September 2010
1 post
THE SATURDAY BOY: Passing out Wolf Tickets ... →
Needle. Wolf Tickets. Ray Banks.
That’s all you need to know, right?
saturdayboy:
Oh, hello.
If you’re here, I’m assuming it’s because you’ve heard the news that Your Humble Narrator will be staining the next three issues of Needle with a novella/novel type thing called Wolf Tickets.
I know, what a shocker, eh?
Bit of background for you: back in the good old…
August 2010
1 post
“TOM WAITS EDITS MOJO 200! It’s MOJO’s 200th birthday! And who better to...”
– Covers
July 2010
1 post
Ning Now Charging To Run CrimeSpace - CrimeSpace →
As you all may already know, Ning, the company whose servers and software power CrimeSpace, has decided to start charging for the service. You can read the previous discussions on this here and here, but it all comes down to this: CrimeSpace will continue to run on the Ning Network and I am happy to pay for the service.
June 2010
2 posts
Nimrod, the World’s First Gaming Computer |... →
Tristan Donovan, a U.K. writer who has contributed to Edge and The Guardian, has just released a new book called Replay: The History of Video Games.
While other history books have covered the topic, Donovan’s 500-page tome is the most exhaustive and wide-ranging history I’ve read. It’s especially notable for its extensive treatment of the history of European game development, which has been...
May 2010
7 posts
Vince Keenan: Book: Memory, by Donald E. Westlake... →
Hopefully Vince doesn’t mind me sharing this. But I’m half way through my second David Goodis novel and this feels like a perfect followup.
The story behind Memory is fascinating; Westlake wrote it in the early 1960s but because it was, in the words of his friend Lawrence Block, “a lengthy serious existential novel by an unknown writer,” it failed to find a publisher. Block, one of...
Back On CrimeSpot.net
Because it rocks. Because you want to read everything on it. And if I didn’t get back there, no one would be reading this either. That’s how much it rocks.
CrimeSpot. Sing it. CrimeSpot!
Blood, sweat and years: Getting fit at 40 →
When did the midlife crisis become so sweaty? As my late 30s do a disappearing act, I thought it would be the time to cut loose with inappropriate cars, clothes and scalp carpet. Instead, the majority of my nearest and dearest have taken to exercise, and I don’t mean walking the dog via the pub. I mean serious, athlete-level training regimens and born-again fitness zeal. I now know more...
The poetry of pop →
“The consumers of music are definitely less lyric-literate these days,” he says. ”We live in a cut-up, fast-paced world now. But I still think songwriters are as interested in lyrics as they ever were.
”The lyric is a weapon and as a songwriter you have a few of them: the melody, the sound, the voice. But every songwriter knows if you have a good lyric, it’s an...
1 tag
Guitar Gear: Catalinbread Formula No. 5
To keep myself writing more regularly this time round I’ve decided to annoy you all with posts on guitar gear. Guitars, effects, amps, you name it. Expect these to be extremely sporadic, though, as there isn’t a lot of gear that actually inspires me to write.
This effects pedal does, so we start here.
Catalinbread’s take on raunchy tweed is out and I have myself one of them,...
2 tags
Spinetingler Has Given Me A Goal
This last week saw me creating this blog, joining Twitter and linking my Facebook account to all these online social shenanigans. My reason for doing all this was to ‘get back out there’ in the world of crime fiction.
And the universe has given me what I have asked for:
** Please note: Spinetingler Magazine has reopened to fiction submissions as of May 13, 2010. **
...
2 tags
David Goodis: About Bloody Time
It’s only been five years since I started reading crime fiction seriously, let alone at all. Seeing as I only read about twenty books a year, all I’ve been able to do is dip my foot into the waters of the crime fiction ocean. My toes have been wet by hard-boiled private investigations, serial killer thrillers, rom-com bounty hunters, police procedurals and mafioso misadventures. But...
Hatadi's New Home
Looking over at my well-worn and semi-retired Blogger blog, it’s painfully easy to notice that I haven’t posted in almost one year. And before that, the posting was pretty damned infrequent.
I could blame work, moving house, travelling overseas, not writing, not making music, spending too much time playing computer games, drinking too much absinthe … but only one of these would...