Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 217

Should You Put Comedy In Your Drama?

Publishers see writers’ work falling into distinct categories. Unfortunately real life isn’t subdivided into genres, so we create false constructs – drama, comedy, romance, horror. The recent Channel 4 police series ‘Babylon’ only found its feet once it had decided whether it was funny or serious. It was billed as a comedy about the police […]

Why Blog Tours Work For Authors & Readers

I’m used to an interviewer saying ‘I haven’t had time to read your book’, but to have one say ‘I haven’t had time to look at your book jacket’ was a first. Journalists are now desk-jockeys with ten items a day to produce. Once they went out into the street to seek stories. Now all […]

Maternal Advice

A few days ago my mother passed away. It had not been as unexpected as her choice of music for the funeral (‘Happy Talk’ from ‘South Pacific’ – the musicals gene being carried on my mother’s side). We’re not a very materialistic family – I have a handful of photographs and memories, some of which […]

Perry In Seraglio (Part 2 of 2)

This is the concluding part of one of my earliest short stories, the first part of which ran yesterday in the ‘Reading & Writing’ section of my blog. “Half a hit, that can’t do you any harm.” “Acid always leaves me wasted the next morning.” “So what are you rushing to get up for tomorrow, […]

Perry In Seraglio (Part 1 of 2)

As my missing books get digitised this year, I’ll be posting some short stories from them. This is one of my very first tales, taken from ‘City Jitters’. I haven’t read it in decades and have no idea if it’s absolutely terrible or just slightly terrible. Read it by all means, but you have been […]

Dark-Adapted Eyes

With the death of Ruth Rendell, we have lost a giant of the literary crime world.Rendell got her first publishing deal with Hutchinson after after working as a journalist on a local paper, the Chigwell Times. She apparently left the job after writing up a local tennis club dinner without attending the event; she’d missed […]

Cities Shaped By Hollywood

If history is really just all the things you can remember (cf. ‘1066 And All That’), then our cities reflect an idealised Hollywood version in which the past is merged with fiction. In the 1950s London was still a direct reflection of its books and films (from Dickens to Ealing comedies), but was also shaped […]

Do Fascists Ever Think They’re Wrong?

I took this photograph in the headquarters of the secret police in Budapest. It makes you recall the Mitchell & Webb Nazi sketch; ‘Our caps have got skulls on them. Are we the baddies?’ Don’t Fascists ever wonder if they might be on the wrong side?Dictators come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing […]

London Gets A Test Case

It’s the same old story you’ve heard before, but this time there’s a twist; the Carlton Tavern in Kilburn was being considered for a listing at Grade II heritage status;Historic England said the pub was “remarkably well-preserved externally and internally”. So the owners, Tel Aviv-based development company CLTX, slipped in with the demolition after Westminster […]

My Treat

Some writers have a fag and a brandy when they finish a book. To celebrate finishing my Christmas book ‘Bryant & May: London’s Glory’ on schedule I went out and spent the pitiful royalties it might possibly earn in advance, treating myself to something I’ve always wanted; a 1920 reporter’s typewriter. Each key shifts […]