Into the wild grey yonder…

Launch day arrives to a dawn the colour of wet slate. The weather’s been dreadful for the last couple of days, and Aberdeen seems determined to live up to its reputation for cold and wind. But I don’t care. Because I’ve got more than enough on my plate right now without worrying about it peeing down.

Being bloody minded, and not too bright, I have determined that I’m going to send Agent Phil (will wear pudding for drink) the first 50 pages of TSA, and as of COB yesterday evening all I have to show for myself is a lousy 47 pages. So first order of business is to get the last three pages done, before settling down to do my accounts and VAT return, which has to be done today or it won’t get in on time and I’ll get shafted for some huge, arbitrary fine, on top of all the sodding money I’m going to have to give them in the first place.

I HATE doing my accounts. That’s why I got myself an accountant, but as they’re going to be doing battle with the Inland Revenue on my behalf, I’ve decided to take a poke at the VAT people myself. A decision that I’m beginning to regret after the first two hours. The swearing starts not too long after that, accompanied by the occasional nervous twitch as I tot up exactly how much money I’ve shelled out over the last financial year. By the time James arrives I’m just slapping the last calculation into place, gibbering and cackling like a weasel-loving weirdo on a caffeine binge. Normally when I embark upon the dreaded accounting ritual sacrifice I am good for bugger all afterwards and this is no exception. James has to follow me round the house as I rant and grumble and mutter about getting outside a very large gin and tonic. Or a whisky. Or anything, just as long as it’s cold and very alcoholic. James is early, which is good, as it means there’s time for me to come down from my accountancy killing-frenzy before we head off into town.

A long time friend and fellow bearded writing person, James has come all the way up from Aberystwyth in the left bit of Wales, to act as taxi driver for me, She Who Must Be Seen To Be Believed and Agent Phil (is that cranachan in your hair, or are you just pleased to see me?). He rationalises this bizarre decision by saying he wants to be at the party, doesn’t mind driving, makes a nasty, fidgety passenger and he’d really like to meet Phil and the HarperCollins people. And he thinks staying sober will vastly improve his chances of making a good impression. Not me – I’m going to scarf a ton of canapés, drink all the wine and generally make a nuisance of myself. Oh hell yes.

The order of business is as follows: pick up She Who Must from her office at five, swing round past the airport to pick up Phil and then fight the rush-hour traffic into the middle of town, getting to the Aberdeen Union Street branch of Ottakar’s in time to say hello, before sodding off to the pub for a wee nippy sweetie. After that it’ll be back to the bookshop for a glass of wine, some canapés and then, according to the sign in the window ‘the author will give a talk about the book and answer questions’. After that I sign some books and the HC contingent, Phil, James, She Who Must Be Fed and me are off to dinner. No problems.

The first problem is that the flight up from London hasn’t arrived at 16:55 like it was supposed to. When it eventually gets in at about half five Agent Phil appears in the company of three attractive young ladies from HarperCollins – Jane, Sarah and Emma the editorial equivalent of the A-Team (only without the whole building a tank in the garage from bits of an old lawnmower, Morris Minor and a bag of cabbages), all of whom tower above Phil’s manly four foot six frame. As the plane’s half an hour late – they couldn’t take off because there were ‘rain clouds over Heathrow’ believe it or not – Aberdeen is well and truly in the constipated grip of rush-hour traffic. Not even a bucket of syrup of figs could shift this lot.

The second problem is that the hotel has screwed up on Jane, Sarah and Emma’s booking. Instead of staying two minutes walk from the bookshop, they’re all the way out on the South Deeside Road. The new hotel is very swanky, but there’s no way in hell they’re ever going to make it from the Airport all the way out there, change, play with the Corby trouser press, and get back into the centre of town for our 19:00 kick-off. But they clamber into a taxi anyway, ready to give it a valiant try. And all the time Aberdeen is quietly getting on with the business of raining on everybody and everything.

James does battle with the traffic all the way into town, and, believe it or not, we’ve got just enough time for a swift pint in the pub across the road before the thing’s meant to start. Which we make full use of. It’s not until we’ve finished and are outside the shop that the plan starts to fall apart again. Ottakar’s have given their Cold Granite window display a bit of a makeover since I first saw it last week. Now there are big postery board things with pictures of the book jacket, and there’s a swathe of tartan up behind the book’s title (eighteen-inch-high letters made from cut-up dust jackets) and the whole display is HUGE. Even ‘Harry Potter and the Gauntlet of Puberty’ has been squeezed over to make room. So James, who’s also the official photographer for the evening, takes my photo with my very first bookshop window. Then before I know what’s going on, a crowd of people begin to gather outside the shop, all there for the signing and there’s more photos and some handshaking and hellos to people I’ve not seen for ages.

