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Yes, you are a great and prolific writer on all things Bond. :)
Love it, thankyou!
Anyway, my signed edition came yesterday from Ian Fleming.com, and included a promotional beermat and a card. The cover art is very reminiscent of the last two Horrowitz Bond books I think. I like it.
It'll be a while before I get round to reading it, as I haven't read the previous one, (which I only recently bought).
I haven't heard of any Waterstones special editions or anything. I assume anyone on here that's got this, has the same edition as mine.
I thought that the added beermat and card were nice little promotional items and they came as a surprise to me. The last time I can think of anything like that being included with a new Bond continuation novel was the Avante Carte paper credit card promotional insert that came with some editions of John Gardner's Scoripus (1988). I believe they were handed out with purchases at book signings and some were even signed by Gardner himself.
I think that, like the young Bond or Moneypenny diaries, I don't feel like it's as important to immediately get my nose into it in the same way as a full-on Bond book. And a lot of that is because when Horowitz, (or whoever) comes out with a new James Bond adventure, it's got the added interest of let's see what they've done with the character. You know, how does this new Bond compare to Fleming's Bond? Is there anything jarring? (didn't Gardner have him listening to Jazz, or was it Benson?), are there any homages to Fleming's Bond? (plenty in the AH novels). Do we feel the Fleming spirit was captured? These are things I like to ask when I read a new Bond book.
With James Bond missing, and this new (astoundingly diverse) 00 team leading the action, that specific area of Bondian interest simply isn't there for me. I suspect it's the same for a lot of us.
But KS is a great writer, and I'm looking forward to kicking my pre-conceptions and ancient attitudes around the playground a bit so I can enter the new 00 world in earnest.
I suppose that was always to be expected to a certain extent but I do find a little bit of a shame that people don't give the spinoffs a chance. I get that people want to see James Bond as the protagonist and I do too but we've got 70 years worth of that, I like a bit of variety to shake things up.
And I am going to sound like an evangelist but screw it, I think Kim's books are excellent and I'm a little over half way through A Spy Like Me but she captures Fleming arguably better than Horowitz because she has to create the feeling without Bond being there. But what I think is so great about the Double O duology atm is that it's about Bond, but not with Bond. We get to see him through the eyes of others. It's so supremely respectful of the Fleming canon with how it weaves in its references but still allows the new characters to shine and tell its own story. And I love all of her characters but Johanna Harwood is for my money one of the best female characters in franchise, if not the best character in the franchise. If I thought she was great in DoN, she gets even better in ASLM.
But I guess I'd better drop my mic there before get into any specifics and I should go and actually finish it.
Yea, a great read is a great read. And Fleming's finest hour (FRWL) doesn't feature Bond for the first third of the book if I remember right.
Well said. I like a bit of change, once in a while. At least Kim Sherwood is a Bond fan. And it’s nice to read Bond story with no input from Purvis and Wade. Not bashing them. I’m just happy that other people can write Bond without me worrying if Bond will go rogue. Please let us know what you think @CharmianBond and @ColonelAdamski I’m ok with spoilers.
Similarly, in TSWLM Bond doesn't appear until two- thirds of the way through the novel.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to new subscribers of girl with the golden pen! It’s great to have you here.
What a whirlwind month! I’ve signed nearly 1,000 copies of the book in five cities for amazing audiences and I couldn’t be more grateful. If you’d like a personalised signed copy, the next person to upgrade to paying subscriber will nab the last giveaway! And if you’d like a signed copy + signed merch, join as a founding member!
Think of this newsletter as the special features section on a DVD, delving into the making of A Spy Like Me in locations Venice, Paris and London – plus all the scoop on signings, the book launch & more in this month’s Grand (Book) Tour!
When the Flemings first commissioned me to expand the world of James Bond with a trilogy, I thought about the nature of a middle book as a bridge or tunnel between one and three. That notion connected in my imagination with the smuggling pipelines Fleming uses as structural devices in Diamonds are Forever (1956) and Goldfinger (1958). This link helped me create the villains for A Spy Like Me. As I have an ensemble cast of Double Os, a network of criminal pipelines smuggling everything from diamonds to art to people would set up an exciting multi-strand plot with distinct yet connected adventures for each agent.
This was back in the first lockdown, and as I had plenty of time on my hands, I took a university course in art and antiquities crime (naturally) from the University of Glasgow to learn more about how looting and smuggling from conflict zones funds terror. If Double or Nothing introduced readers to private military company/terrorists-for-hire Rattenfänger, A Spy Like Me follows the money, as MI6 attempts to smash The Grey Group, a smuggling ring funding terror.
Venice
With my villains in place, I next looked for locations, and realised that Venice was home to a very James Bond cocktail: art, culture, glamour and geopolitics. Venice is an iconic location in the Bond world, beginning with short story ‘Risico’ and developed in films From Russia With Love (1963), Moonraker (1979) and Casino Royale (2006). ‘Risico’ became a key influence on A Spy Like Me, and you’ll find a minor character from Fleming’s story taking on a more significant role in the novel.
