Benjamin Evans - Author

Contemporary culture has an obsession with food. We eat too much, we don't eat enough. This is bad for us, this is good for us. Try this diet, look at these recipes. Jamie Oliver. Jamie Oliver . Jamie Oliver . Food is being blamed for our the way our children behave, the way adults don't behave, the recession, the credit crunch and the end of the world as we know it . It is mentioned on the news , in the papers, in the House of Commons and on almost every report on the state of the nation. and seems to be current number one on the list of problems with the Western world . We all eat too much, we all eat the wrong things and we are all going to die. However, for all the bombast and hyperbole no-one appears to be coming to any solutions. There is a reason for this. We cannot find a solution because the right questions are not being asked in the first place. It should be not as simple as just deciding what is bad for us and what is good for us. Humans are not that simple. No

I am not much of a mystery writer. I don't like the idea that a novel can be created from certain rules that have to be followed for a piece to succeed. For me the whole point of being a writer is that one doesn't have to follow rules, that there is no specific way to do that or this, that a book must definitely contain one thing, or definitely not contain another. However, that does not make writing an entirely autonomous exercise either. It can be, if you are sat at home writing abstract pieces to cleanse the depths of your soul, but if you are an author you need to write something that people will want to read. And if people want to read something it must comply to certain rules. They may not admit it, but people like to know what they're getting - although they may like different types of food, but they still want their food served on a plate. So I am going to see how a proper mystery or thriller works, how it is written and why it is written in the way it is, and for

What are we, as writers, in relation to our work? How do we write? Why do we write as we do? What do we do as we write? And, most importantly, what makes for great writing? To begin to try and answer these questions we need to look from a sense of the indigenous, the childhood upbringing - the 'the hiding place' of the works that are to come. 'The hiding place of my power Seem open; I approach, and then they close; I see by glimpses now, when age comes on, May scarcely see at all, and I would give, A substance and a life to what I feel: I would enshrine the spirit of the past For future restoration.' A voice, the basis of all poetry is created in the past. It is where we can get our own feeling into our words and make our words have the feel of us about them. For Heaney the process of writing is one of 'digging,' and with his shovel, the pen, he comes up with memories of pastoral Northern Ireland and the local slang of his school days. It is a recognition of the

'All this fuss about Swine Flu - it's absurd!' For some there can be no argument with this view. In the last few months Swine Flu has taken over the news broadcasts, NHS phone lines and virtually the entire Daily Mail output, and all for what? A relatively low risk condition, that can be cured with one simple dose of medication, and that most of us have a minimal chance of contracting in the first place. Now in this blog I am not going to consider whether this reaction is merited or not, but why it has come about in the first place. Why is there this sensationalism? Why do so may panic at the onsite of every new virus, as if it might one step from Armageddon . Is this a good thing or a bad thing? How would we cope with a plague today? The first point I would like to make, is that the above statement is absolutely right. The reaction to Swine Flu is absurd, but purely in a philosophical way. The absurd I refer to is that of Kierkegaard and Camus , of our search for self i

How it makes of your face a stone that aches to weep, of your heart a fist, clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice that can throw no six. How it takes the breath away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin, makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static, of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this - politics - to your education education education; shouts this - Politics! - to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS Carol Anne Duffy's right isn't she? Politics. Surely it is the most depressing most gob-smackingly awful part of our social framework, one that if you look at long enough, you feel your soul empty from inside of you, and you