Blogs

What I have learned in ten years of writing by Robert Craven 2021 The great jazz musician, Miles Davis once observed, “ Sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself, ”. This is especially true of being a writer. It’s 2021 and its the tenth anniversary of the publication of my first ‘real’ novel GET LENIN . I have often thought of taking it down off Amazon and giving it a full rewrite, but then I wouldn’t be doing it justice. I love...

The cover of James Robertson’s latest novel, News of the Dead , has a blurb from Ali Smith: ‘A marvellous novelist’. I spend much of my time looking at marketing techniques, when I should be reading, or even writing. Get a big hitter, preferably Scottish, like Ali Smith to say something nice about your writing and copy and paste it to all of your other books. It doesn’t need to be a novelist or writer. Billy Connolly’s good press (Jane Godley...

As always, really tough to make choices. Not surprisingly, the political situation here in the UK has moved several ABCtalers to put finger to keyboard. And opinions have differed. It's what writers do. Our Story of the Week is one such piece, Terrence Oblong's 'I Stayed Up For Portillo'. For non-UK readers, the announcement that MP Michael Portillo had lost his seat was the moment the nation realised the government had lost the 1997 general...

I’m a reader. When I open a book magic happens. Or in Heather Morris’s case magic doesn’t happen. When God said to Moses, you cannot look—directly—at me, but when I pass you might see my glory. When I read a book if I don’t see God’s face, I’m not too disappointed. After all, even international and bestselling authors are only human. I’ll wait for the glory to pass. And I don’t go very many places. The best writers transport you. Where are we?...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011pn4/ophelia Ophelia , based on a book by Lisa Klein, who is also a screenwriter here (my guess that gave her leverage to adapt her novel for cinema/television) tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from a woman’s perspective, in much the same way Tom Stoppard put centre stage other peripheral figures in the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . I’m not read Lisa Klein’s novel. And I’m not a...

Lemn Sissay writes his memoir from a position of power. On the back cover, he lists some of his awards: BAFTA nominated, honorary doctorates, an MBE for services to literature, Chancellor of the University of Manchester. The last line is the killer. ‘He is British and Ethiopian.’ In other words, he’s a black man. He was the illegitimate son of twenty-one-year-old Yemarshet Sissy, a student at a Baptist Bible College in England, and he was born...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011p18/vice Described as comedy-drama, a biographical film about former US vice-president Dick Cheney. Christian Bale won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the most powerful vice-president in modern history. There is a contemporary joke that nobody is ever called Dick, but that’s about it. There is nothing funny about Vice . At a push, I could probably name most of...