Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 342

Being A Professional Writer No.1: First Impressions

I thought I’d start an occasional column on this particular career choice, as there are some things I’m always asked or told.

Here’s something to bear in mind; your first splash sticks to you forever. I’ll go to my grave being described as ‘the author of ‘Roofworld’. In fact, it was the fourth book I wrote [...]

Goodbye, Time Out

From this…

…To this.

After years of falling sales amidst online competition, London’s first and best city guide, Time Out, finally switched to being a printed freesheet this week. The original Time Out magazine, with all kinds of listings for London including protests under ‘Agitprop’, was first published in 1968 by Tony Elliott, and had [...]

Getting Around The City

Mayor Ken Livingstone was the first to realise that London is primarily a walking/ public transport city, and attempted to rebalance cars and public transport according to the ratios in which they were being used in different boroughs (finding that in Brixton, say, that 90% of the traffic was passing through to another area) but [...]

New Podcast Interview Here

I was recently interviewed by Tim Haigh at home, talking about the origins of Bryant & May here…

In Which I Discover I Am Not Mediterranean

Back in London, having missed the ‘month’s rain in a day’ climate change event that killed a New Zealand tourist in Kew Gardens (the rain washed down a branch) I’ve gone straight into jumper-and-jeans mode after the 30 degrees-on-beach afternoon I spent in Barcelona yesterday, and have reluctantly realised that I will never be a [...]

Why You Can’t Find The Bryant & May Graphic Novel Yet

FYI ‘The Casebook of Bryant & May Vol. 1′ is being printed overseas and has to pass back through customs. As a result there’s been a delivery delay, but it will make its appearance in December, just in time to allow you to shave a little of the cost of that present you feel obliged [...]

A Bumper Year Coming: Start Building Bookshelves Now

I work on narratives for a couple of years and then everything suddenly comes out together, but this does seem to be shaping up as my bumper year. The Bryant & May books are, it seems, doing okay; they may never reach the giddy sales heights of a Lee Child or an SJ Watson but [...]

A Walk Through Barcelona

I thought it would make a change to stroll around Barcelona (taking care to avoid all the Gaudi buildings) as I went on my hunt for a key shop in the old town. What I got was rather less expected. I did find probably the best knife and scissor shop ever.

Everywhere you go, ephemeral modern [...]

Neglected Film No. 14 – ‘Squirm’

Jeff Lieberman was an interesting director for all the wrong reasons. His three great B-movie horrors, ‘Blue Sunshine’, ‘Just Before Dawn’ and this are really oddly acted. ‘Blue Sunshine’ has one of the strangest performances on film, with a seemingly hypnotised Zalman King (later of ‘Red Shoes Diaries’ fame – ‘Fifty Shades’ fans, you were [...]

Five UK TV Series Some Readers Might Have Missed

My antipathy towards television is well-documented, but it really wasn’t always this bad, honest. And there has always been a groundswell of basic television that simply morphs from one generation to the next. Viz;

What Old shows Turned Into

Opportunity Knocks – The X Factor
Come Dancing – Strictly Come Dancing
The Brains Trust – Newsnight
Watch With Mother [...]