OUTER CIRCLE arrives in paperback on Amazon
As OUTER CIRCLE arrives in paperback on Amazon on August 13th, here are Ian’s notes and acknowledgements that appear at the back of the first in the Jan Mason series of thrillers.
Notes and Acknowledgements
This book began life in 2014 when I finally decided that it was time I wrote the novel I had been promising/threatening for many years. Initially I would pen a few chapters on holidays until my wife Vikki Orvice suggested I took some time out from writing non-fiction for a living so that I could write fiction for fulfilment. She would, she said, help subsidise me. For that, and many other things, I will forever be grateful.
Vikki died of cancer in February 2019, a year and a couple of weeks after she organised the launch party for the novel at Primrose Hill library in North London, a lovely little venue and in the heart of where much of the action took place. It is a night, a memory, that I will forever treasure as so many friends and backers of this book, created through the crowd-funding publishers Unbound, helped me celebrate my fiction debut. The names of those who generously contributed and who have my thanks follow these acknowledgements.
As the book took shape, I found that the character I most enjoyed writing was Jan Mason, the national newspaper reporter with an old-fashioned belief in traditional and noble methods of legwork and using contacts built up down the years. So much so that I actually wanted to write about her again. The idea took hold within me that she could even be the protagonist in a series of novels.
Unbound granted me the rights back for what was titled with them THE OUTER CIRCLE. I decided to set up a new company V Books to reprint, with the new title of OUTER CIRCLE. I wanted it to become the first in the Jan Mason series of cases and stories and to rebrand, partly also because to bring it under the umbrella of the publishing company named after Vikki who did so much to encourage my fiction-writing career.
It has a new cover, by the brilliant Steve Leard, and that too is homage to Vikki, who was a trailblazing sports journalist, the first female football writer to be hired to the staff of a tabloid newspaper in 1995 and who became the athletics correspondent of The Sun, the London Olympics being the highlight of her career. The colours on the front are those of the Olympic rings. The figure on the back is Vikki, on her phone on Primrose Hill. The shot was taken by my daughter Alex, a professional photographer and now my partner in V Books, when we were mulling over cover ideas back in 2018.
In its previous incarnation, the book enjoyed a good reaction and I am grateful to those buyers and readers of it. There are only a few minor alterations for this new edition (Jim became Frank, which I thought suited him better). I do hope old readers who might have returned will feel they have been rewarded with the new material at the back of this edition – the first three chapters of the next Jan Mason story, DON’T TALK, that represents book two in the series – and that new readers will have come to enjoy reading Jan as much as I enjoy writing her.
She is, of course, based on Vikki, who began her career in Fleet Street as a news reporter on the Daily Mail. She is sparky and clever, ingenious and resourceful, just as V was. I confess that writing her is a way for me to keep her in my heart and mind. And the great thing is that wherever I go, wherever I write, Vikki goes there with me.
As well as my thanks to Alex for her support, both morally and practically, my gratitude goes also to my son Jack. It has been such a boon to have them so close to me again this past year especially. Many more people have also helped me since Vikki passed and they will duly be given the acknowledgement they deserve in DON’T TALK. For now, I want to focus mainly on V, for this was very much her book as well as mine.
Finally, I would like to thank two great men without whom none of my life these past 33 years would have been possible: Bill W and Bruce Lloyd.