Where'd all the pieces go?

If you prefer your chess with pieces, check out my novel (and now screenplay) The Pride and the Sorrow at http://www.mattfullerty.com/

The novel recently won the Bookhabit Unpublished Novel Competition 2008 http://www.bookhabit.com/competition

Thanks!

The Big Easy!

A great little picture I found of Rue Bourbon, New Orleans, graffittied with 'Love Wins'!

Click on the pic to see more of the city!

Sweet!

Picture (for no reason at all) #2

New Orleans street.

You will be punished!

Last weekend, I went with Katie to the newly opened National Museum of Crime and Punishment located in DC's Chinatown. While it's $18 to go round (compared to the free Smithsonian museums including the zoo), this new addition to DC's landscape of museums is well worth it!

The museum is impressive mainly because it combines the history of crime, mostly the state torture that passed as punishment, while profiling modern criminals up to the present. Naturally, England, this means the museum includes sophisticated ballistics and CSI-style techniques! But the best bits were the stories of human arrogance and folly in criminals causing their own downfall!

One case that still puzzles today is that of D. B. Cooper who hijacked and ransomed a Boeing 727 in the seventies, only to leap from the back with the money and never be seen again! Check out Cooper's story here! His tale suits the strain of consiracy running through American culture - was he a genius who escpaed the Feds? Or was he too smart for himself and was probably killed on landing or shortly afterwards?

Check out my novel The Murderess and the Hangman about a maid who kills her landlady for a few pieces of furniture here!

Pownce on it!

Not happy with just having one microblogging with Twitter, I got myself attached to Pownce. For some reason, I enjoy signing up for free accounts with these sites where you can post a comment to a buch of followers. Easy self-promotion for one!

What I've learned is that you can actually connect with a few people, even if just to exchange a comment or two. It's worth it if you narrow your interests down - and while you're sending a random message to 3o or so followers (some go into the thousands) your eye notices a comment about books or chess or whatever you've selected your own followers to be interested in, and the site serves itself.

Just don't spend all day there!

England World Cup qualifiers!

Dear England, Here are the England World Cup qualifying matches between now and the World Cup, South Africa 2010!

06/09/08 20:00 Barcelona: Andorra v England
10/09/08 21:00 Zagreb: Croatia v England
11/10/08 17:15 London: England v Kazakhstan
15/10/08 Minsk: Belarus v England
01/04/09 TBA: England v Ukraine
06/06/09 TBA: Kazakhstan v England
10/06/09 TBA: England v Andorra
09/09/09 TBA: England v Croatia
10/10/09 TBA: Ukraine v England
14/10/09 TBA: England v Belarus

As you can see, the first two matches are next month!

Before then, of course, it's the Olympics 2012 - in London!

Matt Fullerty is disliked by...

The best review for my novel The Pride and the Sorrow is available here. Thanks again Geoff!

"What made Matt Fullerty's writing stand out, from the very first sentence, was an unusually strong and individual way with words. Taking us into the vanished world of old America and Europe he uses a highly textured language to give an almost physical experience of being in that place and time. Drawing subtle lines between a society top-heavy with leisure and the profligate genius it produced in Morphy, he holds back the historical and personal reckoning while letting it gather and brood like the storm that finally washes away New Orleans. In my view this makes THE PRIDE AND THE SORROW a stand-out all rounder in the craft of literary fiction."

Other reviews are available here - all of which I appreciate!
Cheers internet people!

Quote of the Day #1

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you've read one of them you will feel that all that happened, happened to you and then it belongs to you forever: the happiness and unhappiness, the good and evil, ecstacy and sorrow, the food, wine, beds, people and the weather. If you can give that to readers, then you're a writer.

Who wrote it? (The picture's a clue!)

Death by Chocolate

So I never thought I'd spend $2.75 on a cupcake. But on Saturday I did - and well, it was worth it, if you like cupcakes that die in the mouth. Another sign of the small business entrepreneurs operating in the city. Check out all the crazy flavors at Georgetown Cupcake!

Only in America!

Fishing!

Recently, I had my first experience of real fishing - fishing off a boat into the Chesapeake Bay!

The cat is out of the bag (fish off the line) - we had a little help from the Captain, a former Vietnam Vet!

Rockfish and Bluefish for supper tonight! Nice!

Writer v Studio!

Yesterday I read another story of how someone is suing the producers of the new movie Death Race (starring Jason Statham) claiming his ideas were stolen from an original script submittal. The writer's script had a different name but he is claiming his ideas were rejected, then adapted afterwards into the movie that got made. Check out this link!

UK Olympic medal count!

The UK's medals so far are 18 Gold, 13 Silver, 13 Bronze. Total of 44. In terms of gold medals, we are in 3rd place. Pretty amazing - the rowers, swimmers are cyclists are really coming through!

Check out the full table of countries here!

Screenplay complete!

I am pleased to say I've now completed a screenplay for my novel The Pride and the Sorrow.

To distinguish it from the novel, I've called the screenplay The Knight of New Orleans. It's currently with the Film and TV agent Meg Davis, Director of MLA Literary Agents in London.