I decided to set a key sequence during the preview of the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest art show, which transforms the whole island into a gallery. My sister Rosie and I first attended the preview of the Biennale in 2022 to research the novel, mixing with royalty, heads of state, artists, journalists and curators as I imagined Joseph Dryden (004) and Conrad Harthrop-Vane (000) tracking down an antiquities smuggler in a game of cat and mouse across the city. It became the first ever newsletter from a girl with the golden pen.
Now, I traced those steps again, invited by The Biennale to celebrate the publication of the book. A week before A Spy Like Me came out, I arrived into Venice by train, just like Bond in ‘Risico’, where Fleming perfectly captures the drama of entering a floating city:
But at last there was Mestre and the dead straight finger of rail across the eighteenth-century aquatint into Venice. Then came the unfailing shock of the beauty that never betrays and the soft swaying progress down the Grand Canal into a blood-red sunset... That evening, scattering thousand-lira notes like leaves in Vallombrosa, James Bond sought, at Harry's Bar, at Florian's, and finally upstairs in the admirable Quadri, to establish to anyone who might be interested that he was what he had wished to appear to the girl – a prosperous writer who lived high and well.
I followed in Bond’s footsteps, squeezing onto a vaporetto and then losing the crowds to follow narrow streets and cross pink bridges over turquoise canals. I made sure to visit Harry’s and Florian’s, just to keep my cover as a writer living high and well intact.
The Biennale is split across the Gardens and the Arsenale, the secretive shipyard that once powered an empire. As you might know, my sister Rosie is an artist, and she’s written a beautiful newsletter on this year’s show, ‘Foreigners Everywhere’, which spotlights indigenous and marginalised artists from around the world.
If you enjoy tracking down Bond sites, I’ve written about the specific Venice locations in A Spy Like Me for Trip Fiction, so keep an eye out for that.
There were so many special moments shared with Rosie in Venice: late night ice cream walking around the squares; falling in love with new artists (my favourite discoveries were Louis Fratino and Salmon Toor), camouflaging with the newly multicoloured Central Pavilion; a city-wide photoshoot; attending cocktails with the President of the Biennale and gifting my book to the Director before enjoying the best view of the city; and ducking into a vintage shop in a rainstorm and finding a 1940s dress I wore to the launch.
Paris
Paris is Johanna Harwood’s childhood city, and in A Spy Like Me a clue in the search for James Bond takes 003 home. Inspired by joining the James Bond France Fan Club’s cruise on the Seine with the iconic women of Bond in 2022, I decided to take Harwood on a floating gambling cruise before she has a run-in with her mother. Read about that day with Carole Ashby and the whole gang here!
Paris is another key location in the Bond world, beginning with Ian Fleming’s short story ‘A View to a Kill’, where Bond sticks to his rule of staying in a railway hotel. Arriving by train in the early hours of the morning, I questioned my decision to take Fleming’s advice and book a hotel squeezed by the railway tracks, but I was glad in the morning as we woke up in the centre of the City of Light.
Venice to London via Paris may seem a circuitous route, but the chance to retrace 003’s footsteps was provided thanks to an invitation from my favourite bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, to sign A Spy Like Me. My husband Nick first took me to Shakespeare & Co when I was twenty. To meet the Literary Director there, author Adam Biles, and see a stack of my books waiting on the famous typewriter table simply blew my mind.
Then we headed over to Smith & Sons, the most beautiful WH Smith you’ve ever seen, now independent. Smith & Sons championed Double or Nothing with a window display and it was lovely to say thank you and sign another stack of A Spy Like Me.
What do you do with a day in Paris? You eat, of course. We said hello to the Seine, the Louvre, and Rosie took one for the team and devoured bagels, cakes, eclairs, biscuits and crepes. Then it was time to hop on the Eurostar home.
London
In most stories, London is where Bond receives his mission from M, takes leave from Moneypenny and goes on a quest to face the monster. In short story ‘Property of a Lady’, Bond’s mission stays in London, as he exposes a Communist plot making use of Sotheby’s to pay off an agent, the seed for film Octopussy (1983), and Licence to Queer’s brilliant Jim Fanning Friday charity fundraisers.
As A Spy Like Me sees MI6 confronts high end smuggling, I had an opportunity to use the Sotheby’s connection. Researching the novel in 2022, I was given a tour by the head of Clocks and Watches.
Seeing the Sotheby’s Rolex collection, I was:
a) terrified I would drop something
b) inspired to consider our fascination with time in the world of Bond, which became a key theme for A Spy Like Me, linking to the question of how to make the time spent bridging books one and three matter.
So I was excited on publication day to return to Sotheby’s for celebratory cake and a photoshoot with Rosie. Check it out here. That night, I celebrated publication at a charity fundraiser for Hay Festivals outreach programmes hosted by Stonehage Fleming, where the rooms have some familiar names… One dreads to think what happens in the Blofeld office. Then it was time for the launch itself, a collaboration between 007GB Fan Club, IFPL and Harper Collins. Sign up as a paying subscriber for a behind-the-scenes look below!
From Kim, With Love x