I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like doing anything today. Everything is pissing me off at the moment and that includes my work. I feel despondent, depressed, down in the dumps and dowdy. It’s one of those days which may, in my case stretch out into weeks, when I feel as if the world is just too awful to exist in. Nothing is right, everything is wrong and I just can’t be arsed. And anyway, why bother? Everything’s crap, I’m crap. And yet…

And yet the beauty and the ugliness of being a writer is that you have to keep on going. I have this wonderful, dreadful, soul searing job that apparently millions of people would like to have and I am obliged to get on with it. Don’t get me wrong, a writer can have a bad day, a bad few weeks or even a month, but he or she must keep going. The mortgage has to be paid, the cat needs to be fed and you have to keep on going just in order to stay in control. Lose your thread with a train of thought or a plot and you’re in trouble, I know, I’ve done it. When I write I have to be immersed in what I’m doing and so if you’ve ‘lost the plot’ albeit temporarily, then that is very difficult to get back into.

As if anyone needed reminding, moods affect authors just like they affect everyone else. Some authors have famously used drink or drugs to either heighten or lower their moods so that they can get it together to write. We’ve all done that sometimes, but not on the heroic scale of say, Dylan Thomas. I don’t really know how I’d get on with a babies pram loaded up with demijohns of cider. I expect, if I did drink all of them, I would probably end up in hospital. Or I’d die. But I suppose then at least I wouldn’t be tortured, at least I wouldn’t be so monumentally pissed off. Maybe that was why Dylan Thomas was so excessive? Maybe he was not so much moody as just hacked off with it all. Modern life in western Europe, which is where I am now, is soft in some ways and really tough in others. Unlike in the far reaches of eastern Turkey, we here in the UK always have running water, have few power cuts and can usually make it through snow and other hazards to get to our schools and places of work. And yet worrying about the security of our jobs, about our financial viability, about how others view us is something we torture ourselves with on a daily basis. Personally, I do not do this consciously. I never wake up and think ‘Oh, I know, I’ll worry about my job so much today, I’ll not eat, smoke up a storm and probably hang myself!’ But it happens to me anyway because I live in a place where everyone thinks like that for a lot of the time.

What is at the root of all this angst, this worry, this mind crippling ennui? Some say it is the recession (although it was with us long before that came along), some say it is our materialism, our lack of belief in religion. But I don’t know. All I do know is that I am a writer who has obligations as well as real passion for my craft and so I do what I do whatever I may feel like. Well I got to the end of this blog, didn’t I?

I lost a certain amount of my philanthropic cred when I announced at the local post office that I wouldn’t be sending a cheque off to Thai-Haiti relief fund. One little old lady who sells bananas at the local market was in there turning her four dollars worth of change into a money order. She’d been collecting coins from the other traders and wanted to do her bit for the starving Haitians. Being Thai, she merely smiled when I made my stinginess public but I knew what she was thinking. “Cheap bloody foreigner”. Here was an entire country stirred into a national frenzy by all those pop singers and soap stars corralled by guilt to appear on telethons. Once more they’d been able to momentarily pierce the ‘its not my problem’ armour of the viewing public. All those donors could sleep soundly ‘cause they’d done their charity for the year. The Lord Buddha be praised.

As sorry as I feel about the untold hardships thrust upon the Haitians, I’m afraid I’m not the type to get that rare urge to empty my wallet whenever the international entertainment world gets a benevolent spurt on. A flurry of ‘We are the world.’ doesn’t do it for me. I’m a rich guy who was once a poor guy and, as such I’m permeated with a constant urge to help people like the old me. Oh, I was never smelling bad and panhandling in front of fancy restaurants, nor was I stateless and petrified and sold into slavery on deep sea fishing vessels. But I’ve been unemployed and counting out three noodles a day till I could be sure there’d be another packet for next week. So altruism isn’t a debt that plagues me; it’s in my job description as a functioning member of the world community.

I subscribe to a principle of charity – if not beginning at home – at least starting around the next door neighbour’s back garden. There are some five thousand Burmese day labourers living in our area, some, through one of those quirks of nature I’ve never really come to grips with, have produced children. Despite the fact that Burmese have been living here for many years and contribute immensely to the Thai economy, none of those kids have ever been to school. There’s a Thai law that says all foreign children living on Thai soil have a right to go to school but anyone who’s spent time here will tell you there’s law and then there’s non-fiction. So Jess and I bought some books, hired a teacher and rented a space. Thirty kids are now learning to read how their country is being gobbled up by fat generals and to calculate how much they’re being ripped off by their Thai employers. It means we can no longer run the lawn sprinklers and we’ve had to let our Pilates instructor go and we’ll have to do without that talking bathroom scale we’d so had our hearts on, but life is all about sacrifices.

