Welcome one and all to this week’s Friday Feeling, easing you into the weekend with cultural tid-bits and bookish distractions that have been entertaining us this week.

We’ve had bookish CD cases, now here’s how the internet would look as vintage covers.

One of the challenges of being a freelance writer (or freelancer of any kind for that matter) is finding a quiet place to work. The good people of the Londonist have made a handy map of the best bars, cafes, libraries and even hotels you can sit undisturbed with a coffee and your laptop. I particularly like the reviews, “…Well-intentioned but ineffective table service means you can linger here for hours…undisturbed”.

And finally, if you missed the BBC 4 drama on Heather Brooke’s breaking of the expenses scandal, you can still catch it here. Heather’s book The Silent State is out in April.

The story of Heather Brooke, the journalist who broke the expenses scandal, has been dramatised for a BBC 4 drama, ‘On Expenses’. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.

The Silent State is published in April. Preorder it here.

‘Anyone with a vote worth stealing should read this. You won’t know whether to laugh or rise up and overthrow absolutely everything’ - Charlie Brooker

‘She’s a total ninja’ - Ben Goldacre

‘Heather Brooke puts every other British journalist to shame. She has changed British public culture and earned an essential place in our national history. She is an extraordinary figure who must be celebrated’ - Peter Oborne

‘Secrecy is one of the great British diseases. It’s so secret that we don’t even admit we suffer from it. Heather Brooke is part of the cure - challenging the routine concealment and distortion of important information. There should be more journalists doing the same’ - Nick Davies

Do we believe in coincidences? I was all set to write a Turbine Blog post for the lovely people at Windmill about a familial coincidence I uncovered whilst researching the true murder case which features in my novel, The Finest Type of English Womanhood, but now, to be frank, I’m confused. (By the way this subject has been politely negotiated between Harvey and myself, as I had an urgent desire to share with the world the dramatic highs and lows of my search for a suitable dress to wear to the Costa Book Awards; Harvey however remained polite, implacable but firm on the subject).

So, I was going to spin out my tale, with its surprising and shocking ending, but I find that I’m sitting here suddenly unconvinced that it’s in anyway astonishing or odd or even unlikely, and the more I think about it, the less outlandish or accidental it becomes. I’ve now (almost) decided that it isn’t a coincidence at all but utterly understandable, in fact, if it isn’t too dramatic to say so, inevitable. Not only because of banal common-place factors such as time, incident and place, but also, I’m realizing, because of my grandfather’s extraordinary Zelig-like character. But I’m racing ahead.

Firstly the ‘coincidence’ under question.

When I was researching the history of the Union Castle steamer line - the ships which travelled between Britain and South Africa - I came across the story of Gay Gibson, a young actress murdered aboard the Durban Castle in 1947. The deck steward James Camb was accused of her murder.  Now, the reason I was doing the original research, the fact that I wanted to write about two girls journeying to Johannesburg in that immediate post-war, pre-apartheid era was not coincidental. My grandparents, and my mother, had emigrated there in 1946. As a child, I had been both entranced and disturbed by my grandparents’ photograph albums; my beautiful grandmother in a large hat and scoop-neck dress, my grandfather in a dapper silk suit at a party, holding a glass of champagne, but then, turning the page, a photograph of my mother sitting in the strange garden of her new house in Johannesburg, one hand up to shade her bewildered face, dark circles under eyes, blinking in the sunshine. You could feel the shock of the sun on her pasty, war-rationed skin.

Gay Gibson - just the idea of her - tied in beautifully with what I was interested to write about too; young women trying to figure out who or how you ought to be and what goes wrong when you don’t know.

I went to the British Newspaper library and read on microfilm the newspaper coverage of the trial. I read Denis Herbstein’s “The Porthole Murder Mystery’ and the published transcript of the murder trial of James Camb.

Here was the coincidence. My grandfather was mentioned in the trial transcript. Weird, huh? I was shocked at the time, his very name there in print, being discussed as a ‘known associate’ of Gay Gibson. One witness said they’d seen them having lunch, and that he had written her a reference for a theatrical agent in London, which she took on to the Durban Castle in her handbag.

Coincidence, right?

Or is it. My grandfather  had been born in London’s east end to Hugarian-Jewish immigrant parents. From this modest start he had made himself up, literally, to the degree that nobody quite seems to know the truth. He said he was picked off the streets by philanthropists and educated, that he ran a socialist underground press, that he joined the army and learnt how to box. All of these could well be true, and probably are.  One thing that is true is that all families have and like to weave their stories and myths about themselves - mine possibly more so than others - and one abiding story in my family is that you could walk into any room or, more accurately, any bar in the world with my grandfather, anywhere, anytime, and someone there would look up, smile and say, ‘Hello Mike! Why are you here?’

