You know how this works – here are some of my favourite things from this week to give you something to read with your coffee…
Crime to the left of me, thrillers to the right…. Val McDermid on why crime fiction tends to be left-wing in bias while thrillers lean to the right. I had never really thought about this but the more I do, the more I think she’s spot on.
The monster under the bed is a great blog post from Joanna Cannon on the feelings we all have of not being good enough. Her last sentence is now pinned above my desk: “Forget the monster in the middle of the room, that one’s all talk. Failing to try is the real danger. And if you don’t deal with it, it’s the monster under the bed that will get you in the end.”
The hustlers at Scores. NY magazine always has an interesting article or two and this one about a group of strippers turned modern day Robin Hoods (kind of) is fascinating.
To plot or not to plot? Over on Crawl Space crime writers Sarah Hilary and Ian Rankin discuss how they approach plotting their novels and why the less-structured way of doing things works for them. Nerves of steel those two. I’d like to interview both of them for this blog sometime…
Hopping a train across the USA. I’m so sorry that I only found out about this after our trip to California last summer because I would totally have booked our outbound flights to Chicago instead of SFO and picked up the California Zephyr so that we could spend a week travelling across the country to San Francisco. This blogger did just that and it’s a great read. I was also intrigued to find out that Amtrak run a writers’ residency programme on their trains…
White parties – from Hip Hop to Housewives? An American concept – we just don’t have the weather for all those white outfits – the white party is now so uncool it’s a mainstay of reality shows. This Jezebel article looks at how they became a thing and goes behind the scenes at a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills white party in the Hamptons. RHOBH is my guilty pleasure – I love the tackiness and justify it because it’s the only reality show I ever watch. Lisa Rinna is my favourite housewife. Who’s yours? Don’t lie to me…
Sticking with glamour, the classy sort rather than the RHOBH sort… I loved this piece in the Guardian about Anita Loos, pioneering Hollywood screenwriter and the author of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, the jazz-age classic. I’ve seen the film, natch, but never read the book. I’ll have to do something about that soon…
Hope something there keeps you entertained and have a lovely weekend. I’m going to be working my way through some of the dozen or so books that have arrived from publishers this week and spending Sunday morning cheering my son on at a curling match. See you next week.
