Simon Says is my monthly readers’ group communiqué. Sign up for the group if you want your copy delivered directly to your inbox.
Simon Says is my monthly readers’ group communiqué. Sign up for the group if you want your copy delivered directly to your inbox.
12 August 2025 » communiqué 106
There’s something that appeals to us and that connects at an emotional level which makes us want to root for the bad guy.
8 July 2025 » communiqué 105
What makes a good person do bad things? How does an innocent get turned into a willing co-conspirator? Let’s look at the 2004 movie Collateral.
10 June 2025 » communiqué 104
The kernel of a story comes when you start asking the characters some questions.
13 May 2025 » communiqué 103
Adolescence is about a 13-year-old boy who is accused of killing a girl. Watch the third episode—you won’t be disappointed.
8 April 2025 » communiqué 102
However judgemental the term may sound, moral hazard is something to interest anyone who likes a good story with compelling characters.
11 March 2025 » communiqué 101
Landman is a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of West Texas oil rigs. Let me tell you why you should give it a watch.
11 February 2025 » communiqué 100
Why do people talk about Occam’s Razor when it’s nearly impossible to apply this rule of thumb?
14 January 2025 » communiqué 099
Have you come across any coming of middle age books or movies? These are stories are set at a turning point where a character becomes the elder, accepting the senior adult responsibilities that come with that role, while maybe gaining wisdom and some inner peace.
10 December 2024 » communiqué 098
You don’t know the whole story. The second series of Showtrial was recently released. Like the first series, it is well worth watching.
12 November 2024 » communiqué 097
Often in fiction, a death doesn’t matter—it’s just there to kick off the action. So it was good to read a book about grief where the death had real consequences. Let me tell you about Widdershins.
8 October 2024 » communiqué 096
People unintentionally give themselves away, and they can be encouraged to reveal more. But is that what we want in a novel?
10 September 2024 » communiqué 095
No one believes in coincidences, so can a coincidence be believable in a story?
13 August 2024 » communiqué 094
Fiction doesn’t need to tell the truth and it doesn’t need to be accurate. But, to stay engaged, the reader needs to believe a novel is truthful and accurate.
9 July 2024 » communiqué 093
High concept: what is it, and why do we care?
11 June 2024 » communiqué 092
Eric, the new series on Netflix, is seemingly a story of a missing kid. But dig deeper and you’ll find you’re looking at the monster within all of us.
14 May 2024 » communiqué 091
In the twentieth century, spying and war was the domain of the nation state. In the last two decades, much of that work has been outsourced by governments and is now undertaken by corporate intelligence services and private armies. These changes are now being reflected in modern fiction.
9 April 2024 » communiqué 090
John Sawers, the former head of MI6, has recommended Damascus Station by David McCloskey. Let me tell you something about the novel.
12 March 2024 » communiqué 089
Story isn’t simply a matter of what happens but it’s also how that story is told. And in telling a tale, every story starts twice.
13 February 2024 » communiqué 088
Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper is fresh and very current. It feels very real and it’s also one heck of a good read. Let me tell you some more about why you might want to pick up this novel.
9 January 2024 » communiqué 087
Modern medicine could lead to significantly longer lives and healthier lives. Could the resulting pressure on resources lead to a dystopian future?
12 December 2023 » communiqué 086
I watched a bad film. Sometimes I think you can learn more from the flaws in a piece of work than you can learn from successes, especially when those errors are so central in undermining the entirety of the piece.
14 November 2023 » communiqué 085
Matthew Perry’s recent death prompted me to rewatch one of his less well remembered roles as Matt Albie in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Let me make the case that this role was the highlight of his career.
10 October 2023 » communiqué 084
There are many ways to measure work. For an author, a simple measure of work is the output, often measured as the daily word count. But maybe the better option is to measure the input. Let me explain…
12 September 2023 » communiqué 083
Let me take you to place where the men wear khaki, the police cars are battered jeeps trundling over dirt roads, and the first instinct when a dead body is found, is for the police to beat the man who found the body.
8 August 2023 » communiqué 082
Counterfactuals are events that did not happen or a statement which expresses something contrary to the facts. In short, a counterfactual is an untruth. But with the counterfactual, comes the question: what if?
