Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
In my opinion, Chris Taylor’s Harvest Season is a better story, better told, than Alex Garland’s The Beach.
I compare the two books only because each involves “backpackers” on the Asia trail. Taylor’s story unfolds in relatively remote China, whereas The Beach is set in what are supposed to be islands in the Gulf of Thailand. With Harvest Season, though, I have a much surer sense that the writer is indeed familiar with his geographical and subcultural settings. … Read more
I’m a true genius at marketing.
I’m on my way to a book signing at Kinokuniya Books, Siam Paragon Centre. It’s 2.35pm, and I have to be there at 3pm. And I’ve just remembered I have a blog, and what a good opportunity to add this item, and everything. And I’m sure many other people will now rush into the street, as I plan to, and hail a motorcycle taxi to take me to a BTS station so I can … Read more
Come meet the authors (seven of them, at least).
Bangkok Noir
Book launch, open to the public
8pm: FCCT (Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand)
Maneeya Building, Penthouse Floor; enter the building from the Chidlom BTS Station, southwest exit.
Official book launch
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT)
8.00pm, 17 March 2011
Book signing
Kinokuniya, Siam Paragon Branch
3.00pm–6.00pm, 2 April 2011
For more information, please visit www.bangkoknoir.info.… Read more
Jack here.
The fever’s gone. I’m still sick, though. Never mind I’m sitting here like a fool—more like a two-bit hooker, actually—editing a massive, near-sadistically impenetrable document for money, not enough of it.
But let me tell you about my blissful, antihistamine-enhanced sleep last night. A serial dream—it bridged multiple pee breaks—had me much excited at a book idea. I’d decided the combination of the world’s longest palindrome (several long paragraphs) and a brand-new concept of time I’d come up … Read more
In my last post, I discussed the mindful appreciation of a novel tequila experience, one that might even be good for you. Who knows? Our test subjects felt better after taking it, at least, and they were all still alive the next morning.
My earlier “Magic potion revealed!” had for months been a leading magnet for visitors to this site; “T. Mockingbird” promises to be an even bigger draw, which leads one to wonder whether the therapeutic … Read more
Consider the following.
Terrestrial umbilicals. Scuba divers, e.g., carry bottled atmosphere underwater, taking a bit of our terrestrial environment with us.
Marine umbilicals. Whether on land or under the sea, meanwhile, we always bring along some of the marine environment from which, about 375 million years ago, we vertebrate land-dwellers first emerged. That’s right. We veteran fish-out-of-water types have internalized the seawater that gave us life in the first place. Our blood now comprises part of what is essentially a … Read more
Hey, that slogan is copyright (mine, eh?).
Have we stumbled across something more potent than red wine, chocolate or green tea? Could it be that we’ve invented something with bigger mojo than all that stuff taken together? Jeff the most excellent NK web designer-cum-giant anthropologist has bestowed his official approval upon my magic potion, but says he shoots it back together with his own shortcut to health, longevity and much lead in the pencil. Long and strong with yaa … Read more
Writers look for budget accommodation (Bangkok, 2027)
Here are some things that didn’t fit on the graph in my “Things fall apart redux” post.
The price of fish in Villa Supermarket is soaring, the Gulf of Thailand is getting fished out, China is behaving more aggressively as the superpower-in-waiting, I’ve lost my mother’s copy of Ben’s secret recipe for Montreal smoked meat and I now learn Ben’s deli closed two years ago. It’s as likely I’ll get to … Read more
Sara and I are having breakfast at Starbucks. Being a kee niaow species of curmudgeon, I’m complaining about everything from the prices to the clonish docking of people and their digital devices. Discerning impatience in her manner, I eventually desist.
“Give me a break,” she says, going on to explain that Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee; it sells a lifestyle experience, and I should dummy up about it, she’s trying to relax.
Ah, I reply. So we’re banking some sort of … Read more
… Read more
Steve Van Beek, prominent local writer, film-maker and river specialist has just sent me the following encouragement to get off my lazy butt (interview with Philip K. Dick’s daughter) and do more to promote my series of darkly comic futuristic novels (underway) that will clarify most important features of reality in rippingly entertaining fashion. (Some opinion has it that I write better novels than I do blurbs.) Certainly, Philip K. Dick is one of the most successful