If you pile them up right, Ian Rankin books make an excellent table to sign your books on

Dig that sexy eyebrow action

Ishbel Hunter works with dead people

Jane Johnson stripy-coated editorial guru and author

Inside the shop, Vicky (manager of the Aberdeen Ottakars and queen of the canapé) greets me with smiles and a glass of wine. We’ll get going in a little bit, but first I should relax, talk to a few people, eat some canapés and generally mingle. This sounds like a good idea, which should have set the old alarm bells ringing in the first place. Thirty seconds later an old friend, who turned up early so he could buy the very fist copy, asks if I’ll sign his book while things were still quiet. Not a problem says I, thinking we’ve got plenty of time before all the speeches and questions. Signature and doodle, done by making a little table out of Ian Rankin books. Then I look up to see that someone else has also decided to catch the worm (if you’ll excuse the expression) and get their book signed before the rush. And by the time I’m halfway through that one there’s a queue, going around the pile of crime novels and away round the corner. Eek!

I can safely say that my speech was a beauty, witty, thought provoking, gracious, deeply moving and ultimately uplifting. And the reason I can safely say that is because I never actually had to make it. Not one word. Which means no one can contradict me when I say it was the greatest single speech ever given in the history of the world. Made ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ look like the ramblings of a drunken monkey. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Instead I spend the whole two hours signing books and thanking people for coming.

There’s a big contingent from INoGITCH, relations I’ve not seen for years all the way up from Glasgow, friends, friends of friends, friends of my parents… At one point I look up from drawing a teddy bear with a flamethrower to see an eerily familiar face – it turns out my mother has tracked down my nursery school teacher, Moira Lawson and invited her along to the signing. This is the woman who taught me how to read and write in the first place. With whom I got into an argument when I was tiny because she wanted me to spell water with an ‘A’ rather than as it was pronounced: ‘woter’ and in our house I wasn’t allowed to say ‘waaater’. And one of my VIP guests also turns up – Ishbel Hunter head Anatomical Pathology Technician at the hospital (the first line of her address is ‘The Mortuary’). Ishbel’s a bubbly, enthusiastic redhead, who seems almost as delighted to meet me as I am to meet her. Especially as she now knows I’m not a freak, phoning to ask about cutting up dead bodies for the fun of it. Ahem…

Like a twit I keep asking people if they’re going to be hanging around and that I’ll catch up with them when I get to the end of the signing line. Which I never do. Some people even come round twice! Quite a few people buy more than one book: Bwahahahahahahaaa… And I’m not the only one who’s books are getting bought tonight: Jane’s first children’s novel ‘The Secret Country’ is also doing a brisk trade. I even get my first weirdo (it’s a publishing term), a strange-looking bloke who wanders about the whole evening – drinking wine and eating canapés, never making eye contact with anyone. Just drifting through the shop eating and drinking until all the food is gone. And then he does the same. Next time I’m anywhere near a launch party I’m going to try it, just as soon as I can find a dead badger to rub through my hair.

By the time the line has petered to an end I’ve been through one and a half of my specially signing pens. Then I’m introduced to Peter Mitchell of Press and Journal fame who’s much, much larger than life and is going to put a bit about the launch in his Friday column. After that it’s time to sign a bit of the shop’s stock and then dash off up Union Street to the restaurant, where much toot is talked and Phil gets to try out a new hair treatment, applied by gesturing emphatically with a dessert-covered spoon. This is the first chance I’ve had to catch up with Jane, Sarah and Emma the whole evening and it’s a good meal, with lots of wine. I’m starving because, unlike my weirdo, I’ve not been near the canapés all night. In fact the only reason I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine is that other people have kindly fetched them for me. Which means I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Especially if I’m going to get anywhere near Phil, who’s on great form. By the time the staff are cleaning oatmeal and whipped cream off the restaurant walls, floor, seats, tables, customers on other tables, the lovely ladies from HarperCollins have had to make their excuses – unlike Phil, they’ve got to catch an early plane. He’s staying in Casa MacBride tonight and not flying out until midday so we can discuss the new book tomorrow and stay up until four in the morning drinking the Norwegian equivalent of whisky and talking rubbish with Fiona and James.

So that’s it: like all good ships I have now officially been launched, though no one attempted to bash a bottle champagne over my head. Even if it did feel like it the next morning.

Today Aberdeen, tomorrow the world!

Wine and canapés

When I first told people about this launch party thing, the thing they always latched onto was the word ‘canapés’ (pronounced “can-apes” by those of us what is sophisticated and in the know). Why that should be I don’t know, but the word ‘canapés’ acts as some sort of magnet for people. Mention it and they’re drawn inexorably to the idea, like hungry iron filings. Sandwiches: no, canapés: yes. It’s like telling people they’re invited to a cocktail party (only actually coming through with the promise and providing cocktails, rather than a selection of soft drinks, interspersed with photos of Hillary Clinton’s bunion).

