Discovering Henning Mankell (here) Let me start with a confession: I’m not a habitual reader of police thrillers and murder stories. Like everyone, I’ve read Agatha Christie when I was young, I’ve gone through all the classics from Arthur Conan Doyle to Ngaio Marsh but I’m not a fan, call me a dispassionate reader. Why?…
Category: Literature
Climate Change and the Collapse of Western Civilization
To anyone living in Europe, it is truly puzzling that Americans continue to deny Climate Change. The anger, recklessness and vehemence displayed by American “climate deniers” are something of a mystery. And their favorite argument is that there is no scientific “evidence” of global warming – in spite of the rising number of “extreme” weather…
Tom Chalmers, Founder of a Publishing Ecosystem – Interview
Another interview I did under my real name for Impakter magazine. Here it is: TOM CHALMERS – A COOL ENTREPRENEUR Claude Forthomme on 5 December, 2014 In less than ten years, starting when he was 25, he built a whole publishing eco-system ranging from fiction and non-fiction to licensing rights Tom Chalmers is young, perhaps…
Elizabeth Jennings, Romantic Suspense Author and Founder of the Women’s Fiction Festival – Interview
Another article of mine on Impakter magazine, an interview of best-selling author Elizabeth Jennings who also founded the Women’s Fiction Festival in Matera eleven years ago. I attended this year’s Festival and had a chance to interview her – she is married to an Italian and lives in Matera (see photo below, she is presiding…
Speculative Writing: the Next Big Trend in Publishing?
Over the week-end something big happened to our culture. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber was reviewed by Marcel Theroux for the New York Times (see here). So what, you may ask? First, the reviewer, Marcel Theroux is someone worth listening to. He is a successful broadcaster and author in his own…
Women Make the Difference Everywhere
Here’s another article just published on Impakter under my real name, Claude Forthomme – memories of the days when I worked at the United Nations, traveling to developing countries, to inspect and evaluate aid projects, trying to sort out problems: Diary of a UN Official #3: When Women Make the Difference Claude Forthomme on 27…
How Good is Patrick Modiano, the New Nobel in Literature?
The Nobel jury seems to be able to discover new writers you’ve never heard of, coming from countries that have a literature you have never read, like China, Egypt or Turkey and everytime, it’s a real pleasure to discover something totally new. So when the Nobel this year went to a Frenchman I had never…
What Makes for an Expert Book Review
The joy when a reviewer “gets” your book! This morning it happened to me and I wanted to share this joy with you. It concerns my latest book, Forever Young, my climate fiction set in the near-future – well, not so near, 200 years from now because that’s the time I figure it will take…
To Publish AND Perish – Will the Tsunami of e-books Destroy our Culture?
This article was published on Impakter (under my real name, Claude Forthomme): To Publish and Perish Claude Forthomme on 20 August, 2014 at 09:00 Amazon and its 3.4 Million E-Books: the End of Culture? For a long while now, people have debated how many e-books Amazon carried it in its Kindle Store, because Amazon has…
To Self-Publish and Perish: Buried Under 3.4 Million E-Books
I finally found where Amazon reveals a hidden (and juicy) statistic: the number of ebooks available in the Kindle Store. If you’re an Amazon Associate, you can easily find it too but to make it simple I took a screen shot of the page where it shows, this one dated August 16, 2014: Look at…
What’s Life Like When You’re a Writer Married to a Writer? To Find out, Rome Calls Chattanooga, choo-choo!
Couples engaged in the same occupation are rare and don’t always have a happy life together. It may be harder for writers than for other artists to achieve serenity in their life as a couple – perhaps because writers are more given to analyzing their feelings and expressing them into words. That can easily turn…
The 6-Word Novel: For Sale, Wedding Ring, Never Worn!
For Sale: Wedding Ring, Never Worn Ok, I plead guilty: the original 6-word short story, a.k.a. the six word novel, an extreme form of flash fiction, is Hemingway’s and it’s not about a failed relationship but a dead baby or perhaps an unborn child, precisely this: For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. He dreamt…
Claude Forthomme 