Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Author: Steve

  • ‘Cause People Say We Monkee Around

    In the Comments section, Piers Beckley wrote of his old electronic typewriter: “I loved it, because it meant I didn’t have to tippex or retype when I miskeyed… Finally got rid of it a couple of years ago after I realised I hadn’t plugged it in for more than a decade and was never going…

  • The Way the Future Is

    I still like a book. I haven’t been won over to e-reading yet but I’ve no doubt the day will come when I will, just as I retired my typewriter, my super 8 movie camera, and my Olympus stills camera when it became self-evident that I was sticking with them for the wrong reasons. Stay…

  • Jacob Hood – the Firefox Theme

    Whenever my Firefox browser auto-updates, it always kicks off by inviting me to choose a ‘persona’, which is basically a fancy Bergmanesque name for a toolbar graphic. There’s thousands of the buggers, apparently, nearly all user-generated, and usually I skip on by. But someone’s just added a Jacob Hood Firefox Persona. And before you ask……

  • Noir and Back Again

    I just heard that two of my favourite publishers will be combining forces to put out a double volume of early Lawrence Block novels sometime early next year. I suppose that Subterranean Press and Hard Case Crime can both fairly be described as ‘niche’ publishers, but not in any pejorative sense; in an era when…

  • Process and Procedure

    Which ought to be the title of Jane Austen’s unpublished crime novel… It’s the network pitching season in LA, and I just got back after an intense week with results that I should be able to tell you about sometime soon. After nine hours plus of breathing buggy plane air on the way home, I…

  • This Island Rod

    A recommendation – while googling for something else (I’ve forgotten what) I came across this film blog written by Roderick Heath, who describes himself somewhere as a film school dropout (I’ve forgotten where I saw that, too) and is based in Lithgow, New South Wales. It’s only been up for a couple of years but…

  • Scribal Rites

    The Wall Street Journal features this piece on how TV series writers have their own ways to achieve fulfilment and exact retribution. Most of the examples are more subtle than confrontational… David Kohan (tells of how) comedian Elayne Boosler treated him so badly early in his career that he tried for years to get revenge.…

  • Radio Daze

    I’ve had a heads-up to say that BBC Radio 7 will be airing my 90-minute adaptation of Chimera in two slots this coming Sunday (August 22nd) and again the following day… click here for the scheduled times, if that appeals to you. And, tying in with my Quiller post below, I notice that all this…

  • Of Girls, Swedes, and Dragon Tattoos

    If you’re interested and you get the chance, try to see Niels Arden Oplev’s Swedish-language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before you hear much more about the planned David Fincher remake. That first adaptation isn’t a perfect movie by any means, but as screen mysteries go it’s a very good one. A…

  • Quiller and Quiller Again

    Last night, in a collision of whim and a weekend sale by the good folk at Network DVD, I watched The Quiller Memorandum for the first time in a number of years. (Pause for a quick shout-out to my daughter Ellen, singing at the Bloodstock festival today with the band Neonfly. Check out the site…