Welcome to the Bank Holiday Open Mike Monday. This week, OMM features my friend Helen Armfield. Helen’s a journalist,writer, alla round genius and one of my fellow Million Word Challenge participants. She’s also the keeper of Doing Forty Things By Forty which is linked here and has a deep, abiding love for food which is …
Open Mic Mondays: Courgette and Chocolate Brownies by Helen Armfield
Horror, for me, lives in audio. The Man in Black or, as it used to be called, Fear on Four, has run on BBC Radio 4 for decades. The idea was, and is, simple; the Man in Black is the mysterious host of a short radio play, introducing it, setting the stage then coming back …
So, today, the internet is melting down because Ben Affleck has been cast as Batman in the upcoming Man of Steel sequel. Apparently this is a bad thing. Because, God forbid an Oscar winning writer, director and actor should be involved in a movie! That might make it good! Think of the children! Think of …
For the last four years I’ve blogged and freelanced for SFX Magazine. I was actually the first blogger in place, when I approached them about doing pop science work. They couldn’t pay, I couldn’t not write the thing so I ended up volunteer blogging for them. It was good practice and it was a big …
Welcome to Open Mike Mondays. This week, my guest is Nadine Holmes, known to many as MadNad and many more as the Mutherfudger. Nad is one of my cooking senseis, her boundless enthusiasm and willingness to try new things matched only by just how damn good they look (And taste). Plus, she invented worm sandwiches …
Six weeks ago, I started an experiment; an open mike slot on the blog on Mondays. Any subject, any length, any author. I gave it six weeks, figuring that if I didn’t find six people to use the slot, I’d fold it up early. I found the six; “So You Want To Write About …
Welcome to Open Mike Mondays, where I throw the blog open to anyone who wants to run something here. This week’s guest is Vick Linde. Vick is one of the best poets I’ve ever read, not just because she has an instinctive, and needlepoint precise, understanding of language but because she’s a a student of …
Empire Records is one of those Patient Zero movies that a lot of people’s careers spun out of. Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, Rory Cochrane, Johnny Whitworth, Robin Tunney, Ethan Embry and Tobey Maguire’s elbow (His and at least one other role were completely cut) all wrapped around a story that’s one part screwball, one part …
Matt Wallace is one of my favorite people, and writers. He’s relentlessly hard working, insanely talented, knows at least six ways to tear your arm clean off your body (And, I suspect, cure and season the meat for tacos) and brooks precisely no bullshit. Matt’s work is bloody-knuckled, clear eyed and shot through with equal …
This fifth Open Mike Monday piece comes from my Dad. Ian Stuart is a poet, writer, voice actor, Ghost tour guide, raconteur, possibly bon vivant and pen, whiskey and cake enthusiast. As yet he has not attempt to combine the three into some form of boozy ink deploying edible monster that he will, I am …