Mark Charan Newton

Okay, so this is totally a geek thing, but how cool is it? (Linked to from Bookninja.)
For those of you who don’t know, ISBNs are the International Standard Book Numbers you get near the barcode. Every title has a unique ISBN. And to see them as graffiti is simply awesome enough to make me want [...]

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Canadian indie funksters who were always much better than Arcade Fire.

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Share: [...]

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A good convention, Alt Fiction, based in the Assembly Rooms in Derby. Cheers to Alex for such dedication to organise it.
Far too many folks there for me to catch up with in the four hours we hung around. But I like this con. It’s all about the fiction. All about the writing, the craft of [...]

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It’s always interesting, when I see writer blogs, to say publicly who your influences are, I find. Plus it’s a shortcut to the ‘Oh, dude, so, like, whose books are cool?’ answer.
Main ones:
Don DeLillo
M John Harrison
China Miéville
Conrad Williams
Ernest Hemingway
Lesser, but still significant:
Steven Erikson
Jonathan Lethem
Christopher Priest
David Peace
Henning Mankell
Lawrence Durrell
J.G. Ballard
A mixed bag of genres, but I [...]

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One of my favourite writers, Don DeLillo, makes the front cover of The Onion.
Awesome. I love that magazine. DeLillo is by far the best prose stylist I’ve ever come across. Underworld is perhaps the greatest novel. Sometimes, when some of his paragraphs are flying with cool structure and word selection, there is nothing better. Nothing. [...]

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I’m away for a few days, heading to the coast, plotting books, seeing old friends, drinking wine in the sunshine, or watching storms roll in, treading slowly through nostalgia. In the meantime, here’s by far the best band of the last couple of years, Beirut.
My questions are to the girl on the sofa: are you [...]

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Lyrics:
They’ve Incorporated Their Culture And Their Values
Into The City And They’ve Enriched The City
Both Like, From Uh, You Know Work Ethic
And You Know The Restaurants
And The Music
And It’s Really A Diverse City.
I Mean You Walk Through The Vany Avenue,
You Know You Go Through Korean [...]

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Not content with a mention in today’s Guardian newspaper, I’m quoted in this article on fantasy fiction in the Daily Telegraph no less, by genre author Mark Chadbourn. This appears to indicate even more that the establishment is wanting more genre. And that is fine by me. It’s a cracking article aimed at those who [...]

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Here online for all to see is a rather positive review of The Reef with a nice little bit here:
Newton treads new ground in his attempt to bring literary concerns to the fantasy genre.
Well that’s bloody well going on the cover of something. And a hurrah for that. Yes, that’s certainly what I was [...]

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I’m always happy to read articles like this on enhancing conservation strategies.
It’s very much in vogue to talk about climate change. I’m not really about that, because environmental crises are so huge and widespread. Yes, I think we’ve developed over the past few years, and it’s good to get the public in the UK on [...]

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