He wrote 10 books in the 1980s, and it is striking how he still sees writing as both a pleasure and an economic necessity; for all his talk about bobbing in the surf, he hasn't got a lot of truck with artistic pretension. Failing to finish a book means having to "make up the income some other way", and in his 20s and 30s that simply wasn't an option. He had three desks, he once said, because "I couldn't afford to get stuck and give a project a week or two of mechanical diagnostics. So I'd have a kids' thing" - he's written six children's books - "a short story and a fiction thing [on the go], or two fiction things and a kids' thing and it was 'right, not working', just slide the chair over and go 'where was I?'"...
Interview: June 2008 Archives
Allan Ahlberg Profile - The Telgraph
Superb feature about Allan Ahlberg by Nicolette Jones, writing in The Telegraph a few days ago.
[I so often miss Telegraph features and rely on people pointing them out to me. This is definitley one not to be missed.]
Frank Cottrell Bouce Interviewed by Amanda Craig:
There is no doubt that Cosmic is the best novel he's written yet, not only in combining a pitch-perfect narrative voice and a gut-twisting plot, but in its emotional subtext. It will make a great film..."The best novel about fathers ever is To Kill a Mockingbird," Cottrell Boyce says. "You think your father is some bumbling old man, and you discover he's Atticus, he's the hero-dad. Liam knows his dad will bail him out. You never feel like you're doing a great job, you think you've got to be flawless, but the most you can do is to be generous and loving and just there."
Jon Scieszka interviewed...
