Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 382

Re:View – 'Endeavour'

I finally had a chance to catch up with 'Endeavour' after missing it on TV. I imagine it's been a puzzle for TV executives looking to wring more mileage from the Morse brand; 'Well, the 'Lewis' spinoff bombed', you hear them say, 'what about a prequel?' So this precursor to 'Morse' saw unlikeable ginger pipe-cleaner [...]

'Red Gloves' Nominated for Bram Stoker Award

I heard yesterday that 'Red Gloves' has been nominated for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection by the Horror Writers Association. This is a world event and the awards are announced at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 31. The full list of nominations is as follows:

Voices: Tales of Horror [...]

Gunfire For Beginners

I don't believe you have to kill a shark in order to write about it, Hemingway-style, but a writer needs a certain amount of experience in order to write about anything. I suppose that's not always true; HRF Keating's Inspector Ghote novels were written without him visiting India. But some writers end up writing about [...]

Things To Make & Do

Last night a friend told me that she watched in amazement as a two year-old operated an iPhone with dexterity. When I was a kid there was, of course, no internet, and I spent an insane amount of time with paper, cardboard, paints, glue, knives, gunpowder-style chemicals, thinners, balsa wood, plasticene, rubber cement, varnish and [...]

Site Undergoing Maintenance

WordPress is experiencing one of its recurring bouts of trapped wind this week and we're trying to sort out the uploading, so you may experience slow comment response until we've fixed it.

Site Undergoing Maintenance Today

WordPress is experiencing one of its recurring bouts of trapped wind this week and we're trying to sort out the uploading, so you may experience slow comment response until we've fixed it.

A US State Of Mind

When I was a kid I was incredibly influenced by the American mindset. It wasn't that I saw many Hollywood movies – I saw a few, but largely grew up with English comedies starring annoying idiots like Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom, who seemed to have a new film out every week.

Rather it was American [...]

An Open Letter To The Publisher

Dear Harper Collins,

I see that you are to pay Amanda Knox £4 million for her memoirs. Apparently she hired a top lawyer used by Barack Obama and George W. Bush to negotiate a book deal about being jailed in Italy for her part in the murder of Meredith Kercher, a British student.

I see that she [...]

Outsider Status

My brother Steven and I are similar in appearance but utterly opposite in personalities. He's married with two daughters and lives in the Kent countryside with dogs and chickens and fields full of foxes and deer. I suppose he'd describe himself as a liberal conservative. His wife is an addiction therapist. The family loves cars, [...]

Why People Can't Be Trusted

For your delectation we present the billionaire Charles Koch, a key financier of the Heartland Institute, which apparently works to undermine the established science on climate change.

The institute has built a reputation over the years for providing a forum for climate change deniers. It hosts lavish conferences of climate science doubters at expensive hotels in [...]