Category Archives: WRITING

THE COMANCHE FROM BERLIN: JULIA ROBB’S ‘DANCES WITH WOLVES’

Posted on December 20, 2015 by [email protected]

We all remember Kevin Costner’s best movie, Dances with Wolves, in which Mary McDonnell played a white woman who had been captured and raised by the Sioux. This wasn’t the product of a Hollywood scriptwriters’ imagination. It was a fate … Continue reading →

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READ RAGE

Posted on October 30, 2015 by [email protected]
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FAILURE, SUCCESS AND THE WRITING LIFE

Posted on May 21, 2015 by [email protected]

I found some great quotes about writing recently on a great little blog called Bang2Write. Here are some of them - and my own thoughts on how they apply to the writing life. ON STARTING OUT “You don’t start out … Continue reading →

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The Irrawaddy Literary Festival - a Miracle in Mandalay

Posted on April 14, 2015 by [email protected]

A few weeks ago I had the great fortune to be invited to the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Mandalay. Let’s be clear: this is Burma so the Festival is a highly political event. Its patron is Aung San Suu Kyi, … Continue reading →

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STAY WEIRD

Posted on February 25, 2015 by [email protected]

Stay weird. That was the message from Graham Moore when he won the little bald naked man for his screen adaption of The Imitation Game. It’s the story of Alan Turing, the man credited for inventing the first analogue computer … Continue reading →

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THE 23 MOST BEAUTIFUL LINES IN LITERATURE

Posted on January 27, 2015 by [email protected]

Let’s start off this blog about the 23 most beautiful lines in literature by saying these are not the 23 most beautiful lines in literature. They are just some of them. I’m sure you can think of others; Feel free … Continue reading →

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Doh! Did I just do that?

Posted on December 10, 2014 by [email protected]

Doh! So if your inbox was inundated with Colin Falconer blog posts on Monday, I apologize. My bad. I was housekeeping the blog, editing a few old posts and I pressed the publish instead of the update button. How did … Continue reading →

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HOW AGATHA CHRISTIE WROTE HER BOOKS

Posted on December 8, 2014 by [email protected]
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THE JOYS OF RESEARCH #2: SIBERIA. MIDNIGHT. JUST YOUR PAJAMAS.

Posted on October 8, 2014 by [email protected]

So this time it was the Trans Siberian Express from Moscow to Vladivostock. We had got as far as the tundra and so far no one had thrown up in the dining car. Things were looking good. There were four … Continue reading →

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the joys of research #1: BIG CHUCK IN LITTLE CHINA

Posted on October 6, 2014 by [email protected]

I was finishing the research for SILK ROAD. We were on a train from Xian to Kashgar, three days that would take us south of the Great Wall, skirt the Taklimakan desert and on towards the Pamir Mountains and the … Continue reading →

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