A short while ago I heard that John Martyn had died, first via Twitter, which must be a sign of the times, then in mobile call from my brother, Paul. I doubt John knew what Twitter was, or had much time for the web. My first thought was, ‘how sad’, the second: I’m amazed he lasted so long, given his ill health and the vast quantities of drugs and booze he consumed. The first time I met him, in 1976, he blasely snorted a line of smack in front of me and the other people in the dressing room. The last time, just before he started doing those ‘heritage album’ tours, he was in a bad way and a lot of the fire seemed to…
Jon McGregor and I launched this year’s monthly readings at the Flying Goose Cafe last night. It was a lovely evening, where we both did old stuff in the first half (tho’ Jon hadn’t performed his postcards from a 2005 voyage to Antarctica before) and new material in the second half. I read a story about Guantanamo Bay, which I hope (especially after today’s news) will be out of date by the time it’s published. Jon read an extract from his next novel, ‘Even The Dogs’, which goes to Bloomsbury next week and is due to be published in February 2010. The only hiccup during the evening was during my last reading, when a mutual friend keeled over in a faint, luckily hitting the floor…
Happy new year. First, the news: I’m delighted to see that Martin’s back, with a a poetic new blog. And I can’t understand why they had to name the new Doctor Who quite so early, when he doesn’t appear until October 2010. Also here‘s something fascinating that I missed while we were away. We were in Cuba over Christmas. Havana is one of my favourite three cities and I found a copy of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez‘s ‘DIrty Havana Trilogy’ in the airport, where we had an eight hour delay (thanks for the warning to Virgin, who’d known about it for days and still let us get up at 5.45AM to hang about the airport all day). I read all three novels over the next three…
The best of year CD sleeve notes come a little earlier this year. If you want to read about my new novel The Pretender, scroll down. The picture to the left is from the launch at the wonderful Bromley House Library in Nottingham, which was a terrific evening, with family and friends going back more than thirty years, including former tutors from both my spells as a university student and many former students from my current spell as a creative writing tutor (thanks to Aly for the photo). And now, on with the show. This is the 21st of our annual favourite music of the year compilations for family and friends. Sleevenotes updated daily until done. 1. MGMT – Time To Pretend I don’t do…
I edit a series of short novellas (we used to call them long short stories, but things have moved on) for Five Leaves. The sixth and seventh in the Crime Express series are published today. They’re corkers, the best yet. First we have ‘Gun’ by Ray Banks, a tight, gripping noir by a young writer new to me. I defy you not to read in a sitting. Then there’s the only book in the series that I commissioned myself, ‘Speaking Of Lust’ by Lawrence Block, a grand master of crime writing, who I’ve been reading for donkey’s years, and who I was lucky enough to meet up with in New York earlier this year. This is a very spicy quartet of shaggy something stories, told…