I’m hoping that the lure of the canapé is enough to get a good crowd through the door tomorrow (Ottakar’s, Union Street 19:00 to 21:00, be there or be forever compared to Sponge Bob’s pants) where I will – apparently – be giving a talk on the book and answering questions. This means that tomorrow, in addition to doing a tax return and getting the house ready for guests, I’ll have to decide what the hell I’m going to talk about. Maybe I’ll just get up there, give them a song (I’m sure Bryon can recommend something) and bugger off to the buffet table sharpish, before anyone notices I’ve gone.

The worst possible scenario for tomorrow is that no one turns up at all, and I’m left giving the best speech of my life to a couple of paperbacks by Marian Keys. Second worst is that lots of people turn up and I give a speech that sounds like a cross between cattle having sex with alligators and a party political broadcast for the ‘we love lint’ party. Third worse involves forgetting to put on any trousers and being ruthlessly chased through the St Nicholas Centre by a slavering pack of nubile women. Who then staple photos of Hillary Clinton’s bunions to my knees and ridicule my choice of underwear. What’s wrong with gold lame boxer shorts then?

Anyway, by this time tomorrow it’ll all be over and I can go back to not doing what I’m supposed to be doing during the day.

I wonder if there’ll be Mini-Kiev’s…

Catherine the Great

Big up and respect to my sister in law – Catherine, she of the raven hair and Dublin accent. She, my youngest brother Scott and their son Logan (from where I got the name) live in Dublin, where Catherine is a reflexologist and aromatherapist – and doing quite nicely thank you very much – and Scott is the head chef at the American embassy. But more than this, they are the vanguard in my evil plot to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Bwahahahahahahahahaaaa…

Catherine has been going into bookshops and asking whether they’ve got any copies of Cold Granite in stock. In a loud voice. Partly to make sure as many people hear her asking for it as possible, and partly to be heard over Logan (3) singing ‘Jolene’ at the top of his voice (Which is a bit odd, given that his dad is an inveterate Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan and swears blind that they won’t have country and western music in the house.). Last time she asked about the book the man behind the counter told her that no, they didn’t have any copies – they hadn’t ordered any – and anyway, it wasn’t going to be out until the 3rd of May. “Aha,” says Catherine with a twinkle in her eye, “but I’ve heard it’s really good and getting great reviews…” and then off she goes to rummage round the shop. Then, just as they’re leaving – with Logan still giving it ‘I’m begging of you please don’t take my man’ at gas mark six – the man calls across the shop to her that he’s just ordered a heap of copies of the book. He’s been on the system and it really has been getting some great reviews: apparently this MacBride guy's the new Ian Rankin… At which point Catherine smiles and heads off to find another bookshop.

How cool is that?

Catherine totally rocks!

Things Stuart does not recommend

Of all the things that have happened of late, there is one I can wholeheartedly unrecommend: getting hit in the face with your cat’s claws in general, and getting hit in the eye in particular. I know this sounds like fun, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing there’s a LOT more blood involved than you’d think, and quite a bit of swearing too.


This then is the price for playing ‘Where’s Grendel’ around the footrest under the desk. Though I suppose I could look at it as being a bloody lucky injury (no pun intended) as one millimetre closer and I’d have had a claw in my eye, rather than my eyelid. But painful and shouty though it has been, it’s given me a new perspective on the old lopsided writing malarkey. Never again will I produce passage that describe how the blood from a wound in the hero’s forehead runs down and stings his eyes. Blood does not sting* – I can tell this from extremely recent experience. What stings is the hole in your face that lets the blood out in the first place. That stings like a bastard. What blood does do is make everything go all blurry. It’s like a film of pink oil that puts everything into Barbara Cartland soft focus.

Add to that the fact that the whole thing then swells up like someone’s stuffed a bicycle pump up my nose, followed by a slowly expanding black eye, where the blood’s leaking under the surface of the eyelid, and you have a perfect recipe for a great photo for the Glasgow Herald on Monday. Hurrah!

So if anyone offers you the chance to get scratched in the eye by a cat, think twice. Not as fun as it seems.

* with the exception of people like Mr Rickards, whose blood, legend has it, is about 40% by volume – that’d sting.

0.6 on the Weirdometer

This photograph brought to you courtesy of 'I-Forgot-My-Camera' Incorporated

Consider me well and truly freaked out. In a nice way. Sort of… I went into town today and what do I see, plastered all over the window of Ottakar’s? The words ‘Cold Granite’ picked out in eighteen-inch-high letters, made out of dust jackets from the book. Right there, in the middle of Union Street, in the middle of Aberdeen. Thankfully there wasn’t a life-size cardboard cut-out of Yours Truly (or horror of horrors, massive great big, blow up of the old bearded face), but it was bizarreamundo nonetheless.

