You can call me a little sad if you want to, but I have established a routine when - exactly as now - I'm having my breakfast: check my Author dashboard on Goodreads.com to see if there are any new reviews / scores for my books, and, when appropriate, update what I'm reading, like yesterday; … Continue reading Is it wrong to want to know who’s buying your books?
Extraordinary. Jon McGregor's "If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things" is a little bit like watching someone gradually pull an elastic band harder and harder. You know at some point it will snap, but all you can do is watch and feel the tension increase. When it does finally break, the relief is almost palpable. In … Continue reading “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things”
Today I have published a new paperback version of "The Big Frog Theory". The new edition is published under the Coverstory books imprint, and should be available via a range of on-line retailers and by order through bookshops. The format and layout of old version - being one of the first of my books published … Continue reading The Big Frog Theory – new edition
Having recently finished the first draft of my new novel - "At Maunston Quay" - and having drawn a line under what may well prove to be my next collection of poetry - I am in editing mode again. It's a strange time in many ways. I like it because it's a period filled with promise, … Continue reading Some kind of biorhythm: writing, revising, publishing…
A week ago I was having a bad time with two books. Funny how they turned out. One I gave really disliked and gave up on, the second - M.L.Rio's "If We Were Villains" - I not only managed to see through to the end, but eventually ended up quite liking. The original problem? After … Continue reading “If We Were Villains”
If you are going to be even remotely honest, you have to eschew reputation - and reputation as a poet is something Andrew McMillan is gaining in the UK. For my part, however, his collection "playtime" left me remarkably cold. So cold, in fact, that I have just given up reading it, unable to see … Continue reading “playtime”
Not me personally, you understand. Just in terms of what I'm reading. I have two books on the go - one fiction, one poetry - and when it comes to writing my short reviews here, I can already see they will pose a problem. I'm not naive or vain enough to think what I say … Continue reading Having a bad week…
I'm a snob. There, I said it. I have a prejudice towards books; real, physical - wonderful! - things you can hold in your hands, flick through, weigh, sniff... Books are one of the vessels through which people open doors onto the world, their ideas, their souls. I love books. Which means - doesn't it? … Continue reading Wake up and smell the Kindle…
I have just read Ted Hughes' poem "Chaucer" from the volume 'Birthday Letters', a vast collection of pieces written for / about Sylvia Plath. The thing that struck me about "Chaucer" - indeed as it has about many of the poems I have thus far read in the book - is that they read like … Continue reading Would this be acceptable – or theft?
As a writer, Natasha Pulley's "The Bedlam Stacks" annoys me - because it's so good. As a reader, I love it. I hope that contradiction is permissible... She has a talent of effortlessly taking you on a journey in such a way as to let you know that you are safe in her hands. Her … Continue reading “The Bedlam Stacks”
Ian Gouge - Writer 