Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 149

Hitchcock & De Palma: Stop Making Sense

I’m always on the lookout for anything that can help writers understand how to create reader interest, and very often I find it in studies of film. Film is in many ways analogous to books. Watching the excellent documentary ‘De Palma’ last night I was struck by something the director Brian De Palma said about […]

On London Bookshops

Mooching early through central London in the rain turns up several unwelcome surprises; the number of rough sleepers (they can’t sleep in Chinatown, where Westminster has allowed massive homeless spikes), the sheer volume of care-in-the-community babblers about, and the roads/buildings being demolished on such a vast scale that Soho has effectively been wiped off the […]

Celebrating 20 E-Books: ‘Rune’

It came as a shock to me to open my battered copy of ‘Rune’ and find that the world of Bryant & May was already fully formed in my second novel. The characters are developed (although the idea of Bryant having ‘dinner with a beautiful woman’ is harder to see now) and there’s mention of […]

Dying To Be In London

I just picked up Jim Dyson’s excellent book on the gravesites of London’s most notable permanent residents. Paris may have Oscar Wilde and Los Angeles has Marilyn Monroe but we have…the musical dancing grave of Joseph Grimaldi (see columns passim). But we do have a few more famous notables in central London around in the […]

Behind the Net Curtains Something Lurks…

  Some authors seem to work forever below the waterline. They can be successful in their own right without impinging on the consciousness of an attention-deficient public, whose recall-rate of viral videos featuring inadequate Russian driving skills is far above works by novelists who bring a lifetime of experience to their craft. Equally, critics will […]

The Illustrated London News

It certainly wasn’t ‘Hello’ magazine. ‘Probably no paragraph of the Queen’s speech gave such unalloyed satisfaction to the vast majority of her subjects as that which touched upon her relations with the United States of America.’ This was the news that an agreement to arbitrate in the matter of the Alabama claims had been reached. […]

Celebrating 20 E-Books: ‘Calabash’

They’ve been remastered and have out into the electronic atmosphere, so to celebrate this massive backlog of 20 e-books finally being made available – a project I began with designer Martin Butterworth over two years ago – I’m going to occasionally publish an excerpt from the range. Here’s a scene from the novel ‘Calabash’ in […]

Script Ends: Goodbye Alan, And Thank You

It’s pretty clear to me now that without Alan Simpson and his writing partner Ray Galton I would not have started writing. I first found them listed on the back of an LP (that’s cool vinyl, kids – oh, you’re interested now aren’t you?). It was Tony Hancock’s first album, ‘This Is Hancock’ (I should […]

Meet The Neo-Victorians

In order to research my next novel, I’m having to recall a time I don’t remember. It’s set in September 1969 at the end of flower power and freedom, when Charles Manson was stealing headlines from the first man on the moon. I was at school and out of the loop for the whole Swinging […]

A Letter From Barcelona

It’s 9 am. I’m on the balcony in my dressing gown, doing my ‘tired face’. Got a cup of tea and a cuerno in my hands. Clear blue sky, empty street, but there’s something in the air. I can hear distant shouting and then – singing. Some children run past at full pelt carrying flags. […]