Everyone else does, apparently, especially crime novelists. I wonder if it’s because so many of Shakespeare’s expressions sound sinister these days. Maybe it’s because there’s so much death in his plays, most of it violent. But I’m sure you can recognize a Shakespeare title without thinking twice. When I search just for Murder Most Foul…
On October 14, Neil Gaiman gave a lecture for the Reading Agency, at the Barbican in London. Neil Gaiman is the author of over 30 books, mostly fiction, including many for children and graphic novels. The Reading Agency’s annual lecture series was initiated in 2012 as a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share…
I already knew that crime actually does pay, if you’re a crime writer, that is. But I had no idea how widespread the fascination is, until I read a recent (July 19) article by Louise Millar, one of the Guardian’s reporters, in which she picks some of the best crime-writing festivals. They are held in…
Andrew Kaufmann of the Guardian newspaper in London has an interesting POV. He thinks that instead of criticizing new words in the language and trying to squash them, we should be welcoming and even encouraging them. He has a point. There’s nothing more aging than constantly saying “why can’t people talk properly, the way they…
A while ago, I mentioned the Guardian’s requests to various novelists to write a novel as a Tweet. I believe I called it Twitfic, but it’s also known as Twitterature and my friend Sally Allen has some great pointers on how to do it yourself. If you can manage it, it’s a great way to…
Last Friday, the Guardian published this great inspiration for those of us with writer’s block. Even blocked, surely you can write a 140 character story, right? here’s the beginning of the article. You can see the whole thing here. We challenged well-known writers – from Ian Rankin and Helen Fielding to Jeffrey Archer and Jilly…
I can’t help myself. I love maps that tell me where the best literary events, or sites or bookstores are. I own the Atlas of Literature, which covers the world and is great for browsing, but it doesn’t keep me up to date. So I was thrilled to see that the British newspaper, The Guardian,…
What’s wrong with this picture? Could it be that there’s a boat perched on – not to say about to fall off of – the top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the South Bank Centre in London? What the heck is it? It’s a gorgeous one-bedroom ‘installation’ with two decks which provide incredible panoramic…
