Some Breaking Bad Cheers And Boos

Needless to say, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEADmy favourite were the existential episodes1. Cheer. The season finale. Glad they brought back all the old characters, tied up the loose ends and gave us the pleasure of seeing the really bad guys brought down and the not quite so bad guy (Walt) go out in a manner of his own choosing. And Jesse lived. And got away. Not quite as good as the fantastic Face Off season finale but fairly satisfying never the less. And...

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Page Proofs

I've been working on the page proofs for the third Sean Duffy novel, In The Morning I'll Be Gone. It's the school holidays at the moment and the house has been a little nuts so I took a cheap flight down to Hobart and then a bus down to Dover, Tasmania where I rented a cabin for a few days - which seemed like something a real writer would do. Dover is a pretty little out of the way town. There are a few fishermen, a few retirees and a few dodgy looking...

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Hikikomori, JG Ballard, Oblomov And The Deep Map

Have you ever heard of the Hikikomori? They are a subculture of young Japanese men who refuse to leave their bedroom. This is from the BBC story on the phenomenom: A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million....

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The Broken Windows Theory

According to Wikipedia: The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signalling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime.The back wall of the St Kilda Police StationThe theory was introduced in a 1982 article...

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How To Read Thomas Pynchon

I just started reading the most recent Thomas Pynchon novel Bleeding Edge last night. Its pretty good so far and I'll try and get a full review up here next week, but in the meantime I thought I'd reblog this little primer on Pynchon I came up with last year with Bleeding Edge now added to the list: ...Now don't ask me how I know but I know that a lot of you out there have never finished a Thomas Pynchon novel; you've tried but it's never quite...

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What To Do About The Troll Under The Bridge

When you're a writer you have to accept criticism. It goes with the territory and the best thing to do is grow a thick skin and shrug it off; but what do you do when you start getting attacked for racist, sectarian or political reasons? And what do you do when you are being trolled by a single person or a small group of individuals who havent even taken the trouble to actually read your books? ...About this time last year my old pal Stuart Neville...

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1000 Words A Day And Other Myths About Writing

Another myth about writing, good writing that is, is that you need to write a 1000 words a day, every day. Preferably before breakfast. This of course was and is the habit of a lot of great writers. Trollope and Somerset Maugham were the masters of getting their work done early in the morning and then taking the rest of the day off.  JG Ballard (my favourite British novelist of the twentieth century) would get the kids off to school, pour himself...

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Life Without The Boring Bits And Other Myths About Writing

So I spent the last week or so at the Brisbane Writer's Festival doing a few readings, a few panels and conducting some writers workshops (whenever I use the word 'workshop' in a non carpentry related context I always think of that Kingsley Amis line from Jake's Thing "If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.") I met many other writers, talked to readers, potential authors...

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A Walk Up Mount Coot-tha

At the Brisbane Writer's Festival yesterday I had a free morning and afternoon so on the advice of Trip Advisor I decided to hike to the top of Mt Coot-tha from my hotel in the South Bank. Google Maps estimated that this was a 2 hour walk and the ever optimistic Apple Maps said it was a 1.5 hour walk. In fact there and back took me six hours but I do have a bad knee so I'm not blaming the map aps. The view at the top of the mountain was worth it....

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The City And The City

This book kept coming up yesterday at the Brisbane Writer's Festival (where I am at the moment) as a possible direction for the crime novel in the future. (Where crime and sci-fi and noir meet.) I loved it so I thought I'd reblog this little review from 2 years ago:...China Mieville's The City And The City may be the most original crime novel I've read since Declan Burke's Absolute Zero Cool or possibly all the way back to James Ellroy's American...

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