Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Author: Steve

  • Memories of Water

    One of the bonuses of BAFTA membership is that you get sent copies of trade publications during the runup to the awards season. Oscar (R) follows BAFTA, which means that the studios can cover both sets of voters with the same ad campaigns. Imagine the upward direction of my eyebrows when I opened The Hollywood…

  • The Boat House

    Here’s the publisher’s original flap copy for the novel: a longer piece on the story is coming right up. When Alina first appears in Three Oaks Bay it’s clear that her frail, luminous beauty is going to cause some ripples on the quiet surface of the peaceful resort town. For Pete McCarthy, the local boat-repairer…

  • Two Make a Pair

    Ira Levin died on November 12th. His obituary in The Times refers to Polanski’s film of Rosemary’s Baby and suggests that “the atmosphere of evil that pervaded the screen had its origins in Levin’s fictional skills.“ Indeed – one of the most seamless book-to-film transitions around, and an adaptation that honours its source material to…

  • The WGA Strike and the UK Writer

    Thursday’s Variety carries this article suggesting that American producers have been scouting the UK media scene with a view to using the services of British screenwriters to supply them with material during the WGA strike. Some people have interpreted this as a unique opportunity for a British writer to ‘break in’. Others – like, people…

  • The Nature of the Beast

    Given that I’m a zillion miles from the action and not even an American writer, this isn’t the place to come for front-line news on the WGA strike. But what’s going on out there is an important and necessary step in evolution that’s going to affect us all, and we’ll be feeling its effects sooner…

  • Good Things Happen While We Sleep

    Woke up this morning to an email from Ellen Datlow telling me that, at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs last night, The Box won the IHG Award (“Outstanding Achievement in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy”) for Best Short Story. How about that? Ellen was kind enough to step up and accept…

  • Happy Halloween

    And since I’m going to be tied up for the next day or so with my daughter’s 21st birthday, let me jump in early with no shame and a reminder that Halloween is also publication day for my second short story collection. Two books out in one year! Haven’t had that happen in a while.…

  • What’s Entertainment?

    I have to admit that, for entirely positive reasons, I was hoping that NBC’s new zen cop show Life would tank and that its leading man, redheaded Brit Damian Lewis, would have to come home to the UK. Well, I call them positive reasons. But only if you’re prepared to view it in a selfish,…

  • PS Publishing Titles at Half Price

    To mark the launch of its revamped website, multi award-winning indie publisher PS Publishing is offering a 50% discount on all online orders for pre-2007 titles. So that’ll include my short story collection Out of his Mind and the hardcover edition of White Bizango (the paperback sold out some time ago). Both are signed and…

  • The Page 69 Test

    Here’s an intriguing blog in which writers are invited to make some comment about their own work based on a reading of all, or part, of its sixty-ninth page. I don’t know about anyone else, but for years now my browsing method has involved opening any book that catches my attention and reading a paragraph…