a competition for who can make the most extravagant promises. And the far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is pledged to bring back the franc. If she continues to do well in the polls, then pulling out of the euro will be on the agenda. That is not true of any other euro area country, not even Greece. <br /> At any point, the bond markets may well take fright. They will start pricing in the possibility of France pulling out of the euro, or defaulting on some of its debt. Yields on French debt will start to spike upwards. And that will be the point at which the crisis turns scary. <br />While Greece, Portugal and Ireland don’t matter very much to the global capital markets, France does. In fact, it matters much more than Italy and Spain. It has $1.7 trillion of outstanding public debt, making it the fourth largest debtor in the world, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements. (The US, Japan and Italy are ahead of it). That debt is widely traded – 37% of French debt is held internationally, which is a lot more than Italy (24%), the US (19%) or Japan (1%), again on BIS figures. In truth, French bonds are held by institutions right around the world and have always been regarded as rock solid. <br />On current trends, that will have to change. France can no more survive in the euro-zone than Italy or Spain can. At some point, the bond markets are going to wake up to the problems in France. They are going to get very nervous about French debt, the same way they did about Greek and Portuguese and Spanish debt. They will start marking down the bonds, and factoring in potential default. But if that happens the losses to the financial system will be very nasty indeed. The euro was created in France. It may well be in France that it starts to finally unravel as well.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-73137595816383778222011-07-05T08:34:00.000-07:002011-07-05T08:36:05.802-07:00Launching Onto Kindle....The Kindle is a fantastic device for readers, but it potentially is even more interesting for writers. It isn’t so much the ability to reach readers directly, as the opportunity it offers to try out new forms. The publishers and the bookshops are all focused on the 100,000 word book. But there are lots of other ways of writing things.<br /><br />I’ve just launched by first short story on Kindle. It’s called <a href="http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lethal-Force-ebook/dp/B0058UH9U6/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309879892&sr=1-4">‘Lethal Force’</a>. It would be free, but Amazon won’t let me give it away, so instead it is 71p. It will be free in iTunes just as soon as I can get Smashwords to give it an ISBN number and get it up. Take a look, you might enjoy it. <br /><br />But it isn’t just short stories that can find a home on Kindle. There are other forms of writing as well. <br /><br />I already have one idea, which I’m working on right now. Watch this space…..mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-55736885756081038252011-07-02T02:26:00.000-07:002011-07-02T02:29:39.372-07:00The British Monetary Union Isn't Working Either....In my <a href="http://www.moneyweek.com">Money Week</a> column this week, I've been looking at the the UK as a monetary union, like the euro....and concluding that doesn't work either. Here's a taster.<br /><br /><br />What does the euro need to make it work better? The most common answer is that it needs to be turned into a fiscal union, with large-scale transfers from the richer regions to the poorer. It is the conventional wisdom of every editorial, and City pundit. Until it becomes a ‘transfer union’ it doesn’t stand a chance of succeeding.<br /> A caveat or two is usually thrown in. The political obstacles are formidable. The Germans might never agree to their taxes being sent to bail-out Greece or Portugal. The treaties might need to be re-written, and that would require the agreement of all the European Union’s members. Still, if only those obstacles could be overcome, a fiscal union would smooth out most of the problems. <br /> The trouble is, no one seems to have stepped back and questioned the fundamental assumption. The evidence suggests it may well be wrong. Europe has another monetary union between countries at very different stages of economic development. It is called the UK, and the currency is sterling. Reverse the polarities – the UK has a rich south, and a poor north, rather than a rich north and a struggling south – and the sterling area has many similarities to the euro area. It is made up of group of countries with very different levels of prosperity. And it has huge transfers between the richer regions and the poorer. <br /> And the result? It doesn’t do any good at all. True, it holds the currency area together. But it only does so at the cost of creating regions that are ever more dependent on state aid. The truth is, a transfer union won’t save the euro even if it was politically feasible. Nothing will. The project is doomed. <br /> That doesn’t stop people from trying, The most common critique of the single currency is that is an economic union without a political union. George Soros has argued for a year that without a single government the currency won’t survive. The President of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet has called for a European finance ministry.<br /> The UK’s experience, however, suggests that even if it happened, it wouldn’t work. Britain used to be a fairly homogenous economy, with wealth relatively evenly spread out across its major industrial centres, much as it is in modern Germany. Not any more. Post-industrial Britain has a very, very prosperous capital, surrounded by equally wealthy suburbs. The Midlands and East are doing fine. The rest of the country has been falling behind at an increasingly rapid rate. The result is that there are huge disparities between output per head in the South and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It isn’t quite as dramatic as the gulf between Germany and Greece – but it isn’t that far off. <br /> That gets fixed by fiscal transfers. The UK, which has of course a single government, and single finance ministry, shuttles large sums of money from the richer regions to the poorer. Oxford Economics, the consultancy firm, has calculated the amount the British government spends per person employed – per taxpayer, in other words - for the different parts of the country. In the prosperous South-East, the government spent £14,100 per working person. In Northern Ireland, it spent £21,200. Wales, Scotland and the North-East were all way above average. The East, East Midlands, and London were all below average – although London, which has pockets of real poverty amidst its wealth, not by as much as you might think. It also looked at expenditure relative to gross value added, that is the actual output of the region. Taking the average for the UK as 100, Northern Ireland scored 155 and the South-East just 84. In other words, a lot of the wealth from the South-East gets sent to the ‘periphery’. <br /> The UK is, therefore, a monetary union with very significant transfers between its richer and poorer regions. The trouble for the euro’s would-be fiscal unifiers is that there is very little evidence that it fixes the problem. Northern Ireland for example has had a consistently lower growth rate than the UK as a whole – this year, it will grow by 1.1% compared with 1.7% for the UK according to estimates by Northern Bank. Much the same is true of Wales and the North-East. The regions with the biggest fiscal transfers have grown consistently more slowly than the rest of the UK, with the result that the ratio of state spending relative to their local economies has grown steadily over time. Between 1999 and 2010 state spending rose from 50% of the Welsh economy to 69%, according to calculations by the Centre for Economics and Business Research.<br /> Fiscal transfers can hold a monetary union together. There is no sign of the sterling area breaking up, although the Scots might eventually decide to go their own way. But they won’t close the gap between the richer regions and their poorer neighbours. They are a permanent subsidy – and one that will probably grow over time. <br /> If anything, the fiscal transfers probably make the problem worse. They crowd out private investment – after all, why would anyone in Northern Ireland set up a business when they are relatively few industries where it has much strength, and when they could just get on a plane to London, or else get a secure job in the public sector? It creates whole regions where the fiscal transfers are the only thing that keeps the economy afloat. <br />That just about works in the UK. It has been a unified state for several hundred years, and has close ties of language, culture and family between its regions – although it remains to be seen whether the Tory voters of the south-east will accept the deal forever. But it is very hard to see it working for the euro zone. Voters in Munich and Eindhoven already seem outraged by paying for the Greeks and Portuguese. When they get told that the transfers are permanent, and will rise steadily over time, they will surely refuse to pay. The scary truth is that even the one plausibly fix for the euro crisis doesn’t work.mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507626449368286754.post-2502362264206331662011-07-02T02:20:00.000-07:002011-07-02T02:26:10.200-07:00How The Euro Will End....How will the euro actually come apart. I've been exploring that in my Market Watch column this week. You can read it <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/six-triggers-for-break-up-of-the-euro-2011-06-29">here.</a>mattlynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07829245589693825681noreply@blogger.com0