“Frederick loved America. He loved its big open spaces, the sunsets that drenched the evening sky in blistering color. Above all, he loved the smell of promise that hung in the air. Europe, he could see now, was slowly suffocating under the weight of its own history. In America the future was the only thing that mattered. Frederick turned his …
Profile in Vox Magazine
Click here for a nice profile today in Vox magazine, the weekly sister magazine to the Columbia Missourian. I should say, in my defense, (jazz snob alert!) that the reference to “smooth jazz” was a little journalistic license on the part of the lady who came to interview me. I would hate for anyone to think that I’ve gone all …
Leavin’ On a Jet Plane. Maybe.
Let me see… it’s Tuesday, so I should be in London today, having lunch with my agent, Bruce. Except that I’m still here in Missouri, reading weather reports about unprecedented levels of snowfall that has put England into chaos. Flights have been grounded across Europe, roads have been blocked, trains halted. It’s all a terrible mess. Our flight has been …
What Are You Thankful For?
[This is an older post that seemed appropriate to revisit today. I finished my six-month rewrite of the manuscript yesterday and sent it back to my publisher in New York. I think (and hope) that it is a much better book than it was six months ago. I am certainly thankful for that. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.] Hallam made a card …
Snip, Snip
No, this is not a post about books, or writing. This is a post (actually an edited re-post) about something entirely different. And personal. Ahem. You may want to look away now. So, fair warning having been issued… … the nurse was awfully nice. She asked me what I did, how long had I been in the States for, did …
Title Talk
Still no closer to a title for the book, although I am thinking about it an awful lot – whenever I have a spare moment, in fact. Often I forget that not everyone is as fixated about the subject as I am. This can throw up some interesting discussions, when only one party to the conversation is particpating with the …
Deliver Us from Deliverance
Family traditions can be pernicious things. Bizarre rituals – whose precise genesis nobody can quite remember – are dutifully repeated year after year, simply because that’s what’s always been done. Quite often nobody is having much of a good time, but nobody is willing to admit it. Of course, it doesn’t have to be like that. This weekend saw my …
Time Passes
Ridiculously, school starts today. Our children, typically, have adopted diametrically opposite approaches to the glorious vistas of educational opportunity opening up before them this morning. Catherine is more excited than she was last Christmas Eve. The prospect of entering kindergarten is possibly the most thrilling thing ever to have happened to her; there was much debate on the way home …
Special Relationship?
No postings on the World Cup yet, although I’ve been watching as much as I can and enjoying most of it, except for 90 minutes last Saturday afternoon. Thanks to the England goalkeeper’s utterly bizarre howler, I have been on the receiving end of much gleeful teasing – cute email references to “dropping the ball”, and the like. Oh, how …
Keeping a Straight Face
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. It’s about an Englishman – a successful corporate attorney, who works in a big law firm in one of the most exciting, vibrant cities on earth. He’s married to a glamorous American wife. Suddenly, against his will, he finds himself transported to a small town in the middle of rural America, where …