by Graeme Cumming | Nov 4, 2016 | Writing |
Like many people, I enjoy reading books with recurring characters. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, for example, or Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme. Provided they’re well written, they offer predictability – you know what you’re getting. When I first decided to write...
by Graeme Cumming | Sep 16, 2019 | Music, Nostalgia, The Gigging Years |
If you’re a regular concert-goer these days, the chances are you attend mainly large venues – arenas and football stadiums. For lesser artists – usually those who had their heyday twenty to forty years ago – you might catch them at concert halls. A place you almost...
by Graeme Cumming | Sep 12, 2019 | Events, Literary Festivals, Writing |
Have you ever noticed that, when you buy a particular car, suddenly there are loads of them on the road? Or you buy an item of clothing, and everyone seems to be wearing it? The reality is that there aren’t more of those cars on the road, nor has that coat or dress...
by Graeme Cumming | Sep 10, 2019 | Events, Literary Festivals, Writing |
Regular readers (both of you!) might recall that, back in May, I went to the Market Deeping Literary Festival. One of the events I attended there was their Read Dating session, and I wrote about it here. A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a fellow writer who’s a...
by Graeme Cumming | Sep 8, 2019 | Events, Literary Festivals, Writing |
Like most of us when we reflect on our childhoods, I have some very happy memories, although I didn’t always appreciate how good it was at the time. Even so, I didn’t particularly like where I lived and couldn’t wait to move away and leave it behind – again, I...
by Graeme Cumming | Aug 24, 2019 | Gogglebox, Nostalgia, Television |
For most of my time at secondary school, I wrote stories to entertain classmates. In the main, they were parodies (not that I knew what a parody was back then) of existing movies and TV series. Very often, though, they’d include versions of real people we all knew....
by Graeme Cumming | Jul 18, 2019 | Gogglebox, Nostalgia, Television |
For those of you who don’t know, I’m the oldest of four children. When my parents separated, my mum was in her mid-thirties, which seemed old to me at the time. Now I’m the age my mum was when my daughter was born, I know she was comparatively young, and must...
by Graeme Cumming | Jul 9, 2019 | Nostalgia, The Gigging Years |
It was my mum’s birthday last week, and it reminded me of a gigging story. I’ve previously made reference to the fact my mum influenced my early musical tastes. Although I went on to discover and adopt different types of music in later years, I still have a fondness...
by Graeme Cumming | Jul 3, 2019 | Gogglebox, Nostalgia |
Some time back, I wrote about going to see Status Quo for the first time. The year was 1982, and you can read my account here – it’s worth it if only for the videos! That took place in May. In August, they topped the bill at Monsters of Rock held at Donington Park,...
by Graeme Cumming | Jun 30, 2019 | Blogging, Meetings, Writing |
Last year I had a blog tour for Ravens Gathering. Arguably, it was a little late, since the book had been out for a few years by then. However, I’d never done a blog tour and got talking to someone who organises them at a Book Connectors event in York a few months...
by Graeme Cumming | Jun 27, 2019 | Literary Festivals, Writing |
This is a continuation from my last post, so you may want to read that first. Click here if you haven’t. Because the Deepings are a bit of a drive from my house, we’d travelled the night before and stopped at a Premier Inn in Peterborough. As with all Premier...
by Graeme Cumming | Jun 24, 2019 | Literary Festivals, Writing |
A couple of years ago, the incomparable Linda Hill made mention of the first Deepings Literary Festival on her blog, Linda’s Book Bag. As it happened, I was thinking I needed to go to some literary festivals and this one seemed like a good place to start. Sadly, the...
by Graeme Cumming | Jun 9, 2019 | Gogglebox, Nostalgia |
One Sunday evening in 1973, I managed to persuade my mum to let me watch a TV movie. I say persuaded because it was school the next morning and, I suspect like most households at that time, Sunday night in particular was a night for making sure you were ready for the...
