When you do a fringe show, on a limited budget, especially when it’s essentially, a ‘one-person show’, you’re rather limited about what you can create in terms of set. In past shows, I’ve just not bothered with anything, especially when touring. I mean I did a whole tour with a plastic joke-shop arm as the […]
Belfast and Beyond ‘Writing’
I’ve always wanted to go to Northern Ireland. I find the accent sexy. Guys with a real Belfast accent – that clipped, fast, adenoidal and charmingly aggressive burr – gets my motor running. So it was no accident that I was taken to a city as aphrodisiac to rewrite and reproof Bastardography. The Editor and […]
On Display
My summer has been marked by spikes of joy; three in all. That’s the three times I saw my book in Chiswick Waterstones, on display, in three different locations. First, it was in a window display, next to Max Hastings, well not him in person, but next to his tome: ‘The Secret War: Spies, Codes […]
The Way I Write
There were not a lot of books in the house because I was brought up by a single mum who was working two jobs, but I do remember a comic that used to get delivered every Saturday morning. There was this story about these cats ‘Drag A Chair Puss Cat’ and ‘Never Hangs His Coat […]
Dystopian Fiction – why dystopia?
Why Dystopia? The issue of why writers might want to take up the challenge of writing a dystopian novel is a complex one. After all, a writer’s vision of a future society is invariably going to be miserable because, if you think about it, why would anyone want to read about a brilliant future […]