Went for my medical, listened to the lecture. It has to be done. I know alcohol and ciggies are bad. I understand about strokes and diabetes. It’s worth having the Riot Act read every so often to make you put the brakes on a bit. That said, too much doom and gloom is counter-productive. I [...]
I’ve only been knocked unconscious once, as far as I can remember. We were on a family caravan holiday in Clacton and I’d brought a school friend. We were out walking and, for some reason, I was winding him up. I pushed it that bit too far, it’s a character weakness of mine, so he [...]
Gunshot wounds make a small hole going in and a large one coming out. I have made the painful discovery that it’s the same with electronic nicotine cigarettes. Whatever you do, DON’T puff on them like an ordinary fag or you’ll find out what it’s like to have the back of your head blown off. [...]
One attraction of travel writing is the chance to get the adrenalin pumping. I remember a flight over the Namib Desert, massive dunes that flowed like a frozen sea right down to the real one. The pilot swooped low and followed the beach. I looked across and noticed tyre tracks along the sand just beyond [...]
The Olympics are over for me. No matter how fast, how high, the athletes go, none will match Ben Parkinson’s 300-yard walk carrying the Olympic torch. Afghan veteran Ben was not expected to live when a bomb inflicted terrible wounds in 2006 – he lost both legs, broke his hips and suffered serious injuries to [...]
KINDLE, CRETE AND THE GOLDEN SNITCH We are on the threshold of the first real Kindle summer – the Battle of the Beaches. It’s an exciting time for readers and writers. Ereaders went mainstream at Christmas when sales in the UK rocketed to five times higher than a year earlier. Some estimates reckon one in [...]
A vortex of ideas is flying around my head like candy floss. The whirling strands are trying to adhere to the wooden stick and weave themselves into the patterns that will be the framework of Danny3. In tandem with my third Danny Lancaster crime-thriller – following on from the Wreck Of The Margherita and Death [...]
Funny thing, writing. The worst part, or maybe the best, is that it’s highly addictive. Even when it goes badly you plough on, knowing there’s a spark of light somewhere ahead. And your cast of characters won’t leave you alone. They want to be out and about, trading dialogue, blows or bullets, making love or [...]
Writing is a solitary activity. In a crowd, I’m the guy on the edge, watching. So exposing myself to strangers who have read my book is exciting and scary in equal measure. The Facebook Twit Lits Book Club picked The Wreck Of The Margherita – my first crime-thriller in the Danny Lancaster series - as [...]
CHERYL COLE’s success has thrown the spotlight on the North East where my great granddad was a sparks in a Tyneside shipyard. Now crime writer Howard Linskey is throwing a darker light on the region with his new thriller The Damage. In the follow-up to his highly-praised debut The Drop, Gang boss David Blake returns [...]