Author Forsyth to tell tales on the Web

Frederick Forsyth will be putting out his next work, a series of short stories, on the Internet

In this story: No dearth of thrillers 'Lots of emotion' RELATED SITES

LONDON (Reuters) -- Frederick Forsyth admits he is not much of a computer whiz.

But with a little help from those who are, the one-time champion of the edge-of-your-seat thriller is abandoning his papery past and heading online.

E-publishing is the new thing. And following in the footsteps of another best-selling author, American Stephen King, Forsyth has embraced the Web and decided to give Internet surfers the first chance to read his new work.

"E-marketing is quite clearly a new phenomenon. And when you think about it a story is a product, a book is a product, like a sweater or a can of beans," he told Reuters in an interview.

"You can shop on the Internet, but then you've got to go to the store and actually get the article, or somebody has got to bring it to you. You can't download a can of beans...

"But with authorship it is different, the whole exercise can be done without the buyer leaving the desk," the British writer says enthusiastically.

The 62-year-old author of such blockbusters as "Day of the Jackal" and "Odessa File" is also leaving his old genre behind.

He dismisses the theory that the end of the Cold War killed his subject matter.

"I don't think there has been any let-up in the production of thrillers since 1990; there seem to be as many out there on the shelves today as there ever were," he says.

"If you want to do spies, you can still do spies. Spies against Iraq, spies against China, or spies against North Korea ... there are still plenty of spies."

Forsyth says he just felt "thriller-ed out" and wanted to try something different.

He describes his new pieces -- five short stories to be e-published from mid-October -- as "whimsical" self-contained stories, each with a "twist."

Their settings are as diverse as a crime-ridden north London housing estate, a medieval Italian piazza and an all-night flight from Bangkok to London.

At an average of about 20,000 words long, each story will "provide a couple of hours of entertainment for about two quid (pounds)" for anyone who logs on to www.onlineoriginals.com.

Having written 10 novels in around 30 years, nine of which were thrillers, Forsyth is well aware of the critics who say he either can't, or simply won't, write about human emotions.

He rejects such criticism.

"I think I have shown I can write about other things than people pulling other people's finger nails out."

"I put lots of emotion into my last book, 'The Phantom of Manhattan,' which was very emotional and very sentimental. But then the same people who said I never write about the human heart promptly panned it," he says, laughing. "You can't win."

With his e-publishing venture, Forsyth hopes to attract a new audience, and he is braced for the instant feedback the Internet may throw at him.

"There are people who don't traditionally read books but do surf the net constantly," he says.

"If people want to log on and chit-chat about the stories, that's fine. It's a way of exciting interest and spreading the word that they exist and where they are available."

But Forsyth promises fans who still prefer to read a real book rather than a screen or a downloaded ink-jet print-out will be able to buy a paperback anthology of the stories before long.

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