Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 151

Black Humour Is A Sign Of Intelligence

  That’s what a new study in the journal Cognitive Processing has found; intelligence plays a key role in the appreciation of black humour. A team of Viennese researchers discovered that a group with the highest sick humour appreciation and comprehension scored top marks in verbal and non-verbal IQ tests. They were better educated, and scored lower for aggression and […]

When Readers Meet Writers

As our careers progress writers should stay in touch with readers more. It’s common sense to find out what people like or dislike. But what’s the best way? Well of course there’s social media, but you don’t really get beyond the formal politeness of writing a letter online (unless you’re on this site or you […]

Stretching Credibility

A comment from Robin yesterday prompts this consideration; when does a book stretch credibility too far for you? On TV that moment is known as Jumping the Shark, after the Fonz in ‘Happy Days’. On film it’s called Nuking the Fridge, after the fourth Indiana Jones film. What is it in books? Personally, I find […]

The Truth About Q&As

It’s always surprised me that the first question I get asked when someone mets me is; ‘Do you write under your own name?’ It seems a peculiar choice over ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ or ‘What do you most like writing about?’ (which I never get asked). I attend a lot of media events […]

Guilty Pleasures

An article in the London Times asking their writers to name their guilty pleasures prompts me to consider my own. I like to think that over time I have become entirely immune to passing trends and fashionability (which explains my T-shirts). It means that such pleasures are no longer even ‘guilty’ but pleasures, period. These […]

‘Open The Fridge Door, Hal.’

How did this happen? My home is now sentient. I feel like Julie Christie in ‘Demon Seed’. My bathroom scale calls me up to nag me for not having done enough steps. My oven, fridge, dishwasher and microwave all beep at different times to warn me about over/under-heating. My TV and sound system are only […]

Is The Arthouse Film Dead?

London has opened more arthouse film venues in the last two years than it has for decades. There’s the excellent Piccadilly Picturehouse, the Curzon chain, the Everyman chain, the Electric, the wonderful Regent Street Cinema and many others are now screening live theatre events – so why would arthouse be in any danger? Because we’ve […]

That’s Nearly All The E-Books – What’s Next?

The e-book arrival last week of my ‘Devil Quartet’ of short story collections,Personal Demons, The Devil in Me, Old Devil Moon and Demonized brings the new e-book total to 17, with just three more to go,Red Gloves Volumes 1 and 2, and the original collectionFrightening, making a nice round 20 volumes. Everything else is currently […]

Just My Type

Oh you poor Snowflakes, forever complaining about your download speeds – do you have ideas what we Base Dates* had to go through? It began with the desire to write something, anything. I started with a black biro, never blue because blue was for private letters, and I wanted to draw too. Soon I was […]

The Moving Theatre

As reader Brian was asking about the old Players’ Theatre, I dug out this article on it. Apologies if you’ve read it before, but I’ve added some new material. The Charing Cross Theatre is underneath the station in a railway arch. Too large to be called a fringe venue, yet not quite big enough to […]