Charlie Williams's Blog, page 18

Mangel in the paper

Here is an interview with me re the Mangel books in last Sunday's Birmingham Sunday Mercury. Nice that Blakey is not forgotten, though he is taking an extended break in a holiday camp called oblivion at the moment. When he comes back, rested and raring to knock heads, only the faithful (and those willing to be converted) will remain unmolested! Not that Blake's a molester of anything.

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

My radar must be pretty low. Seems this came out a couple of months back from Harper Perrenial - a re-titled US edition of 2009's PAINT A VULGAR PICTURE (Serpent's Tail). If you like The Smiths and you are up for finding out what kind of stories their songs have inspired in a bunch of writers, check it out. My one is, naturally, SWEET AND TENDER HOOLIGAN.

Pulp of the day: HORRIFIC

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Pulp ain't just about books. Comics weighed down the news-stands alongside their text-only cousins. Maybe they weren't quite as sleazy but they were just a gruesome and lurid in other ways. And one overriding vibe dominated them all - the weird. Saying that, I wasn't there, so how would I know? I'm just making this up - ignore me. But don't ignore these great covers from 1953 issues of HORRIFIC. As you can see, they used the same model for all of them!

A reading for Tuesday

The words of Royston Blake are a source of guidance and solace for many (possibly). In this extract from chapter 8 of Deadfolk, Blakey tells us what to do in those despairing moments when all we need inspiration and all we get is knock-backs...

I got The Good The Bad And The Ugly off the vid shelf and went to slot it in. But then an old tape caught my eye and I picked that up and all. ROCKY 3 it said on the front in my best handwriting. I slapped it in the player and slumped on the sofa.

I...

Pulp of the Day: THE BASTARD by Erskine Caldwell

First published way back in 1929, THE BASTARD was the debut of Erskine Caldwell, an author who went on to achieve fame and huge sales with TOBACCO ROAD and GOD'S LITTLE ACRE. THE BASTARD was banned upon publication and Caldwell's personal copies seized. Even by today's standards, the misogyny and casual racism makes this a rough read, but it is written with the pace and forward propulsion that pulp became known for in the thirty or so subsequent years (even if Caldwell himself isn't always as...

Cruel to be Kindle

Actually I'm not being cruel at all, I was just after an earth-shatteringly good pun, and there we have one, yes. So let's be clear on this: no one is being cruel.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Owners of a Kindle (or compatible device) in the UK can now get STAIRWAY TO HELL on their hand-held devices for a mere £3.80. Of course, the yanks have had it available for a few weeks now (for a mere $5.91) but we're all square now and no one's getting what others can't get. So no more bickering, OK?

Tal...

Dead Sales

Got an email from the late David Veronese this morning offering me cheap meds online. Is this the logical next step in a commercial world that has exhausted every sales channel - recruiting a sales force of the dead?

No more can we hope for oblivion in death - they'll have us working the tills at Tesco and Wal-Mart soon. But David Veronese, author of the overlooked noir classic JANA? I foresee a black market in the online identities of the dead. The bigger you are in life, the more your email...

Book Trailer

Alright, here's how book trailers should really be done (WARNING: contains guns):

Viva

No, not the classic Vauxhall of the 60s and 70s, I mean the Spanish viva, which is a word meaning "shit car", or something. Anyway, congrats to Spain on reaching the World Cup final. In honour of this unprecedented success, here is an extract from the end of chapter 9 of GENTE MUERTA (Spanish version of Deadfolk), translated back into English via google translate. (Regular readers will already be familar with the Russian/googlish version of this passage)...

As I got home, I put my favorite...

Hairway to Stell

You're allowed to promote yourself every now and then aren't you? Good...

Buy Stairway to Hell.

Oh, you want a reason? How about because it's better than that other book you were thinking of buying? And if self-praise isn't enough for you, check out this review snippet from David Maine at Popmatters:

This novel works wonderfully well on multiple levels. First, there's Rik himself, a man who is able to straight-facedly say things like, "I was someone who liked to remain cool and calm in his...