Why There Are Fewer Original Novels…
Today’s column is a coalescence of several others I’ve been writing and thinking about for a while. It came to a head when I gave a speech at the Southbank Literary Festival about outsider status. I’d...
View ArticleBryant & May And The Missing Genre
‘Choose one style of writing and stick with it,’ I was told many years ago by an editor. Naturally I ignored her and continued to plough a lonely furrow between every possible known genre, starting...
View ArticleCrime Swamps ‘Britain’s Happiest Town’
According to property agents, Harrogate in North Yorkshire is the UK’s happiest town, while nine out of 10 of the grimmest places to live are in London – but Harrogate, with its flower-filled park...
View ArticleBooks I Fight To Finish
Writers are not supposed to name the books they don’t like; it’s an unwritten law, as if by doing so we’ll somehow damage the trade. All writers have flaws and quirks; it’s what makes them individual...
View ArticleMale & Female Reading
Despite the new century’s welcome seismic shift in sexual equality, we all know there are gender divisions in reading. Or as my father once put it; ‘Romantic novels are for middle-aged women who hate...
View ArticleStretching Credibility
A comment from Robin yesterday prompts this consideration; when does a book stretch credibility too far for you? On TV that moment is known as Jumping the Shark, after the Fonz in ‘Happy Days’. On film...
View ArticleSeven Days A Week
In Waitrose at the weekend I bumped into Max Schindler, the awesome artist who creates the Bryant & May covers, like the one on the left. I had always pictured him as young, small, rather shy. He...
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