Peter James: Novelist and Film Producer: Notes From The Underground

Peter's blog

Friday, March 14, 2008
Notes From The Underground

Last December 17th, in the UK (and abroad on digital radio) some of you may have heard me on BBC Radio Four, promoting a wonderful new literary magazine, Notes From The Underground, which was launched that day and handed out free, across London by men in bowler hats, looking like pastiches of the famous Magritte painting.

Notes From The Underground is an enterprise started by Tristan Summerscale and Christopher Vernon. Tristan is the son of my English teacher at Charterhouse, David Summerscale, the one person in all my schooldays who gave me the confidence to believe I could be a writer. I owe David ( a brilliant man, who went on to become Headmaster of Westminster School), a debt bigger than I can ever repay, so it was great to have the opportunity to at least give something back, when I was asked if I could support the launch issue of this magazine by contributing a very, very short story!

Part of the ethos of Notes From The Underground is that people should be able to read something stimulating while sitting on the Tube, and the issues of the magazine contain a number of short and very, very short stories. Mine is two sentences long, and is called "Companionship" . You can currently view the video on the Notes From The Underground website's front page. Click the Play button, turn up your sound, you will hear me reading it and see the brilliant animation with it!

If you have Windows Media Player installed, you can also download the short story here - but be warned - it's a big (10mb) file.

posted by Peter James at 3:09 AM 6 comments

Comments:

What a rum ending that is. But an excellent web site.
BTW found an excellent author called Chris Simms, writes about Manchester.
Roll on June, and
Dead Man's Footsteps.
See you soon l hope lol.

Robert Splaine

By robert splaine, at 11:26 AM

Good story, agree Robert "rum ending". Chris Simms was at Harrogate Peter, did you get to meet him. Fantastic guy, and his stories are great too :-)

Linda

By Anonymous, at 6:57 AM

No Linda, l didnt get to meet him at all. I was on my out of Waterstones, (and l always say l am never finished in waterstones till l am through that door lol), and they had a sleection of Manchester Authors, and l picked him up Chris and also
Cath Staincliffe, who incidently wrote Blue Murder for TV, just started her yesterday.

Robert

By robert splaine, at 7:11 AM

Hi Robert

Tbanks for the reccomendation of Chris Simms, I will get one of his books.

All best

Peter

By Peter James, at 8:51 AM

Hi Peter,

Just wanted to say I saw you on the TV today, on SKY3, The Book Show. Thought you were very restrained with Jeffrey Archer, when he started having a go at you for your late start to the day! Of course, the correct answer to his badgering and boasting about being up at 6AM to work on his books was "But my books are already better than yours, Jeffrey. Imagine how much better they'd be if I started earlier in the day . . ."

All the best,

Mark

By M, at 8:40 PM

Hi Mark

Thank you - I like that argument a lot!!!!!!!

All best

Peter

By Peter James, at 4:41 PM