The banana lady lives in the middle of the same community we do and for ten years has watched the Burmese kids hang around waiting for that glorious day when they can be uneducated criminals and prostitutes. But because the Thai version of George Clooney didn’t tell her to dip into her purse she kept her blinkers on awaiting that glorious day when she could help the starving Haitians. And, generous though she’s been, I fear for where her four dollars might end up. I briefly worked for the UN and I have constant nightmares that feature a three-thousand dollar vacuum cleaner with curtain tassel and shag carpet attachments taking six months to be delivered from Sweden to our little UNESCO supported education project in Laos. If I knew someone in Haiti I’d stick some cash in an envelope and mail it to them as we did to friends in tsunami-hit Phuket. But my suspicious self tells me there’ll be a lot of nouveaux riche public officials in the Caribbean in the not too distant future.

The myth of the magic bubble of international aid has never been popped with a more pointed needle than it was in Graham Hancock’s excellent book, Lords of Poverty. The author reminds us, “Another serious problem, also not beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to solve, is the sheer number of different kinds of organisation that flock like benign vultures to the scene of every Third World catastrophe. Leaving aside for a moment the private charities which, by definition, are a diffuse and scattered bunch with widely differing skills and concerns, it is a little-known fact that there are at least sixteen specialized United Nations agencies which can become involved in disaster relief activities; frequently, they all do so at the same time…treading heavily on each other’s toes, bickering violently amongst themselves…”

So, kindhearted fellows, let us take a leaf out of Dr. Siri’s book and do the little charities well. “Forget the planet: save the garden.”

You might have noticed the banner on the right hand side of this site. The Court reporters (bless them) has named International Crime Authors Reality Check as one of the best 50 best blogs for crime & mystery book lovers. We are honored for this recognition.

Writing a weekly blog seems like no sweat until you approach the one-year mark and have exhausted your usual bag of tricks. At that point, all of us are forced to dig a little deeper and report from our vantage point the pressure points in society that lead to crime.

While crime is universal, the way crime is defined, the laws applied, the bad guys bagged, the punishment meted out, and the consensus of what is an isn’t a crime come down to cultural attitudes, social and political structures. Murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault are among the crimes that are punished in all cultures. Almost all. In many parts of the world the silent part of the equation is the relative status of the perpetrator and the victim. Another factor are customs, traditions or religious beliefs. You can’t safely assume others from a different culture will accept your definition of a crime. Honor killings are permitted in some places. In other countries, such a killing would be murder.

In some countries, women aren’t permitted to go out in public without an escort. The woman’s face must be covered, she can’t drive, vote or hold certain public offices. To violate one of these “laws” is a crime. A crime many of us have trouble with; in fact, we find the idea of criminalizing such behavior repugnant. In other places, a powerful politician, general or local warlord can ensure, despite eye-witness statements and other evidence, that his son or daughter’s conduct will not result in a conviction. Sweatshops where people work in slave like conditions or where hundreds of workers die in a fire rarely result in a conviction. Life is unfair, the sage says. You can’t fight city hall, says another. No matter where one looks, what we think of as “crime” invites us into a much larger context. To ignore that context is to live with your head buried in the sand.

The best of international crime fiction examines the social justice issues that arise in “crimes” committed in the developing world. It is a tough, unforgiving world unless you have the right connections or the right family name. If there is a growing trend, one that Thailand appears to share, is that the masses are far less tolerate of fundamental unfairness in how laws are applied. To enforce criminal law the police, prosecutors and courts require legitimacy. The exercise of political power without legitimacy leads to conflict and violence. The appearance that the way the law is applied to the elites is different causes social conflict. The elites accustomed to using the criminal law to reign in the masses are finding the old tropes aren’t working. Once the masses realize that propaganda gun is firing blanks the walls start to fall. Like the Berlin Wall.

The question for a crime writer is how far down the road can a book take a reader into the political aspect of crime. Do readers care about this line of inquiry or is it a distraction? As a reader of crime fiction, I have found that novels that are narrowly confined to a mystery or limited to the thriller element connected to a crime less interesting. Reading such a book is like taking an amusement ride. You get off, buy a ticket and get on the next one. The next day you can’t remember one ride for the other. I want more from a book. I want something that I can remember, that provokes me, one that won’t leave me alone.

I sense an appetite to read about the underlying causes that shape crime. Those causes are often (though not exclusively) cultural and political. The more we understand how values are creates and spread through a society, and how a political system fights to maintain its creditability, the closer we come to placing crime in the larger context. Without that contextual framing, the crime is another picture of a large trout with the rest of the ecosystem of the river blocked out.

On this blog, the four of us are examining the cultural ecosystem upon which our series draw upon. At the same time, we reserve the right to write about narrow things that writers love to talk about: conferences, interviews, awards, reviews, publishing, agents and other writers. That’s because we are human and loved to talk about what we do.