I also took the move of registering The Knight of New Orleans with the Writer's Guild of America, East as proof of copyright. Copyright is immediately assigned to the originator at the point of writing, so registering any work (or mailing it to yourself in a sealed post-stamped envelope) has to be a wise move.

I look forward to The Knight of New Orleans being sent out next month!

Stolen scripts!

To add to the Death Race stolen script story, the writer of new Kevin Costner movie Swing Vote is also claiminh his ideas were stolen - click here!

For an article on stolen scripts generally in Hollywood - admittedly a couple of years old - but setting the scene for these new claims and revelations, check out this link.

Hollywood is still pretty nutty, England! We wouldn't have it any other way!

Ozzies and Brits fight it out!

The Olympics is starting to look like the Ashes!

I have to include this picture because there are so few occasions!

Check out this article!

Brew at the Zoo

Last night I went with Katie to Brew at the Zoo at the Smithsonian National Zoo up in Woodley Park, Washington DC. What a good time! You basically walk through the zoo at night, while all the animals are asleep, and the day is cooling down, then for your $40 get handed a Brew at the Zoo stein, and then spend 3 hours sampling about 40 beers! And no, I'm not paid by the company!


We need more of this England! Add to that a pleasant hillside to lie back on, and lots of food tables of local restaurants (this is America, food has to be involved) and we had a good time. And being in a group of two, we were able to get around and switch tables fast!

All the details are here!

New Orleans - the beautiful!

New British pub in DC!

Dear England, Following my posts about Union Jacks in Bethesda and the Elephant & Castle on Pennsylvania Avenue, there's now a new British pub in DC - in Columbia Heights!

Columbia Heights has seen a lot of development in recent years, and now includes the Commonwealth Gastro Pub, a pretty upscale pad offering all your faves from Yorkshire pud to Toad in the Hole! The one drawback - the drinks are a little pricey ($8 for a Strongbow - what's that all about?) This drawback amuses me somewhat, given the tagline being used - "the People's Pub."

Anyway, good to see another British pub in the city.

Cheers!

Hubert Selby Jr. - quote of the day!

"The responsibility of the artist is to transcend the human ego." Hubert Selby, Jr.

Hubert Selby Jr. wrote Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream, both made into decent movies. I just finished watching the documentary of his fascinating life, "Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow" (2005). He goes from tough kid / only child in Brooklyn, skipping school, to a merchant seaman who contracted a terrible disease from the cattle being transported to Europe at sea in World War II, to spending years in a hospital, having a lung removed, becoming a heroin abuser for the pain after getting hooked on morphine, drying out and quitting booze at 40, then surprising everyone and living for another thirty years (and writing some amazing and pretty dark fiction).

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Enough said!

Here's the last thing Hubert 'Cubby' Selby, Jr. wrote:

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A List of Indignities

Birth
Death

Beijing Olympics Medal Count!

Dear England, As you can see from this chart we're not doing bad in the medal count so far!

The UK has 2 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze, putting us in 10th place! You can see the breakdown for our Gold (Cycling and Swimming), Silver (Cycling and Canoeing) and Bronze (Horse riding x2 and Swimming) at this link.

Come on England!

Shouldn't that telephone box be red?

As telephone boxes are fast disappearing from the UK altogether, they're surviving on the campus of George Washington University - albeit in blue. Dear England, we miss our red telephone boxes!

China - don't ban our Vegemite!

Vegemite is a much loved food in Australia, worshipped with an equivalent love/hate that we Brits have for our Marmite.

Click the image to read the article - the small print says "C'mon China, don't ban our Vegemite!"

Morphiana - who knew?

As a by-product of writing a novel centrered on the life of legendary chess player - forgotten by history - Paul Morphy of New Orleans, I developed a minor interest in collecting all things Morphy. Apparently this is known in the strange world of antique trading as Morphiana. Who knew such a thing even existed?

So recently, I just purchased - off ebay of course, it is the 21st century, the proof of which is the Beijing Olympics happening right now with the Communist Party, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin all looking on (while Russia and Georgia fight a territorial war on their borders!) - and I quietly buy some Morphy stamps.

Who knew Mr. Morphy was such a celeb? Surely you've only really made it when they put your face on a stamp?

Paul Morphy's face on a stamp from Myanmar (formerly Burma) - in their 'Kings of Chess' series!

The Chess Players - your move, Devil!

The painting is called The Chess Players and is by the German Painter Moritz Retzsch (1779-1857). The devil is playing a young man for his soul - and despite having the white pieces - the young man is lost! The devil looks impatient to claim him and the angel ready to weep.

The moral - never play chess against the devil!

Is that my Dad in a Ferrari or what?

Dear England, A lifetime ambition, a few weeks ago my Dad got his boyhood dream realized - he got to drive in a Ferrari!

This took place on a F3 course, and in my Dad's own words, "I'll never buy a Ferrari, but the drive was brill......top speed on the back straight...153mph...fastest bend 92mph...I even impressed myself....and for the last 2 laps the instructor went quiet!"

Glad to hear they both made it back! Apparently the road Ferrari has an annoying design where the gear changes are not on the steering wheel - as they would be in the Formula One car. Clearly these road cars weren't made for 153mph race courses!

Watch out for those cones!

You can just see him behind the wheel in this one - next stop Beijing!