My book The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages is being reissued in an illustrated edition. It will appear sometime next year in the States, and possibly the UK too. Before that, hopefully around this August/September, the illustrated version will appear in French, German, Dutch and Spanish. The publisher will be Taschen.
Meanwhile, your author is being visited by Gentlemen from Porlock, meaning that his next effort, New Waves in Cinema, is being constantly delayed, interrupted and generally buggered around with. Hopefully I can get the beast slayed by the end of next month. Or the month after that.
No novel-writing news to speak of, although I hope to spend a week with Lindsay and various hand-picked lost souls in Devon in September for an intensive session on Elias. Ideally, progress will have been made by then, and hopefully more than just 'oh dear, he's signed his name again', if I may quote the scriptures.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
New Podcast
A new podcast, featuring myself and Gordon Strong, is available as of today from Geoff Ward's Mysterious West page at the Western Daily Press. Scroll down and look for 'Week 42'. The interview was recorded in the middle of last month, and features your author holding forth on a short film he is currently making about Gordon, and also talks about the usual (Gnostics, Cathars and a few other pet obsessions).
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Richard Leigh 1943-2007
Sad news: Richard Leigh, co-author of The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail and all-round Dan Brown nemesis, has passed away. Apparently he had been suffering from diabetes, and resolutely refused to have anything to do with doctors (given the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, I can't say I blame him). Richard was good enough to meet me when I was writing The Knights Templar and offer me sage advice on some of the more arcane elements in the Templar story; it was a meeting I have fond memories of, and had even hoped to interview Richard in a documentary about the Templars that never quite happened. (He was enthusiastic about the idea of the film, and agreed at once to the interview.)
You can read The Independent's obituary here.
I'm sure Richard would want well-wishers to donate to the Vancouver Institute for Lycanthropic Children. Or, failing that, the Pushkin Trust, of which he was a trustee.
You can read The Independent's obituary here.
I'm sure Richard would want well-wishers to donate to the Vancouver Institute for Lycanthropic Children. Or, failing that, the Pushkin Trust, of which he was a trustee.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Gnostics Interview
I have just recorded a second interview for the US radio show Coffee Cigarettes and Gnosis, discussing The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics, which has just been published in the States. The show goes live this Saturday, 17 November. For anyone who missed the first interview, on the Cathars, you can purchase a download of the show here.
I am currently not writing a novel, no surprises there, perhaps, as we approach the third anniversary of this blog, but am writing a book on new wave cinema for Kamera Books and editing the text of The Cathars down for an illustrated edition, which is due out next summer. I am also struggling to get a feature film completed before men in white coats come and take me to the nearest funny farm. As excuses go for not completing Elias, I think that's a pretty good one. Or a pretty bad one, depending on your point of view.
I am currently not writing a novel, no surprises there, perhaps, as we approach the third anniversary of this blog, but am writing a book on new wave cinema for Kamera Books and editing the text of The Cathars down for an illustrated edition, which is due out next summer. I am also struggling to get a feature film completed before men in white coats come and take me to the nearest funny farm. As excuses go for not completing Elias, I think that's a pretty good one. Or a pretty bad one, depending on your point of view.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
In the Virtual Alexandria
The US radio show Coffee, Cigarettes and Gnosis interviews me this week on the Cathars. Go here, scroll down to the eye, and click on the musical note to hear the show.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
US Radio Interview
Yesterday I recorded an interview for the US Radio show, Coffee, Cigarettes and Gnosis. The original intention was for me to talk about two of my books, The Cathars and The Gnostics (the latter of which has just been published in the States). However, I talked for so long about the Cathars that they've decided to do a separate interview in a few weeks' time about Gnosticism. The Cathar interview should be online next weekend. Failing that, the weekend after. I hope it's been possible to make something coherent out of my ramblings... At any rate, I landed a few punches in favour of the Good Christians against what they called the Church of Satan.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
The Unconscious Novel
Yesterday Lindsay's group met again. This is only the second time I've been there this year, but I think I've only missed one or two meets, as our regular schedule has been interrupted by various factors, one of which is Lindsay's struggle to complete his new novel, Sun at Midnight. Well, I say 'new', but he's been working on it since about the time Alice's Masque came out (and that was 1994). He told us that, when he'd begun the book, he'd had a dream where he was told that the book was already written, and all he had to do was write it down. He then proceeded to do this, while at the same time working on other projects (radio plays, the Celtic Stories, the Troy novels and of course the marvellous Parzival and the Stone from Heaven). However, he became stuck on one important aspect of the back story, and only this summer did the answer present itself. In relating this to us, he reminded us that we should never underestimate the power or the role of the unconscious in our work; it always knows best, and we should listen to it. If something doesn't feel right, it must be addressed, it must be worked on.
