I selected Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road from a 3-for-2 pile because of its wonderful cover (see the bottom of this article). That was not enough to secure my purchase, however. I got the cue to do that from a random paragraph.
Remember the old gag? The starlet was so dumb she made the mistake of sleeping with the writer. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released to fanfares about a month ago. The adjective ‘long-awaited’ doesn’t do justice to the roads travelled by its creators and its fans. This is not development [...]
Paul Raven, over at the Velcro City Tourist Board, has tagged me with a meme. Here’s what the meme, which originates here, tells me to do: “To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.” So, here goes. This is the fifth sentence [...]
This week’s flash fiction must be in text form and quite brief, I’m afraid. The podcast takes a while to do and I’d like to concentrate on the current novel. If you’re subscribed to the podcast, then (i) why not let me know? and (ii) don’t worry, the hiatus should be brief. This week’s flash, [...]
I once read that, before sitting down to write The Stand1, Stephen King put a single sentence on his noticeboard. It was enough to put him in the space where he could write the novel. That sentence was: Randall Flagg is a dark man. If that sentence doesn’t conjure an entire world in your head, [...]
The question is, what shall I call the little blighter? Unfortunately, she’s a she, which puts paid to ‘Boswell’, ‘Biggles’ and ‘Napoleon’. Any ideas?
It’s a computer game, but it will take you only minutes to complete. It contains no hero and no villain. There are no points to win. The paid version of the software differs from the trial in one respect: the main character may die. Interested? Minutes ago, my girlfriend and I were searching on the [...]
I did something last week that I seldom do. I walked into the Canterbury branch of Waterstone’s1. I wanted to pick up a copy of the new James Bond book, Devil May Care. As you may or may not care, this book was commissioned by the estate of Ian Fleming to continue the Bond novel [...]