11 July 2023 » communiqué 081
Did you know there’s an easy way to know when a character on TV or in a movie—who is perfectly healthy—is about to die?
13 June 2023 » communiqué 080
There have been many dramatizations of the end of the Nixon presidency. All of these retellings have been very serious in their approach, so it’s good to find White House Plumbers, a new series which plays the story as a hairbrained escapade more reminiscent of the farce the facts suggest.
9 May 2023 » communiqué 079
Recently I’ve been thinking about flash fiction—stories that are told in a highly limited number of words. This form requires more of the reader since much goes unsaid.
11 April 2023 » communiqué 078
This is the Night They Come for You is a layered conspiracy thriller set in 1961 and the present day with action in the UK, France, and Algeria. Fact and fiction are woven together and at the heart of the book are characters caught up in Algeria’s independence fight, both in the 1960s and 60 years later.
14 March 2023 » communiqué 077
Dal Y Mellt is the first Welsh-language drama to stream on Netflix. Let me try and tell you why it’s worth seeking out.
14 February 2023 » communiqué 076
Will we read a novel written by a computer in 2023?
10 January 2023 » communiqué 075
For every story, there is a timeline, but the events in the story do not need to be told in chronological order. The Netflix series Kaleidoscope takes one step further and tells a story with a different timeline for each viewer.
13 December 2022 » communiqué 074
I’d like to introduce you to two new characters, Stink and Angus Quillan.
8 November 2022 » communiqué 073
Did you know the price you pay is optional? Very often, you can pay less, without negotiating…you just have to understand the game.
11 October 2022 » communiqué 072
One tool I use all the time—without exaggeration, many times a day, every day, without fail—is a clipboard manager. So what is it, and why might a clipboard manager be useful for you?
13 September 2022 » communiqué 071
We’ve all received scam emails from Nigerian princes. We don’t believe them because they’re such an obvious con. However, there are cons that we want to believe.
9 August 2022 » communiqué 070
The Long Goodbye is a good movie. But what makes takes the movie from simply being good, to being excellent is the music. To my ear, this movie has one of the best scores…but then it was composed by John Williams.
12 July 2022 » communiqué 069
A look at film noir—where it started, and how we feel its influence in movies and novels.
14 June 2022 » communiqué 068
We Own This City is the new series from David Simon, the creator of The Wire. It sees a return to the Baltimore Police Department, but twenty years later, and twenty years worse.
10 May 2022 » communiqué 067
Can’t change the facts… Maybe you can change the context?
12 April 2022 » communiqué 066
For the wronged, the vengeful, and anyone who wants to criticize, the roman à clef is a great tool. But what is a roman à clef, and who do you think is worthy of a deniable public scorn?
8 March 2022 » communiqué 065
Is it a crime to break the rules of crime fiction?
8 February 2022 » communiqué 064
Have you caught the Wordle bug yet? If not, then maybe it’s time to find what everyone else is talking about.
11 January 2022 » communiqué 063
New Year is often the time we look to make changes. But why do we make changes, whether at New Year or any other time?
14 December 2021 » communiqué 062
Showtrial has all the elements of a plodding police procedural. However, what could be a pedestrian story is elevated to something quite special and is worth watching.
9 November 2021 » communiqué 061
When I write a novel set in the present day, I want to avoid details that seem normal today, but which will age badly, becoming so obsolete that they make no sense to future readers.
12 October 2021 » communiqué 060
It’s easy to finish a book and throw it aside, never to return. But let me make the case for rereading books.
14 September 2021 » communiqué 059
The Appeal by Janice Hallett is a story told through emails, text messages, Post-it Notes, newspaper articles, reports by lawyers, and police interview transcripts. It’s a good book, but the approach is an interesting way to tell a story.
10 August 2021 » communiqué 058
Have you ever wondered how you can avoid online surveillance? One tool that can help you maintain your online privacy in Tails OS. It’s not for everyday use, but for some people, using Tails is literally a matter of life and death.
13 July 2021 » communiqué 057
Guns, bullets and other things the movies get wrong.