I wanted to post the first two chapters of my unfinished novel FILM CLUB here on my Multiglom blog, but WordPress’s new editing interface is a disaster – intolerable and unworkable – and clearly not designed with writers in mind, so I have posted them on Substack instead.
Here are the first two paragraphs of the preamble:
When I first joined Twitter, back in 2009, I concocted a story called The Psycho Murders, inspired by the 1973 Vincent Price film Theatre of Blood. I replaced theatre critics with film critics, and killed them off in ways inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, as opposed to the original’s plays of William Shakespeare. I posted it on the social media platform in 56 increments of approximately 140 characters.
About a year ago I decided to expand this idea into a novella, set in and around the national press shows of 1990s London, which I had frequented in my role as film critic of The Sunday Correspondent, Tatler, New Statesman & Society, and The Sunday Telegraph. I thought the story might serve as a snapshot of that era, the early days of the internet and IMDb, before smartphones, wi-fi and Google, when print still ruled, and arts criticism was still a viable career choice, if only for the privileged few – mostly old white men…
MULTIGLOM 