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The pattern is unmistakeable. A graph shows a financial trend-line (the price of gold) going up and down a couple of times, then declining more…
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No seats. Outrageous spectacles. An enigmatic, four hundred-year-old name. What is it that makes “Zum Schwarzen Kameel” stand out? Zum Schwarzen Kameel (Bognergasse 5, 1st…
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Originally posted on Inconsistent Pacing: Do you remember the first time you watched Jaws, and you were really hyped up, but it was kind of…
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Attentive readers will know that, Wodehouse-wise, I am a slow-burn fanatic. Since 2017 I have been relishing a mouth-watering shelf-full of Wodehouse in a hand-tooled…
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Many people come to this site in order to read my thriller Blood Summit. Welcome! You can get hold of a copy of Blood Summit thus: (i) go…
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The Klimt masterpieces have been seen only twice in the last 127 years. Yet they have been on show all the time. It makes some…
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My famous Vienna Cafe Reviews note the alleged “no kissing” rule in the Cafe Malipop; and promise a story from 1986. Here it is. It concerns…
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Have you ever wondered what Robert Pimm looks like in person? Now you can find out. I will be performing my first public reading at…
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My blog How to read P G Wodehouse: a practical guide praised Plumtopia, a P G Wodehouse specialist, for its advice on precisely this subject. I thoroughly recommend…
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Here is the text of Chapter 6 of my Berlin thriller Blood Summit. “Terrorist Uli Wenger meets a mysterious Russian.” Enjoy! You can read the…
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The book fits right in, between Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Good company. “Blood Summit” at Shakespeare & Co in Vienna It gave me…
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My original Vienna Cafe Reviews story, published in March 2017, included a story about a customer having a bad experience trying to get the bill,…
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‘One of my favourite restaurants in London is the Laughing Halibut,’ I say as we eat our lunch in Vienna. ‘When I first started eating…
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I was bemused recently to see a news report headed: Austria ranked by expats as one of unfriendliest countries. I have lived in Austria for years…
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The US President, British Prime Minister, German Chancellor, Russian President and other G8 leaders are taken hostage by terrorists at a summit in Berlin. Rescue…
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I first came across the term “Overton Window” in a piece by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books in July 2016. He described…
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Here is the text of Chapter 5 of my Berlin thriller Blood Summit. “In which Helen Gale gets into even more trouble.” The Reichstag dome.…
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I shall not try to summarise 2017 (thank God, I hear you cry): every journalist on earth is doing that. Instead, I have chosen my…
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What a brilliant movie! Full of breathtaking, blow-you-away moments, unpredictable plot-twists, and unforgettable images and ideas! I speak, of course, of the original 1977 Star…
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Here is Chapter 4 of my Berlin thriller Blood Summit. The Reichstag dome. Warning: bad things happen here in “Blood Summit” How did Dieter Kremp, Deputy…
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Wonderful news and äußerst schön. My Berlin thriller Blood Summit is now up on Amazon, both as an e-book and as a paperback – I’ve seen, and…
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In the last couple of weeks I have posted the prologue and first chapter of my new thriller, Blood Summit. This week comes Chapter 2. Get…
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Last week I posted the prologue of my new novel, Blood Summit. This week, you can read the first chapter. It introduces protagonist Helen Gale, a…
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What is in my new thriller Blood Summit? Here is the prologue. The complete novel, as both paperback and e-book, should be available soon on Amazon.…
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I am working with the outstanding designers at Creative Covers on images for my new novel Blood Summit. They have sent across a few mock-ups.…
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My blog How to read P G Wodehouse: a practical guide praised Plumtopia, a P G Wodehouse specialist, for its splendidly non-prescriptive advice on precisely this subject. In…
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I recently published a new Hotel Story – the seventh in the series. The Three Heads. Like all the Hotel Stories, The Three Heads features the…
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The first thing I saw were his big butcher’s arms: broad and sheened with sweat. Next I saw tattoos; a square jaw, thick with stubble,…
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The main piece has now been published
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I am watching the sequel to a movie I adored three years ago. The sequel is so piss-poor that I feel violated and upset. How…
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There is something weird about how films are rated. Is it a conspiracy? I’m beginning to wonder. Readers of this blog will know that I…
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More complex than Dan Brown. More thrilling than Le Carré. Closer to the truth than either. Counter-terrorism expert Helen Gale has one job: to protect…
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I’ve added new reviews to my popular Vienna cafes: which are best? blog. The fifteen cafes reviewed are mostly in the town centre, but include several…
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Here is a complete short story, set in the Moscow of 1993. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced…
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You’re shopping for a fast-paced, intelligent action thriller. You spot three books, set in Berlin, which you think might meet the bill. The Reichstag in…
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Ha! Is this absentmindedness? Or dementia? Either way it’s, er, good news. I’ve been keeping an article from a newspaper meaning to blog about it:…
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In the course of a recent quiet weekend, I dipped into the soul of central European melancholy. I watched 210 minutes of a 1964 black…
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In his story The Feeling of Power, written in 1958, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagines a future where computers are so ubiquitous that people have forgotten…
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‘Is it cold in here? I’m a bit cold.’ Mick Jagger, in a skin-tight stage suit displaying his gaunt chest and an ornate cross around…
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A man is writing a novel. He decides to check a fact. He consults his computer, or his phone, to find he has six new…
I love Henry Miller’s “When you can’t create you can work.” The create part feels like magic– like something that may have happened once, but is unlikely to happen again. Every blog post feels like a miracle. Good lists!
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The Facebook Effect
This comment shouldn’t be here since it relates to your Facebook post about people being reluctant to follow links that take them away from FB. But, on leaving the familiar FB territory I find myself having to search for a Comments box on a page that is (of course!) packed with lots of other interesting ideas and articles. This causes brain strain and not in a good way.
We are all lazy. And many of your readers will be browsing on phones or pads where the jump from one application to another involves screens disappearing and new ones popping up. It’s a hassle to go back to the previous screen so why not just hit the ‘like’ button and move on?
At least that’s partly what seems to be going on. I have zilch, nada, zero followers on my blog (mainly because it involves logging in and passwords etc and not because it isn’t utterly fascinating….) but quite a few friends who are more than happy to like or comment on a blog post when a link to it pops up on my – and their – FBpage.
Maybe that’s what’s happening Leigh. Maybe we are all just happier in the comfort zones of our own FB page.
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I have always loved the Orwell rules. They embody their own advice, and the last one reminds us that the purpose of all writing is to communicate as best we can. I also commend the (somewhat longer!) guidance on this from Steven Pinker in The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.
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