There are some writers whose treatment of a particular subject you can almost predict. That's not necessarily a bad thing. John Higgs, though, is not one of those writers. This warm, witty and endlessly interesting writer is described (accurately, for my money) on his website as someone who "specialises in finding previously unsuspected narratives, hidden … Continue reading The work of John Higgs
So, one twelfth of 2020 has passed, and have I written any fiction so far this year? I have not. But, I have continued to work on the Reeds story I've written about before. My protagonist has a new name, which alone makes him feel a bit more alive and less of a cardboard cut-out. … Continue reading #AmWriting – Fixing it in the Edit
Awkward. I try to be positive on this blog because goodness knows there's enough negativity around. But equally, I have to be honest. If you take it at face value this is a gripping, well-written comic with excellent artwork. Those of you who know The Sandman will delight in the return of characters such as … Continue reading The Sandman – The Dreaming, Volume 1: Pathways and Emanations
The Nouveau Roman was a French Modernist literary movement of the 1950s whose antecedents were Joyce, Beckett and Proust. A common theme among the works produced by those writers grouped as nouveax romanistes were "discontinuity, rupture, difference and revolution"¹, and they defined themselves against "a dominant culture in thrall to a staid and anachronistic concept … Continue reading The “Nouveau Roman”: where to start?
Imagine "The Littlest Hobo" written by Ted Hughes... Marney the Fox was a two-page b&w comic strip featured in Buster from 1974-1976. It's been collated and nicely reprinted by Rebellion comics, who did a similarly good job on The Beatles Story (and other lost UK comic serials). Marney is a fox cub, orphaned in the … Continue reading Rural horror for kids! – “Marney the Fox”
Alasdair Gray lived - and wrote and drew and painted - in the hope of seeing Scotland once again become an independent nation. There's a grim symmetry in that he died at the very end of a decade which had come so close to seeing just that, and on the cusp of a new one … Continue reading Alasdair Gray 1934 – 2019
The basic stats from My 2019 in Books tell a story. How does it all break down? Total books read: 219 Re-reads: 48 (22%) So, a fifth of all the books I've read this year are ones I'd read before. That doesn't surprise me: I've always gone back to books I love. What does surprise … Continue reading A year in books – 2019
One of the boys in this photo is now dead. Today would have been his 45th birthday. Why do I remember something like that? I didn't know him particularly well. As it happens, his family moved away when we were in 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th?) year of High School, so I never saw him … Continue reading “All those moments…”
So. A further update on my own fiction. As I wrote last month, I wasn't happy with the way that my first "reeds" story had turned out: lots of atmosphere at the expense of, well, anything else really. A sign that I'm likely to be happy with something - that it might even be good … Continue reading #AmWriting – Finding the story
The river is tidal for many miles upstream, and the current strong. To an observer on the southern shore the island midway across the estuary’s breadth is deceptively close. You might think you could swim to it, and explore undisturbed its unpeopled expanse. But whatever anecdote your reaching the island inspired, the journey back would … Continue reading Firth of Tay
Into the Gyre 