🇺🇸-born, 🇬🇧-based, novelist. Latest novel, "Tomorrow The Grace," out now.
Often sex finds itself treated as a subject that can somehow be seen in isolation. It is as if sex is somehow something that happens in a separate sphere and is unnecessary to a story despite the act itself being possibly life-altering.
Read more "Sex And Sensitivity"
There is no reasonable doubt whatsoever that U.S. voters want Joe Biden to become president, and from today he shall be for four years…
Read more "“Biden For America”"
No matter how many books you have completed, no matter if readers have said what you write is good or even excellent (if you are lucky), you are never quite sure of where you stand with the current manuscript.
Read more "With The Current"
She opens with recollections of being a sixteen year old American – from Pittsburgh – who finds herself living (due to Dad’s job) for a year in the mid-1970s in São Paulo, Brazil…
Read more "“The Memory Keeper”"
Well, here we are again at the crossroads of life.
Read more "Friday Digest: 15 January 2021"
Every genre has politics. From sci-fi to romance and then some, show me any fiction and I will point out the politics in it. “Politics” is inescapable and unavoidable.
Read more "The Inescapable"
In a 1999 embassy visit – my most memorable one – I met a middle-aged consular officer who probably had a gazillion years of education and was trying to sort out various problems. Mine was that the UK Home Office (like Homeland Security in the U.S.) misplaced my passport. (Don’t ask.)
Read more "Foreign Relations: Now And Then"
He summoned up a mob to invade the Capitol in looking somehow to disrupt the final congressional certification of the November 3 election of his successor.
Read more "The January 6th Insurrection"
One and two were red flags, and three was a personal turn off. From just those introductory pages I knew the book would not be for me. And I felt awful for feeling that way.
Read more "When That Book Is, You Feel, Uh, Not Great"
It appears there will be lots more STAY HOME viewing as a new national anti-COVID “lockdown” is in force across the U.K. again.. Netflix, etc., are fine. But social media will again also be where we might turn for some interaction.
Read more "If You Are Home, Too (Again)… Hello!"
The Chaperone is a reasonably entertaining film and a decent way to pass 1 hour and 50 minutes in the pandemic. However, if you want to LEARN about the real Louise Brooks and of the history of that time please read a history book…
Read more "“Norma” And “Louise”"
The major reason I am a writer is my (now late) uncle (a crime novelist who died in 2015) urged me to give it a go. I would never have had the courage to do so if not for him.
Back in the 1990s he began to get on at me to write a novel…
Read more "Winding Down Another Year"
It is a clichéd and frenzied near-panto that reminded me often of a high school stage production that is always moments from turning into a “Saturday Night Live” skit. For an hour, I sat there stunned: I could NOT understand the praise for it.
Read more "That Mis-Imagined Era"
Yes, we have FaceTime and such; but in terms of in person contact we may be now in much the same position as they were in “1799.”
Read more "“I cannot wait to see you again”"
This may be a difficult season of the year for many even in good times. However, 2020 is perhaps the worst Christmas season in decades. For many more people than usual it is indeed the absolute worst Christmas of their lives.
Read more "If This Is Your Worst Of Times"