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Bonjour. *tips hat* Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Today we have the second in our series of interviews, Talking Chop. Here’s Clare’s First Law: the quality of puns in a title and the standard of content are inversely proportional. Meaning, of course, that … Read more

Unless you have some species of rich and meaningful life occupying your waking hours, you can’t have failed to notice that, next month, from Sunday 6th October til (probably) Friday 18th, I am embarking on a pilgrimage around the final resting places of our nation’s most celebrated poets. I’ll be joining Mark Grist and MC … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. I’m here every Monday and Thursday with posts full of writing tips, apopleptic rants, interviews and links to things I think you’ll love. At the moment, Thursday is Barber’s Chair day, where I take a budding author’s first … Read more

About a month ago I visited Chester to do some poetry projects with Chester Performs. On the Saturday, I sat in the Roman amphitheatre in the middle of Chester, chatting to members of the public about their earliest memories. I wrote each memory on a big A2 sheet of paper, and we hung them up … Read more

Release date: 1991 Systems: Arcade Released in Asia as Crime Fighters 2, Vendetta was Konami’s follow-up to crappy 1989 title Crime Fighters, a sub-par version of Final Fight with one of my coin-op pet hates – a numerical energy meter that decreases over time, regardless of whether you take damage. It’s a cheap way of … Read more

As you may have seen, on Friday I announced a tour/pilgrimage that I’ll be undertaking (weak pun intended) in October with Mark Grist and MC Mixy. The idea is to visit as many famous poets’ graves as we can, across the UK. We start in Bristol, on Sunday October 6th, and we end sometime after … Read more

Welcome to Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. As promised, here’s the first of our interviews with authors, editors and agents about the tricky art of rewriting, desucking and trimming fiction. I’ve decided to call this tentative new section ‘Talking Chop’, partly because it’s an awful … Read more

Part of me can’t believe I’m announcing this. It’s probably the most foolhardy project I’ve embarked on. By writing this down, I’m committing to it. I have no idea if it will triumph, or dissolve into an embarrassing fiasco. To be honest, it could do both. The thing is, friends – I need your help. … Read more

So you remember I said I’d sometimes use Friday’s Cone O’ Tragedy blogs for introducing you to awesome new stuff? Okay, so you definitely don’t, but still. I said that. And now I’m about to make good on that idle offer in the most spectacular of ways. My wife is so cool. You’d like her, … Read more

Welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. Friends – this is an urgent appeal. Hit up your writing websites, post on your blogs, FB message your writing buddies, tweet out to the masses. I need more first pages to critique. Without them, the surly … Read more

The last of the pubs we visited on our poetry pub crawl around Chester was the Marlbororough Arms. My research material said: ‘Though it is relatively new to the list of pubs within Chester, that does not mean it is not haunted’, which is technically true. Its age is not the reason it’s not haunted. … Read more

Release date: 1987 Systems: Arcade Over the last few months, in our ongoing history of video games beat em ups, we’ve been looking at the 2D sidescroller: a game where the player character walks along a single plane – usually left to right – punching and kicking waves of marauding goons. It’s a genre that … Read more

Welcome to the first of the new Monday editions of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. In case you didn’t hear the announcement, this month, we’re going to try a little experiment. Death Of 1000 Cuts is going to go twice-weekly. Thursdays will be kept exclusively … Read more

Hello friends. Today I flew over to Denmark for a mini-tour with the smashing poet Harry Baker. We’re hitting up Copenhagen today, Aarhus tomorrow, and Aalborg on Sunday. It’s going to be straight pimping. I hope it goes without saying that, if you’re around in one of those cities, please come and say hi! Last … Read more

Hello and welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, it’s Una’s turn in the Barber’s Chair. Every Thursday I take an aspiring author’s killer first page – their shop window, polished up to the highest sparkle they can manage – and dismantle … Read more

Earlier this month I led a poetry pub crawl round ostensibly haunted pubs in Chester. I wrote a poem for each pub we visited. The Cross Keys is one of its oldest pubs set within the old Roman Walls of the City. All the pubs we visited attempted to drum up trade with bullshitty supernatural … Read more

Release date: 1988 Systems: Arcade, Turbografix So what’s the best 2D sidescrolling beat em up ever? Perhaps you thought this was a subject you could sneak through life not having an opinion on! Wrongo! The best 2D sidescrolling beat em up of all time is the arcade version of Splatterhouse. I first encountered this game … Read more

This week, I have gigs in London, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg. On Wednesday, 8pm, it’s Homework, at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. It’s our true stories night. £5 on the door. Get there early for a seat. On Friday, I’ll be doing poems in Valby, Copenhagen. On Saturday, I’m in Aarhus. On Sunday, I’m in … Read more

The internet is in love with twee lists of writing advice from authors – Geoff Quillpusher’s 8 Rules Of Writing, Dipstick McFamouspants’ 10 Laws Of Great Novels, etc. They’re never very enlightening, often strip-mined from larger works and taken out of context, but being short and coming from great novelists they take on a gnomic … Read more

Welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. We’re here every Thursday, trying to solve prose definitively, so humankind can move onto more productive things, like space travel and Pang. I really want your first pages! If you’re working on a novel and you have … Read more

Last Friday I led a poetry pub crawl around a series of ostensibly haunted pubs in Chester, weaving local history with ghost stories and beer. As a teetotal atheist who has been to Chester twice in his life, I was the perfect choice. I wrote a poem for each pub we visited. Over the next … Read more

Release date: 1991 Systems: Arcade, Sega Megadrive In the distant future of 2010, New York is rocked by ‘nuclear explosions of unknown origin’. 20 years later, the clean-up operation has barely begun when a mutant gang full of mean dudes, calling themselves ‘Big Valley’ (I can’t read that name without immediately substituting early 90s cheese-reggae … Read more

Hello everyone. I’ve just installed Google Analytics so I now know that this, News Monday, is read by almost nobody. So I’m free to say whatever I want. Bleugh! Aren’t the ravages of war brilliant? Rod Stewart is my favourite singer-songwriter. Okay, I’ve acclimatised to my newfound giddy freedom. The blog has been running on … Read more

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story teller who would keep that from you. Especially do all stories of monogamy end in death, and your man who is monogamous while he often lives most happily, dies in the most lonely fashion. There is no lonelier man … Read more

Welcome to another edition of Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time. This week, it’s Frederick’s turn In The Barber’s Chair. As always, read the extract, then my cuts beneath. You might find you disagree with what I had to say! If so, please do add your … Read more