Liverpool in a Pint

A quick post to note that at the end of last week I printed out the manuscript of the Cain’s book and sent it off to the publisher, Liverpool University Press. This I am convinced is the hardest part for a writer. Handing over the best part of a year’s work for someone else to [...]

Thomas the Tank Engine

I just added an article about Thomas the Tank Engine to the “Writing” section over there on the left. The article first appeared in The Reader magazine, issue 25. Here’s a snippet:
Growing up near to a railway line, trains were as much a part of my childhood as conkers in the autumn and frogspawn in [...]

Shed Working

Yesterday I came across an excellent site dedicated to shedworking. As a shedworker of almost four years’ standing now I came over all warm and fuzzy about my own shed, which I built in the summer of 2003, and thought I would post a gratuitous picture of my workplace. I am a very lucky man, [...]

Crime Fiction Conference

I heard this morning that I am going to be giving a paper at the Literary Art of Murder conference in Newcastle in April 2008. I’m going to be talking about the “new noir” a sub-genre that recreates the 1950s setting of original hard-boiled and “noir” crime writing, but does so in a knowing and [...]

Raymond Chandler on Writing

The Reader magazine issue number 26 came out today and it includes a short article of mine on Raymond Chandler. Since I finished my PhD thesis on Chandler back in 1998 I’ve found it hard to write about him for some reason, but this piece worked out OK I think. Here’s an extract:
Crime writer Raymond [...]

Key Ideas Entries

Over the past week since the deadline passed we’ve been receiving a lot of entries for the Key Ideas book. I’d forgotten just how time consuming it is processing the entries as they come in, but it’s exciting to see the project start to take shape. And now that the Cain’s book is in its [...]