I have a lot of good reasons for staying in the Middle East as long as I have. While the main thing keeping me here 14 years and counting may truly be inertia, I also enjoy being an outsider, researching my Palestinian crime novels on site, visiting the Palestinian towns whose atmosphere of violence, decay and liveliness makes me feel so creative.

But let’s get real: I’m here for the coffee.

There’s no place outside Italy where there’s a more sophisticated coffee culture than Israel, and nowhere on earth do you find yourself cajoled into drinking as much coffee as Palestine.

When I first arrived here, Israelis were drinking one of two kinds of execrable coffees. Middle-aged ladies seemed to go for “Nes,” which despite being the Hebrew word for “miracle” signified only that it was Nescafe instant, served with water so hot that it’d be a miracle if you could taste anything and with enough milk to make it look about the same shade as the skin of the sun-loving ladies who drank it. The alternative was “botz,” which is the Hebrew word for mud. To sum that up: why drink the liquid when you can also have the grounds stuck between your teeth for an hour or two?

In the last decade, however, the number of cafes – hip and less so – in Israel has risen sharply. Everywhere you go, even in Jerusalem and let alone in trendy Tel Aviv, there are bars offering top international brands from the ubiquitous Lavazza to Caffe Mauro and Bristot. It’s an Italian-style espresso-drinking culture and in some of the cafes they even understand how to maintain their espresso machines, thus guaranteeing a good cup.

See, at least there’s one thing about Israel which hasn’t gone to hell in a handbasket over the last decade. Don’t let anyone say I don’t look on the bright side.

Palestinians haven’t changed their style, however. (Which now that I think of it is also a good reflection of their role in the so-called peace negotiations over the past decade.) The way most of them like their coffee is cooked in a narrow-topped tin pan, boiling it over a gas flame with some sugar. “Masbuta,” or “just right,” for coffee with some sugar. “Sada,” or “bitter,” for funerals – and of course for Omar Yussef, the hero of my crime novels.

When in Palestinian towns, you’re greeted at every meeting by a small cup of thick coffee. You have to wait for the grounds to settle and then drink it before you can move beyond the small talk and get down to business. Every meeting, all day. Until you’re buzzing and wondering why all the colors are so bright, even though you’re inside and the shades are drawn. You’re also curious about the stabbing pains in your urethra….

Not that I only have coffee when I go out. Four years ago I quit journalism to work from home on my fiction. I get a monthly delivery of Lavazza for my home machine. It comes straight from the importer. Perhaps it’s the quantity I consume, but they seem to believe they’re delivering to a business address. Naturally I tell them I have an extensive staff, each of whom needs a lot of coffee, and that’s why they need to make an extra delivery again this month…

So with coffee being that central to my existence here, I was particularly intrigued to hear from a reader of my novels – and of this blog – named Terry Fitzgerald. TF informed me that my fellow blogger and terrific author of Bangkok crime novels Christopher G. Moore had signaled his approval of Terry’s Da’kine Coffee Bean, which he produces in Honaunau, Hawaii. He kindly offered to send me along a batch.

Now I used to be a journalist – when someone offers me something free, I’ll go to extraordinary lengths to secure it. In this case, I made several visits to my local branch of the Israeli Postal Service whence I eventually was able to wrest a bag of Terry’s prize-winning bean. (Check him out at www.dakinecoffeebean.com).

I’ve offered Da’kine to some Israeli friends, who commented with pleasure on its redolence of the most deliciously bitter of dark chocolate. I took it into Bethlehem for a rendez-vous with the real Omar Yussef. He drank it without sugar and with approval. As is traditional for a Palestinian when accepting a coffee, he said: “May Allah bless your hands. May there always be coffee in your home.”

This brand, too, I hope.

They’re coming.

From the north with their hard man Jett Lee countenances and their eat-to-excess karaoke restaurants, and their Mekhong river dredgers and their mini-skirted, short chunky legs, they’re coming.

They’re coming. From the south they’re coming. With their almost Lao, we’re-brothers-under-the-skin rhetoric and their rotating door governments and their cross-dressing TV shows and their skin-whitening creams, they’re coming.

From the east and the west, they’re coming. With their bleached highlights and their designer ethnic wear and their Lonely Planet security blankets, loud voices, I-wish-we’d-left-the-kitchen-sink-at-home backpacks, wash-off tattoos, e-mail addictions and impossible empathy, they’re coming.

They’re boldly coming to where they think no man has come before, seeking out new lies and new uncivilizations. Exploring a strange new world: Laos, the final frontier.

