A Very Belated Apology to America!
This is a terrible confession: after writing a nice piece about America in my newsletter, I completely forgot to put this version up on the web. So, with profuse apologies to all my American friends – here it is at last! America There are times when certain friends of mine make me wince and … Continue reading
The End of the First AsparaWriting Festival!
And so, after a year of planning and working on the basic ideas, the AsparaWriting Festival is finally over. It’s been a really rewarding experience. The whole concept was, and is, to create a festival for unpublished but enthusiastic writers. We wanted to set it up, first: so that aspiring writers could come and learn … Continue reading
Krupp Can Wait
FIRE ON THE RUNWAY by Mel Bradshaw, Dundurn Toronto ISBN 978 1459703353 priced at £11.99 for paperback I was fortunate enough to be invited as the International Guest of Honour at the Bloody Words festival in Toronto this month. It was a huge honour, but more to the point, it was a great joy to … Continue reading
Toronto – Bloody Words 2014
I really have been inordinately lucky this year. One thing I always wanted to do, when I was young, was to take every opportunity to travel. I was hugely fortunate because my father took us to Austria, Italy and even Kenya. I saw a lot of the world when I was a teenager. Later I … Continue reading
Immigration and Customs – Help!
OK, a brief diversion. I mentioned to a friend on Twitter yesterday that I had a chequered history entering Canada. There was the time I was picked up by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police to you) and driven off in the back of their cruiser, or the time when I was refused entry … … Continue reading
Tripping again!
Here in Britain, we have a new education leader who has been excoriated in the media and by teachers since he took his job. His name? Michael Gove. Mr Gove is a man who invariably causes fury. He has stopped increasing funding for schools and colleges, he has cut budgets all over, he has presided … Continue reading
New projects!
Every so often a project comes along that intrigues me, and recently I’ve had another one. Ever since I first saw the Arnolfini picture by Van Eyck – Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne Cenani, his wife, by Jan Van Eyck (1434) – which, from memory, was when I found as an illustration inside the Folio edition … Continue reading
YouTube? I Tube
There are some aspects of a writing career that just get in the way. There is no other way to look at it. When I started out (twenty years ago now, God help us!) the job was easy. An author was supposed to write. As my friend Quintin Jardine likes to remind me: “Writers write … Continue reading
Let’s Get Inky
A short while ago, the very nice people at Cult Pens suggested I’d like to have some new inks to play with. Who am I to refuse an offer like that? A year ago I started to use Cult Pens’ own Deep Dark Blue ink. This was a colour they designed to match their own logo, … Continue reading
Pens I Have Known – A Review of a Life in Pens
I am madly keen on fountain pens. On my desk right now, I have three Conway Stewarts, three Crosses, one Kaweco and one Cult Pens pen. All of them are regularly used. When I am writing, when I am planning, when I am doodling or plotting, the only pens for me are fountain pens. … Continue reading
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