Books for Xmas 2009

For those whose tastes run to the literary, the crime novel to die for this Christmas is Peter Temple’s Truth. The fictional underbelly of the Victorian police, dry as the crackle of eucalypt leaves in the moment before the fireball hits. A stripped-down, elegant and elliptical story of hard men and violence on both sides [...]

The unravelling

I’m at a loose end. Pull it and I’ll start to unravel. The revisions are done, the publishing Gods temporarily appeased after taking my second-born. Henry Hoey Hobson has left home, whisked away on secret publisher’s business to an unknown location, a brutal boot camp where a merciless editor will whip his scrawny arse into [...]

Crime Pays @ BWF

‘She’s nervous,’ whispered the former army interrogator into my ear. ‘Look at her body language:  scanning the room; seeking the reassurance of eye contact with people she knows; the nervous chatter… I guarantee that afterwards she won’t remember a single thing she has said.’ Talk about getting my money’s worth out of the Crime Pays [...]

Sneak preview – The Lonely Dead (a w-i-p)

Detective Nick Fardoulys stared at the pretty feet; the immaculate toenails painted a light metallic brown. His baby sister would have been able to identify the colour immediately from her once-unlimited palette of words. She had always insisted that only old farts like him wore brown; young pains-in-the-arse like her, apparently wore cappucino or pewter, [...]

How long is a piece of string?

Stringing words together is what we writers do. But when it comes to novel writing, how long should that piece of string be? That was a question recently posed by a regular reader of this blog and I thought others might be interested in the answer. Dust, my soon-to-be-published first novel was done and dusted, [...]

Busting a foofer valve

According to American humourist Gene Fowler, writing is easy: you just have to stare at a blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead. [Note to the long-dead Mr Fowler: my forehead has been geysering in a Monty Pythonesque fashion onto my computer screen for days now, but it isn't getting any easier.] [...]

Confessions of a cereal killer

People will always look for a reason. Antecedents, the courts call it. Probative and prejudicial. For mitigation or explanation. It doesn’t matter to me.  I am what I am. A self-confessed cereal killer. I make no excuses, so don’t try to blame it on a deprived childhood. Other people had what I had. A choice [...]

Contemplating a life of crime

It is said that the jaws of writers run red from cannibalising the lives around them. Having supped, long and deep, on a vein of my own experience, I hunger for the smorgasbord offered by the lives of others. Don’t worry, if you see me staring at you strangely, in a queue at the deli, [...]