littorally

We managed to wrong a few rights

The collected wisdom of Newcastle’s new manager.

Tags: circus, comedy, Football, Newcastle

If songs were lines in a conversation, everything would be fine

Swiping this meme from John Rickards and Steve Mosby:

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every category, type the song that?s playing

??????????-

Opening Credits:
Blinder by the Hour - The Triffids

Waking Up:
Four Kicks - Kings of Leon

First Day At School:
Mockingbirds - Grant Lee Buffalo

Falling In Love:
Blue Valentines - Tom Waits

Fight Song:
I’m In Love With A Girl - Big Star
(Maybe not the best soundtrack for a fight, but there you go)

Breaking Up:
It’s A Man’s World - James Brown

(Hmm)

Prom night:
Postcards from Italy - Beirut

Life:
Tame - The Pixies

Mental Breakdown:
Mr Pharmacist - The Fall
(Oh, the serendipity)

Driving:
Suds and Soda - dEUS

Flashback:
Perfect - John Cale

Getting back together:
Snow Come Down - Lori Carson

Wedding:
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads
(Aw, that’s quite sweet)

Birth of Child:
Scattered Black and Whites - Elbow

Final Battle:
The Killing Moon - Pavement

Funeral Song:
Twin Layers of Lightning - The Go-Betweens

Final Credits:
Grace Cathedral Hill - The Decemberists

Tags: Music

FX: Tumbleweeds

Hello. Been a while, I know. I blame Christmas and holidays and other such distractions. Yeah, I know it’s nearly the end of January. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks floating on a soft fluffy cloud of some really rather good painkillers, on account of the ruptured disc at the bottom of the spine deciding to take industrial action by holding a sit-in on a nerve. At the hospital on Monday to see the spinal surgery people: four years ago when this first happened, I decided against an operation, but this time I might go for it, if offered, as I am bored of ‘managing’ it, and wondering when it’s going to go next.

Am still stuck in a rut with plans for the next novel. Have a dozen ideas, but don’t like any of them enough to get excited about it, or to feel that they’ve got enough in them to go the distance across 90,000 words.

In news elsewhere, Mark Lawson is not keen on the idea that you have to have chemically-induced brain damage in order to lower yourself to writing crime fiction.

Every writer struggles with point of view now and then; third person omniscient can be a particular challenge.

The opposite of shoplifting? Shopdropping.

Congratulations to Olen Steinhauer. If you haven’t read any of Olen’s novels yet, do yourself a favour. They’re fantastic.

Are you a half-crazed liquorish nonagenarian? Michael Berry offers five lessons that writers can learn from HP Lovecraft (link courtesy of John Baker).

And finally, surely some of the finest examples of the wax dummy maker’s art.

Tags: Crime fiction, half-crazed liquorish nonagenarians, sciatica, shopdropping, Writing