Now given the fact that this is stage one of ‘Operation Global Domination’, I have to wonder why I’m so freaked by the sight of my book’s name in a bookshop window. Even if it is in eighteen-inch-high letters. How am I going to react if someone actually recognises me? Which, given the fact that I’m going to be all over the Evening Express and Press and Journal* sooner, rather than later, may not be beyond the realms of possibility. And when that happens, am I going to get lynched?

Now you see, these are the things they don’t teach you in Media Training – how to run like buggery from an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob. Time to invest in a pair of Nikes I think...

* Aberdeen's two local daily newspapers with HUGE readerships

Not really getting into the swing of things...

Well, it’s Wednesday, three days since I’ve been a sort-of full time write-ist, and the chapters ain’t exactly flying off the printer. A lot of this I blame on other people (as it’s MUCH easier than accepting any sort of responsibility oneself) – Monday was interrupted by the double-glazing people coming in to finish off the bedroom window, Tuesday was the boiler being serviced (we’ve had no hot water for slightly over two months now), and today was interview day. So, all in all, not a lot has been getting done. I’m still only on chapter three of TSA. THIS WILL NOT DO!

On top of which, ever since I had my ‘sort of last day at work thing’ last Thursday, I have become a huge, bearded bed-slug. The alarm still goes off at 06:45, but I have become intimately acquainted with Miss Snoozebutton – saucy little minx that she is – much to the dismay of She Who Must Have Time To Shower, Dress, Breakfast And Swear At Hairdo every morning. This is not like me at all. Some mornings, even when I have managed to drag my sorry carcass from the embrace of Madame Duvet before 07:15, I still don’t get to the computer by 08:30. It’s as if my internal body clock has a snooze button of its very own, and something keeps hitting it. Possibly this is just a reaction to getting up to go to work every Monday to Friday for the last God knows how many years, or maybe I’ve just suddenly turned into a lazy bastard?

Whichever it is, I’m going to have to get my act together and actually write something. Stuart did look upon the book and said, ‘Let There Be Words!’ and there were… Starting tomorrow morning. I swear.

Does this look infected to you?

Well it’s been a long time coming, but in the best tradition of the worst possible television programmes, we have to evict someone from the Beard Brother house. For ages now I’ve been skipping down the ‘Blogs what I read’ list: Ray, Aldo, Lee, James, Bryon, John, Lynn, Sarah, Dave, Jim... Yes, sorry though I am to admit it, I’ve been avoiding ‘Book Angst 101’, rather than doing the decent thing and making a clean break of it. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me… I think we should start seeing other blogs.”

Which is why Jennifer Jordan is now given the dubious honour of joining the list of things what I read. Anyway, I’ve been lurking in the bushes round her place for a while, she seems like a nice enough girl. In the shower anyway…

What do you mean that’s not wholesome?

In tooth and claw

Well, it had to happen eventually – our little kitten has become a cat. As far as I’m concerned (and nuts to anyone who disagrees) this transition occurs at the point when a little fuzzy ball of fun and mischief becomes a lean, mean killing machine.

Now Grendel has killed things before, but to date her victims have all been bugs – spiders, beetles, forky-tails, the odd midge or five, but today was her first step up the evolutionary value chain. Today was her first mammal.

Nope, Mr Shrew's not sunbathing...

She was mooching about the front of the house, hopping in and out of the long grass on the lawn, in the mist and drizzle, when something furry caught her eye. I know she’s seen mice before, as the wall at the bottom of the garden is home to one or two (the little sods ate all our mange tout this year), but the closest she’s ever got to catching something with fur on it is watching antelope get it in the neck from some lion on the discovery channel.

I suppose the real worry now, is that she looks on a shrew as a good starting point, and continues her way up the chain. First it’s shrews, then mice, then rats, then it’ll be terriers, then sheep, then pigs and on to Shetland ponies (there are loads round here, vicious little buggers) and after that she’ll have nowhere to go but cattle and horses. Now you may scoff, but she’s a Main Coon cat – and while normal cats stop growing between a year and a year and a half, Main Coons keep on going until they’re five. She’s going to be enormous! What if her taste for mammals isn’t sated with cattle? The north east of Scotland is woefully depleted of monkeys (due to an unfortunate mix up with a jar of peanut butter and an economy-jumbo-size packet of condoms), so the only thing left for hunt will be MAN… Which is going to make blowing raspberries on her tummy a lot more dangerous.

Not quite the last day at work...

Sounds odd, I know, but bear with me. Officially my year-long leave of absence starts on the 22nd of the month – this is due to the four week period cycle thing INoGITCH runs on, because it’s the European arm of a massive American corporation. That means that right now, even though I’m sitting on my bum, looking out at the garden and trying to stop the cat from filling everything I type with ‘adsfjoiaw;ioj;;;;;;;;’, I’m still on the company clock. Albeit on the at home bit of my part time regime (twelve business days in the office, eight days at home). And once the 22nd comes round, I still won’t have left – the leave of absence means that INoGITCH generously pick up my life and health insurance while I’m away. How cool is that? But yesterday was still technically my last day (while at the same time not being). Which means it doesn’t feel like any other time I’ve left a company. Because I haven’t really…

I had been told that there wasn’t going to be any sort of going away thing organised (normally at INoGITCH, when someone leaves there’s a whip round, a novelty card to sign and a presentation where anyone who likes said leaver – or just wants to get out of working for ten / fifteen minutes, goes and listens to a bit of speechifying and the like) as Kevin (my boss) didn’t think I’d like that kind of thing. Ah, well, fair enough. Devious little shite that he is.

