Yeah, I didn't want to mention him because I suppose he is doing something well - and I think you've hit on it. The stories rattle along and are easy to follow. But, my God his writing is utter shit. No grasp of grammar at all: commas in the wrong places, sentences that end in the most implausible. Constant use of pointless and almost meaningless adjectives, adverbs and analogies: the very wealthy man glanced at his watch... Oh and the ridiculous over-use of ellipses... Then there are simple mistakes because he grabs at ideas he thinks he knows. My absolute favourite, 'P a n d o r a is out of her box.' I can't help wondering whether Dan thinks his masterwork, the Da Vinci Code, is actually based on fact rather than being mainly plagiarised from another load of old bunkum (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) by authors who were completely taken in by a hoax perpetrated partly for fun, and partly as a bit of self-promotion by some French tricksters.
Incidentally, the earnings figure I quoted of £13000 came from figures the Society of Authors published a couple of years ago and it seems that this applies to writers of novels, short stories and book-length non-fiction work. I'm assured it's possible to earn a great deal more (3 or 4 times as much) if you put the famous novel on the back burner and concentrate on magazine short stories, filler pieces bordering on journalism, journalism, competitions, commercial blogs, etc. etc. That does surprise me and I suspect that in order to achieve this one would need to work very hard indeed.
EDITED: 19 Nov 2019 12:43 by WILLIAMA