Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Category: novels

  • The Suicide Hour

    The dust is finally settling after internal restructuring at Random House – I expect you can read about that somewhere else – so with thanks to those who’ve gone out of their way to ask, I can tell you that The Suicide Hour is back on track. I received a copy of the edited manuscript…

  • After Gutenberg…

    I was thinking about writing a blog post on my trickiest-ever script assignment, and was scrolling through the news section of my old website trying to locate a particular item when I came across this review of The Painted Bride from The Washington Times. The Painted Bride (Subterranean Press, $40, 181 pages) is veteran thriller-writer…

  • On Method

    For anyone fascinated by process, and I know I’m not alone, here’s an example from Derren Brown’s blog in which he records, with staged photographs, the evolution of a painted portrait. It has a relevance to writing that I’ll explain in a moment. For those from outside these shores who may not be familiar with…

  • Christmas, and a plug for my Kindle stuff

    I reckon I must have had a happy childhood because most of my Christmas gifts seem to recall it in one way or another. I’m kinda shameless in the hints I drop but at least it makes me easy to buy for. How else could anyone know that my old Corgi Batmobile needed a nice…

  • Coding Your Book for the Kindle

    With more detail and clarity than I can offer you, Paul Drummond has added a page to his own website in which he lays out the process of setting up a manuscript for e-publication to a professional standard. “Each chapter was copied from the original Word document, converted to HTML and added to the .ePub…

  • In Sickness and in Stealth

    Back in 1984 I travelled through Finland and Russia to research the book that would eventually become The Boat House. I say eventually because it was a far from easy road. Not the travelling, that was an adventure that I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Helsinki, Joensuu, Savonlinna, the towns of Western Karelia… then onto…

  • Rewind

    When I gave up the day job back in August 1980, we took half of the advance money from Chimera and set off for the US with the intention of stretching it out as far as we could and staying until it was gone. We travelled coast to coast and spent the main part of…

  • The Way the Future Is

    I still like a book. I haven’t been won over to e-reading yet but I’ve no doubt the day will come when I will, just as I retired my typewriter, my super 8 movie camera, and my Olympus stills camera when it became self-evident that I was sticking with them for the wrong reasons. Stay…

  • Noir and Back Again

    I just heard that two of my favourite publishers will be combining forces to put out a double volume of early Lawrence Block novels sometime early next year. I suppose that Subterranean Press and Hard Case Crime can both fairly be described as ‘niche’ publishers, but not in any pejorative sense; in an era when…

  • Of Prams and Hallways

    In today’s Guardian Frank Cottrell Boyce takes on Cyril Connolly’s much-quoted assertion that “there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway”. The piece is accompanied by a picture of J G Ballard and his three small children, raised single-handedly after the death of his wife at a young…