I lived in Laos in better times. Not better for the Lao, I must say, the Lao who struggled to make a living. Whose government officials sold pond fish at the market before work because they hadn’t been paid for three months. Whose college students washed their one white shirt over and over until it became transparent. Whose soldiers fought in flip flops and whose housewives cooked bees and frogs and snakes because the markets were empty. No, those weren’t better times for the Lao. But for people like me who were escaping from ‘civilization’ it was the perfect place. Two cars passing at the same time would be considered traffic. Dust would blow up from the streets and leave the old, once-white buildings with a brown blush. Girls on the street would think to smile then remember that someone might be watching, writing down, reporting. But I felt as if that pace and simplicity were meant for me. Laos was never an easy place to live but I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that the happiest and most miserable scenes of my life have all taken place in that theatre of the bizarre. It was as if the complications and pleasures of the world had all been stripped down to their basics.

I never know what to expect when I step off the Lao Aviation flight from Bangkok but these days I’ve come to expect less. It all begins with the list of charges at the Visa On Arrival desk. What high-level meeting decided that an Aussie should pay a dollar less than a Swede? Only in Laos, they say. I sat on what used to be the bank of the Mekhong but all I could see was two-hundred yards of building site. They’ve filled in half the river to make a road. So what that Sri Chiang Mai opposite turns into Venice for three months a year? I walk through the nighttime streets where badly made-up transvestites lurch out of the shadows at me like Living Dead zombies. Jumbo drivers offer me drugs and sex, then swear at me when I refuse politely in Lao. I can get every movie and TV series ever produced for a dollar a DVD and pick up a Chinese Sonely player, (guaranteed to last till just before you get it home) at the Morning Market Mall.

The invaders are causing untold damage. The kids don’t know which is their culture any more. By far the worst programmes on satellite are the Lao ones – women in uniform talking about cattle and coffee beans, self-conscious mo lum singers doing poor imitations of their Thai counterparts – so none of the youngsters choose to be Lao. They used to shout, “Hello, Soviet” at me in the good old days, now they say, “Hi, man!” and high-five me. They tease their hair into Thai punk and wear T-shirts from Kunming with dirty words they can’t read across their little chests.

It was naïve of me to think the place might maintain the simplicity and innocence I’d fallen for twenty years earlier. My good old days weren’t theirs but there are so few places to visit now where time has stalled and then started to run in reverse. People eat better now and have more than one shirt to wear, but now the clock is running forward at twice the pace and I see them tumbling along in a swirling deluge of the unfamiliar. I feel like pinning up fliers on lampposts asking people to help me find my lost Laos. The final frontier is being breached. Phasers on repel, Mr. Spock.

Being an author these days demands a variety of skills quite apart from the ability to write. In order to promote and publicise your books you have to develop public speaking and performance skills, you have to learn to deal politely with your detractors and you have to grab absolutely every opportunity that you can to get out and tell the world about your novels. Just before I fell down the stairs into the cellar and knackered my leg, I was lined up to do two pieces of work for the BBC. On January 4th I was due to appear on Radio 4’s ‘Excess Baggage’ show talking about İstanbul and on the 8th I was going to be one of Robert Elm’s ‘Listed Londoner’s’ on BBC Radio London.

Happily for me, ‘Listed Londoner’ was rescheduled for the 8th March – it’s on at 12.15 and it’s live if you’re around. But ‘Excess Baggage’ was a one off and so I really did want to get down to London for that if I could. My orthopaedic consultant wasn’t happy about it, but I was adamant.

Of course we were still languishing, here in the UK, underneath the heaviest snowfall for forty years which made going anywhere a nightmare. And so if I am honest it was with some relief that I learned that arrangements had been made for me to do my broadcast down the line to London from BBC Manchester. All I had to do was get there which was where my poor long, suffering husband came in.

Admittedly he offered to drive me in to the city. He also knew up front that I was not allowed to put my broken leg anywhere near the ground. But when I hopped up to the front door and looked over the, to me, enormous step that I had to leap in order to get out of the house he must have thought, as I did, ‘What!!!’ I couldn’t swing myself over. I broke my right leg, I am right handed and I just didn’t trust my left leg to support me. I hopped feebly and tried but I just couldn’t do it. It was only when my husband said, ‘Look you just have to or you’ll let down the BBC!’ that I took, literally, a leap of faith and got myself over. My left leg hurt like hell and I was sweating with the strain of it but I did it. Elated, I hopped to the car and then took five minutes to get in but then we were off.

BBC Manchester were absolutely wonderful about providing parking for the car and a wheelchair for me. I didn’t like the feeling of everyone talking over my head all the time, but it did give me an enhanced respect for disabled people which perhaps would be a lesson to us all. I managed to get myself into the studio without the aid of the wheelchair and found an old stool on which to prop up my broken leg. I would have liked some water to lubricate my throat but because a water main had burst in the centre of the city, I couldn’t have any.

