So I finally got to see the Fun Lovin’ Criminals perform live. Though the fact that I saw them in Navan made it a bit surreal – especially during ‘The King of New York’, when Huey Morgan had the Naaaaavan crowwad chanting ‘Free John Gotti’ over and over again. Did they know Gotti was a gangster and a murderer…
Anyone who knows me, or has read any of my books, will know that I have an interest in unusual machines – well, anything unusual really, but machines too. Here are a few that have grabbed my attention lately. One of our Weird-Wide News roving reporters sent me this link – a bit of film about a New Zealand…
I’ve just received my author copies of ‘Strangled Silence’ on audiobook, ably narrated by Clare Corbett. This recording is published by WF Howes on their Clipper label. It’s a CD in this case, but it will soon be available on their excellent Playaway device, an mp3 pre-loaded on a dedicated player that you can borrow from libraries. Here’s the…
Introducing the Armouron Knights.
I’ve had an ongoing love-hate relationship with Apple for many years. The affair started back in the early days of my illustration and design career. It was a time when the print industry was moving away from print-ready artwork. At that point, every aspect of a page design had to be laid out on a board and photographed to…
Why is it so hard to make money from something that so many people love so much? What is it about books that they put those who love them most through the mill? It can be hard to love books sometimes. I learned the other day that the Hughes & Hughes bookshop chain is closing down – in fact…
‘The Water Babies’, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s surprise offering and ‘100 Bullets.
To recap from Part 1 (of my ambitious and epic blog trilogy) what a publisher traditionally does for a writer is: first, they take that story on. That approval is, in itself, a recognition that the story is of a reasonable quality. Then they hone it into something they can sell, produce the printed matter and distribute it to…
The Stand and Deliver seminar and bad news from Mercier Press.
The issue of what, and more importantly how children will read in the future is a battle – not just for hearts and minds, but also for attention spans. In this, the second of this three-part post, I’ll outline how I believe this change in reading will shape publishing as we know it, and how those of us working…