I don’t know about you, but I think there are two kinds of people in the world when it comes to music. Never mind which genre you chose to set up your base camp. Never mind what you’re currently listening to or what you truly detest. The way I see it, you either grew up listening to the same music as your parents or you immediately turned your nose up at it. In some cases, you might keep the same taste as your parents. In other cases, you might rebel against it as soon as your friends snigger at the music they find lying around in your bedroom.
Read MoreHey, Internet, it’s good to be back amongst you. After a couple of chaotic weeks and some incredibly painful days without any sort of signal that belongs in the 21st century, The Blank Page is up and running again. I’d call it 2.0, but let’s not fool ourselves. We’re in for more of the same here. The overly long posts and occasional reveries that don’t quite add up to a bigger pay cheque. Still, that’s hardly the attitude to start on. The Longs have moved finally moved house. Let’s begin there.
Read MoreThe house move that's been consuming our live since we started looking at locations back in March has finally locked into place. Over the space of a rapid Tuesday afternoon we went from feeling like we were never going to actually move to finding out it was happening in a week’s time. It was pretty dizzying. A happy flavour of panic.
Read MoreI’ve been writing stories, in one form or another, since I was about six or seven. It’s hard to be sure exactly when I started. It’s all become a bit of a blur thanks to, well, getting old. I know I was definitely small enough that older relatives thought it was adorable. I guess it was at the age where it’s socially acceptable to patronise a child for trying to do something you associate with grown-ups.
Read MoreNo matter who you are, the odds are pretty good that a teacher left a mark on you. Of course, for my parents’ generation that could mean something very different. Their teachers didn’t just use chalk and blackboards to educate them. Oh no, they employed some very different instruments.
Not that we’re here to discuss the failings of our parents’ teachers. Nope, we’re here to talk about a few things, which would really annoy one of my old teachers. She certainly left a mark on me.
Next's week blog comes damn near seven days early and it's come with anger in its heart and disbelief on its sleeve. Be warned, there are spoilers beyond this point. There are also some opinions, some facts and a dash of vitriol. Enjoy!
Read MoreFrom past experience, I know that elements of the past few days are going to creep into my writing over time. It’s happened before. The section in Something Needs Bleeding called The Blind Walls came from a trip to Austria, where I ended up getting out the lift on the wrong floor and not realising until I turned a corner that wasn’t on my own floor. A trip to Bury St Edmunds became The Wooden Walls and a Monday night spent in a chain hotel in Bristol became the inspiration for the first section of The Righteous Judges.
Read MoreStorytelling is such a fundamental part of who we are now that I don’t think we could really separate it from our lives. Stories are how we talk to each other. They’re how we relate. They're how we relax, either together or alone. Let’s face it, social media is just one long, never ending story we’re telling to our friends. True, some of the character arcs are pretty vague and there are repeating plot points and bad grammar all over the place, but it’s a story none the less.
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