When the time came, I had what amounted to a very pleasant chat with the interviewer, John McCarthy, about İstanbul. I talked about my favourite parts of the city, about İstanbul European Capital of Culture 2010 and what the city means to me and to my series characters. There I was, a woman with a broken leg and no water talking down a microphone to a man who, back in 1991, had been released after five years in captivity in the Lebanon. John’s time as a ‘guest’ of the Islamic Jihad organisation had made him a household name. We didn’t talk about that of course, it was quite the wrong time, wrong place. But it occurred to me then just what writers as a group of people do to get their stories and to make sure that the world hears them. In no way am I comparing myself to John McCarthy. A broken leg is very small potatoes in comparison to being held as a hostage for five years. But I think there is a little bit of a soldier in all of us and I think that as I leapt out of my house on that snowy January morning I, albeit briefly, channelled my own inner warrior.

I am trying to wrap my mind around the almost hysterical, obsessive need for people to become a published author. Mostly, I suspect, it is like one of those twist off caps on a cheap bottle of wine where the threads don’t quite catch right. There is a concentrated effort to get the cap off. More simply, getting into the publishing racket is another example of our need for acceptance in the crowd of strangers. We live in age where many people wish to stand out apart from the crowd as an accomplished worthy, special word genius. The problem is the number of people who want to stand out by writing books has become larger than the crowd that read and buy books.

Like most people I admired perseverance as a noble attribute. People who don’t easily give and roll over with the first wall in life they hit. People who pick themselves up and keep on going. That’s my kind of people. Pull up a chair, I raise a glass of OJ to your grit.

But there is a limit. I think I may have found where that fence is. There is a writer who blogs at Literary Rejection Display and he’s blogged about his 11,000 rejections on the way to getting 82 stories published. One publishing industry insider called this record of rejection “inspirational.”

Remember we are talking about rejection. That haunting word that has shadowed every kid from 11 years on. Who in defeat, looks back at the bully and says, “Yeah, I’ll show you.”

Let’s test this theory of what is inspirational inside the world of rejection. Forget about writing stories for a moment. Let’s say the person wishes more than anything to be a world-class marksman and reap the honor of that status with the larger world. He goes to the shooting range. Pulls out his rifle and goes through 11,000 rounds of ammo. He hits the target 82 times. Not a candidate for sniper’s school. But he doesn’t give up. He slaps in another clip and blasts away.

Or assume he’s a trainee pilot and manages to crash land a plane (let’s make that a different plane) 11,000 times but has 82 confirmed landings where the plane safely landed. The air force would likely not give him a set of wings. United Airlines might hire him. But do you seriously want him flying the plane you are in?

Or assume he builds custom cars on spec. His brochure says he personally built spec cars, which were rejected by 11,000 buyers but 82 cars he managed to sell. Do you want to buy or ride in one of his cars?

Or he bakes cakes which are rejected by the 11,000 cake tasters, who spit them out, drink water to wash away the bad taste and ultimately shopped for cakes elsewhere. Still 82 other cake buyers are bought one of his cakes, saying they were yummy. Would you eat the cake?

Would we find the marksman, trainee pilot, car builder and cake maker inspirational in light of their rejections? Or would we wonder how a person can take that kind of beating, wake up the next morning and knowing he had a .007 percent chance of success but still manages to pull out the rifle, get into the cockpit of the plane, go to the garage and assemble another spec car, or to kitchen to bake a cake, firing up the process of almost near certain rejection all over again?

It seems writing stories and books is a special areas of human activity that attracts so many people who willingly continue to persist despite the clear message that rejection delivers: you should devote your talents and energies to something with at least lottery type odds of success. I don’t have the answer to the question of why the continued effort to write when such a clear signal of rejection of a writer’s work indicates that he shouldn’t bother is inspirational? Other than one: It is difficult to let go of a dream. Especially if you believe that in time, with enough effort, the dream can come true.

The harsh reality is that not everyone can play the violin, swim, run, shoot, cook, sing, dance or tell jokes at a professional level. There is a certain level that defines success. It is where a commercial enterprise that depends on turning a profit will pay money in order to support the talent. A big talent brings in a lot of money. Sponsors will pay money to be associated with the skill and talent. Perhaps in sports it is easier to know who has won and who has lost. It is objective. There are cameras at the finish line. Sensors at the end of the pool pick up the first touch. There is no arguing the toss. No bellyaching that a winner is made a loser because the gatekeepers don’t recognize talent. Losing 11,000 times isn’t professional talent. It is by definition not professional. The pitcher who throws 82 strikes is a hero, and can play for the Yankees. But if he throws 11,000 balls into the dirt in order to get 82 strikes, no one is going to write an inspirational movie about that player’s devotion to the game and how the Yankees were damn fools to overlook him.

