Jaws

Oh Kindle, how we love thee.

/ Robert Lautner/Mark Keating / 2 Comments

I had a flu virus in January. It knocked me out for most of the New Year. To be honest I’ve only ever had the OG flu once in my 20’s and, if you’ve had it, you know that death is actually more preferable but this was pretty bad. Consequence was, for this year, I kind of missed my publication of the paperback version of my novel Quint for Jan 16th.

However I’m overjoyed to say that, by the Gods, the Amazon Kindle edition of Quint is available for the month of Feb for…and get this… only 99p for the whole month.

So if you didn’t buy it in hardback (and I can’t stand those) and you didn’t buy it in paperback (which sits real pretty in a pocket or neatly on your bedside table or the place above in your nook) it reads nicely well on that device you neglect from time to time.

What I put into it has been rewarded by the JAWS fans (and the heathen) to be the book that was almost missing from the JAWS story and its lore. But don’t take my word for it! Listen:

‘QUINT is more than an uncannily brilliant impersonation of voice, it’s a story that feels like it was there from the start. This is a book to be swallowed whole’ EVIE WYLD

‘Excellent… a profound portrait of a life dislocated by war and violence’ THE TIMES, Best Summer Reads

‘Lautner … has carved out the literary missing link between Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea, and gone a long way to putting some of the balls back into serious English fiction’ Giles Coren, THE TIMES

‘Whisky-soaked, guttural, stinking and funny’ Evie Wyld, OBSERVER

‘QUINT brilliantly deconstructs a savage archetype that is scarce in today’s sanitised world… if Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea was doused in whiskey and strained through the gills of a tiger shark, it would not sound dissimilar… one of this year’s literary miracles’ IRISH INDEPENDENT

‘Clear your diary. Strong, silent Quint is going to tell you his story ― and it’s the bastard child of WW2 and Moby Dick, the sweet spot between thrilling, brutal adventure and the poetic voice of the American working man, as if Raymond Chandler were a veteran deep-sea fisherman, steeped in Steinbeck and sneering at Hemingway… thrilling, brutal, poetic, literary and irresistible, one of the 21st century’s first great 20th-century American novels’ LOUISA YOUNG

‘An act of literary ventriloquism… uncanny… one of the most surprising literary miracles I’ve come across in a long time’ Hilary White, RTÉ

‘Highly enjoyable, and a must-read for any Jaws officionado’ BUZZ magazine

‘I loved its urgent voice, its layering of such a complex character, and its deft handling of the uncanny valley between Benchley’s character and Robert Shaw’s enduring screen portrayal’ SCOTTISH FIELD

99p for Feb. Come on and help a brother out.

The Shark is Still Working

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I was on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row the other day, which is one of their cultural arts programmes, as they’d invited me as part of a segment on JAWS. what with the whole 50th thing coming.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00208gp

It was only brief and we were talking about shark movies in general and the legacy of JAWS in that regard what with two summer shark movies being released (Under Paris and Something in the Water).

It made me think of what is the actual legacy of JAWS?

There are probably quite a few TBF, ranging from the impact on the blockbuster as a genre to the marketing and crafting of movies, but I wanted to consider one perhaps less obvious, and personal, either individually or as a group.

As an older JAWS fan I can see how the movie has grown with me over the years and how it resonates with different ages from perspective.

When you’re a kid it’s certainly a horror movie. I was lucky enough (or unlucky at the time) to see JAWS in the cinema, although I hid behind a seat for most of it.

Then, as a teen, it becomes a summer movie, an escapism, something fast consumed with action and heroes and a (literally) explosive ending, a satisfying not too “deep” watch before dinner that gets the adrenaline flowing in a not too intense manner. You enjoy it for its surface and it doesn’t mess you around or cheat you.

Then, as you get older you can see more into it. JAWS grows with you. As an adult you’ve watched thousands of movies by now and you begin to appreciate the crafting of the film, particualy Verna Fields editing, the dialogue and the humour, the characters and their arcs.

To many of us JAWS was the movie where (if we’d grown up with it) we learned to discern movies. Instead of just munching on any old dross they would chuck out for kids we began to notice what made films good or bad.

It was subtle but somehow JAWS pervaded us with its delicate approach and its use of camera and music, of shooting angles, sound, light and composition, enough that we could now see where all this was lacking in other films and subconsciously acknowledge when we saw it in a film, which could have eluded us if we didn’t have this burned in appreciation of JAWS in our psyche.

As I’m writing the film that immediately comes to mind is Marathon Man (which I’ve just looked up was ‘76 and it probably just popped in because of Roy).

Again I would have seen this on the TV as a kid but could immediately tell as I watched that this was a “good” movie. And I can see JAWS in it. Do you know what I mean? You can spot it. I think JAWS did that for us, some of us at least.

In the piece on the radio the presenter, Antonia Quirke who has written a BFI Classics book on JAWS, delighted me when she said how JAWS seems to have always been with her, that she couldn’t remember a time when JAWS wasn’t around. I know what she means. It’s almost like JAWS is always still lurking near every movie you watch, that without even considering it, the shark is still working on us, circling silently. The landlord of film, getting his rent due.

After publication. The first month.

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Quint has been out for about three weeks now and the response has been amazing. The book got a prime window in Waterstone’s flagship store in Piccadilly and they give it great backing from their booksellers naming it their book choice. The Times announced it as their Book Of The Month (that blew me away) and the Irish Independent called it a “literary miracle”.

