Trick or treat
This is a story about Halloween, a packet of toffees, and a bloke. The toffees are easiest to describe, so I’ll start with them. Chewy treacle, a whole 1,35 kilos...
Editor: surgeon or butcher?
As someone who is skeptical about editors – though committed to brutal self-editing – I must get a look at the new edition of What We Talk About When We...
A little boasting, and a lot of thanks
Whilst only in my wildest daydreams could my numbers begin to approach Neil Gaiman’s million blog readers, I did a tally today for the fantastic people at Carmarthenshire who have...
How to keep from going under as an indie writer
A few guidelines: Don’t check your stats after each new sentence you write. Don’t read the latest Richard & Judy or Oprah titles and gnash your teeth. Don’t search every...
Assorted and discombobulated thoughts about editors
Over a long and caffeine-fuelled breakfast with Hamburg-based painter Miwa Ogasawara, so thin and elegant that I can’t work out where her deep laughter comes from, I ask whether anyone...
One of my tests
of a novel is whether I flip straight from the last page right back to the first in order to reread it. Another is whether I bash my head against...
I, Orpheus
Hilary Mantel in today’s Guardian: The whole process of creativity is like that. The writer often doesn’t know, consciously, what gods she invokes or what myths she’s retelling. Orpheus is...
A dog is not a Hund is not a chien
Whenever I tell people my children are bilingual (and in one case, multilingual), without exception they say ‘how wonderful!’ But is it? Yes, it’s convenient to be able to ask...
Just in Case
is a case in just what I dislike most about YA publishing: a stereotypical angsty teen; a clever bag of tricks like the Voice of Fate, an imaginary (or maybe...
Dividing lines in the mind
An interesting 2006 interview with Anton Zeilinger, philosophising professor of physics at Vienna University: We’ve learnt in the natural sciences that the key to understanding can often be found if...
Letter to a grandmother
Dear Grandma, Tomorrow is my eldest son’s birthday. He’s at least twice as old as I was when I last saw you, yet how little he knows about his maternal...
The Hydra
The Hydra is a mythical beast.The Hydra lives in the swamp of our imagination.The Hydra has many heads, 9 or 99, which regrow if severed.The Hydra has noxious breath which...