In writing, the general feeling is that, well, it is all feeling, subjective, and if you tunnel away long enough, you can burrow under the gatekeepers wall and moat, breach the inner walls, and do a victory dance, holding up the published story or book, showing the world you are a winner after all.

No one likes rejection. The reality of the world is that truly talented people with unique abilities and rare talents and skills are a small percentage of the total population. The rest of us admire such people. We watch them perform. We benefit from such performances in many different ways. The problem emerges when we delude ourselves into telling ourselves, “Hey, I can write cozy novels just like Cakes Copeland.” Or “I can tell jokes better than David Letterman.” Or “I can write a novel better than Dan Brown.”

I know. The first and last example is what gives all that false hope. No one truly believes the network should dump Letterman and hire him as the replacement. Being funny is more than just hard work. Like writing a story or book.

I don’t know what the magic number is before a writer should move on. But I’d say it isn’t the 11,000 elevation, the K2 of rejection. A heavy weight boxer that takes 11,000 body punches while throwing 82 deserves a place in Guinness Book of World Records for continuing to stand in the ring. But inspiration isn’t the word that comes to mind when you look at the boxer who has taken that beating. Sadness is closer to the mark, a sadness that comes from understanding that we occupy a world where no one has the balls to tell the boxer that the fight is over. We tell him that because he’s still standing on his feet after such punishment that he is inspirational. Instead we should be telling him throw in the towel, take a shower, go home, devote what precious time he has left on this earth for and with family, friends, and community. Inside that place, he is more likely to make a difference, have more impact and a life with more meaning. There are things in life other than writing stories, books and films from which self-worth and accomplishment can be achieved. And just maybe those are things that, in the long run, should be valued more, seen as more significant than a published book with one’s name on the spine and front cover.

But wait one moment. Rejection has a certain meaning in the old world of publishing. Will that change as publishing migrates online and ebooks multiply like fireflies around the porch light? No question about it, change is already here. We are entering an new digital age where the old notion of rejection of book will radically alter. No one will have the patience to accumulate 11,000 rejections. They won’t need to wait for one rejection from a traditional publisher. Here’s why. Everyone now has access to make their books available to the whole world by simply uploading it. Others will be invited to read, download, buy or share it. In this new age of publishing, rejection will gather a new meaning. But it won’t be rejection at the gateway to readers.

It will be inside the beltway of readers that rejection will bite like a pit bull.

In this new world where everyone can claim to be an author, rejection will come as “authors” realize that only 82 of every 11,000 online authors are worth reading and indeed are read. The book with a few hits will become the new measurement of rejection. There will be sly ways sold to online authors to pump up their number of readers. That will soon be exposed as fraud. Rejection will be coded in new ways. Don’t think technology will abolish it. That won’t happen. People will still complain and wail of the unfairness of it all. In the end, old age, new age publishing, the bottom line is pretty much the same. There are only a small number of authors worth reading. Making it easier to be “published” doesn’t make it any easier to attract an audience.

Great or even good writing is rare. If you are an avid reader, finding an author you want to read has always been like panning for gold. In the future, readers will miss the old publishing system, imperfect as it was, when editors and agents waded into the murky waters, panning for gold. They published stuff that wasn’t gold. But that is only human. Readers have great expectations when they read a story or book or poem and most of them hate going through tons of gravel looking for a few specs of gold. Instead of those polite, meaningless form letters from traditional publishers, readers may not be so kind when their anger and disappointment of reading an inferior work causes them to shout insults. If I had to make a prediction, rejection is set to become much nastier, personal, and demoralizing. The new crop of authors will look back with longing at how civilized the old world of rejection really was.

The dead man’s mother raged and cried as she told me how she’d discovered her son’s body, in the cabbage patch outside her home. She’d gone down on her knees, she said, touched his blood and wiped her fingers on her face and called out that God is most great.

As the winter wind came cold off the Judean Desert, I watched her weep and thought: “I have to write a novel about this.”

Forgive me if that sounds callous, but I’m a writer. Or, I should say, that’s the moment when I became a writer.

I was Time Magazine’s Jerusalem bureau chief, covering the violence of the Palestinian intifada, when I went to that bereaved mother in her village on the edge of Bethlehem in 2002. I had always written fiction, but only published a few short stories. In the midst of the despair that engulfed Israelis and Palestinians, I found the very thing that could make me happy – the material for my series of Palestinian crime novels.

The killing of that woman’s son as he crept home in the dark was the basis for the opening death in my first novel “The Collaborator of Bethlehem.” The book won a Crime Writers Association Dagger. Since then I’ve published two more crime novels set in the Palestinian towns.

They’re a response to the emotional questions that, as a journalist, I was never able to answer. Strangely, fiction proves to be a better way to understand extreme events than journalism.

