Borders

Shame about this, and I really hope they can find a clever buyer who can make it work again. In my London days I used to spend hours in the flagship Oxford Street branch (sadly already closed). I discovered so many writers in there, just from being able to sit down on a couch with a book for a while. When my first book came out, that was the London store I first checked to see if they had it in. They did, but it was only in the crime section and not in the more prominent "new books" section downstairs. So I got a copy and took it down there, placing it front-out in front of a pile of someone else's book (dog eat dog, babe). Then I stood back and watched, pretending to read a copy of Heat magazine. Sure enough, a man came along and picked it up. He read the first page for a bit then put it back. Bastard!

Happy Thanksgiving...

...to all yanks out there. As a special present (*cough*) to mark the occasion, I can let you know that Stairway to Hell will be published over there and in Canada by Serpent's Tail in June 2010. Any North Americans who already have it, you guys are ahead of the curve. You are able to speak several languages instinctively, work out the square root of any number in less than a second and jump over a car without touching it. You just don't realise it yet.

What do you call a man with three planks of wood on his head?

R.I.P. Edward Woodward, who was an iconic presence for anyone who loved The Equalizer, The Wicker Man, Callan, Hot Fuzz or many others. On top of that he was the punchline of a joke (see above) AND could sing with the best of 'em:

I am a mole and I live in a hole

Five Stairway to Hell-themed questions answered by me at 3am Magazine. They'll make you cry. They'll make you laugh. They'll make you blow your overdraft. On Stairway to Hell... which you can get in a nice double deal along with my first book Deadfolk for a nice £9.52 over at Amazon.co.uk. Hey, it's nearly Christmas.

(Shit, Charlie, didn't anyone tell you it's uncool to promote your wares on your own website?)

No, they didn't. And if anyone knows of someone else's website I can hawk my shit on, drop us a line. For we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

Thank you Susan Tomaselli for the five probing questions.

"It was not immediately clear if any customers had been served"...

Now I know why there is a Russian edition of Deadfolk.

KENT AND PANTS

Had a good time at the Kent Uni event, where I stood up in front of students, read a couple of passages from my books and talked about writing. However, halfway through the proceedings I became convinced that my flies were undone. I didn't see how I fix this - or even confirm my suspicions - without looking like I was fiddling with myself. I was in Royston Blake character mode, reading the forklift passage from King of the Road, but my heart wasn't in it. It was in my pants, wondering if everyone could see them. And worse: was that a cool breeze I just felt down there? As soon as it was over I sat down and very subtly checked.

False alarm.

So, to the students of Kent who came, apologies. You got a watered down version of Blakey there, due to my anxieties. Usually he's a lot louder and more vehement. And let's be honest: Blakey wouldn't give a shit if his flies were undone.

Kent Event

A bit late, this, but if you happen to want to come to my event at Kent University tomorrow, here are the details:

Tue, 10th November, 6pm

Peter Brown Room, Missing Link, Darwin College, Canterbury Campus

£2 entry - pay the pink bucket at the door.

Tickets available at the door or by post. Please email english-office@kent.ac.uk to reserve or purchase a ticket.

More details here. I will be talking about writing, doing a little bit of reading (aloud) and answering questions. See you there if you're around.

These boots were made for

No, not some pervy fetish thing, I'm afraid. This is the prefered footwear of Adam Booth, trainer of David Haye (6'4"), who on Saturday night fights Nikolai Valuev (7'0"). When you can't find sparring partners tall enough, this is what you do.

My prediction: Valuev pts victory. He is just too big. (Also his manager is German, the fight is in Germany, and German judges are, shall we say, loyal to their own).

FWIW, I kind of want the big Russian to win. He is no Ivan Drago, more of a Shrek. Haye is by far the superior fighter, but I can't help but admire a guy who, after 50 fights, openly admits he is still learning to box. He'll come unstuck against either Klitchko brother anyway, if he ever was made to fight them.

Black Static

Stairway to Hell got a nice review in Black Static magazine (the UK's premier mag for horror/dark sf/slipstream etc). Many thanks to Mr Peter Tennant for the positive words, and for having a crack at nailing the genre:

"In the end, this is not so much horror fiction as a subversive text in which tropes of the genre are added on to a comic novel dealing with aspects of modern life, such as the lust for fame, reality TV and the superficiality of the media, all of which get the piss taken out of them (sorry, but I couldn’t resist that). Bottom line, Stairway to Hell is a barrel of fun, probably best read to a soundtrack of The Song Remains the Same and Ch-Ch-Changes."

Kent

Anyone in Canterbury read this? On Tuesday, 10th Nov I will be at Kent University campus in that town (my alma mater) to talk to the creative writing fraternity there. I am told the event is open to the public, so please come along if you like my books at all or are interested to know how and why I write such things. If you don't give a shit either way, maybe you should come anyway and let me convert you. If you actively dislike me and the books, maybe you should stay away. Or come, and throw things at me. I'll bring my cricket bat and fire them back at you, thereby achieving these kinds of headlines and the success that notoriety brings.

Check the events page for details. Nothing there as I write this but I'll pull my finger out about a week before the event.

Bandido vs Bandido

My kind of biker gang:

"They were at the very bottom rung of biker gangs. Some were in their 40s but still lived with their parents. They were not making any money, many of them had been rejected by the Hells Angels and half of them didn't even own a motorbike."

The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes

Not been here for a while. It always goes the same way when I have a book out: intense burst of activity as you take the book by the hand and lead it out into the world. But Stairway to Hell can stand on its own two feet now, even though it has no actual feet. The book must walk out there and make its way in the world. If it gets run over, falls foul to drugs or becomes a member of Coldplay, well, at least I tried.

But it's doing OK so far, if reports are to be believed. Rob Chilver in Adventures with Words had this to say:

Williams’ prose is punchy, filthy and funny, littered with musical references and sideswipes at the state of the music industry today. The plot takes on a variety of twists and turns with some truly laugh out loud moments. While, the premise may sound bizarre, and it is, Williams creates a world and its character where by the end of the novel, bodyswapping and exploding record shops seem to be the norm. For those looking for a witty, entertaining and original read, this is a must.

You know, that makes me want to go right out and buy eight copies of the book. And I wrote it! Then there's Andrew Collins in The Word:

Charlie Williams' committedly silly novel about the eternal Faustian pact of pop stardom is difficult to dislike. A vivid turn of phrase ("chewing air" after puking up), witty touches (the pretense of teen idol Zak Bremner summed up in album titles Zakology and Bremnology) and fag machine philosophy (if you have an All Day Breakfast at breakfast time does it just become Breakfast?) sugar the pill of the ludicrous, scatological plot.

Ah, yes, the old pill sugar. I've never met a plot that couldn't be helped along with a shake of the sugar jar. Especially scatalogical ones. But "ludicrous"? "Commitedly silly"? Couldn't we just say "absurd"? Beckett was absurd. Ionesco and Genet were absurd. I don't mind rolling with those guys, even if I missed that scene by half a century. But I never heard of no "Theatre of the Ludicrous". Mind you, "committedly silly"... that sounds like you're so silly that you've been committed to a mental institution. That's no small accomplishment, I feel.

Of course, I josh. My book is lucky to even get noticed by Messrs Collins and Chilver, and I hope it said thank you and bowed politely (right before they chucked it in the Worcester County Pauper and Lunatic Asylum).

(For a taster of other Stairway to Hell reviews, check it out here.)