There’s been that noticeable Nomad silence lately, and for my part I can pin it on a variety of things: reading papers emailed in by my diligent Leipzig students, traveling to London to meet with the wonderful crew at Corvus (my new UK publisher), dealing with the dirty details of buying and starting renovation on [...]

A little while ago, Kate Horsley over at the relaunched Crimeculture asked me and Kevin to do a two-way interview for the site. Because of our schedules, it took a while, but proved to be a fun and interesting experience, delving into the writing process, themes, receiving fan letters from hit men, not receiving them [...]

As I mentioned before, the paperback of The Tourist (Indie, Amazon, B&N) will be released soon–on Tuesday the 16th, in fact. Back when it came out in hardback, I wondered what kind of extra material I might put up to accompany the book. In this case, an obvious proposition came to me–put together a soundtrack. [...]

As I discussed before, I jumped into the whole e-book thing by purchasing a Kindle. It’s been fun owning the thing, and I’ve grown used to the interface, reading along at the same pace I would with a book. It’s particularly useful when reading manuscripts–I’ve got a potential-blurb novel on it now. I’ve bought a [...]

I’ve been out of touch for a hella long time now, up in Leipzig too full of teaching (much more time-consuming than some may have you believe–particularly if you’re raising a 2-year-old at the same time) to write anything here, much less write a word of my next novel. Now, though, in Budapest for the [...]

Best New Book Brodeck’s Report by Philippe ClaudelThe fact that this book hardly featured in the annual “best of” lists is proof that even the literati fall for their own brand of hype. Because Brodeck’s Report is an astonishing book about the horrors mankind perpetrates and the survival of the human spirit. It’s set beyond [...]

Every few months I have lunch in London with a small group of fellow authors – Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick, James Twining – and my UK agent, known to followers of Stuart MacBride’s blog as “Agent Phil”. We’re all good friends so we have a lot of laughs and spend time discussing the one thing [...]

In about a week and a half, the family and I will be relocating north and west, to Leipzig, where I’ll begin something I’ve never done before: teaching. Two classes, The Collaborative Novel and The Spy Novel. Given that the idea for The Collaborative Novel–a class in which everyone works together to write a single [...]

I wanted to drop in to apologize for the lack of posts from me here (except one I deleted–I apparently let a secret out before its time). The family and I spent a lovely couple weeks on the Croatian island of Hvar, our first “proper” vacation (meaning: one that had nothing to do with work) [...]

I recently received an email from the esteemed Otto Penzler, and he described a project he’d been trying to get off the ground for a few years now. It kept getting stalled for various reasons, but he was happy to say that it was back on track. Agents of Treachery: an anthology of espionage stories. [...]

I’ve just returned from my first promotional tour of Finland. I actually finished out there on Saturday evening but came back by land and sea and spent a few days in Stockholm. Now, I have to be honest, I had very limited expectations for this short tour. Kuka on Conrad Hirst? is my first novel [...]

For some time now I’ve had a problematic relationship with reading. There are books I really enjoy, many of which I’ve mentioned here, but I don’t find myself seeking out books hungrily, as I did when I was younger. Why is that? Part of the problem is that I’m a writer. Back in high school, [...]

With just over a month to go before the publication date of my sixth book, The Devil’s Company, I still have no idea how I am going to understand the experience of a new novel without the traditional ritual of the book tour. My publisher decided to skip the tour this time around, in part [...]

  I confess. I have a crush on Alice Munro. I’m 47. She’s 77, and I don’t call because, given the life force and vitality of her prose, I’m too old for her.  Ms. Munro, perhaps Canada’s most talented and celebrated writer of short fiction, is in today’s news because of  her selection for the [...]

The film version of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons earned $4.7 m today, and $50.9 m since its release, but that is no consolation to Angels’ actor Stellan Skarsgard who called Brown “a terribly bad writer.” “… He had cliffhangers after every chapter which makes you continue reading,” said Swedish born Skarsgard, who plays the head [...]