Since the first time I set foot in the West Bank in 1996, I had grown disillusioned with the ability of journalism to convey the depth of what I learned about the Palestinians. Back then, I visited the family of a Nablus man tortured to death in one of Yasser Arafat’s jails. The news article I wrote was a good one, uncovering the internal Palestinian violence so often overshadowed by the more spectacular conflict with Israel. But my impressions were much deeper.

I was struck by the candor and dignity with which the dead youth’s family spoke to me; the sheer alien nature of the place thrilled me. At the entrance to the family’s house in the casbah, an old oil drum held black flags and palm fronds, symbols of Islamic mourning. Men sat around smoking under a dark awning. I felt a powerful sense of adventure, as though I had uncovered an unknown culture.

The lawlessness of Palestinian life also gave me great characters for my fictionalized good guys. But also the villains. Unfortunately there are many Palestinians who have strong motivations to kill each other. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years with some of these men, trying to learn why they take the path of violence—time that has led to a deeper characterization of the villains in my books.

With my new novel, “The Fourth Assassin,” I brought my sleuth Omar Yussef to New York because I wanted him to confront the most important issue of the last decade – an issue which is crystallized in its most horrifically concrete form in the city of 9/11.

It’s a natural progression for a series that began in the cabbage patch near Bethlehem. When I stood there, it was seven months after the attacks on New York and Washington. The questions posed to anyone thinking about the Middle East had just become so much more complex. Too complex and emotional for journalism to encompass them and, all these years later, for politicians, too.

Whether it’s a single sniper’s bullet cutting through the chest of a man outside his mother’s house or a jetliner bursting through a 110-story building, my novels are aimed at the most explosive points in our recent history. That’s why I simply had to write them.

Although still hobbling about with a stick, I am now fully back at work. To be honest I only really ever stopped writing completely for a week, and that was when I was actually in hospital. But now I am officially ‘whole’ again I am back in the world of deadlines, author events and getting to appointments, albeit on our unpredictable public transport system. I won’t be driving for another few weeks yet.

It feels odd but good although I am very aware of how out of touch I have become with my latest Çetin İkmen plot. Of course I never help myself in as much as my plotting is and always has been Byzantine (please excuse the pun). And this novel is particularly complicated with probably more blind alleys and red herrings than ever before. But then the subject matter is not one that can be simply told. İstanbul is a complicated city; socially, politically, geographically.

There is an old adage about the best stories being those that are simply told. There is of course truth in this and I can see that a simple story, well executed, is a thing of beauty and probably a joy forever too. But some subjects just will not fit into that format. Sometimes things really are just not that simple. As Matt will know only too well, the Israel/Palestine situation is one of these. Try untangling that one and reducing it down to its basic elements. Where do you start?

İstanbul is not only one of the oldest cities in the world it has also been and remains an object of both desire and of controversy. Everything comes together in İstanbul – religion, culture, tectonic plates. Yes, on top of everything else, the city is due another earthquake. While people in tea gardens debate whether or not İstanbul is a great European or Asian capital, the on/off road to Turkish EU accession is followed with both interest and despair. What kind of place is this city of unknown millions that changes every minute and yet remains regally the same?

I don’t know any more than anyone else, but if my books reflect anything about this city, it is the sheer complication that it represents. Çetin İkmen will be producing no quick fixes or untangling anything in five minutes any time soon. And thank God for it. My degree subject is psychology and so I have always been interested in human thought and behaviour. My natural urge is to try to dissect everything I experience. Happily I am never short of material especially not in İstanbul.

Imagine you wake up in the morning and open the curtains. It is another ordinary day. Traffic is moving. People are walking along the streets. The street vendors are behind their stalls. Then you open your email because everyone knows that is absolutely one of the first things to be done in the morning. It is like Christmas Morning. Who has left a little present under the tree?

The other morning, I opened my email and found something called The Terrorism Risk Index (TRI) developed by a James Bond sounding company named Maplecroft. TRI which had released a risk ranking for 162 countries. Since the days of David Letterman, most people focus on the top ten list. No one is all that interested on what country ranks 37th or 119th on the list. They are definitely out of the medals.

So I scanned through the top ten list:

Iraq (1), Afghanistan (2), Pakistan (3) and Somalia (4), top the ranking of 162 countries and are rated, along with Lebanon (5), India (6), Algeria (7), Colombia (8) and Thailand (9). These are listed as extreme risk nations.

The first eight countries, I nodded. I can see that. Though having just been to India, where problems seem to be localized. Countries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 all could be fitted inside India and if you combined their population is only a fraction of India’s population. So, yeah, there are some details that are a bit spotty in this assessment.

That’s not what I found the most upsetting. It is the Number 9 spot.

Thailand #9.

Thailand is an Extreme Risk Nation? This has to be a misprint. Someone has been into the sauce. Other explanations are incompetence, stupidity, or madness.

