Chris Stanley's Bazaar

Hi all! To those of you that knew the pre-fame me - no, I won't buy you a Faberge egg. You probably won't even get a Creme Egg, to be honest. To those of you who are reading my blog for the first time, welcome! Have a Faberge Creme Egg! Seriously, it's great to see you and even greater that my afternoon of rambling was turned into something entertaining enough to bring you here. I won't gild the lily because we're all busy people (those objets d'art don't papier mache themselves, you know, and as for the French punctuation lessons...). I'd like to invite you to check out my other blog posts and also my archive, which are being added to all the time. One of the first things I've had to accept is that not all of the stuff I wanted to talk about has made it into the finished podcast, mainly for reasons of time. You can probably tell that I was itching to unleash that English Upper Second Class, so kudos to Thank Book For for not indulging me. But ...

Oh. Emm. Gee. No, not the first three words out of my mouth usually, and I appreciate that hasn't been, like, dude, used since Clueless. But I'm excited, and it's all because my Thank Book For Podcast and readings are finally up and posted! I'm not going to ramble on here, because the work is there to be heard, but if you want a super fun yankee doodle happy mister fun time, click on the first link to get taken to the Thank Book For podcast starring yours truly: Chris Stanley's Thank Book For Podcast EXTRA, EXTRA! You lucky people also get something for nothing, or as I like to say, Deep New Something. And it's doubleplusgood, folks, because not only do you get to hear an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book The Sad Club (with accompanying notes): "This is a teaser chapter from my current project, a novel called The Sad Club. It's the story of four men who plot their revenge against their old school bully. In this reading, f...

I think it's a good idea to give you a more involved idea about what The Sad Club is about. Anybody who read my last blog post will know the general gist of the plot - four men get the chance to fulfil their childhood vow to kill their bully - but that probably makes it sound quite simple, and you may be wondering where the finished product is, and why I couldn't have just typed out  Sleepers  by Lorenzo Carcaterra and changed the forenames. The main protagonist is Elliott, who is a forensic psychologist. At the start of the novel, he is at his lowest ebb, his wife and kids having left him and he being under investigation for his work with a notorious killer, who he recommended for release but who went on to kill again. He receives an invitation to a friend's wedding, to be held in Berlin. Elliott hasn't seen this friend in twenty years, chiefly for the reason they didn't get on, but also because they we part of a hated foursome at secondary school and informall...

I recorded my first ever podcast yesterday. It was for Thank Book For, which is a book-related initiative created by some old colleagues of mine. The idea is that we have a fairly informal and fun interview about our connections to literature and libraries, and our current projects. This may sound like I was doing some old friends a favour, but we all get something positive from it - I get publicity and some of my work and ideas out there, and they get some great content for their project, which even at this early stage has made real headway. I can't say I wasn't nervous about the prospect of recording. I was worried that I was going to take it all far too seriously, and in wanting to say everything I'd end up saying nothing. I don't want to spoil the podcast, which is slated to appear in the forthcoming days, but Tom and Gemma came to conduct the interview and it was great fun. It was like any good interview, by which I mean they asked questions, let the subject prov...

Hey hey hey. Right, let's treat this like a date. You want to know about me. So, three random facts to get the ice broken: 1) I once tried to pull Robbie Williams on behalf of my sister. 2) I once made up a band out of thin air and convinced Q Magazine to put them on radar. 3) I've been on Mexican television. Probably. See, I don't like that last one. It's not sure enough of itself. And let's face it, if I can't come up with three things about myself that are both interesting and factually correct, there's not much to recommend me as a regular read.  The first post of a blog, I think, is like a television pilot. It's got most of the elements of the real series, but you're just introducing the characters. They don't mean anything to you yet. And though, if you're a completist you'll go back to the very first one when you re-watch the entire run, you'll know in your heart it's a bit rubbish.  That's o...