Personally, I like my crime to have a more literary flavour than your average Agatha Christie affords , but Mark Mills could take a few tips from the 'Queen of Crime' with regard to plot development. Nobody in the library crime reading group liked this, a Dan Brown-style mystery/murder set around a villa in Florence.

The main problem is that the murders happened some years before, during wartime, so there's no sense of urgency, although it does have some bearing on who is the rightful heir to ownership of the property. It's not particularly well-written and the narrator is too immature and lacking in character for us to empathise.



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When they get to my age, some people like a good funeral. I prefer a nice book launch :

It's an excuse to visit a (usually) posh part of London
The bookshop ambience is convivial
The author gives a little talk about his/her next book
There's a chance to talk to friendly book-readers
Not least, there's free wine and nibbles




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The fanfare is to welcome our new Strictly, Derek Thompson, who has manfully stepped into the shoes of our beloved Rod, who is off to poetical pastures new. We’ll miss Rod’s wit and wisdom hugely, but Derek will be bringing his own brand to the party, as a comedy writer (among other things) and occasional coach. So, on behalf of all Strictly followers, we decided to plonk the new boy down in the hot seat, direct a bright light into his eyes, and interrogate…er, that is, interview him:


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This is another one I saw but failed to blog about at the time. I went with an ex-colleague who still lectures at the same local South London College I left in 2004. Even so, she gasped at some of the language.I thought it was pretty toe-curling,too, accustomed as I am to the grittiness of some fringe theatre shows. It reminded me a bit of a film called Romper Stomper, (1992) but maybe it was a coincidence that the playwright was Australian.


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I must catch up with my blog
I must catch up with my blog
I must catch up with my blog

Something I never learn: I can't be out and in at the same time. When I'm at home I'm usually sitting in front of the laptop, but having made the review deadline I'm caught by some other attention-grabbing event. Maybe I should cancel my subscription to Time Out.

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Had Lewis Carroll and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn been partners in building design they might well have come up with Canada Water Library. In fact it was designed by Piers Gough, and opened in November 2011. It's said to have solved the problem of how to build a library on too small a site, as if the fact of a new library were not miracle enough in a time of widespread closures. Inside, it was warm and cosy; not at all like the set for a Murnau film.

The U3A ‘Day for Aspiring, Self-published and Published Writers’ attracted some 40 enthusiasts, from London and other regions. I know because I was i/c of ticking off names.


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Yesterday's lessons went well but spring fever has officially hit the Upper Peninsula and attendance is falling off as a result. We celebrated International Poem In Your Pocket Day at the music store and...Read More Here

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There was a good turn-out at Manor Park Library, and I spotted some reading-group members among the standing-up throng. They should have come earlier, I thought. But they'd been vulturing in the adjoining room, where the giveaway books were laid out. By the time I got in there it was almost bare. Never mind, I enjoyed the delicious home-made snack - canapes, they've been called at other minglings I've attended. Especially memorable were tiny jerk vegetable patties and spiced mini potato- cakes. Shame I was off the wine that day, because there was plenty of that.


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I’ve just heard that my novel, The Making of Her, will be published this Friday. Even as I write this, it’s at the printers being turned into A Real Book. I’ve never had a baby, but I guess this is the nearest I’ll come to it. So please bear with me, because I’m going to blog about its story. Not its plot, but the story of how it came into being.


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A couple of posts ago, in Nothing but the truth, I found myself saying

new writers and unconfident writers, paradoxically, seem to gravitate towards... well at one evening of short fiction readings, nine out of the ten stories read were centrally, chiefly, about death. And competitions sifters say the same. I used to think crossly that it was just a cheap thrill - some instant gravitas - but I'm a slightly nicer person these days.

and a blog reader got in touch, because she's neither new nor unconfident, but often writes about death. Is it really such a Bad Idea? Such a marker of a writer who doesn't (yet) know what he or she is doing?

So I raised my head from the sum I was doing, about how old my main (orphaned!) character's long-dead beloved would be if he'd lived, to say the following:

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