Posted on
Being a reliable dep bassist/guitarist I regularly play with a lot of different people in a lot of different bands. I have done for longer than I care to admit, yet it still amazes me how often I come across people who cannot play nicely with others. I don’t mean the usual muso problems (that […]
Posted on
I’ve written a lot of stuff about fathers and sons over the years – it’s the central theme of my most recent novel Gap Years – and I don’t think any of my books fail to mention that defining moment in life when you realise your father is not an all-powerful, omniscient creature. Sorry Dad […]
Posted on
It is now a truth universally acknowledged that anybody who does anything creative will get battered for expressing personal opinions online. We get told artists aren’t supposed to have political views. Don’t alienate your potential customers, stick to writing/singing/crochet/cheese-making. You know, like George Orwell, Peggy Seeger, Margaret Atwood and Chuck D. Well fuck that. I’ve […]
Posted on
One thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that my pop-culture references are going out of date. My random shouts of, ‘Monkey Tennis!’ at trailers for new TV shows, or, ‘It wasn’t me that done it, Mr Hoppy!’ in a geordie-esque accent are often met with blank stares anwyay. But most people used to at […]
Posted on
The worst advice my father ever gave me was: ‘If you don’t know the answer, make something up and say it authoritatively enough that nobody questions you.’ I think he meant it as a joke, but one of my friends once told me that while I would undoubtedly be useful as a phone a friend […]
Posted on
Unless you’ve had me muted for the last month (which is entirely possible) then you’ll know my new book just completed a blog tour (follow the link for an explanation if you don’t know what that is). I’m quite pleased with how it all came out, and, while I promise I am working on new […]
Posted on
No, not Christmas, and no, not going back to work yesterday morning. Neither of those are really my bag, baby. I’m talking about New Year. I’m fairly sure I’ve written about it before, but I can’t be arsed to hunt through old blog entries to look it up so if this is identical, then I’m […]
Posted on
The big news this Christmas is that I finally finished the book I told myself I wasn’t good enough to write. It’s coming out in February with massed fanfares and another top notch blog tour care of Rachels Random Resources (doing the hard work so I don’t have to). It is called Gap Years and […]
Posted on
There was something magical about my grandmother’s toast. I’m not sure quite what benevolent spells she weaved over what was – to all intents and purposes – just a slice of burned flour and water smeared in congealed cow’s milk, but it worked. She would hand slice some fresh white bread, toast it under her […]
Posted on
If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram etc. etc. then you can’t have failed to notice that for the last ten days my book, The Craft Room, has been on a blog tour. What the fuck is a blog tour? I hear you all shouting. Well, it does exactly what it says on […]