This is precisely the problem I'm having with Elias, especially since asking a close friend for advice over the summer. Her advice was to make the character of the new housekeeper - in what may or may not become the Prologue - a more interesting character, perhaps a dyer. I thought this was a great idea, as it would mean that this character becomes at once much more interesting and dynamic. But I also felt that it would entail a major rethink of the Prologue, and had a bit of a meltdown. On the way up the M4 to see Lindsay and the gang yesterday, I realised that these supposed big changes were not so big at all. In fact, I really can't see what I was so mortified about to start with.
Despite this, the gut feeling remains that Elias is worth doing; moreover, it's something I have to do. Even in the last month, when I've been working on the fairy novel, thoughts about Elias have been popping up here and there. On a recent trip to New York City, for instance, I suddenly felt that NYC would have to appear in the book, from its earliest incarnation as New Amsterdam (which will make an appearance in the Starkey narrative) to its ceding to the British and change of name in 1667 (towards the end of the novel, when Helvetius is about to publish his account of meeting Elias and the subsequent attempt at performing a transmutation).
So: trust your gut (even if it's slightly larger than one would presently like!). That reminds me, the gut has been called 'the second brain'... but perhaps that's something I'll leave for another time.
As a postscript to this one, however, I can report that the fairy novel got the thumbs up - with a few caveats. Also, we discussed Patrick Harpur, whom Lindsay knows. The tremendously exciting news is that Patrick's long out-of-print masterpiece on alchemy, Mercurius, is finally being re-issued next month. All hail.
This is precisely the problem I'm having with Elias, especially since asking a close friend for advice over the summer. Her advice was to make the character of the new housekeeper - in what may or may not become the Prologue - a more interesting character, perhaps a dyer. I thought this was a great idea, as it would mean that this character becomes at once much more interesting and dynamic. But I also felt that it would entail a major rethink of the Prologue, and had a bit of a meltdown. On the way up the M4 to see Lindsay and the gang yesterday, I realised that these supposed big changes were not so big at all. In fact, I really can't see what I was so mortified about to start with.
Despite this, the gut feeling remains that Elias is worth doing; moreover, it's something I have to do. Even in the last month, when I've been working on the fairy novel, thoughts about Elias have been popping up here and there. On a recent trip to New York City, for instance, I suddenly felt that NYC would have to appear in the book, from its earliest incarnation as New Amsterdam (which will make an appearance in the Starkey narrative) to its ceding to the British and change of name in 1667 (towards the end of the novel, when Helvetius is about to publish his account of meeting Elias and the subsequent attempt at performing a transmutation).
So: trust your gut (even if it's slightly larger than one would presently like!). That reminds me, the gut has been called 'the second brain'... but perhaps that's something I'll leave for another time.
As a postscript to this one, however, I can report that the fairy novel got the thumbs up - with a few caveats. Also, we discussed Patrick Harpur, whom Lindsay knows. The tremendously exciting news is that Patrick's long out-of-print masterpiece on alchemy, Mercurius, is finally being re-issued next month. All hail.
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