Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 145

Celebrating 20 E-Books: ‘Spanky’

So there I am, standing in the shop window of a bookshop in Bluewater shopping mall of all places, next to a gigantic man dressed in leather stockings, a thong, wings and size 11 court shoes. It was my own fault. I had wanted to write a novel that updated the Faust legend. I thought; […]

Brass Monkeys II

We arrived in Oslo in heavy fur coats, only to find it warmer than London. This is where we remember that the UK is further north than anyone realises or is prepared to acknowledge. We are by nature more Viking, German and Scandinavian that anything else. Oslo was full of hipsters in shorts and girls […]

I’m Moving To A Five-Post Week

Thanks to those who offered me advice about social media, and the time it eats up in my job. I think the best way to deal with this is by making a small change. Due to Brexit and rising prices, I shall be switching to a five-post working week online. (Well, that’s what everybody else […]

Brass Monkeys

The boiler broke down last weekend, and I remained wrapped in layers to type. I detest the damp and cold – not ideal for someone born in the Northern hemisphere. So for my trip tomorrow I think I must have gone mad. How did I ever get talked into this? My ideal holiday is a […]

London Endures

The London Mayor Sadiq Khan is right; terror attacks are part and parcel of living in a big city and you have to be vigilant to combat the dangers. Donald Trump Jr  just launched an attack of his own on Kahn (on Twitter, this presidency’s preferred mode of communication for the conducting of ill-informed dialogue). Kahn […]

The Park Gates Are Open!

‘Bryant & May: Wild Chamber’ is here at last – it’s my biggest B&M novel and took a little longer to write than usual because of the huge amount of research I did. However I ended up discarding about 80% of it, something I nearly always do. Not every novel has a lot of research, […]

The Voyage Of The Lucky Dragon

One of the joys of spending hours creeping around secondhand bookshops is the array of unknown stories that get put in your way. I was not aware of Ralph Lapp’s book about this dark episode in Japanese/US history. On Friday 22 January 1954 the Lucky Dragon set sail from a port south of Tokyo and […]

More On Overlapping Time

In my ongoing look at overlapping time, here’s a rather lovely example. A singer who has a new album out at the moment first sang when Sigmund Romburg had a hit with The Drinking Song. Dame Vera Lynn was seven when she started, and she’s 100 now. The ‘Forces Sweetheart’ is to have her face […]

Should Writers Be Topical?

Anyone with half a brain will know that we live in extraordinary times, but most writing doesn’t reflect the present. Part of the reason is that for fiction writers the gestation period is so long. The distance from the idea to the final version of the book, then to finding the publisher, and then to […]

How Much Time Do You Spend On Social Media?

Last night I spoke with a writer who does no social media at all. Every morning I start my day by doing two hours of social media work. I love writing this site, hate Facebook because there’s simply too much on it to cope with, and enjoy Twitter because I like reading the articles people […]