No rubbish

Bill Stickers banned, even for death

Something for the weekend, sir?

Update to last post, plus NY writers’ reading

Alternatively you can click here. You get all the text but, alas, no author photograph…

Just back from a very interesting evening listening to four New York writers from the New School MFA programme in Fiction Writing at Rome’s John Cabot University. I’ll have more to say about this when I find a moment, but it’s unusual, for me at least, to find listening to prose being read aloud so enjoyable. I love to hear poetry, but there’s something about fiction that I think needs the silent page, and the innumerable nuances of attention the reader brings to it. Anyway, I was proved wrong tonight. More about this in the next day or so.

My kind of, er, promotion

Before you throw out yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph (and I haven’t said that very often recently, if ever), take a look at the Travel section, under My Kind of Town. You’ll find a photograph of me, yawn, and an article about Fondi, where I live, with lots of useful tips about where to eat, what to do, and so on. And of course, at the bottom (I imagine – I still haven’t seen it), a shameless plug for Little Monsters.

And I get fifty quid!

Arsehole strikes again

Anne Berkeley’s alerted me to an excellent blog dealing with Nigeria and, in particular, to a post about the hideously repressive legislation being introduced there against homosexuality. Not yet passed, it’s already being applied with typically religious zeal. Even worse, if that’s the appropriate word, the term is used so loosely that a yearning glance across a crowded room is practically as culpable as full-on sodomy. I’ve spoken about the situation of gay people in Nigeria before, and wondered about the faith system of all those middle American Anglicans who prefer to be under the episcopal wing of the spittle-frothing homophobe Bishop Arsehole, rather than our own sweetly well-meaning beardie, the A of C. Still cool about it? Hmm. It will also be interesting to see how Europe reacts when gay Nigerians begin to seek asylum on our own more liberal shores.

The blog is called Naijablog and you can find it here. It’s well worth a read, and not only for this post, entitled God also loves gay people. Scroll down until you find it.

Thank you, Anne.

Me, me, me, face out, piled high

Jane’s been scouting for copies of Little Monsters in a few central London bookshops. Here’s what she found (from Borders and Waterstones). Now don’t say you don’t know where to buy a copy!

Little Monsters – Good Housekeeping (April 2008) review

Little Monsters – Daily Mail review

Hot sex in San Francisco

David Isaak has recently said that the mere mention of sex in a title can increase the number of hits a blog gets exponentially. The title to this post is thus intended to lure unwitting sex fiends, particularly those based in San Francisco, to my blog and to the neat little Amazon widget to the right of this post, which magically makes it possible to order my book. Subtle? Of course it is. It’s all anyone deserves who has nothing else to do with his time than type hot sex into a search engine.