Happy Halloween!

Japanese tunnel

I was very pleased to hear that there is to be a Japanese edition of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. It occurs to me now that I am not sure that there is to be a Japanese Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. I'll have to check.

I've done a couple of interviews this week. I had a chat to Lorne Jackson who is Books Editor on the Sunday Mercury and Birmingham Post. It was a pleasure to talk to him but I do find interviews tiring. It was no fault of Lorne's - it was a very relaxed affair - but the dread of saying something completely stupid is always with me, and someone taking notes just makes it seem all the more threatening.

And if this were not terrifying enough, I have also had a chat about an upcoming radio interview for Radio Scotland that I will be doing from the BBC studio here in Cambridge on the 16th of this month. I haven't done much radio, to be fair - but I can't say that I have excelled in the medium.

I have never been asked to do TV.

Not yet anyway.

Strip club

I have been doing some life drawing at a class run by the appropriately named Kate King, at King's College here in Cambridge. The classes are for King's students but there are spare places and so the likes of me can - for a fiver - have a small taste of what it would have been like to come to a Cambridge college.

I get a pathetic thrill walking through the small door within the large locked door in the gatehouse. Last night there was an Atkinson Grimshaw sky with a bright moon lighting up a scattering of clouds. The big old lamps were lit and I wondered what it must be like to take this kind of place for granted. I'm not sure I would ever stop pinching myself if I were a student here.

As for the life drawing, the classes - or strip club as my son insists on referring to them - are not classes in the sense of teaching; at least not for outsiders like myself. Kate will certainly give guidance to students, if called upon to do so. But for me it is just the access to a model and the chance to get back into drawing for the hell of it.

Blood red splatters

I went up to London today with my son to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy. I've never been a great fan of Kapoor. It all seems pleasant enough, but it has never moved me. His childlike love of materials often seems to produce work that is a bit, well, childlike for me. For all the talk of alchemy and mysticism, a pile of coloured pigment can often doggedly refuse to be anything but a pile of pigment - not less colourful or even beautiful, but not invested with the power that it is clearly intended to have.

But this exhibition - with certain exceptions - seemed different. The huge railway carriage made of red wax, extruding its way through the Royal Academy galleries so slowly it was almost imperceptible, was extraordinary. I can't say I've ever had a dream involving a wax railway carriage, but it was certainly dreamlike. Or is it nightmarish?

And the canon that fires blood red wax at a wall was also rather wonderful. We waited ten minutes but it was worth every second. A man appeared and silently performed the preparations and then BANG - the noise was not so much deafening as shattering: you could feel it thump through your body as the wax shot out and slapped against the far wall.

My son and I had looked at the plaque to the Artists' Rifles as we queued for a ticket, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who found this more than a hollow art trick. While we stood waiting behind the canon I find my thoughts turning to my father who was in the Royal Artillery during World War II and for much of his life thereafter.

Blood red splatters.

The wax dripping down the wall brought a few whoops and a ripple of applause, but I think the noise and the spectacle also stunned the audience a little. Like the wax railway, it was darker than it seems.

Buy my books, they are good

I have had lots of conversations recently about sales. This might have something to do with the fact that it is royalty time for writers, so - unless you are Stephanie Meyer (and let's face it, you probably aren't) - October can be a cruel month.

There is much talk of reduced advances and falling royalty payments. Look how grumpy that last post was. Poor Tracey. Once I start getting crabby there is no telling who I might lash out at next. So keep my spirits up. Buy my books and encourage your friends to do the same.

You know it make sense.

Stuff white people like

I am indebted to The Guardian here in the UK for telling me about the blog called Stuff White People Like. Here is a post on Apple products that is so much better than my rant of a couple of weeks ago. Superb.

I am not indebted however, to The Guardian ruining my morning coffee with not only a photograph of Tracy Emin, but Grayson Perry as well. They are standing on the cover of G2 like something from Revelation. . .

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the fourth beast say, Come and see.

And I looked and lo, I beheld a woman flogging a dead horse and a man who appeared like unto a six year-old girl with no taste.

Perry is living proof that a grown man can dress in a ridiculous frock, Bo Peep bonnet, platform shoes and ankle socks and still be utterly uninteresting. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: It's the work, stupid.

Emin has threatened to leave England because she pays too much tax. She seems to forget that this country has been misguided enough to provide her with the wealth that has brought this appalling tax burden.

But if ever there was an argument for higher taxation. . .

Death of death ray

I was very saddened to get an email the other day announcing the death of the excellent Death Ray magazine (or at least its lapse into a coma). Shame on you all for not buying it. Death Ray have been good to me. I was to have appeared in its November issue. They were to run a story and a Q&A I did via email.

The straw that broke the camel's back obviously.

Proofs of The Dead of Winter arrived by jiffy bag. The book is edging ever closer to its publishing form. I'm actually looking forward to sitting down and reading it again.

That may seem odd - and I was actually asked once on a school visit, 'Have you read all of your books?' - but if you put the book aside for long enough, it is possible to read it with some degree of freshness. It is still yours, obviously. But it has also - hopefully - taken on a life of its own.