Mission to Malmo

A couple of weeks back I was chatting with another author about the inescapable value of “walking the territory” – that is, the importance of visiting a place to get the sense of it, to make your writing feel as authentic as possible. It got me thinking about my own research jaunts, and so partly inspired by the travelogues of fellow thriller writer JF Penn (check out her great website Here) I thought I’d post some observations from one of my most recent trips...

Ever since I was kid, airports have always been intertwined in my mind with thrillers. I think part of it is the whole romance of travel/thrilling locations stuff right out of a James Bond novel, mixed with my love of the classic “airport novel” that fills the shelves of duty free bookstores. And what’s cool for me is that now my books get to fit in that space...

I was heading to Malmo in Sweden, under a non-disclosure agreement, on a two-day flying visit to talk about a new videogame project connected to one of the thriller world’s biggest names. But the quickest way there is actually through Denmark. So my route in was via Copenhagen airport....

...and then across the Øresund Bridge by train. 

And it was neat for me to look down the carriage and see this gentleman and think... Hey. That book cover looks familiar... (What are the odds?!)

My first real glimpse of Sweden through my window was an orchard of wind-farms, a strange and slightly alien sight rising up from the straight along the coastline. I have to admit that my perception of what to expect in Sweden was warped a little by the work of an artist named Simon Stålenhag... Check out his stuff Here and you’ll see what I mean. He's just had a TV show based on his stuff green-lighted by Amazon.

His art fuses a 1980’s view of the world with odd, invasive technologies that look like they come from some alternate reality, and wandering through Malmo I soon understood how this country influenced him.

Malmo reminded me of the kind of brutalist, concrete-cube architecture that was all new and futuristic when I was growing up in the 1970's, the buildings that were the backdrop of austere dystopian SF movies - Farenheit 451, Alphaville, THX 1138 and the like – but with flashes of artistic weirdness here and there.

One morning I woke up and realized that the hotel I was staying up reminded me of City 17, the location of the game Half-Life 2 - check out the similarity Here.

All this might make Malmo sound a little distant and unwelcoming, but it wasn’t! 

I loved the artwork and the river winding through the town, the great restaurants and numerous craft beer places. I also want to highlight the Science Fiction Bokhandeln for accommodating a quick drive-by signing by me, and The Bishops Arms pub off Gustav Adolf Square for having an amazing book-laden snug in the back that was very conducive to a glass of scotch and some writerly company.

But I was here to work; I’d come to Sweden to meet with Massive Entertainment, developers of The Division 2 – the sequel to the hit action game under the Tom Clancy franchise banner. 

As well as being a long-time reader of the Clancy novels, I’ve also been a dedicated player of the videogames created under the author’s name. Last year I worked on the Ghost Recon Wildlands open-world shooter game, and having expended a lot of hours on the first iteration of The Division, I was excited to work on the sequel...

Details on the elements I contributed to The Division 2 haven’t been announced yet, but I can say my part is just one component of a massive (ha ha) project, involving several other scriptwriters and a great many talented people. 

(Also, as some fans of the game have asked, I should make it clear I’m not writing a Division novel or a comicbook – as cool as that would be! – but writing scripts for the game itself). 

48 hours later, and I was done. While the trip was short, I liked the city enough to want to come back and see more of it. And while I don’t (right now) have plans to write something set in Malmo, I’m pretty sure I’ll make use of my exposure to the city somewhere down the line. 

Writers store all this experiential stuff away and it rises back to surface when you least expect it. I never intended to draw on my trip to Madeira as detail for a 31st century planet of vintners in my Horus Heresy novel Nemesis, or my visit to the Maltese “silent city” of Mdina in my latest Marc Dane thriller Ghost, but both places inspired me and helped me make those stories feel authentic. Travel doesn’t just broaden the mind, it stimulates it.

If you enjoyed this travel blog and you'd like to see more of the same, let me know in the comments below or via my Twitter feed...