This Blog
From now on, I will try to make more of an effort with this blog. What I mean is – at least one non-plug post a week. (There will be plug posts too of course, in between the non-plug ones, but basically I’ll be trying to up the non-plug quota). I have been inspired by bloggers like Vaughan Simons (An Unreliable Witness) and Ani Smith (Down In Me) and Socrates Adams (Chicken and Pies) and Jenn Ashworth (Every Day I Lie A Little) and Emma Unsworth (Fall and Fall Again) and Crispin Best (We Will All Go Simultaneous) and, really, the list goes on and on. (You will notice that there are no ‘book blogs’ there, i.e. fiction review/discussion sites. I think they’re great, but that’s not what this here blog is, so it would be weird and untrue if I said that they had inspired me to change my blog in the way that I am hoping to change it).
Have a look at the blogs above, if you can/ They’re all worth the time.
So – yeah.
(This is a slightly pluggy post, by the way, because this is a link to an interview with me on the Quercus website. I think Mark Thwaite (of Quercus) asked some good questions).
Fell House 
August 16, 2010 at 7:12 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by QuercusBooks, Thomas Fletcher. Thomas Fletcher said: Some new blog posts, in one of which I mention other people's blogs: http://ow.ly/2ql0W […]
August 16, 2010 at 7:13 pm
A big-up for the shout-out, as I believe the, erm, kids are wont to say.
(I have no idea, really.)
August 16, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Don’t lie. You have been listening to Radio 1 and you know it.
August 16, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Couldn’t they have found a better picture for your interview?
August 16, 2010 at 9:47 pm
I chose that photo, actually, and they read this blog, so, y’know… I’d rather you didn’t criticize, to be honest. There’s no real need.
August 18, 2010 at 9:26 pm
What? It’s a free country! If it’s on teh interweb, it’s fair game for comment as far as i’m concerned.
August 18, 2010 at 11:23 pm
just because something is fair game, it doesn’t mean you have to kill it
August 19, 2010 at 4:59 pm
WTF? Kill it? A bit vehement considering it was only an opinion marra! I was merely stating the fact that considering it’s on his bloomin publishers website, a more professionally taken picture (which Mr. F has) might have been more appropriate for the target audience.
August 19, 2010 at 6:46 pm
OK.
The ‘kill it’ thing makes total sense, because of the ‘fair game’ analogy. Like – just because it’s open to criticism doesn’t mean that you have to criticize it.
Obviously, you open yourself up to potential criticism from the whole world when you have something online, but you don’t necessarily expect it from a friend. It bothered me for that reason. And it’s not like it was constructive. But also, I had to challenge the original comment because the guy who did the interview and manages the Quercus website is very active online, and might well have read it. And I don’t want to be seen to be letting people think that Quercus have made decisions that they haven’t.
If you had just said it to me offline, in a room, it would still have bothered me. I maybe wouldn’t have felt the need to respond, but for the reasons above I felt the need to do so on here.
August 18, 2010 at 12:17 am
woohoo, i knew my ‘blogging’ revival would pan out eventually.
August 20, 2010 at 9:14 am
thanks for the mention! 🙂 I am also vowing to do a bit more with my blog, although what ‘a bit more’ might be, I don’t know.
And for what it is worth, I prefer candid pictures to ‘professional’ type ones. I use a professionally taken profile picture for my website, but only because whenever anyone comes near me with a camera I end up looking like an entrant to a gurning competition. I wish I had some candid type pictures when people ask me for them.
So yeah, the picture is fine. 🙂
August 21, 2010 at 10:42 am
Thanks Jenn!
Excited to see what ‘a bit more’ turns out to be 🙂
August 21, 2010 at 6:53 am
Thanks for the mention, Tom! I feel like I’m still getting to grips with a blog, and I’m still torn now and then about blogging at all (writers writing about writing sometimes feels a bit like a snake-eating-snake, BUT I’m enjoying doing it, and I enjoy reading other people’s, so maybe it’s best not to think too much about it and just write! Anyway I’m chuffed to know you’re enjoying it! x
August 21, 2010 at 10:48 am
No problem Emma! I am enjoying it, and as for blogging in general… well, I am ‘pro-blogging’, as you might have guessed. I’m not a fan of fiction about writing, if that makes sense, or poetry about the process of writing, or any of that – feels a bit circular, self-referential, snake-eating-snake, as you so aptly put it – but blogging I like. I see it as just another medium really. A very direct, interesting medium.
Thanks for the comment!
August 23, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Thanks Tom, you have given me food for thought there. Blogged about it in fact!