December 22, 2012
I caught this wonderful video a couple of weeks back when it appeared on Boing Boing.
If you want to see more of the Bank of England then, like O, I guess you’ll just have to break in. To find out how, read the book: full instructions are included. 😀
December 18, 2012
Some excellent reviews here for My Name is O…
…Thanks to Barrington Stoke for passing these along. 😀
December 18, 2012
Today I was also shown this wonderful review of my book Crawlers, written by Cosmo, 11, for The Big Green Bookshop.
It’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for when I wrote the book, and I am delighted and honoured by this talented young writer’s kind words.
December 14, 2012
This has been a strange year. In air miles, imagination and sometimes both I’ve spent most of it far away. Since it’s been about twelve months since I last did this, here are some music recommendations – stuff I’ve been listening to while out there.
I brought a whole bunch of great music back from Japan. The album I probably love most – though it’s far from comfortable to listen to – is Seven Idiots by World’s End Girlfriend. This is Les Enfants du Paradis:
I think it sounds like a fairytale, perhaps by Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Andersen, in which you do a deal whereby you get to live a total life of passion, thrills and wild romance on the condition that the whole thing is compressed into seven manic minutes then you die.
Zac Bentz, under the name Dirty Knobs, is making some of my favourite new music in the world right now. I first heard about him via Warren Ellis who linked to Bentz’s majestic and desolate Field Recordings from the Edge of Hell, and I’ve been a fan since. October’s Hallow was the highlight of my pumpkin season, but my favourite album of his at the moment, one that’s grown on me enormously in the last six months, is Ghost Geometry.
This music is huge and slow. Listening to it I imagine wandering through vast, echoing, eternal spaces, sometimes scared, sometimes inspired. Click here to hear or download it for yourself.
Best rediscovery of my year was Sonic Youth. I hadn’t listened to them since I was a teenager – and was therefore all the more awed and delighted to find out that in all the years they’ve now been playing together they’ve never stopped making new and wonderful music. You’d have to search hard to find another band who’ve so consistently kept pushing themselves, each other, and the possibilities of what guitars, bass and drums can do. Here’s Washing Machine.
From classic roots it grows and spreads until gloriously weird new territory opens up around you.
Here’s to that.
Sam
December 7, 2012
Hello. Would you like to buy my books?
You would? Awesome! Then here’s the best way to do it:
Order them from The Big Green Bookshop. As well as supporting me, you’ll also be supporting a brilliant local business that – through hard work, imagination and wild enthusiasm – makes everything it touches better, every single day it’s open. If you order through the BGB and ask them, I’ll also sign the book(s) for you or whoever you wish.
Postage in the UK is free; international delivery is reasonable and just as easy to arrange. Here’s The Big Green Bookshop’s website, here’s their blog, and here’s a terrific recent article about the shop and some of the wonderful things that happen in it.
Thank you for reading.
Sam
November 30, 2012
A hundred and twenty-five thousand words into the very first draft of my latest novel, I now know the ending and what has to happen to get there.
I’m excited. I’m also relieved, especially about the ending: I’d been starting to wonder if this project would actually have one.
So, a pinprick of light in the dark at last. I’m heading towards it. But like that other light that seemed to be the end of the tunnel but was in fact an oncoming train, I hope the glimmer I’m seeing doesn’t turn out to come from something like this dude…
This is an anglerfish, from a whole bookful of astounding underwater photography called The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian.
That title, btw, gives another hint as to what this book I’m writing is partly about.
MOO HOO HA HAAAAGH *sounds resume of brain mashing against keyboard*
November 16, 2012
This week on TBM, my final Fresh Horror recommendation for now: my favourite Horror author writing today is…
November 9, 2012
This week on Trapped By Monsters: Joe Hill.
November 1, 2012
My event at the London Anarchist Bookfair last week was a blast. The audience was full of smart young people who asked all sorts of intense and penetrating questions. I got a huge kick out of trying to answer them – as I also did with these, below, which came in recently from Ali, 14, in Lebanon…
I would like to ask you: Are you thinking of turning The Black Tattoo into a movie? If yes, it would be awesome.
Hi Ali. Here’s one answer to that question. Here’s another: I don’t make films, I write books. I prefer it that way. You can make a book as spectacular as you want, fill it with whatever you can think of, and nobody will say ‘That effect is too expensive’ or (to pick one current horrifying example, a film about to come out based on an excellent book with an awesome character in it who looks nothing like the actor Hollywood chose to play him-) ‘We’re going to put Tom Cruise in it.’ GAH! ‘Scuse me. ;D
Film is a powerful medium with (because it’s comparatively easy to take in) a long reach. In films a person could do some stuff, and I like films, sure, doesn’t everybody? But in books… in books, you can do ANYTHING.
Also, while I’m happy with Black Tat and how it turned out – and I’m delighted and thrilled to be corresponding with you about it! – it’s already written. If I go back to it I might not have time to write all the other stuff, new stuff, that I want to write.
I wanted to know: Why did you want to be a writer? What made you love writing that much? I want to be a writer because it’s the only way I can express my feelings. What about you?
I write because I love imagining stuff. Books – and comics, and films, and animation, and games, and theatre, and storytelling, and tv (hm, maybe not tv so much!) – can be good at imagining stuff for me, in fact sometimes they can be amazing at it. The idea of writing something that someone else might enjoy even half as much as some of the things I’ve enjoyed is, I find, a very inspiring idea to go after. But, fundamentally, I write because I love imagining stuff for myself.
Luckily for me, it turns out that’s probably the best creative approach. The best guarantee you can have that someone else will be excited by your stuff is if /you’re/ excited by it. After that, it’s a matter of craft – doing your very best to make sure that what you write is properly conveying that excitement to a reader. That can be hard work, but it’s got its compensations too.
Thank you so much for answering my question. As a writer, do you read other writers’ work? Or just write your own story?
You’re welcome, it was a good question, one that I think most writers ask themselves all the time. 
😀
This next question is easier to answer. I think that everyone in the world should read as much as possible, and that goes DOUBLE for writers because reading is the best way to learn how to write, how to decide what you’re going to write, what sort of writing you like and what you don’t and why, and just what an amazing way to communicate writing and reading can be.
Of course you need to write your own story. But you will always be influenced by something. So it makes sense to be influenced by the biggest variety of fascinating things that your brain can possibly hold, until your head is like a vast cauldron full of rich, reeking, bubbling stew from the depths of which your own unique mix of flavours will rise to the surface.
In other words, Yes: I read, every chance I get. ;D
What kind of books do you like to read?
I read all sorts of things, all the time. Have you seen my LibaryThing profile? There I keep a list of five hundred books that I think are awesome, I’ve written a bunch of recommendations, and you can even keep up with what I’m currently reading if you like.
Have a look. I hope you find something you enjoy. Happy reading!
Sam
…Ali first contacted me via the Guestbook on the Black Tat website. The Crawlers and Tim sites have Guestbooks too and an O Guestbook is on its way. Meanwhile, if you have a question for me, you can also reach me via a few other methods you’ll find on my homepage.
October 31, 2012
More Fresh Horror on Trapped By Monsters: this week, John Dies At The End by David Wong.
