For all those of you who are contemplating writing a multi-generation saga for your next novel, a word of warning for you. All of my previous books have taken place over a relatively short time period. One of the things I wanted to do with my new novel was to expand that rather tired palette (to mix artistic metaphors) and …
Starting Over – Again
This is an old post from some time ago – eighteen months or so, I think – as will quickly become apparent. Not only did I not have a publisher for A GOOD AMERICAN at this stage, I didn’t even have a title! Still, it seemed appropriate to re-post today as a counterpoint to my post yesterday about the satisfaction …
Writing for My Life
Look, I know. This is supposed to be a light-hearted blog. I’m supposed to serve up wry, self-deprecating posts about me and my writing. I’m meant to be developing, God help me, a brand, in the hope that you’ll all go out and read my novel when it comes out next year. But light-hearted is a bit tricky right now. Earlier …
Charades
Since I’ve been looking after the children on my own in the new place we have instigated a new bedtime tradition: charades. (Pronounced CHARARDS or CHARAIDS depending on your inclination/country of origin.) It’s a lot of fun, although we discovered pretty quickly that we have a limited repertoire of mutual books/films/songs/etc to draw from. I am thankfully unfamiliar with the …
When Imagination Meets Reality
As regular readers of this blog (and especially my twitter feed) will know, I have just returned from a quick jaunt down south to New Orleans. It was a great trip. New Orleans is one of the few places that managed to live up to my preconceived notions of the place. I had a blast, ate far too much (the …
THE BIRD SISTERS by Rebecca Rasmussen
Rebecca Rasmussen came to Columbia to give a reading at PS Gallery at the start of May this year, just after her wonderful debut novel was published. I had been speaking with Rebecca for some time on twitter and invited her to make the trip down I-70 from St. Louis to visit. Her reading was exquisite – understated, funny, and …
Road Trip!
This afternoon I shall be climbing into a car with my good friend Chris Stevens and we’ll be setting off south. Destination: New Orleans. We’ll be in a Mini Cooper, which doesn’t seem very Jack Kerouac to me, but never mind. It’ll probably be more comfortable than a battered old van, I suppose, and we are old men now. I …
Hot Desk
There was once an episode of Friends when Ross (I think) both bought an apothecary’s cabinet, or some such, from Pottery Barn, and then pretended that he’d picked it up in an auction somewhere. He was too ashamed to admit where he’d really bought it from (he was, of course, found out, because someone else had bought the same thing.) …
New York Stories
I love New York. I like to think I know my way around the town, just a little bit – enough, at any rate, not to want to be seen gawping like a tourist and snapping photos every thirty seconds. Hence this terrible photo of the Empire State Building, surreptitiously snapped with my iPhone two evenings ago, as I pretended …
Oh, the Profanity
When my first book was published, twelve long years ago, my characters cussed and cursed their way through the unlikely adventures I had concocted for them like drunken sailors on shore leave. Their conversations were veritable cesspits of fruity idiom. At the time I thought I was being terribly clever. I believed that this was what writers did when they …