Christopher J. Yates's Blog

My next novel was recently announced in Publishers Weekly, a second “dark academia” psychological thriller set in the same Oxford universe as my first novel, Black Chalk.

I’ll be posting updates on my website Pen & Palate, where you can also read my restaurant reviews and other adventures in food and fiction.

Or sign up to my newsletter below if you want to keep it strictly fiction!

Meanwhile, click through the gallery below to see some photos from an Oxford research trip I...

I’ve started a new website, Pen & Palate, which brings together both my fiction and food writing. (As well as writing novels, I’m the Hudson Valley Dining Critic for the Times Union newspaper. Check out my latest Times Union food articles here.)

On Pen & Palate you can find reading guides to my novels, short stories, original food writing, book news and my thoughts about the world of fiction writing.

Hope to see you there soon.

I’ve written a piece on why I hate to use quotation marks in fiction (and a brief history of other novelists who do likewise) which you can read on Grammar Girl here — don’t all go crashing that server at once.

Here’s an article I wrote for Crime Reads, MY VIOLENT FRIEND: GROWING UP WITH THE PSYCHOPATH NEXT DOOR, on the topic of an incident from my childhood, when I was ten years old, which partially inspired my novel GRIST MILL ROAD.

GRIST MILL ROAD has been named one of the best novels of 2018 in the New York Post, by NPR and in Parade magazine. Click on one of the links below to see the full lists.

New York Post
NPR
Parade magazine

Duck breast, cast-iron grilled over charcoal lumpwood

It’s a cliché, I know, that men revert to their inner neanderthal when it comes to cooking outside. Man love fire. Man build fire. Man cook meat on fire. But it’s not a cliché I’ve ever tried to fight. Quite the opposite, I’ve embraced it, having created three fiery cooking zones in my garden. Well, I call them cooking zones, but what they also represent are the three places I can hide from social interaction when family or guests come to...

“Grist Mill Road” is published in the UK today.

So now, seven months after American readers, British readers get to read a British writer write about America in American.

Hope that all makes sense.

Here’s a radio interview I enjoyed very much with John Smietanka for his show “With Respect”. Coincidentally, we share the same legal background—but don’t let that put you off.

Here’s an article I penned for the Crime Files website about where I write. Note: my dog may have photo-bombed the second photo.

I recently sat down for a fascinating chat (and breakfast) with Monica Parikh of School of Love NYC where I revealed, among other things, how I originally screwed up my novel GRIST MILL ROAD by trying to set it in the UK. Read the whole interview here.