New translation commission…
If Cyril Dewitt’s first novel is anything to go by, it’s safe to say the rumours of Grace Kelly’s death are greatly exaggerated…
As the journal of our narrator, part-time serial killer and self-confessed braggart, Clément Justeclaimant (what were his parents thinking?!) unfolds, we learn that he’s a top-drawer Paris perfumer by day, and recreational serial [...]
The day the music crashed out a 3rd storey window
Apologies to all those who have been asking for an update on my cello-out-the-window project. The event itself took place a couple of weeks ago and since then life has rather got in the way of blogging. I had been waiting until I had a complete video montage to show you of the [...]
Why I’ll be throwing my new cello out the window…
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that throwing this cello off a roof, or out of a window, made a lot of sense.
Bravo Martha
Ever since her eponymous debut album, Martha Wainwright has always held pole position on my iPod. Everything from her haunting, lingering voice, to her painfully raw candour, appeals to me. Plus, she’s from Montreal, which invariably strikes me as a good thing.
Novel Locations in Paris
Writing a novel is all about choices. What to include, what to cut, where to set it, who to live vicariously through. We’re just back from a short-break to Paris during which, among other things, I had a chance to revisit some of the choices I’d made in my crime novel This He Did Without Remorse.
Plot Outline for ‘Blood Harmonies’
The Quartet was born when three chance pieces of information fused in my head. The first came when I happened to turn on Radio 4 near the end of programme in which the leader of a string quartet (sadly, I didn’t catch his name) was talking about the process his ensemble were going through to find a new First Violin, and how a psychologist had asked to observe.
Why set a Bosnia novel in Paris?
When I started writing This He Did Without Remorse several people asked me why I’d chosen to set it in Paris. Since much of the plot turns on the fallout from events which happened in Bosnia, wouldn’t Sarajevo have been a more obvious choice of location? Perhaps. Except the book isn’t really about Bosnia, it’s [...]
