John Baker’s Blog

During the last years our politicians, playing to the lowest common denominator, have stressed the existence of evil in the world and the need to combat it. George Bush gave us the axis of evil; before him Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as the evil empire; and over images of British soldiers being killed [...]

Shortlist for the £10,000 James Tait Black Memorial prize.
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Psychiatrists wooed by Drug Companies, reports the New York times:
The more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.
Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday [...]

How do you weed out characters that aren’t earning their keep?
A character doesn’t earn his or her keep when they do nothing interesting with or in opposition to the leading characters in your narrative. If they are your leading characters you need to stop writing and return to the stage of thinking about your novel. [...]

Fifty people turned up in the Drill Hall for the Hay-on-Wye Writing Workshop, quite surprising when you consider that the fee was £25.00 per head for a two-hour session. Maybe billing it as a practical masterclass in the Festival Programme did the trick?
The high entrance fee also begged the question of who would turn up. [...]