A J Lattimer & Co. - Michael Reidy

https://bit.ly/2BumIdb My thanks to Pauline and the judges!

Does good fiction need a villain?  Looking over my novels and stories, there are some sinister people, but I don't think there are any real villains. Now, there are those who might use that criterion to criticise those stories, and they may not be wrong, but I am not attracted to stories where there is an obvious villain or nemesis, whether of the Robert Lovelace and Sir Percival Glyde variety, or the more complex Javert, or even the insidious Humbert Humbert. One of the challenges today is that we are used to boo-hiss villains, and they are the staple of television drama - more subtle villains not being suitable for viewers who only occasionally drop into a series, or to the commercial interruptions and distractions of television and web viewing. Of course Francis Urquhart and his American cousin, Frank Underwood, are notable exceptions, but even they are subservient to what I find the more interesting driving force - events, my dear boy, events. The effects of a world tha...

Happy New Year, all! Make one of your resolutions not to sweat the stuff you can't do anything about and focus on making your desk, your room, your home, your office a better places. I was in Massachusetts with family for Christmas and it resonated with all my childhood Christmases. Returning to the UK, the decorations and lights in the neighbourhood are already gone and it's not even Epiphany yet. My lights are still on and will be until twelfth night. This is another, sad illustration that people no longer understand Christmas, even as secular event. Can the message of Christmas not be sustained even until 6 January? I expect there are Valentine's Day promotions in the supermarket. Anthropologically, it must be unique to celebrate the anticipation of an event that one doesn't actually believe in with the expenditure of billions of dollars.  I'm one of those who firmly believes that no one who does not believe that God became Man at Christmas has any busine...

These blog pages are easier to produce than the web pages, so WIP and what I'm reading will appear here in future. Another concession to digital automatonisation.  There was an interesting anecdote in Peter Ansonge's radio drama Portrait of a Gentleman , broadcast on BBC Radio 4 recently and still available to listen to. The play explores the possible relationship (or lack thereof) between Henry James and Constance Fenimore Woolson during their time in Venice. James is finishing The Portrait of a Lady and Fenimore is examining her life - both literary and romantic. During the course of the play, James relates visits to writers in Paris and cites advice from Flaubert: "The business of a writer is to finish a book; get to the end. Forget whether it's any good or not, or that you might be disappointed. You'll always be disappointed. Just finish it! That way, you get to write a second book." A cursory search has not turned up a source for this advice, but ...

Cherries and other tales - by Ian Thomson Ian Thomson demonstrated his story-telling ability in Come Away, O Human Child and other Tales, and in Cherries , he continues to show his versatility, sharp observation and wit. The five stories that comprise the collection each have cherries in them somewhere. Their importance ranges from the central to the incidental; indeed, in at least one, the reader has forgotten about them until they suddenly appear. This is not a literary Where’s Wally? but a clever device to link otherwise unrelated stories. While there is a darkness to them – death and murder lending themselves to subdued tones – what distinguishes the stories is that their characters are so like people we have known. They all ring true, yet are not stereotypes. The reader is repeatedly rewarded with wry observations, biting asides or a snigger of recognition: “He brought a particularly Welsh kind of misery to his conversation” (“The Pier”). Or, Paul’s first loves,...

My copy of Ian Thomson's Cherries arrived this week and I am happily turning the pages and enjoying these tales. A full review will be published in due course, but characters, plot and perception are all there.  "He brought a particularly Welsh kind of misery to his conversation. He was universally known as Dai Hat, and when asked why, he would only reply darkly that he used to have one." Those are the sort of sentences one never learns to write in "creative writing" classes. In fact, they are the sort of sentences that anyone attending a creative writing class could never write. Creative writing classes engender a sort of grim "originality" that can be spotted a mile away by the people who should be writing: readers. Those who read a lot understand more about good writing than anyone who learned writing from a textbook. They know that a good character is like a drawing by Matisse or Picasso: three or four lines says it all, and the viewer fi...

I am wondering where 2018 went. I didn't get the hang of it until about August and now I'm being prompted to buy 2019 calendars and diary pages. I recently had to order a new driver's licence [after 44 years here, that spelling still jars] as I have special birthday approaching. It was all done online and the new card arrived in about 72 hours. Pretty impressive. I also completed my absentee ballot for Massachusetts and emailed it in. A day later, the attorney general of the Commonwealth had some problems with the ballots and issued new ones, so I ended up voting twice. As previously noted, O n the Edge of Dreams and Nightmares is now in print and copies are flying off the shelf. Well, it is about dreams. I have just ordered proof copies of Entrusted in Confidence which comprises three stories with characters from The Countess Comes Home . It will appear early in 2019. There we are with dates again. I remember a teacher telling me on 5/5/55 that the next time I co...