Posts in On the Holloway Road

Reviewer and reviewed

On the Holloway Road Published work Reading 8 Comments

I’ve got a bit behind with my  reviewing on this site, but had a book review published today in online literary magazine Review 31. I wrote about a new book on urban explorers called Explore Everything: Place Hacking the City by Bradley L. Garrett (Verso Books). Here’s a quick extract from my article: At first glance, ‘place hacking’ may seem like just another form of escapist thrill-seeking. Sneak into a construction site, poke around inside Battersea Power Station, run along train tracks to discover abandoned Underground stations. Dodge the security guards… Read More

New stuff

On the Holloway Road 22 Comments

I’ve been adding a few new features on the site recently, and thought I’d highlight them for you. First, I’ve added a list of all the books I’ve reviewed on the site. You’ll see that it’s listed A-Z by author, and that I have a few gaps. If you have a recommendations of a good book to read by an author whose surname begins with N, Q, U, X, Y or Z, please let me know! There’s also an archive page now – I’ve been blogging since the beginning of… Read More

How to write a book review

On the Holloway Road 11 Comments

Just saw a nice post on Read.Learn.Write which goes into the methodology of writing book reviews, using my novel On the Holloway Road as a model. I’ve never really thought about a method for writing reviews before – I tend to just give my response to the book in whatever form seems natural. That’s probably because the reviews started as my own way of keeping track of what I was reading and analysing it to improve my understanding, and although other people now read them, the style is still quite… Read More

Guest post on The Undercover Soundtrack

On the Holloway Road The writing process 7 Comments

I am excited to see my guest post on The Undercover Soundtrack go live today. Novelist Roz Morris hosts a weekly series in which she asks other writers to talk about using music as part of the creative process. In the post, I talk about the creation of On the Holloway Road in more depth than I think I ever have on this site. That’s quite shocking, since I’ve been blogging for the full three years since it came out, and haven’t written much at all about the writing of it. I… Read More

Another good review

On the Holloway Road 1 Comment

On the Holloway Road just picked up another excellent review in the book blogging world, this time from Vishy. I haven’t been thinking about the book very much recently – I’m now two books ahead, working on my third novel! So it’s great to have been reminded of On the Holloway Road recently, first by Nivedita Barve’s review last week and now by Vishy’s. I like Vishy’s review a lot, especially the way he describes the different layers in the novel: At one level it is a ‘road-novel’ and describes… Read More

Great review for On the Holloway Road

On the Holloway Road 7 Comments

Nivedita Barve has just posted a really insightful review of On the Holloway Road – click here to read it. And I don’t call it insightful only because it’s positive 🙂  She describes the book well, and makes some very interesting points about the characters and themes. I really like the way she describes the tension between the way Jack and Neil are portrayed in the book and how she as a reader reacted to them. Neil is idolized by Jack and everyone around him, while Jack speaks of himself… Read More

On the Holloway Road £1.09 Kindle promotion

On the Holloway Road 2 Comments

I’ve just noticed that Amazon is currently promoting the Kindle version of my novel for £1.09. The normal price is about five times higher, so if you’d like to try it, please click here. You can even get a free sample first, if you’re not sure about spending your £1.09 🙂 These offers usually seem to last only for a day or two, so I can’t guarantee how long it will last. Please note, this is on the Amazon UK site only. If your Kindle is registered to a different Amazon site… Read More

On the Holloway Road – free sample

On the Holloway Road 7 Comments

My publisher, Legend Press, is offering a free sample of the first two chapters of On the Holloway Road as a special Christmas giveaway. Click here to access it – not sure how long it’ll be available. Merry Christmas to all my readers, and thanks for all the wonderful comments over the year – it’s been great getting to know you! I haven’t been online much for the last couple of months as I’ve been busy with other things, but will return in 2012 with a new look for the… Read More

New review for On the Holloway Road

On the Holloway Road 10 Comments

On the Holloway Road picked up a good review from Emma over at Book Around the Corner yesterday. I don’t normally tell you about every review, but I wanted to highlight this one particularly because of a beautiful description of my main characters, Jack and Neil. Emma compares them to Sal and Dean in Kerouac’s On the Road, who she calls “day butterflies, the colorful ones who fly playfully from one flower to another under a sunny sky.” On the other hand: I saw Jack and Neil as night butterflies…. Read More