I look out the window again at Bangkok. No tanks. No columns of smoke rising. No sound of gunfire or explosions. The TRI says the Index measures not only the risk of an attack but also the chance of mass casualties.

The extreme risk of mass casualties in Thailand? What were the authors of this report thinking? That a cartel of tuk-tuks drives has plans to run down foreigners on Sukhumvit and Silom Roads? The implications are immense. I suspect most expats, if they have insurance, have some kind of clause providing the insurer doesn’t have to pay a dime if the insured is stupid enough to sustain damage or loss in an extreme risk nation.

Imagine the conversations all over North America about holiday plans.

“Darling, about that trip to Thailand, did you know it is an extreme risk country?” he asked.

“God, cancel the flights. I told you we should go to Mexico. But you wouldn’t listen,” she said.

“You’re right, dear. We’ll holiday in Ciudad Juarez,” he said, sighing, knowing that he had lost the battle once again.

Keep that Mexican travel brochure in your mind, because I will come back to it—that is to Mexico.

Let’s put this discussion into a larger perspective. Terrorism in 2010 is a label like communism in the 1950s, everyone was afraid of it and no one was quite certain what it meant other than the people involved were evil, blood-thirsty and had access to weapons that could kill loads of people. Beware of labels that everyone throws around like a beanbag but hasn’t a clue as to what is inside the bag.

Why, for instance, isn’t Mexico on the TRI list? Give us a break. This country has a major civil war being fought in the northern states right next to the American border and yet it is Thailand (yes there is an insurgency in the South) gets #9.

It’s all in the terminology. When pundits write articles about the drug cartels in Mexico they don’t use the word terrorism. Instead they use “criminal insurgency.” Not that criminals and their insurgency is any cause to make you feel safer.

In 2009, 7,500 Mexican died in this inner raging drug war.

Thailand, in the number 9 position, making it an extreme risk nation had no way near that many people killed by armed insurgents in 2009. Why are drug cartels with a heavily armed militia of thugs appear to be deemed less of a threat than terrorists? Because people are conditioned to fear terrorism, and if terrorists are involved, then somehow the murders by the stadium load, seem to be a natural phenomenon like an earthquake. Suicide bombers strike fear into the heart of the TRI audience while an army of machine gun wheeling cartel thugs is ignored as if were just a sprang ankle.

Most countries have criminal enclaves (places pundits like to call slums) where criminal fight over the turf, kill each other, and bystanders, and the authorities by and large stay outside the perimeter. I suspect America has many such enclaves, and given the death annually by handguns, there is a low-grade war going on inside these enclaves with the statistics reported out to the larger community. In terms of body count, terrorism casualties are about as common as bathtub drowning, when compared with the kill rate in the world’s criminal enclaves. Such enclaves are dynamic. There is every indication that North America may be in period of accelerated expansion of such criminal enclaves as unemployment is slated to remain at all time highs for years to come. See Don Peck’s How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America.

The authors on this blog write about crime and violence. Our books develop political and social (as well as economic) connections to crime. This linkage is what makes crime fiction interesting and compelling. The best crime fiction is a war report that takes readers inside one of these criminal enclaves, shows the pathways to the larger community. Most members of society are delusional about the true nature of risk, because they can’t properly identify how such risk comes into existence, the tenacity of the underlining problems, and the corruption and double standards that undercut the rule of law. These enclaves are awash in money. Drug money mostly. It bends and snaps the rule of law. Yet people feel, by and large, safe. It is those foreign terrorists that give them nightmares and not the organized cartels, the gangs, freelance criminals circulating in their own economy five miles away.

The problem with concentrating on terrorists is that, in the larger scheme, their crimes are a drop in the bucket compared to the ongoing criminal insurgency raging across the planet. Terrorism is a sideshow. And always has been. The main event, where the extreme risk pops out right under everyone’s nose happens inside that criminal enclave that you glimpse on the TV news, usually with police and emergency service vehicles angled in the street, lights flashing, bodies being taken out and a reporter telling you the police are investigating the crime. That is every day. Day in and day out.

The risk of you becoming a casualty is much greater at the hands of one of the discontented and poor young men who have no prospect of jobs who turn to crime as the only available option. This new army of angry, young recruits may not be fueled by the hatred of a jihad. The fuel of despair and hopelessness are the precursors to hatred and you don’t need a religion to motivate such young men. Wanting status and the material stuff that a material society proclaims is essential for your manhood is the new scripture.

Inequality, corruption, and violence are valid risks to assess. But you should look in the right place. The TRI is a distraction. It draws one away from the main risks we all face. Terrorism is ugly and frightening, but it isn’t in the top ten of real risks that any ordinary individual will likely face.

They are in a criminal enclave within spitting distance of your backyard. Don’t worry about the terrorists; worry instead about the young man with a gun and nothing to lose.