by Malcolm Pryce | May 12, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing
The big wooden door of Santa Maria della Scala hospital creaked open. The Blessed Saint Bernadine of Siena peered through the gap. ‘Yes?’ he said, inspecting me through rheum-filled eyes. ‘I’ve come about the job.’ ‘Job?’ ‘The Corpse-washer.’ I held up the...
by Malcolm Pryce | May 12, 2021 | Uncategorized, Writing
A round-Oxford bus ticket. £4.30. That’s all. For the price of two cups of coffee, you can lay the ghost that wanders through the labyrinth of your heart. You can finally get started on that novel. Begin your pilgrimage in London at that railway station named after...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
Five years before he died, Elmore Leonard published his Ten Rules of Writing. I agree with them all, but happily break most of them on the grounds that there is no ‘ Writing Cop’. But of his ten rules the one I like best is Rule №11: When you find writing that sounds...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Uncategorized, Writing
1. Knock on the door. 2. Housewife opens, quickly wedge your foot in. 3. Shove your way in, empty a bag of soot on her floor. 4. Before she calls the police, whip out your vacuum cleaner and clean up the mess. 5. Close the sale. Apparently it worked. A lot of vacuum...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
About six months after I finished my last novel I had a dream in which one of the characters in the novel appeared to me. She told me there was a continuity error in chapter 11. She said I’d got her home address wrong. When I awoke I remembered the dream and checked;...
by Malcolm Pryce | Jan 31, 2021 | Uncategorized, Writing
It was Monday 25 April, 1988. I stood before the Magistrate in Marylebone Magistrate’s Court awaiting the words the verdict of the learned judge. Alongside me in the dock were two ladies from Glasgow who had been arrested for soliciting on Edgware Road. And there was...
