Past Blasts

Seeing as I am currently bored, creatively bankrupt and more interested in sitting on my arse watching films than doing something as taxing as an interesting new blog post, I have dredged the archives for vintage stuff to show you. So allow me to take you back through the mists of time, to a moment when I was just as clueless as I am today but slightly more deluded about it... about it... about it...........

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Did I tell you I was on the cover of a magazine? Yes? OK. Did you believe me? No, thought not. Well get ready to eat those words, sonny boys and girls. Allow me to present WRITING MAGAZINE (Feb 2005)...

Honest to God, I can't leave my house now without people pointing at me and whispering "Hey, there's that guy from the front of Writing Magazine..." And the other day in town, when I went to pick up the mag... ah, I can't bear to think about it. People were following me from shop to shop, quickly hiding behind pillars and letterboxes and things whenever I turned around. But they couldn't fool me. I could feel them...

I knew I had to do something about it. I just couldn't let them get away with it. So I ran back and looked behind the letterbox and confronted the little old lady there, who was pretending to post a letter. "You leave me alone!" I screamed, blowing her blue rinse all over the place. "I have a right to privacy!" Her Yorkshire terrier was yapping like crazy now, biting my shoes. "It's people like you..." I said. "It's people like..." Words were obviously not working, so I kicked the dog hard and ran off, hoping that would send out a message to the public...

It seemed to work, too. For a while. Then the police came after me, chasing me down Friar Street and through Woolworths and onto the ring road...

I shook them by slipping into the multi-storey and hiding under a silver BMW on the top level. It was dark when I came out. No one could see my face in the dark. I drifted out into the night, weighed down by the futility of man's struggle in an indifferent universe...

Jeff Bridges and The Wisdom of Fingernails

Personally I believe everything Jeff Bridges says, no matter what he says. And this time he happens to be talking about The Big Lebowski, so it's extra special.

I had one of those trinity moments yesterday. The thing I'm writing at the moment, someone has just got coshed senseless, so he's left unconscious. Then I picked up the book I'm currently reading (a Fred Brown) and the protag, where I left off, had just been knocked out. And all day long, over and over, I had The Stranger in my head, saying "Darkness washed over the Dude..."

Congrats Al

A different sort of book gets the prize at last. And a top geezer. Shout it from the rooftops. And if you see Al lying unconscious in a gutter this morning, somewhere in Edinburgh, just walk on by. It's a trick. As soon as you lean down he'll dematerialise, reconstitute himself behind your back and give you a kick up the arse before running off, singing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

Comics

I have been developing a comic/graphic novel with the very talented Worcester artist Jonathan Dukes. So far I have written the script to the first issue/chapter, and Jonathan has been sketching out some characters. The whole point of it, besides me wanting to do some comics work, is that we both come from Worcester and share a certain vision of the town. We also both love warped stuff. Wanna see more Jonathan Dukes? Check out his PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A CHEF comic. His site is here.

"I’ve seen the giant pyramid they’re building up on Capitol Hill"

Check out The Eyes of Travolta, latest blogging by The Sound of Drowning. Believe me, it's a blogging like no other. Pay attention to this guy.

French News

The French edition of FAGS AND LAGER, out from Gallimard/Série Noire in March 2008, will be called DES CLOPES ET DE LA BINOUZE. Also LES ALLONGÉS (French edition of DEADFOLK) has been shortlisted for the Prix SNCF du Polar - the French crime writing award. Blimey. I'll let you know how it goes. More about the prize here.