My new novel about university life, Student, which I give the background to below, is published on Monday, September 24th, the start of Fresher’s Week at most unis. As an opening week offer, you can get the book on Kindle for 99p, or from the publisher at £4.99, post-free, for a signed copy. That’s less than anywhere else for a signed copy. Obviously, we’re doing this more for attention than sales, and reviews left anywhere will be much appreciated. I started writing seriously 28 years ago, after training to be a teacher. Almost the first thing I wrote was to become my debut, The Foggiest, in 1990. I saw it as a trial run at the time, and concentrated on adult fiction of the kind…
Yesterday, I finished reading Gorm Henrik Rasmussen’s excellent book about Nick Drake ‘Pink Moon: A Story About Nick Drake‘ and went to see a wonderful new documentary, ‘Searching For Sugar Man‘. Impossible not to draw links between the two. Unfortunately, I’d read a piece about the documentary that gave away a major surprise. The less you know about the singer Rodriguez before seeing the movie, the better. No big spoilers here. The film tells the story of a singer-songwriter from Detroit who made two great but ignored albums in 1970 and 1971, then vanished. He was rumoured to have killed himself onstage as a protest against audiences who talked through his music. Drake made three albums in his lifetime and walked off stage during his final…
In the week of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival (see post below) and the Booker prize long list (on which I’m delighted to find this debut, indie novel by a fellow member of Nottingham Writers Studio), it’s more than appropriate to host this particular guest post by Nicola Monaghan, aka Niki Valentine. Like last year’s guest poster, Lawrence Block, Niki wrote one of the Crime Express novellas, the very fine The Okanawa Dragon. I’ll be taking a proof of Possessed on holiday with me. It’s already available as an e-book and will be published in paper on October 25th. I am frequently asked what the difference is between my Niki Valentine books and those I write as Nicola Monaghan. I am tempted to say the Valentine…
Oops, a month has gone by without a post. Sorry about that, especially to those who don’t read my ramblings on Twitter (these are near daily and can be found in a box to the left, unless you’re in China, where it’s barred: sorry, Martin). I’m getting stuck in to a redraft of my next novel, so am unlikely to write again for a while, but I do have a guest blogger lined up very shortly. Though, to confuse things, she’ll be writing under a pseudonym. These days, I need to leave at least eight weeks between drafts of a novel so I can see the thing fresh.This means that, even after the surfeit of end of term marking, I’ve had time to check out…
This review appears in today’s Nottingham Post Fifty years since her first hit and a few days after selling out the Royal Albert Hall, Dionne Warwick brings her band and the South Bank Sinfonia strings section to Nottingham, a city she first visited in the mid-60’s and has returned to regularly ever since. Unfortunately, it’s the middle of a long, wet bank holiday that has seen many flee the country. Only half of the seats have been sold. Dionne doesn’t mind. ‘The order of the evening is to have a good time,’ she begins. Her voice has ‘given her good news’. She’s over a cold, so will be able to add a couple of songs that she couldn’t manage earlier in the tour. The early…