The second most relevant thing I can think to tell you about my grandfather is that all around his dining-room hung photographs of him posing with Hollywood stars - John Wayne, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda, Mike Silver and Debbie Reynolds, laughing and clutching one another smiling into the camera. See, Zelig. I said to him once, ‘But why are you with them?’ and he shrugged, smiled and winked at me.

By this I don’t mean to suggest he was a charlatan, he wasn’t - he was, to name a few attributes, brilliantly clever, hard-working, politically energetic, insightful, complex, charming and a surprisingly graceful dancer, friend to thousands but, I suspect, known to very few.

So, when I think that my grandfather, who had just arrived from his army post in Israel to run a commercial radio station in Johannesburg, knew Gay Gibson, I just can’t be surprised by this fact.

And because The Finest Type of English Womanhood is also a story of outsiders wanting to belong, but making it up as they go along and trying - in this case, disastrously - to find their place in the world,  it doesn’t seem unlikely or coincidental that my grandfather might have an off the page walk-on part in this tale, indeed it is characteristic that he should.

Puzzling over writing this blog, I looked up ‘Coincidence’ on Wiki and was struck by this quote from Plutarch, ‘It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur’ . If Plutarch had known my grandfather and, you know, there is this tiny, crazy part of me that wouldn’t be entirely boggle-eyed about that either,  he might have added, ‘Especially if Mike Silver were involved.’

So, do we believe in coincidences or not?

P.S. I wore a black dress, with kick ass shoes.

The Finest Type of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath is out now. Buy it from Amazon, Play, Waterstones.com, or from your local bookshop.

Helping you through the other long, dark, tea time of the soul, it’s this week’s Friday Feeling!

We’ve already had totally stylish bookshelves, now here we have some weird and wonderful ways to reuse your old books. The book ball is neat, the book ’scrapbook’ looks like a flower has been sick on it. Oh well!

Stuart Evers argues in this lively blog post that confidence isn’t everything when it comes to good writing. (Largely I agree, though I’d also say that unless you have some confidence that the story you’re telling is worth reading then why would you bother writing it?)

‘The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year’ is a long name for a frequently hilarious prize: you can help vote for the shortlist here. Our very own Hutchinson published a contender in previous years called Knitting With Dog Hair: Better a Sweater from a Dog You Know Than a Sheep You’ll Never Meet. So many questions about that book. So few answers.

What was it like to write Pocket Notebook?

This is something I’m asked with increasing regularity, certainly by colleagues in my ‘real’ job as a serving police officer, colleagues who now look at me - the publication date fast approaching - with a curious mix of wonder, bemusement and no little amusement.

I’d love there to be a brief, snappy soundbite answer. In truth, it’s been a blur.

Try this: imagine working full-time shifts, a minimum fifty-six hour week of morning, afternoon (but they’re really evening) and night shifts. So even before you get to the physical act of writing, imagine feeling permanently jetlagged, like you’re flying to Goa and back ad nauseum, an interminable redeye flight across timelines, your body clock not tick-tocking but jumping around the hours until you’re so tired you could weep. Throw in a Masters degree in Creative Writing with a Critical Study on Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive fiction and his accounts of marginalised individuals.  Add attempting to renovate your decrepit cottage with little or no money, going to night school for Portuguese lessons (don’t ask), attending various writing groups and doing distance learning writing courses just so you can, y’know, get somewhere. Please. And then, just when it’s getting really interesting, ensure your wife gets pregnant. Twice, while you’re struggling with the first draft. I mean, why not? Idle hands and all that.

Against that backdrop you sit, and write, and type. You do it when you can. You do it because you must, because you’re twenty thousand words in now and it’s become a compulsion. This thing - this kernel of an idea you had back in the day, back in 1995 when you were a young man and the tools required to do the idea justice were missing so you put it to one side - it’s gripped you like nothing else. Imagine stumbling home after twelve hours in work, it’s one in the morning, your house is asleep so off you go, losing yourself in the travails of Jacob Smith, potty policeman, the prose pouring out of you, spewing onto the page because - see above - this is the first time in days you’ve had the chance to write and it’s been building inside you, you’ve just got to get it out. And before you know it the sun is bleeding into the room through the blinds, your heavily pregnant wife is at the door, bleary-eyed, holding your toddler daughter, shaking her head. You go to bed, feeling guilty again. You sleep, but wake intermittently to scribble notes. And so it goes…

Then there’s having a character like Jacob in your head. For months upon end. A character whose life is disintegrating, whose clipped, control-freak tones soon dissolve into stream of consciousness ramblings as everything unravels around him, a man who you would cross the street to avoid if you knew him. Imagine preparing to write, your laptop humming away, notes spread across the damp-riddled cloakroom you grandiosely refer to as your study, and to get into the groove you have to pace the kitchen, chain-smoking, working yourself into a frenzy just to match the mindset of the character you’ve created, to be able to write about the crazy things he’s doing with his life. Then picture your one-year-old daughter watching you do this.