Turned out there had been a whip round, but Kevin doesn’t tell me this until we’re on our way to Tescos after lunch (Where the Eamon – technical guru and Goon Show freak – bought me steak. Which is impressive enough, but even more remarkable when you think that he’s also reserved three copies of the book from Amazon. What a star!) and he announces that we’ve got £70.00 to spend on wine as a leaving present. Hurrah! Given that ASDA’s doing a 25% off all Australian wines thing (and an extra 10% off if you buy more than 6) we managed to stretch it to eighteen bottles! Most of which is sparkling. Mmmm… fizzy wine… (Brief aside: when I was down at the HC-sponsored pre-dinner drinks at the BA Conference, most of the publishing types were on the red, or white wine. ALL the writers were on the champagne. Every man jack, Rankin and McDermid of them. Maybe it’s got something to do with being sat on one’s tod all day in front of a word processor that conjures up this insatiable thirst for fizzy wine?) Then Kevin did the speech thing and a select crowd gathered to wish me well. I’d been there for nearly five years, so it was nice to see a lot of the people I actually worked with, and liked, there. And of course my novelty card was covered with references to fish, cheese and monkeys.

Which was nice ;}#

Hopefully the invites for the launch party are going to arrive soon (Fiona of the Great Publicity is off ill at the moment – possibly an extended hangover from her late night drinking session with Mz McDermid – so I’m not sure if they’ll have been posted) and I’ll pop back into the office to hand some out. Or pass them on to someone like Alex (who’s fault it is that I ended up in INoGITCH in the first place – thank God, as the dotcom company I was working for was already in receivership), who’s keen to feature in book three as a mono-browed purveyor of ultimate filth, and will be acting as a ‘consultant’ for the less wholesome aspects of the novel (i.e. filth).

Anyway, I know some of the guys and galls at work pop in on the blog from time to time, so if they’re reading this I’d like to say thanks again.

It’s actually been fun.

Yup, I'm jumpin’ on the old bandwagon

Well, we can’t let Bryon have all the fun now, can we?


Look is Fiona* and me! (I’m the one with the beard)

This South Park generator is WAY too addictive.

*She Who Must Be Poked In The Eye With A Pickled Egg

Glasgow A-Go-Go (part 2)

Wednesday morning officially starts with my seven thirty wake-up call, though for me – as is usual in hotels, even swank ones like One Devonshire Gardens – the whole ‘am I awake or asleep?’ thing is a grey, fuzzy area. I’ve been awake more than I’ve been asleep, raiding the mini-bar again, this time for a £3.50 bottle of mineral water from Fiji (don’t ask). At about half three I discovered that not only is the tap water down here a suspicious yellow colour, it also tastes like the carpet under a heavily-used blackboard. Breakfast however, more than makes up for it – even if you have to go outside and down to the end of the block to get to the hotel restaurant. I’ll have the Full Scottish with poached eggs please.

By the time I’m three quarters of the way through a monumental fry-up, Fiona, my publicist appears. Someone seems to have stolen her eyes and replaced them with little pink-rimmed buttons, sewn onto a pale, grey face. It turns out Val wasn’t over keen on leaving the party last night and Fiona valiantly stayed with her to the last, while people plied them both with champagne. Now that’s dedication for you. As a stalwart vegetarian Fiona also has the Full Scottish, leaving out the black pudding: eggs, bacon and sausages don’t count as meat when you’re knackered and hungover. They’re medicinal. This is all accompanied by Earl Grey tea with milk – I know, I know, but she’s a tad on the eccentric side (a ‘tad’ meaning just this side of ‘dangerously unhinged’) but she gets away with it by being bizarrely bubbly, friendly and talkative – toast and Marmite. Sorry, can’t think of a reasonable excuse for the Marmite. We talk of the day to come as we eat, surrounded by silent, sullen-looking couples who don’t seem to have a single word to say to each other. Ah, angry public mastication done in a strained silence, you gotta love it.

