The Waiting Game
If you’re a writer you spend a lot of time just sitting around waiting. You wait to see whether your book has been accepted or rejected. You wait to see what your editor has to say about your work. You wait to see whether a project gets approved or you have to go back to the drawing board. Once you finish a project, you often sit around waiting for feedback. That is what I am currently doing now–waiting to see what my editor has to say about The Angel of Fire. Sometimes when I finish a book I need a Read more…
Just In Time Book Buying
When we moved to Scotland a few years ago, my family arrived with a suitcase and a carry-on bag each. When we moved back to Prague two years later, I shipped back a ton and a half of books. I had far more books in storage in various places. I am a hoarder of books and an impulsive buyer of them. It used to be that if I was in a bookshop and I saw a book I thought was interesting I would buy it. I am the sort of person who dreads being stuck with nothing to read. All Read more…
Kindles, Kindles Everywhere
Amazon has just announced a raft of new Kindles, including what looks like the first serious challenger to Apple’s iPad, the Kindle Fire. Before the Apple fans start howling me down, let me point out why I think this is the case; it has nothing to do with utility or the OS or how wonderful the iPad is or is not. It’s the price ($199) combined with access to Amazon’s awesome (and, yes, I do use some of them) cloud services. The Kindle is tied to Amazon’s e-commerce platform but that is no bad thing given the library of movies, Read more…
The Absence Note
I set myself the goal of writing 3 posts a week when I started this blog. My initial plan was to do them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Much to my surprise I have managed to keep this up for a few months now. Given the fact that my idea of a regular blog schedule used to be posting once a year whether I had anything to say or not, I think I have done pretty well. However, I am off to Gamesday on Friday– I know this is on Sunday but hitch-hiking from Prague takes time. Just kidding– I Read more…
The Ossuary at Sedlec
At the weekend my old friend Barry was in Prague. He wanted to see the Ossuary at Sedlec so we headed out there on what was the hottest September day I can remember. It’s been a long time since I visited the Bone Church, maybe 15 years, and I had forgotten quite how strange a place it is. King Ottokar of Bohemia sent Henry, the Abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec to the Holy Land in 1278. The holy man returned with what was believed to be earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. This made Read more…
The Best Laid Plans
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley. I expected to be on a train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, family in tow, right about now; this to be swiftly followed by four days of swanning around the capital of Germany, visiting museums, eating in nice restaurants, seeing friends and doing all the usual tourist stuff. Instead I am staring at the screen of the monitor in my office in the (admittedly delightful) city of Prague musing on the vagaries of life. How did it come down to this? Yesterday, Nurgle struck down my son Dan with some sort of Read more…
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