Been a long time.     However, I still pay an ungodly amount for this website and it would be Bah Humbug of me indeed to neglect to wish...

Two months since my last blog entry and we’ve STILL not moved house. It’s a process I’m really not enjoying - greedy middlemen waiting on...

We’re in the protracted and painful process of trying to move house and I’ve aged ten years in two months as a result. I spent most of...

In the dystopian age of 2024, artificial intelligence will continue to revolutionise numerous aspects of our miserable lives, from...

20 pieces of famous writing advice For some while, I’ve been keeping micro-snippets of advice from famous authors in a notebook. I’m not...

After twenty years, I ended it. The relationship had been one-sided for some time and she’d be the first to admit that. It’s a hard thing...

We all know who said that, right? Wrong. Ernest Hemingway* wrote sober and edited sober. He was, undeniably, a big fat drunk, but he...

William Wordsworth's autobiographic epic The Prelude contains a section in which the young Romantic poet steals a boat and oars his way...

A headache in technicolour. A commercialist hymn to storytelling and cultural appropriation. A delicious cocktail that still manages to...

After the brutal fight, James Bond panthers into the bathroom and spies Vesper Lynd huddled under the shower, the water soaking her...

An argument in favour of comic book fiction as a literary art form Look, I’ve read a lot of ‘important’ books in my time. During my...

I’m writing this in two places. One at 10,000 metres and the other, in the near future, six hours from now, in the shadow of Mount...

The spooky season is upon us, so I thought I’d write something befitting of Halloween and explore an oftentimes-maligned genre. I haven’t...

I’ve been delaying writing this for some time. Because that’s what we do. If a writer has a period of spare time, you can bet that...

This morning I wrote my standard 1000 words, which is the minimum I attempt to accomplish when I’m working on a novel and not suffocated...

The third in my BIG THEMES series of articles, which are easy to spot because I USE CAPITAL LETTERS. For some reason. Lately, I’ve been...

I am a pilgrim. For some, a celebrity pilgrimage might entail visiting the childhood home of assassinated central American freedom...

MEMEnto Mori: Internet Memes about Writing that are so Accurate they're Painful

It occurred to me yesterday, as I sat listening to roof ribs sliding down slick tiles and smashing through asbestos garages, that such a...

A Christmas Carol is more sinister than you remember. Ah, A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ beloved story of redemptive holiday spirit, Tiny...

Or, How Flannery O'Connor and Paul McCartney are on the Same Page. I began this blog last year during the first nationwide lockdown and I...

It's Christmas next month. But it was surely only Christmas last month. I don't understand. 1991 was thirty years ago and the last...

Granted, there are suckier, less beloved books out there but, let’s be honest, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is as deeply flawed as it...

This morning, I walked twenty kilometres, hoping a new story might rearrange itself in my mind. It didn’t, but I did get to top up my...