Today we’re off to the huge HarperCollins warehouses to sign copies of Cold Granite for distribution to the bookshops. HC have the largest storage and distribution network for books in the country, dealing not only with their own volumes, but those of other publishers as well. It’s a BIG operation. We’re met at the door to a 1960’s style bunker tacked onto a massive warehouse by Marie, one of the head honchos and responsible for making sure I don’t do a runner when faced with the reality of signing one and a half THOUSAND books. She shows us into a little conference room and introduces me to my gaoler for the day – an affable, redheaded dynamo called Janis, with a pronounced Glaswegian accent and line in risqué humour. There’s an oval conference table in the middle of the room, artistically piled high with copies of Cold Granite. Like a little fort. There’s about eighteen times that number of books stacked against the wall. Ulp. Then Janis proudly tells me that all these volumes represent a whole pallet of books – seven hundred and fifty. And I’m going to have to sign two pallets’ worth. ‘Ulp’ becomes ‘Eek!’

Just to be on the safe side, I say I’d better visit the toilet before we start. Maybe there’s a window I can squeeze out of and make good my escape? No chance – I’m escorted there, and I’m pretty sure Marie’s got someone else watching the exits. Now when I was about eleven I spent a dull afternoon in science class, working out a fancy signature. Something that I could dash off with a flourish when I became rich and famous. Over the years it degraded slightly, until now it resembles a kind of swish, flick and a dot. My official, bona fide signature takes about a second and a half. And, looking at the great wall of Glasgow lined up around me in crime-novel-sized bricks I have to say thank God for that! I might actually get out of this alive.

If you’ve never signed 1,500 hard-backed books before, this is how it goes: the write-ist (that’s me) sits in a huge typist’s chair with LOADS of lumbar support and a gel-ink pen. Fiona, standing to your left, takes a book off the pile, opens it and slides it in front of you. You sign it – Swish and flick and dot – slide it to your right, then Janis (or someone slightly more sane), shuts the book and makes a little pile. When the pile is five books high, it gets neatly stacked against the wall behind you. And all the time Tom or Bob, depending on who’s doing what at the time, is taking a fresh book from the unsigned pile, opening it to the right page and marking the place with the front flap of the dust jacket. Then he adds it to the wall of books. And on and on and on it goes, like a perpetual motion machine, designed to torture write-ists. I have to admit that it’s a very slick operation. It may be a torture machine, but it’s a well oiled one (and no, I’m not talking about Janis here), they do this a LOT. I might think 1,500 is a daunting heap of books to sign, but the next guy – who’s due to turn up at half nine tomorrow morning – has SIX THOUSAND to get through before he can go home! His publicist must really, really hate him.

As my signature is such a sad little squiggle I decide to embellish things a bit. I’ve been told not to change my signature for the signing, as that’d be dishonest, and if I’m faking it, then what’s the point in having me here at all? Anyone could do it. But I still feel that I want to do a little more for the people buying the book. So every now and again I scribble in a ‘All the best!’ and then graduate from there to quick doodles. You know the kind of thing, cats, dogs saying random words, teddy bears with chainsaws… Just every now and then. One lucky person will get a quote from Scooby Doo. Another a little dinosaur saying “bottoms, bottoms, tee-hee”. But Janis’s favourite is the teddy bear with a flamethrower, which she makes me work on until it no longer looks like “he’s huddin’ a spade with a wee face on it…”

By the time ten o’clock rolls around Fiona announces I’m averaging about 500 books an hour. Which makes me Mr Studmeister (in some twisted parallel universe). But by the time eleven arrives I’m feeling decidedly nauseous. It’s motion bloody sickness again, I’ve been sitting at this table for two hours now, head sweeping left, grabbing a fresh book, scribbling my name and maybe a doodle, then passing it off to the left. My eyes going in and out of focus as stuff flashes through my hands. Urrrrrrrrgh… So in order to preserve the assembled stock from the risk of being vigorously splattered with two poached eggs, two rounds of toast, sausage, beans, bacon, black pudding and fried mushrooms, Janis takes me for a quick tour of the gardens while everyone else gets caught up with their day jobs. Which is an excellent excuse for her to have a cigarette. As she smokes and smiles and jokes I get the feeling that Janis is one of those ‘forces of nature’ insurance companies are always warning us about. She tells a lot of her telephone customers that she’s a leggy, size-ten blonde, occasionally getting caught out when someone, so enamoured by her telephone manner turns up at the warehouse complex to take her out to lunch. But those people still leave smitten. On the way back to the signing torture chamber she tells a scandalous story about Fiona my publicist and swears me to secrecy. Back in the room Fiona looks slightly worried at what all the grinning is about.

More signing and then a sandwich lunch arrives and then we’re back to the old swish, flick and dot again.

Of the 1,500 books I think about 15% get something a bit different. The really rare ones have a ‘Stuart’ you can actually read (there’s only about four of those), but rarest of all is a nearly full-page tyrannosaurus rex called Harold, looking bemused. I have to admit, that when I buy a book, I’m always much more tempted by signed copies. I don’t know why: possibly because there’s something 'personal' of the author about the thing, I’m hoping the illustrated copies of Cold Granite will make someone smile. And buy the book, of course.

