I found myself saying something utterly woeful the other day. I was describing a book I’d read to a friend. “I think it’s for men,” I said to her. “I mean, it was good. But it didn’t grab me. So I think it was probably written for men.” To my credit, I whacked myself in…
Month: September 2014
Self-Publishing: It’s Not For Christmas
There’s a reason that the ‘airport novel’ or ‘airport paperback’ was defined as category of books all by itself. It’s the same reason that there are large bookshops in airports, and why newspapers publish pathetically useless holiday reading lists. It’s because on holidays, everyone reads more than usual: regular, occasional and infrequent readers alike. And…
Tark And Mara Do Fashion… And Scottish Independence
Mara was spitting fire. “Please stop spraying lighter fluid on that naked flame, my little pyronymphomaniac,” said Tark, lounging against the Baby Grand in the open-plan concert kitchen of their Dublin penthouse, a post-flight gin and tonic in his hand. He had been expecting his wife to explode ever since their private jet had touched down. “If a second Damien Hirst…
5 People From Real Life Who Really Should Be Fictional Characters
Continuing on in an apparent series of Lists of 5 Random Things In My Head in a shoddy Blogging 101 exercise I didn’t know I was doing, and certainly wasn’t doing on purpose, here is a list of 5 people who exist in real life, who perhaps would be better off existing only in fiction (either for their benefit, or…
5 Terrifyingly Awful Books I Might Have Written In My 20s
There are very few writers who make it in their 20s. The few who do are endangered creatures; to be lauded, protected, and possibly locked up in a laboratory for serious scientific inquiry. Many people believe that nobody should be writing about life until they’ve at least lived some. And indeed, many writers in their…
5 Vaguely Booky Things I Learned On My Holidays
Now that it’s September, and the schools are back, I want to tell you what I learned on my holidays this year. Not least that having a holiday from the Internet was harder than I thought it would be. I had some fish in the sun, then some steak in the rain, and then some music in a…
Tara Sparling writes 