The long slow death of ‘social media’
A couple of days ago I was on the bus from Piazzale Roma to Marco Polo airport. In front of me were a young couple, gleefully passing between them an iPad of the photos they’d taken in Venice over the previous few days. It was all so public those
Venice in January
Just spend a delightful week in Venice talking about this year's Venice Noir festival for one thing. And yes it will be big, so look out for some news and dates for events next November, with some familiar international names and panels in both English and Italian. January
Bye bye Twitter... the Nazi salute really seals it for me
I joined Twitter in 2007 when it was tiny and no one knew what it was for. Over the last eighteen years it's provided me with lots of interesting friends, countless fascinating facts and threads, free advice from helpful strangers and the odd nutcase who needed to be
Fishbourne Literary Festival April 5, 2025
I'll be opening the festival in the beautiful setting of Fishbourne Church in Sussex on Saturday morning at 10 am. It's quite a programme, with a great range of authors. Hope to see some of you there. I'll be talking about the background to
We don’t need another hero
I'm wary of heroes, modern ones anyway. The classical type are fine. They’re flawed, miserable, doomed creatures, nothing like the too-perfect marionettes you meet on occasion today. If you’re thinking about writing about one of the latter – you know the kind, great teeth, perfect hair, indefatigable,
Revising a manuscript – three strikes and you’re out
You’ve been wanting to finish that book for ages. Finally, you’ve just typed the last page. Yippee! Now what? Do you reveal your MS to the world, or at least an agent or editor you’d like to woo? No. By which I mean NO! The key to
The shaky start to my semi-illustrious career
Thirty years ago I was sitting in business class on a JAL flight from London to Tokyo, a glass of champagne in hand, a fat stack of three hundred or so A4 printout pages on the table in front of me. They amounted to the latest and, I’d decided,
Pick a name, any name
How do you decide what your characters in your story are called? Carefully, I hope. If your book works, that choice will live with you for years. My stories usually take place in foreign countries and often with local characters. My first published book, finished thirty years ago this year,
Now on Bluesky...
Like lots of other people I've grown disheartened by the state of Twitter (not calling it X). I've been there since 2007 and made lots of interesting contacts and read many fascinating posts. But... well, we all know what's happening. I won't
The story behind When The Germans Come
My latest tale may come as a bit of surprise to readers. It’s set not in Italy but a few miles from my home in England. In the town of Dover, a funny place that’s always sat at the edge of the country it seems to me, misunderstood,