When we’re almost done Janis takes me through to the staff store, where everyone who works here can purchase books at incredible discounts. She tells me the whole staff are avid readers. Would I like something? I do the short-hand math in my head – my suitcase has my whole kilt outfit in it, so already weighs a ton and a half. If I don’t want to herniate myself I’d better not buy any more than about a half-dozen paperbacks. I’m ponderously selecting them when she slides up and tells me not to be so wet – for me the books are free, so stop sodding about. It’s like being given the keys to the sweety shop! Books! Lovely BOOKS!!! It’s an embarrassment of riches, and I’m still a bit nervous about the whole coming across like a freeloader thing, even though Janis is encouraging me to greater and greater excess. And every time I pick up a couple of books to look at they’re whisked away to an awaiting pair of boxes that’ll be posted up to me. How cool is that? Once again I’m left staggered and humbled at the generosity of the people in publishing. AND I’m getting heaps of great books!

Before I go, Marie comes through to tell me there’s still a couple more books to sign. When they have a new book in, they put up notices and posters all over the building, and the people who work here are invited to buy the book and have it signed by the author. And there’s a list of people who want Cold Granite – ALL of whom get an illustration, and my heartfelt thanks for buying my book. It feels like I‘ve been given a great honour – and I have – and I can’t help grinning like an idiot. We even have a little photo call with the first person to buy it (I’m keeping the details secret at the moment, as Marie has promised to email the photo through to me. But as soon as it arrives it’s going up as a news story on the website – my first ever UK sale!) who’s lovely, freckled, and even shyer than me.

The train ride home is much the same as the one down to Glasgow, only in the opposite direction, and the motion sickness kicks in a lot sooner as I hammer away on the laptop keyboard. By the time I get to Inverurie I’ve got two and three quarters chapters of TSA done and am convinced I’ve lost my car keys somewhere between breakfast and the Glasgow Queen Street train station. But luckily I’m not quite that stupid.

But for a minute there it was a close-run thing.

Glasgow a-go-go (part 1)

According to the website and the telephone information lines it’s ‘Business Class’, but to the wee man at Inverurie train station, and the sticker on the carriage window, it’s ‘First Class’. I’ve never travelled anywhere first class before. The first thing that strikes me is just how quiet it is. No one says a word in our tiny bit of the carriage – separated from ‘Saver’ and ‘Supersaver’ by a pair of sliding doors and just over £20.00 a ticket (and that’s both ways: Aberdeen to Glasgow and back again) – except to say “yes” to tea or coffee. And two minutes later I’m wishing I said “Oh Christ NO!” instead. British Rail tea: the legends are true. It’s like drinking creosote, only not so nice. So I dig out my laptop, plug it in, slap on the old earphones and start writing chapter zero of ‘TSA’, one of at least two books I intend to write this year.

I’ve never been a great one for reading in cars: motion sickness. And you can forget all about those bloody Imaginator-style, virtual roller coaster things. I don’t know if it’s the fake motion-blurry computer graphics, or the fact that my inner ear is busy telling my brain that, no, we’re not flying in a spaceship through a spacestation / asteroid mine / scale model of Raquel Welch’s fallopian tubes, we’re sitting in a suspiciously stained seat strapped to a shed-load of pneumatic pistons, so stop being so bloody stupid. In the ensuing internal bun-fight, whatever I had to eat last usually comes off worst. Writing on a laptop, on a train is something like that too, and by the time we’re clickity-hummming south past Arbroath, my breakfast is beginning to gargle and I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea after all.

So why do it then? Well, the lovely people at HarperCollins have asked me to be their guest at the Gala Dinner, which takes place at the end of the annual BA Conference. They have a lot of booze, a big awards ceremony, three course meal and a disco. Sounds like fun, no? Except maybe for that bit about the disco. But even then, get enough drink in me and I’m John Travolta after a hip-replacement operation and random liposuction. The dinner is tonight, I’m going to meet up with Val McDermid – she of the extremely generous blurb – my publicist Fiona, some of the high-heejins at HC, and a whole heap of other industry types. And then as a penance I have to sign 1,500 books at the HarperCollins warehouse tomorrow. Which I’m not-so-secretly dreading.

I’m taking the train, because it’s less hassle than driving all the way down and fighting with the Glasgow motorway system (designed by the Marquis de Sade on a really, really bad day) , and I can crack open the old laptop and finally get started writing the book. It’s a plan and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, it’s quiet enough in ‘business class’ to hear a midgie fart, I’ll have no problems concentrating. Unless I loose my breakfast that is.

On the other side of the class-divide-sliding-doors, a group of six guys are drinking bottles of Miller and laughing so hard I’m pretty sure one of them’s going to have an embarrassing accident in his pants any time now. He’s got a laugh like a hyena on helium and at each and every stop on the way from Aberdeen to Glasgow he nips out for a fag, standing in the open door of the train, all the smoke drifting back into the carriage.

