Batman

The term ‘camp’ comes from the French term se camper, meaning ‘to pose in an exaggerated fashion’, and was first used in 1909, although it has long been regarded as etymologically obscure. Back then it was noted to mean ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical or effeminate, but it didn’t stay in those pigeonholes. The rise of post-modernism made […]

US film critic Marshall Fine recently got death threats after publishing a well-reasoned critical review of ‘The Dark Night Rises’, an enjoyable if somewhat pretentious and overlong film based on an old comic-book character. The backlash was so severe that Rotten Tomatoes had to shut down its comments section, and has repercussions for all websites […]

The other day it occurred to me that I was blogging too much. I’m definitely spending too much time on the inter webs doing social networky. It has now spread to seven days a week and I have no life. Today, however, I finished a new book – a standalone thriller that I’m really hoping […]

I was in ‘thinking mode’ yesterday (staring out of window with mouth open pretending to write book) which meant catching up on some saved sites, and in the interests of oh, I don’t know, sheer caprice, I thought I’d Pinterest a few here today. I’m quite interested in the speed with which fads rise and […]

Batman’s in London. The latest issue of Batman has him visiting the city for the first time. And of course it’s bloody raining. But hang on a minute…there’s something odd going on here. Isn’t Batman currently at the O2 in a big ‘na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na’ bat-bombs and bungee-jumps-type multi-media show? And now DC Comics suddenly have […]

Oh come on, a round of applause – the translator was doing great until the second half!

‘Paperboy’, the hardback, has now sold out. The good news is that the paperback is only a few weeks away. The bad news is that it won’t have the end-papers of my notebooks in. One of the things I mentioned in the book is that I got to fulfil some pathetic schoolboy fantasies – writing […]