Monthly Archives: October 2022

  The difference between my life and a story is I don’t actually need drama and problems for it to have meaning. One of the well-kept secrets of writing is that when we’re really in The Flow, when we’re following … Continue reading →

Last night we watched a DVD. Remember them? It was a 1944 movie called Murder My Sweet, based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely. It was the first film outing for Chandler’s famous PI Phillip Marlowe; he was played not … Continue reading →

What I really want to talk about is the short story form itself, and these are good stories for that purpose: simple, clear, elemental… For the young writer, reading the Russian stories of this period is akin to a young … Continue reading →

Recently I swore off crime novels (nightmares, basically) but here I am, back again. We started watching Mindhunter on Netflix. It’s about how the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit gathered information from convicted serial killers, so they could begin to understand … Continue reading →

Isn’t this glorious? It’s called pandorea pandorana, or wonga wonga vine, but as I put out the washing this morning with this fecund froth of flower, bud and blossom bursting into full, overblown sweetness close by, what came into my … Continue reading →