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. :-(

A True Book-Lover

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, DollyMopp has surpassed not just herself but the entire assembled readers of the Pornographer of Vienna to show she is the ultimate 'book-lover'. Vienna's gallery-goers would have been proud of her Rouge Noir Boudoir pics.

Sex Goddess

I am honoured to be picked as a Book of Sin by The Daily Dolly. She writes a searing and sensual blog entitled The Sordid Swashbuckling Diary of a Sex Goddess. 'Nuff said, methinks.

I am Uncool

A fine and witty blogger at Uncool has done me the kind service of placing the PoV among Nabokov, Turgenev and Hughes in her favourite books of the year. Two even finer points, however: she has a laudable aversion to Kafka's The Trial and Russian writers bring her to tears. I wish there were more people like her out there.

I recommend you read her blog: funny, insightful and, most importantly, unflinchingly irreverent.

Yuletide reviews

Mark Farley is the blogger-supreme of the bookworld, embarking on the laudable quest of "reading nothing but ghostwritten, celebrity biographies for a whole year".

But when he is not reading about Jordan's struggle for success despie the restrictions of her body, he has put together a set of reviews for all the blind wanderers of Waterstones around Christmas time.

These are my contributions, for anyone interested:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is as powerful and persuasive a book as you will pick up this year. It reads as though Dawkins is twenty seconds away from breaking out in expletives and head-butting a vicar. Of course it’s clever; but it’s also entertaining.

Jude: Level 1 by Julian Gough is a mind-bending, exquisitely offensive romp through modern Ireland which pulsates like a 21st century Candide on steroids. Gough is at the forefront of making comic novels clever again.

The Curtain by Milan Kundera is a return to the Czech exile’s customary musings on what makes decent writing. Economic and insightful, every budding writer addicted to polysyllables and prologues should read it.

Sterling job

Sterling Books - a superb independent bookshop in Brussels - has made the PoV book of the week.

If you can afford the Eurostar ticket (approx. 100 euros from London) or the bus ticket (approx. 2.50 euros) from the edge of Brussels, please scuttle down there and pick up a copy. 10 percent off!