Last Wednesday my friend and fellow writer Brian Kirk tagged me in an online blogging chain called The Next Big Thing, a series of questions about writers’ next projects. The idea is to draw attention to writers and their blogs…

Goodreads Book Giveaway The Avenue by James Lawless Giveaway ends January 24, 2013. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win

I can recall now the first time I heard the insurance man remonstrating with my mother. It was late one Christmas Eve. I was six or seven at the time, waiting in bed for Santa,  pressing tightly on my eyes,…

Christmas Eve The birds make fake bird songs that I heard in the Christmas shops, the fake moon is spotted before dark, the navyblue sky is waiting for its absence to be filled, houses stand like sentries, men in windows…

Check out this profile: James Lawless http://t.co/oRsra5OH via @Amazon_Studios The late Giles Gordon and David Marcus and president of Ireland Michael D Higgins, who resurrected Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board), believed in the filmic potential of The…

Apart from the big hitters Timothy Mo’s Pure and Sebastian Faulk’s A possible Life which I reviewed (see my book reviews post), there were other books I enjoyed this year which largely escaped the main media. These included poets, Declan…

‘Now that the literary novel is marginalized, the theatre too often a time-serving charade, and poetry increasingly like a children’s party game, perhaps it’s time once more for the considered observation, the aphorism, the intimate journal and the reflective diary.’…

My highly-commended novel The Avenue is now available on Kindle at Amazon.com for $3.68 or for £1.93 on Amazon.co.uk Some reviews of The Avenue: “James Lawless has a mighty thoughtful and penetrating capacity to make you gasp and rage and…

One of my bookshelves “The contents of someone’s bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. ” Anatole Broyard