MattRees.net

I’m at the diagram stage of plotting my next novel. Perhaps I should add a thought from Italo Calvino: “I’m a regular guy, I like well-defined outlines, I’m old-fashioned, bourgeois. My stories are full of facts, they have a beginning and an end.”

I use yoga and meditation to prepare myself for the mental and physical challenge of writing. I introduce this podcast by talking about the importance of yoga and how it helps to open a writer’s creativity, and to prevent fatigue from sitting for long periods. I describe several stretching techniques you can do throughout your [...]

Journalists know that their readership is changing. The primary approach to this change has been, frankly, to panic. And of course to fire people. To offer the same style and content, but with links to Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. I’ve come to the conclusion that these things don’t help. What readers want is a [...]

(Blurbworld! is a crime/romance/sci-fi/satirical novel to be serialized here and on my blog in coming months. A blurb is a comment highlighted on the cover of a book, usually provided by another author or culled from a review. They’re often misleading and typically repeat a somewhat tired comparative trope: eg. “Jonathan Safran Foer is the [...]

(This continues my series of autobiographical vignettes, intended to demonstrate the neuroses, ambition, talent, chance, mischance, place, alcohol and attitude that go toward the creation of a writer. The tales may be instructive or proscriptive. This one concerns work –– something writing should never be.) In the summer after my second year at Oxford, I [...]

Before I became a writer, I worked a number of crappy jobs. I hauled cement on my back, gleefully destroyed hospitals, ate meat pies, and watched homoerotic wrestling while draining a deep-fat fryer. And got paid badly for all of them. But without them, I wouldn’t be the writer I am. Download the Podcast: (Download [...]

(This continues my series of autobiographical vignettes, intended to demonstrate the neuroses, ambition, talent, chance, mischance, place, and alcohol that go toward the creation of a writer. The tales may be instructive or proscriptive. This one, at least, is mainly about the alcohol part.) I quit drinking the day after I turned 27. On my [...]

When I was a very young journalist in London, I had the last interview with Salman Rushdie before Khomeini pronounced his fatwa against the writer. Unfortunately I was drunk. He was rude, and so was I. Here’s the story of how it happened. Download the Podcast: (Download the MP3) Subscribe via iTunes

I just wrote an article for The Jerusalem Report about “What Israelis Fear Most.” Surprisingly, I found that Israelis didn’t fear being murdered by a psychopath or caught up in a case of mistaken identity which leads to them getting into car chases with the FBI on their tails. Surprisingly, that is, if you read [...]

Mrs. Rees has given me two lovely kids. She has enjoyed the presence of my parents. She even visited Wales with me. But I was never quite sure of her. Because she had only read one Raymond Chandler novel. In an effort to make our marriage complete, I suggested this week she augment her reading [...]