You may not be aware of a case that’s just come to a conclusion in London involving two young boys, 10 and 11, who were convicted of trying to rape an eight year old girl. Okay, that’s pretty sick, I grant you. I don’t care what universe you’re from. Well, it started a discussion in our house — were the kids made that way or born that way? You know, the old ‘nature vs nurture’ argument. And my answer is I still don’t know. I write about it all the time in one guise or another, but I have to...

Music is a funny thing – I can’t spend a day without playing music while I’m working, walking somewhere or sitting on the tube ignoring everyone else. The influence of music on art and literature is significant to the point many writers and artists post or list playlists that “helped them” finish that story or kept them company as they painted. A few historical examples include James Joyce (Italian Opera), Thomas Mann (Wagner), Stendhal (Mozart) to name a few. More modern examples include people like Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame (Muse), Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke (Blues in general)...

One of the questions that have plagued authors over the years is what I would call a ‘post-apocalyptic-dread-survival-of-the-fittest-paranoia’. Read any end of the world fiction, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to David Brin’s The Postman to Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (perhaps a less brutal example) and you’ll see it: the shit rises to the top and the most brutal, neanderthal members of our race take over as, of course, ‘might equals right’. The current paralysis Europe faces at the hands of a mere volcano does make one wonder if our continued dependence on technology is proving...

Vanity publishing I’ve been reading a book by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel’s Game, about an obsessive writer. Set in Barcelona in the 30′s, he ends up making a deal with a shadowy figure to write the ultimate book in a year. In that year, he starts to hear strange things about the man he’s dealing with and decides to break the deal, resulting in all sorts of terrible things happening. Part mystery, part supernatural thriller, this book has a great combination of elements that pull in the reader. I can highly recommend it – as with a few Spanish...

I’ve been musing on the subject of writing for a while, as you know if you’ve been reading these musings. And after reading a post on Charlie Stross’s blog yesterday I don’t know whether to be depressed or just shoot myself. Okay, I’m not going to shoot myself, that’s just the drama queen talking again – he’s been banished back to his closet, so I’ll carry on. Charlie talks about wanting to be a writer since he was seven and I know just what he’s talking about. Once I’d mastered this reading lark I, too, wanted to write the kind...