I’ve just had a week off work, so I’ve been spending plenty of time catching up on my reading, watching films and hanging out with friends. Bliss!Earlier in the week I reviewed the new James Bond film, Skyfall, and in my review I mentioned one of the locations that features in the film – Hashima Island, which is off the coast of Japan.
Seeing the island, which is abandoned, in the film reminded me of an article I read online a couple of years ago when I was first discovering Twitter. It was a piece on ghost towns from a travel blog, full of haunting images of houses and apartment buildings left behind by their inhabitants, with furniture and even toys forsaken for the elements.
I’ve never been to such a place, but I find the idea of a whole town standing empty fascinating and sinister. It’s the perfect location for a novel, and something that sits quietly in my ideas bank waiting for the right time.
Speaking of Twitter, I had an overexcited book nerd moment this morning, as I saw that author Attica Locke had sent me a tweet thanking me for the review I wrote on the blog of her latest novel, The Cutting Season. She said it, ‘Made my day’.
Well, knowing that she’d read my review and was pleased with it made me pretty happy too! That’s the great thing about Twitter, it makes people much more accessible, and there are a great community of writers on the social network who I enjoy engaging with.
A quick book tip for you, check out Origin, by J.T. Brannan. It’s an action thriller that explores the geneses of mankind. My first impression was that it would sit in the Dan Brown genre of religious/scientific thrillers, which I’ve never been too keen on. But it’s well written, with a startling ending.