So you write, and write, the word count rising, fifty-thousand, sixty, seventy, more. It consumes you, your character taking on a life of his own, his breakdown your breakdown, his experiences yours. It feels like it’s never going to stop. And then - suddenly - you do stop. Everything falls into place. Everything ends. Imagine it: it’s half three in the morning, you’re on paternity leave for your son, you’re supposed to be helping out your wife who gave birth not two weeks before. That guilt again. But that compulsion. The last year, gone. And you type the final line, almost crying with relief. Just as you do, your tired wife appears at the door again. She sees the look on your face and smiles.

It was good to get Jacob, this crazed police juggernaut, out of my head.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Am I grumbling about all of this? Hell, no. Let’s put it into perspective: my wife, who was also enduring everything I’ve mentioned, quietly, with no fuss, carried and gave birth to two beautiful children while I was hunched over a desk making up a story in La La Land. But this novel, Pocket Notebook, is my own little baby. Now it’s published I feel a tiny bit of that guilt has been assuaged. It’s my thank you to her.

I imagine you reading it now, you who I’ve never met and probably never will. And I’m thrilled. I imagine you experiencing Jacob’s world, travelling with him, shaking your head in disbelief, smiling to yourself - maybe, hopefully, laughing out loud on occasion - as he stumbles onwards.

I imagine you finishing his story and feeling you’ve been on a hell of a ride. Because it is one, for him.

And it still is, for me.

Pocket Notebook by Mike Thomas is published today. To order a copy go to rbooks, Amazon, Waterstones.com, Play, or find it at your local bookstore.

Watch the trailer here

The trailer for Pocket Notebook by Mike Thomas is here!

Pocket Notebook is out now. To order a copy go to rbooks, Amazon, Waterstones.com, Play, or find it at your local bookstore.

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy

‘…it is a triumph; a dark, thrilling saga roaming from the ghettoes of LA to the boondocks of Haiti as assassins and FBI agents try to make peace with the havoc they’ve created.  Vivid as a nightmare.’ John Williams, Mail on Sunday

A World by Itself by Jonathan Clark

‘…a compelling history of the British Isles to date, tracing political, religious and material cultures from the Romans to the present day, and focusing on the most dramatic moments of the last two millennia and the enduring questions of what it means to be British.’ Scotsman Magazine

Pocket Notebook by Mike Thomas

‘Pocket Notebook is most certainly not run of the mill…Amusing, in a very black way…entertaining…There’s no doubt Mike Thomas can write very well indeed…he’s come up with a cracker of a read…Needless to say, Smith is heading for an especially bloody end. It’s who he’ll take down with him that provides the suspense, and the horror.’ Henry Sutton, Mirror

‘Arresting tale doesn’t miss a beat…Pocket Notebook might become cult reading in police circles, [but] it certainly isn’t about to become a recruit training manual.  This is an enjoyable black comedy that builds to an exciting climax.’ Tim Relf, Independent

Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop by Kristan Hawkins

‘Plenty of charm in this effervescently sweet novel - perfect for reading in the bath.’ Metro

Bad Vibes by Luke Haines

‘It’s pretty much the best-written book I’ve ever read by a musician.  He has a superb deadpan style.  You will call people and read bits over the phone’ William Leith, Evening Standard

Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed

‘Incredibly vivid’ Press Association syndicated review

 Liaquat also wrote his ‘book of a lifetime’ piece in the Independent

The Finest Type of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath

‘Brilliantly melds a factual post-war murder into a dark fictional tale’ Telegraph

Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi

‘…a balanced, lucid narrative; a rich, complex account of this crucial part of Iranian history.’ Observer

‘A powerful memoir of Nafisi’s Iranian childhood, her mother and a homeland shattered by political revolution.’ The Times

Author and historian Helen Rappaport will be touring around the country talking about her writing through 2010. For full details please visit Helen’s official site.

The author of The Brother Gardeners will be giving a talk at the British Library on the 2nd February from 6pm.

For directions to the event, click here.