Blogs

Lammas weekend. The first of the Celtic harvest festivals and the fields are being gleaned, leaving stubble for when the geese return. One of the times of the year when getting stuck behind a tractor on the way into or back from the big city, Aberdeen, is pretty much guaranteed. Usually, it’s not a big issue being in the slow convoy, open windows wafting in the scents of summer, it's quite life affirming. Not so on Tuesday. Am a sucker for money...

It’s over 20 years since Francine Prose published her guide for Reading Like a Writer , which I try to. It’s for people that love books, which is me too, and for those that want to write them. Yes, exactly. Prose is an antonym. Re-reading Reading Like a Writer reminds me of so much that I’ve already forgotten, but I’ve already forgotten it, again. Reading is mostly what I do. But Prose as a bibliophile is at genius check-mate level. Slow down...

Went to Huntly on Monday to see ‘The Odyssey’ again. It is a bum-numbing almost three hours, but I wanted to rewatch the Circe scene and experience that soundtrack again. This is a big screen movie, so all those millions allegedly watching on X, missed a treat, big time. While in Huntly, bought a book about Rhynie. A mystical area of Scotland, with geology found nowhere else on the planet. Famous for Pictish forts and standing stones, including...

I’m not young. Many, or most, wouldn’t consider me a writer. Certainly John Gardner wouldn’t. For Gardner good writing, ‘creates a vivid and continuous dream’. Everything else follows. Look, for example, at the brouhaha involving Sir Christopher Nolan's latest film, The Odyssey . As most of us would expect, rave reviews followed the money. But I loved the dissenting voice of Emily Wilson. Her 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey was cited by the...

What if sleekit was sent as a supernatural helper. This is such a stretch, there is nothing less magical or mythical to me than sleekit, the little shit, however, I am hellbent on exercising my imagination in order to grow new synaptic connections and not get any dottier, if I can help it. So, sleekit as supernatural helper delivering a message, to be ignored at my peril. Lesson one; buy more mouse traps, the good ones with poison in them, and...

After a long time in the drawer, my novel Son of September is out. It's available now on Amazon for Kindle, with a paperback to follow. The summer of 1991, two foster children in South Florida start hearing a voice through equipment that should be dead. It tells them what's coming, and the day it arrives, and that they're the only two placed to stop it. What follows is nine years of getting them ready — and the slow question of who they become...

Robert Goddard has written a stack of books. None of which I’ve read or been aware of. He’s a bit hitter. Stephen King and Lee Child are among is fans. The Fine Art of Uncanny Predictions has multiple timelines, many characters and complicated plots. But we know as a reader it will be resolved and the world set to right. The What If of fiction is topical. What if Himeko Sato, a childminder and domestic service, known as the Kobe Sensitive,...

Just when you admit to costly and embarrassing dopamine-hitting behaviours, the gods of the underworld ( Algo and Rithm ) send you a messenger; Dan. Affirming that sad vindication, narcissistic behaviour was not ‘all in your mind’. (Just tried to find Dan using AI. AI is rubbish, we have absolutely no worries about it taking over the planet. On the other hand, if AI is learning by copying humans, it is currently focussing on some real dolts...

Free Course available through Open University – What is Poetry? Have you ever wondered what poetry actually is? No? Well why would you? But if you have ever pondered this in a sudden rush of existentialist angst, then the good news is that there is a free course available via the Open University that will attempt to answer the question. Whilst there, there is also the opportunity to get an overview of techniques built into the formation and...