The Prague Revue is back!

Prague's literary journal, The Prague Revue, has been relaunched.

After a hiatus of a few years, edition number 8 is out, and features work by Ivan Klima, Jay Rubin, Gerald Turner and some waste of editorial space called Lewis Crofts.

Click here and support an important publication in one of Europe's most important cultural centres.

A Rotted Pit in a Peach

This is the kind of imagery I like. It's not mine. It's this lady's. GimmeBackMyCoat.

Click here for her journal and a lyrical description of the hollow feeling that you have when finishing a book.

The Shropshire Star

Shropshire, the county of numerous stars: Charles Darwin, Clive of India, Wilfred Owen and... wait for it... T'Pau (picture right).

And it is also the county of the Shropshire Star which has recently published this article. Click here.

Flattery gets you everywhere

The most insightful and respected blog in the literary community – Uncool – has produced this long-awaited analysis of the cross-over of writing and aesthetics. Click here.

It is to be applauded...and is proof that flattery gets you everywhere.

3 for 2: choose well

The dilemma: the PoV is released this week in pocket paperback format and will be available in the '3 for 2' offer at Waterstones.

But if you get your mum and dad a copy each, what to do with the third one? Oh, the choice, I hear you cry through cyber-hell. Oh, the dilemma of variety. Oh, the onus of selection... whatever. Well, some ideas:

1) a sacred text as the basis for a polygamous cult in a Norfolk enclave
2) slip inside a Mills&Boon cover and give it to your gran
3) give to that guy in the tight trousers who smiles at you in the tube
4) a fire-lighter for a sacrificial pyre in your back-garden
5) grind down with extract of thyme and use as a cure for baldness
6) douse in petrol and hurl through a library window
7) reading

Any other suggestions, write them on the back of a copy of the book and send them to my enclave in Norfolk.

Ich bin ein ExBerliner

...as Kennedy is probably saying now.

The Berlin magazine ExBerliner has published a review of my book and an interview in this month's edition. If you haven't had enough of me already, please go click here.

I am also off to Berlin later this month (28 May) to give a reading at Kaffee Burger at 9.00pm. Do come along. I'll be the lanky bloke at the front with a book on his lap.

If you can't bring your tired finger to click on the magazine itself, here are a few tit-bits.

"This is the ultimate introduction: perceptive, comprehensive, and so evocative of the decadence and decay that marked turn-of-the-century Vienna that the streets and cafés seem to etch-a-sketch themselves onto the pages, a kind of literary biopic."

"Lewis Crofts brilliantly explores Schiele's fascination with female forms, starting with that of his sister, and their metamorphosis into symbols of patrician sanctimony. These sections of the novel are mesmerizing and come close to echoing the morbidity of writers such as Joseph Roth."

Out into the Ether

An extract from Chapter 5 of The Pornographer of Vienna has just been published in a special fiction edition of the Viennese magazine Ether.

It is well-worth reading. There's not a single Sudoku in sight.

Six Random Things

I've been tagged (in the internet sense, not in the playground sense) by PD Smith, author of Doomsday Men. It's a game doubtless meant to perpetuate clicks, surfing, blogs and other mouse-operated madness.

It involves saying 6 random things about yourself. For me, these are:
1. I have a fetish for cotton-wool buds
2. I can't say the words 'celebrity' or 'laboratory' without stuttering
3. I dress up as Darth Vader at weekends.
4. My second toe is longer than my big toe.
5. I am colour-blind but still a snooker-addict.
6. Poor punctuation should carry the death sentence.

Otherwise, the rules are as follows:

a. Link to the person who tagged you.
b. Post the rules on your blog.
c. Write six random things about yourself.
d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.
f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

The six people I’m tagging are:

Gavin Plumley
Claire Wigfall
Uncool
Sylvia Petter
Dolly Mopp
Phil Schoenfelt

Tibor Jones

Kevin Conroy Scott, mate and general literary guru, has launched his own agency: Tibor Jones & Associates. You can find them here: www.tiborjones.com

Well worth a look, and it's not just about books....if you're into broader projects, original ideas and taking a fresh look at this oldest of industries, then this is the place to be.

Notes From The Underground

A new literary magazine, entitled Notes From The Underground, is hitting the streets of UK cities and is well worth a look.

Coincidentally, of course, the current edition also features a facile little tale about the beginning of the world, syntax and emoticons (by me). It is as follows:

The Word
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was inaudible because there was lots of other things going on at the Beginning of Time and no-one, not even God or the People who had not yet been created (because Soil had not yet been created to make them out of… or Monkeys for that matter… or any Matter at all… apart from Dark Matter…but that doesn’t matter) could hear it. And no-one could hear the Word even though that Word had a capital letter at the front. Everything had a Capital Letter at the front back then, even God. But there were no emoticons. They were made on the third day. :-(