Audio and electronic sales have been good, the book sales the best I’ve ever had for a hardback and the critical reviews are better than I could have imagined. I ventured to London for a book signing and was featured on BBC Radio 4 and RTE Radio One. Thank you to everyone who bought a copy! For a book that’s had very little publicity I’m very proud of its reception.

Waterstone’s asked me to do a piece for their blog and it was then that I had to go back in time and drag through my emails to find out when I had actually written the book.

Weirdly enough, and to my own surprise, I had told my agent about it first in 2012! By that time, I told him, I was a third of the way through and we put it to HarperCollins in 2013 and signed the contract in 2014 as part of a two-book deal with a publication date of 2019.

ISBN’s were created, publication announced, a placeholder with random details and page numbers put up on Google all ahead of time. Then the lawyers stepped in and publication stopped.

After many years the Benchley estate decided the time was right to allow other works related to JAWS to go ahead and we got our permission in 2022 to publish for the 50th anniversary of JAWS in Feb 2024. And he we are.

An annoying thing is that I’ve had people import the book to the US (and tell me so) because as yet there is no set US release and that has confused some. Yes, despite being available in Canada, Australia and the rest of the world, Quint doesn’t have a US release yet.

Yet.

And I’m not allowed to say why. I may even get into trouble for talking about it. Let’s be mysterious enough and say that I know the reason.

I might be able to say a couple of words and that should be OK. Hopefully.

Universal. Fiftieth.

That should do.

What I’m saying (and not saying) is just as the timing for the hardback was for the 50th anniversary of the novel there are powers that decide these things outside myself and publishers and they have many sleeves with many cards up them. Timing is everything.

Four weeks to go.

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Jan 2024. Never actually thought we’d make it out of ‘23 TBH.

Where I am, in Pembrokeshire, it’s raining, raining hard. It’s been raining pretty much every day since December.

The ground is flooded, the garden’s dead, we’ve had back to back storms and dozens, yes, dozens, of power cuts. My PC died on Christmas morning, couldn’t take the power cuts any more. I needed a new mobo, cpu and ram. But this was that time of the year when everything stops. Amazingly I managed to get everything delivered by the 28th and got back up and running by the evening. Now, after the long, long stretch of the end of ‘24 I can think of what lies ahead.

Every now and then I have to remind myself I have a new book coming out, and now, after years of waiting for it, I’m now just four weeks away from Quint being published. That didn’t happen last year, in fact, I haven’t had a book published since 2018.

For most of us ‘23 has been a hard year, and I’m heading into this year, like millions of others, with less money and more debt than I started last year. Every thing coming in is less, every thing going out is more. But I’ve got to put hope into this book, I’ve got to get behind it more than any other book I’ve written because it means so much to me.

I know that might sound odd (it’s a book about Quint from JAWS, how serious can it be?) but it’s a novel that I think has a perfect timing and resonance for today. And I’m serious.

There are themes and attitudes in the novel that when I re-read it seem to be all around us now but there is hope in the story. Obviously we all know Quint’s ultimate fate so I made this book to end on a comparatively more positive outlook and when we see Quint in JAWS he’s not exactly a negative person, in fact I’d argue he’s the jolliest asshole out of the cast, so I wanted to roll into that character, the comedy of his life, the tragedy of his life and how at the end of it he’s still smiling and singing (until those black eyes roll over white, of course).

Feb 2024 it’s out. I hope you like it and let me know what you think.

The Head. The Tail. The Whole Damn Thing.

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It’s now just under seven months to go for publication of my novel based around Quint from JAWS. That seems like a long time but not when you’ve been waiting about eight years for it to exist at all.

So Feb 2024 will come around to line up with the 50th anniversary of Peter Benchley’s original novel and then the paperback will follow in 2025 for the 50th of the film. We’ll see what happens to my high hopes then.

I’d like to get some thoughts down on what this book actually is and its purpose.

I write literary fiction, whatever that actually is, but I suppose it means that there are certain sensibilities and themes you don’t find in other genres, a reading experience that fulfils differently.

I write what I want to write. Anyone could write a book about Quint. All you need to do is check all the boxes. USS Indianapolis? Check. Sharks? Check. The Orca? Check. And so on. That’s a book, sure. But that’s not a story.

And most would concentrate on the Indianapolis as the engine for the story. That’s the event, right? That’s what Quint’s all about, right?

That’s lazy. It’s the same trap that filmmakers fall into whenever there’s been an attempt to tell the story of the tragedy. They feel the event is enough, that the action is the drama, is the story. And they fail.

Mostly they fail because we know the story, know it’s tragic and terrible. We know. What else you got?

Obviously I wrote this book from a deep affection for JAWS. The film has been a constant in my life. And what appeals to most fans is the mystery of Quint, and, in contradiction almost, it’s that mystery which makes the character. He doesn’t need a past, all we need to know about him is in the film so, in effect, writing a novel about the character is almost sacrilegious to the mystery. It shouldn’t be done.

So I didn’t look at it like that. I wrote a novel that could actually be about anyone. Anyone that is who had three wives, grew up in the depression, went to war, survived the sinking of a battleship and became a charter captain specialising in shark fishing. And it’s also none of those things. It’s a character story and journey. You can take it as a story about Quint when you pick it up but it won’t be when you finally close it.

I have chosen the non-profit organisation “Beneath The Waves” for charitable donations from myself and the publisher on publication and future royalties. You can help support them.

https://beneaththewaves.org/

Quint 1st edition hardbacks are available for pre-order.

https://smarturl.it/Quint-HB