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Douglas Watkinson January 20, 2021 |
The Muse Steps In…
I finished White Crane (the latest in the Nathan Hawk Murder Mysteries) and dead pleased with myself I rolled it off and gave it to The Muse to have a read. It took her two days of intense work, interrupted by the demands of her own business, and I did my usual thing of “popping in” to see…
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Douglas Watkinson February 14, 2019 |
Here’s to the Pig…
Going Home No, not me, in any sense of the phrase, but my future daughter-in-law. She and my son are off to Lanzhou for Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the pig, fyi. I thought getting around Shanghai last year was pretty tough, given that we did so in a week of national holidays, but… There’s a…
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Douglas Watkinson March 13, 2018 |
Real Hawks and the Spy
This week I’m abandoning Nathan Hawk, whose latest appearance on BookBub (Haggard Hawk, the first I ever wrote) brought a staggering 60 odd thousand downloads, and many requests to follow it up with another gruesome crime to solve. Which I will do, just as soon as I’ve finished The Fire Pit. Meantime, at least for a day while…
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Douglas Watkinson January 18, 2018 |
Two little words, sit by my doorstep…
I’ve grown to loath and avoid two small words in the last few months, largely because of their hidden purpose. They’ve never offended me before, in fact both are remarkable by their insignificance, but now they can be heard daily, hourly, on television and radio interviews and have a far greater meaning than they deserve. This morning, for…
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Douglas Watkinson October 19, 2017 |
In for the Kill…
“When they get out, we’ll be waiting…” Who said that? And about whom? It gave me the idea for Easy Prey, which is being promoted by BookBub October 21st. But it wasn’t a straight steal on my part, or an easy write, just the inspiration behind it. I kept seeing two sides to the crime and everything in…
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Douglas Watkinson September 20, 2017 |
Taking the ssiP…
There’s a drama series on BBC1 at the moment called Rellik and it’s hit the deck in spectacular fashion. Far from being a scandi noir offering, as the title might suggest, it’s simply ‘killer’ backwards, which makes you groan before you even get to the opening scene. Or in this case the final scene. You can just hear…
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Douglas Watkinson August 22, 2017 |
Exploiting my nearest and dearest…
I can’t tell you how difficult it is to write about people you know! I don’t mean the cannon fodder (in writing terms!) you meet in passing, or even people you see every day and would say you knew … reasonably well. They’re dead easy to draw without a shred of conscience and sometimes they prefer the picture…
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Douglas Watkinson August 1, 2017 |
Who put the ‘i’ in mischievous?
I’m always banging on about misuse of language, but my current beef is with the word ‘mischievous’. Who put the ‘i’ in it and made it ‘mischiev-i-ous’? It doesn’t really fall into the category of language reshaping itself with use. It doesn’t make it easier to pronounce, better to look at, easier to spell, or give it a…
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Douglas Watkinson June 22, 2017 |
How Not To Tell a Story…
Sometime in the last century I was the Script Editor of an iconic television police series called Z Cars – (If you remember it you should probably be in a museum). Because of the sheer amount of drama the BBC was making then the Producer suggested that we cast around for new directors and a wise friend pointed…
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Douglas Watkinson June 8, 2017 |
Role Reversal…
Just as I was starting to believe the Brits could no longer make decent TV drama (with the exception of Black Mirror) and that we’d handed the baton to Europe and America, along come two series to stand that on its head. The first is Jimmy McGovern’s ‘Broken’ – so much going on in it without ever smashing…
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