Book Shopping

I just can't be trusted in book shops. Especially No Alibis. I mean, looking at Mount TBR, the last thing I need is more books. All I intended to do was introduce a visiting chum to one of my favourite shops. I'd no intention of picking up anything, except that signed hardback of Adrian McKinty's Hidden River. Unfortunately, the assistant couldn't find it, so I should have left it at that. But no. I started browsing.

I got a signed hardback of Brian McGilloway's Gallows Lane, Carlo Gébler's A Good Day for a Dog and The Dust of Death by Paul Charles. And that was me showing restraint! I put back books by KT McCafferty, Ken Bruen, James Ellroy and many, many others.

Anyway, that's three more NI crime books that'll be reviewed in due course.

Carlo Gébler Creative Writing Course

From the CWN Weekly Newsletter

5 day Intensive Creative Writing Course

Duration: 1 week (5 days)
Date: 28 July – 1 August 2008
Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Course tutor: Carlo Gébler

Course Details

This is a week-long course for experienced practitioners. The purpose of the course will be to help those who want to advance or finish a novel. In order to facilitate this, participants must bring the manuscript they would like to advance or finish, plus a short three written description of this novel and a summary of its plot. It must be stressed it does not matter what type or genre of novel participants are writing: all types of fiction will be welcome. Participants must also expect to read from their work-in-progress during the week.

Each morning will start with an informal presentation by the tutor on a novel or short story he admires and that he believes has something to teach those who want to write.

After the informal presentation participants will read from their work. Everyone will be expected to read to the group in the week. Each reading will be followed by a discussion, led by the tutor, on what has just been read aloud. These group discussions will form the heart of the workshop. Individual tutorials will also be part of the programme if there is enough time.

By the end of the week, participants will have a much clearer idea of how to advance or finish a complex piece of work.

Please note that it will not be possible during the course for the tutor to the read the work of participants either in or out of course hours.

The course runs from Monday 28 July to Friday 1 August 2008. The course hours are 10.00 to 4.00 daily with an hour for lunch. The course tutor prefers if participants attend for the full duration of the course. The number of participants is limited to 10

The course sounds brilliant, and I'd love to have that kind of time to spare. I've an old manuscript that could do with this sort of attention. Alas, I must work to earn a crust, and have little Brennans that I don't want to abandon for that long.

The newsletter doesn't mention how much the course will cost, but I imagine the details will be on the Irish Writers' Centre website soon enough.

An Interview - Carlo Gébler

Carlo Gébler was born to the writers Edna O’Brien and Ernest Gébler in Dublin in 1954, was raised in London and currently lives in Northern Ireland with his wife and five children. He has written a wide range of novel and plays. His most recent work is A Good Day for a Dog, published by Lagan Press.

Q1. What are you writing at the minute?

I’m working on an illustrated children’s version of The Crocodile by Dostoyevsky. It’s the story of a man swallowed by a crocodile. He survives and becomes a celebrity.

In the non-fiction field, I’ve been interviewing people about suicide and their experience of suicide, these are people who have been affected personally by it, and from their testimonies I am constructing a book.

And finally, I have a play that is very near completion. It’s a work of fiction based on Brian Nelson and Freddy Scappaticci and their life experiences as they ran in parallel.

Q2. Can you give us an idea of Carlo Gébler’s typical up-to-the-armpits-in-ideas-and-time writing day?

Up at six-thirty to prepare breakfast for the family. I bring tea and toast to my wife in bed. Then it’s out for a swim. After that I come home to write for two to three hours, and hopefully in that time, I’ve produced a good 1000 words. That brings me up to noon and I spend the rest of the day doing all the admin that comes with writing.

Q3. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Garden, walk, slowly become my dad. All the ordinary things. I don’t watch much TV, and I would go to the local cinema more often if it played more of the kind of films I like.

Q4. Any advice for a greenhorn trying to break into the crime fiction scene?

Read, read, read!

Q5. Which crime writer(s) have impressed you this year?

Edward Bunker always impresses me, and I’ve just got my hands on his new one, Stark. I also very much enjoy Georges Simenon, a Belgian author who wrote in French. I’m a big fan of his Maigret novels. And I recently reread The Trial by Kafka, which I very much consider to be a crime novel.

I also consider William Roughead one of my greatest influences. He was an amateur criminologist who went to trials to write up and publish the transcripts. He covered the trial of William Joyce, AKA Lord Haw-Haw and wrote an essay on the Burke and Hare Murders.

Q6. What are you reading right now?

Edward Bunker’s Stark and Colum McCann’s This Side of Brightness.

Q7. Plans for the future?

Really, before I start anything else, I’d like to finish up my current projects, and then we’ll see. I have a lot of teaching to do over the summer, but I also want to work on a new idea I’m very fond of. It’s a crime story based on a mid 19th century Irish agricultural murder.

Q8. With regards to your writing career to date, would you do anything differently?

I would have been less recklessly promiscuous and not written in as many forms as I have. It would have made it easier for people to classify me as a playwright, novelist or children’s writer but I’ve made these hard by doing all of these. On the other hand, by doing all of these, I’ve never been bored.

Q9. Anything you want to say that I haven’t asked you about?

Yes, I’d like to make a point regarding my writing advice. Reading. Writers should read because it exercises the imagination. The imagination is the organ that produces literature. You can train it by reading, much like you train a muscle through exercise at the gym. Read and you become much more adept at using words and images to create powerful work.

Thank you, Carlo Gébler!

Jump Around - News and Links

Here's a few good places to visit for some word on the NI crime scene.

First off, stop by Colin Bateman's site. In his "Latest" section, he's made one of his rare blog updates. Among the news, "I'm working on a TV project for Sky at the moment, which is based on the crime novels of Stephen Booth... The latest children's book, Titanic 2020: Cannibal City is either in the shops (in Ireland) or about to hit them (everywhere else) and I've been doing my bit to promote that... I'll be interviewing the esteemed Ian Rankin on stage." And there's something on there about penile dysfunction... ahem.

Moving on, there are some articles of note over at the Verbal Magazine website. Carlo Gébler gives us a great insight into his latest novel, A Good Day for a Dog. And if you click on the Issue 14 pdf you'll find an article by CWN's Tammy Moore on the John Connolly and Declan Hughes event held at No Alibis last month. You'll also find a wee review of Garbhán Downey's Yours Confidentially written by some glipe.

And Ian Sansom is getting some much deserved attention over at Detectives Beyond Borders. He's the subject of a post on 10th June 08 and forms part of a very interesting question on the entry dated 11th June 08.

So have a wee surf about there, folks. And remember where you read it first!