 Red Room Writer Profile
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Charles Davis's Blog
November 20, 2009
- In which we battle maggots, seek to save donkeys who do not wish to be saved, dodge mercenaries, work on another novel, talk to the ducks, get bitten in bed, delve into German mythology, and talk to the ducks a bit more. Click here for an excuseOctober 2007CAST:Diarist – mugginsJeannette – muggins’ helpmeetAmpa – a very greedy Labrador with a penchant for escaping and a ...
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November 13, 2009
- In which we fear animal parts turning up in the post, massage a sore tit, meet a medicinal cat, discover a duckling from heaven, tune into a fox, wrestle with goats, and kill a pig for complicity in the death of her mate. Ah, yes, and the dog endeavours to bake a cake.Click here for an excuseSpring 2007CAST:Diarist – mugginsJeannette – muggins’ helpmeetYves-Marie – Jeannette’s ...
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November 6, 2009
- In which we kill a duck with coffee and kindness, the dog does a Kerouac, and a new sport is invented involving clinging onto the hindquarters of a highly agitated ram – mind you, with a tall, bald Englishman clinging onto its hindquarters even a ram that is ordinarily placid to the point of insensibility is liable to get a little nervous. I think if I had a tall, bald Englishman clinging onto ...
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October 30, 2009
- In which we meet Zazie, the incredible gamboling lamb who walks like a dog, pets like a cat, and plays like a puppy, and in which we furthermore burn the uninflammable ‘Rolls-Royce’ of coal, ward off the hygiene inspectors, impersonate an aficionado of capraphilia, bury a sheep, give birth to a goat, squeeze a few teats (as one does), name check Bin Laden, and encounter considerable duckshit ...
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October 23, 2009
- Blog is an ugly word, often as not denoting an ugly product. In purely onomatopoeic terms, it would do perfectly well as a description of projectile vomiting, and sometimes I suspect that is what it amounts to. As with vitriolic internal e-mails (now there’s a phrase to conjure an image), there is an immediacy to blogging that encourages all manner of hasty and hugely regrettable evacuations, a ...
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October 16, 2009
- Stories sell. Not mine, I hasten to add. But the basic rule remains – tell a good story about the background to a product and you can flog stuff a hell of a lot easier. I was thinking about this at a recent gig by the Tuareg band Tinariwen, whom Nick Kershaw memorably described in the following terms: “Most bands know how to rock, but these guys know how to roll.” That’s not a bad ...
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October 9, 2009
- For the last few months, I’ve been wrestling with alchemy and, for the most part, alchemy has been winning. The subject is central to my next novel, so it’s fairly vital that I pin it down for a while in order to work out what’s going on behind all the retorts, athanors, and other arcane chymical paraphernalia. The trouble is, being too mean to shell out on a book, I’ve been doing all my ...
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October 3, 2009
- You know what it’s like when somebody describes something you’re doing or –worse– something you have already done, as ‘brave’, and you think, “Oh, my God! What unforeseen consequences have I overlooked that this breezy commender of bravery sees with such hideous lucidity?” It’s all very well being ‘brave’, but it would be nice to think you had a vague idea what risks are ...
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September 27, 2009
- Just back from a research trip to Mont St. Michel, the setting for my next novel, and I find myself lumbered with a double load of expectations, the one very probably imaginary, the other undoubtedly so.Landscape is often the spur for my fiction, falling in love with a place, wanting to evoke it, and working out what sort of story can unfold in such a context, and this has been particularly true ...
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September 18, 2009
- Kids don’t sit down with a dictionary and study language. Or, if they do, you probably ought to get them checked out, because if they carry on like that, some nasty little sod in the playground is going to start beating them up. They may ask questions, they’ll certainly try out words they’ve heard and see if they fit, waiting for a correction to which they will vehemently object, but ...
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September 13, 2009
- My niece just gave birth, delivering herself of a bundle so very substantial that it was getting on for the weight of a small turkey. Doubtless it would be a fairly thin Thanksgiving if the extended family sat down to feast on an eleven pound bird, but eleven pounds of ‘little’ May easing her way out of a previously untried tummy is a hell of a lot of baby. Naturally, I wouldn’t want to ...
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September 3, 2009
- Not a word I like – ‘exotic’. Or, at least, not in principle. Just as ‘erotic’ generally denotes not sex but a commodifiable parody of sex, so ‘exotic’ is applied not to what is genuinely and interestingly alien, but a product that somebody, somewhere is peddling and wants you to spend money on. And yet I am tempted by exoticism, a lapse I blame in part on rugby and cricket, but ...
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August 30, 2009
- What do you need to be a writer apart from a pencil and a pad of paper? Plenty, but here, in no particular order, are ten likely suggestions:1. Talent. Tricky one, since I’m none too sure what it is when it comes to writing. The obvious riposte to that is, “Because you haven’t got any, chum.” Maybe, maybe not, but when you think about it, identifying an innate writing talent isn’t all ...
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August 23, 2009
- Fatwa is a dirty word in the west. In truth, nothing more menacing than a scholar’s opinion on religious law, pundits frequently appear to presume that it’s a death sentence for blasphemy, usually one delivered by some slavering psychotic with one eye missing and a hook for a hand the better to grapple with God and sundry other elusive matters, the like of which are probably best left ...
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August 15, 2009
- At first glance, there would appear to be a virtually infinite variety of vanities available to the aspiring egotist, but once exposed to a little lucidity the selection tends to shrink alarmingly. Deprived, for obvious reasons, from indulging in the conventional vanity of narcissism, I rarely look in the mirror, and when I do the prevailing motive is one of curiosity. Where in the world did that ...
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