Freedom From The Mundane

Image: Metro

A day of two fascinating halves. On the one one hand I had the day job, which was busy and thick with challenge, and on the other was the live coverage of the stand-off between the police and the killer gunman running loose around Northumbria.
I won’t go into the day job much; lots to [...]

July 10th, 2010 | Tags: 24-hour news, clothes, Day Job, fugitive gunman, GDR's, media, poems, Poetry, Raoul Moat, Shopping, television, TV journalism, Writing | Category: Day Job, Edinburgh: the City & the Festivals, Editorial Comment, Film & TV, Poetry, Writing | Comments (1)

Image: Orhan Tsolak

I can’t believe the rumours that the Observer might be going to shut its doors. I first picked up the scent of this from David Mitchell via Twitter, and it seems to have some substance to it. Despite circulation not falling, unlike some other newspapers, the possibility that the paper might be closing [...]

August 6th, 2009 | Tags: baby sitting, dogs, Fleet Street, journalism, journalists, media, newspaper, Observer, print, Reading, Swine Flu, the press, Writing | Category: Animals, Books, Day Job, Food, Drink, and Bevvy, Publishing and Marketing, Reading, Writing, Writing Process | Comments (2)

Image: Hitchster

When I typed the words, “I have a book coming out this week” in yesterday’s blog post, something happened inside me – I got my first blast of nerves. It’s gone away now that the promo merry-go-round has begun, but I find I get excited about it in waves instead. I suspect when the [...]

June 2nd, 2009 | Tags: blog tour, book marketing, computers, friends, GDR, I.T., media, Netbook, photographer, Photography, press, promotion, Samsung NC10, Stella, writers | Category: Books, Edinburgh: the City & the Festivals, Fiction, I.T., Internet, Photography, Publishing and Marketing, Writing Process | Comments (3)

Image: Aussie Gall

We had 7 inches of snow forecast last night. When I started coming round from my slumber I was shivering, so naturally assumed that snow had indeed fallen. Had it heck. The fuse that handles our heating had blown during the night. Not only that, but the fuse that handles half the lighting [...]

December 4th, 2008 | Tags: blackout, electricity, Evening Times, Fiction, Freelance, freezing, journalists, lecky, media, newspaper, NUJ, perss, power, power cut, snow, Sunday Herald, The Herald, Weather, Writing | Category: Editorial Comment, Fiction, Freelance, Glasgow, Publishing and Marketing, Scotland, Writing | Comments (2)

Let’s get the BIG news out of the way first – at 19:18 GMT I completed the first full draft of Greener is the Grass. I totally messed up the 40k word count estimate and was trying to match it no matter what happened, so I forgot about it and followed the story au naturelle, [...]

September 28th, 2008 | Tags: Editing, Fiction, Guardian, Interview, Jamaica, media, NaNoWriMo, newspapers, novella, press, Reading, Writing | Category: Editorial Comment, Reading, Writing, Writing Process | Comments (2)