Time for my annual reading blog. Spent most of the last week above the clouds, at the edge of the El Teide national park in Tenerife. The photo above was taken just below the space observatory there, near the volcano that is the highest point in Spain. The clouds are so close that sometimes it feels like you can walk out onto them (see first photo). But when you find yourself driving through then, they become dull, wet mist. We didn’t take any CDs for our hire car, or I would have been playing my Calexico collection to death: felt like we were driving through a Western movie. I associate Tenerife with overbuilt resorts, and on our drive back to the airport we passed some…
My colleague, the talented fantasy novelist, Graham Joyce, died last year, and I helped clear his office (which we shared with Georgina Lock) a few weeks ago. There’s an event celebrating his life and work this Saturday, at 11am, as part of the States of Independence independent publishers festival in Leicester, which is always an interesting day. Graham was a true independent: free thinking, irascible on occasion, inspiring and, most of all, an original. I was, for a few years – technically – his line manager on the MA in Creative Writing that I used to run and still teach on. Graham preferred the word ‘boss’ and, boy, did he hate all bosses. We had our differences, but they had long dissolved into mutual warmth…
I don’t put all of my Nottingham Post reviews on here and, when I do, I generally don’t extend them much, but I was only given 300 words for Rumer last night, and felt like writing a bit more today, so here it is. Rumer has by far the best ballad voice in modern pop, a worthy successor to Dusty Springfield and Karen Carpenter. I’ve seen her four times, the first a casino showcase the week her debut album came out. The second, headlining Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, maybe a little before she was ready to, and, lastly, it was a pleasure to see her reformed band Stereo Venus open for St Etienne at Sheffield’s Leadmill in 2012. A lot’s changed since Rumer played the…
A slightly extended version of my Nottingham Post review. In the 18th century, a Welshman called John Evans crossed the ocean to America. He was searching for the mythical tribe of Prince Madoc, Welshmen who mated with native Americans and were the USA’s first European settlers. Two and a bit centuries on, his distant relative, lead singer of popular Welsh band The Super Furry Animals, has written a concept album about him. It’s also an app, and a movie, and a very enjoyable book. All of them are called American Interior. Gruff, in fur trapper’s hat, takes to the stage at five to eight to introduce a quirky ten minute film that gives the background. Then Gruff and his four piece band begin, bringing with…
My friend Don died a week ago today. We only met a handful of times, but were cyber-buddies for more than a decade. Internet friendships tend to involve carefully edited versions of ourselves that wouldn’t fit so firmly in real life, but, had we not lived 4,600 miles away from each other, I suspect that we’d have been good friends. He was very supportive of my fiction, sometimes posting rave reviews on Amazon under quirky aliases (ie Joey Kludge). Three years ago, when I dedicated the second Bone and Cane novel to Don and his crime loving wife, Jo-Anne, he was touchingly flattered and at first convinced I’d just sent them some sort of specially personalised proof copy. I met Don through a Usenet newsgroup…