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 [...]

Because this sort of thing is about all the TV I ever watch these days. And just because.

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 [...]

As my little corner of England grinds almost to a standstill under 8 inches of snow, I’m conscious that much of the Northern Hemisphere is also experiencing an unusually cold winter. Many of you might have noticed the story of the snowbound train in China, on which passengers were trapped for 30 hours. Of course, [...]

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 [...]

Back when I could write my age with a single digit (i.e. back in the seventies) the kids in my neighborhood came in two types. One was devoted to Sesame Street, while the other was an Electric Company aficionado. I was solidly in the latter camp, but as with my devotion to Beta videotapes, it [...]

I came across Seth Marko’s post, which I thought must’ve been some sort of mistake. But no, it’s not. Says the Philadelphia Free Library, We deeply regret to inform you that without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood [...]

First off, a test. Two girls, aged 10 and 12, become trapped in a storm drain in Adelaide, Australia. Fortunately, they have their phones with them. Do they… (A) Call the emergency services? (B) Call their parents? (C) Use their phones to update their status pages on Facebook? Astonishingly, the two girls in question did [...]

Picture of Leipzig ©2002 by James Martin Though I first learned this last year, I’ve kept mum until the official papers arrived verifying that I’d been granted a Guest Professorship at Leipzig University. That’s the Leipzig in Germany, with a university founded in 1409 no less, and it’s the Picador Guest Professorship for Literature in [...]

I am heading out for a week of family vacation, but I leave you all with a review I have out this weekend in The Washington Post.  The book, Methland by Nick Reding, is pretty terrific.  Methland is a social history of methamphetamine in American culture, but Reding looks at this history through the lens [...]

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 [...]

Germany is enthralled with the revelation that a dramatic political event, which ushered in reforms and reshaped the new Germany may have actually been a work of espionage. In  1967, while participating in a left-wing protest against the visit of the Iranian Shah, German university student  Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the [...]

  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 [...]

  British poet Ruth Padel has resigned a week after being appointed to Oxford University’s poetry chair and only days after her role in the smear campaign that eliminated her rival Derek Walcott. Walcott was the favorite for the 301-year-old post, which has been held by the likes of Robert Graves, until a campaign, highlighting [...]

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 [...]