I however, have no such addictive compunction. Except maybe for the packet of orange and lime Tic-Tacs I bought for the journey. Which seem to be all lime. Now I’m all for lime Tic-Tacs, but I bought the mixed ones for a reason: I like the orange ones, and so spend the next ten minutes trying to shoogle all the green ones to the bottom of the pack, like a crazed maraca-shaking lunatic. Which elicits increasingly worried looks from the American on the other side of the table, who spends the whole trip tracing the train’s progress down the east coast of Scotland on a map, and so is probably in no position to cast the first stone.

And neither is the only other occupant of our business-class fortress against the great unwashed: I call him Mr Shouty. Remember I said it was all nice and quiet? Well that changes round about Perth. Mr Shouty has a mobile phone and the bastard is determined share his side of an angry conversation with everyone. Now, I don’t actually have a mobile myself, but I’m pretty sure the whole point of having a mobile phone is that you don’t have to shout to speak to your friend in Dundee. You speak into your phone and the words travel through the air, borne on the wings of the magic technology fairies. The little buggers won’t get there any faster if you shout!

The cold and rain starts before we get to Sterling, the castle invisible from the train, hidden in the low, grey clouds as Mr Shouty gets going on yet another bloody call. I wonder if anyone would mind if I just smashed his head in with his own phone? If anyone’s interested – and I’m sure we all must be given the volume he’s shouting his private conversation at – he’s in the middle of negotiating some sort of hostile takeover. But then I get the feeling pretty much everything is going to be hostile where he’s concerned.

When the train pulls into Glasgow I take a black cab to the hotel HC are putting me up in. One Devonshire Gardens – sounds like a bed and breakfast, which is OK by me. I’ve spent the last four years working for an IT company, I’m used to… shall we say, the lower end of the away-from-home accommodation experience. HC obviously are not. One Devonshire Gardens is five, plush Georgian houses, all knocked together into one VERY swanky hotel. According to Dave, my taxi driver, it’s got four stars: this is where all the rock and film stars stay when they’re in town. Rod Stewart, Brad Pitt, and now me. Lucky, lucky people. Inside it’s all dark wood panelling and sweeping staircases and stained glass. I have never even been inside anywhere so swanky, let alone stayed there! And I’m not in a tiny, wee, broom-closet with a walk-in shower and single bed either, I’m in a suite. You name it I’ve got it: sofa, armchairs, tables, funny wooden boxy things, one of those things you putt golf balls into and it pings them back at you, one putter for same, an ironing board, huge bath, four poster bed, and a Corby trouser press. Now this is living. Publicist Fiona is off to the bank (and may be some time), so I set about using every single last item of equipment I can find in the place. Including a spell soaking in a deep, bubble bath, liberally sprinkled with bath salts (I’ve no idea what bath salts are, but I’ve got a big jar of them in the bathroom, so I’m bloody well going to use them), and I lie there reading ‘Lazy Bones’ by Mark Billingham, eating one of my complimentary apples and drinking my complimentary mineral water. The effect is only slightly spoiled by the fact that in my freeloading glee I’ve mistaken the aloe vera shampoo for the aloe vera bubble bath, and am therefore currently washing and conditioning my entire self. But the bubbles do a great job of hiding the water, which has a strange, chemical-yellow, ‘Mountain Dew’ quality that’s probably best not dwelt upon.

When the anointed hour finally arrives I clamber into the old kilt outfit, foregoing underwear as befits a red-blooded Scottish male with a heavy sporran, and stride downstairs to meet Fiona. Only Fiona is nowhere to be see. But, sitting in a chair by the door is someone who looks suspiciously like Val McDermid. I’ll just go over and say thank you for the blurb she gave Cold Granite. Or at least that’s the plan. I get as far as the smile and intake of breath, when she glances up from her book and gives me a look that screams, ‘just keep on fucking walking’. So I do a quick about turn and kid on I was going to hand in my key at reception anyway. My guess is that Val gets recognised a lot, she’s probably sick to the back teeth of people coming up to say “Hi” the whole time. Then I hand in my key - which, incidentally is about the same size as my sporran – and decide that this is bloody stupid. We’re both with the same publisher, we’ve both got the same publicist, and if I skulk about in the shadows waiting for Fiona to appear and introduce us, I’m going to look like a right arsehole. So back I go, and this time I don’t even give her a chance to produce ‘the look’, I go straight in with the, “Val? Stuart MacBride – thanks for the blurb…” after this things go swimmingly. Val’s nice, swears like a true Fifer, is hugely enthusiastic about her genre, fiercely loyal to the writers she likes, and full of hellfire and damnation for the industry individuals and institutions she hates. I get the feeling that pissing off Val McDermid would not be a good move. Did I mention she’s from Fife? They grow them scary down there.

It’s odd, being driven through Glasgow to the dinner. My family is at least three generations Glaswegian, I spent a lot of time down here when I was little, but so much of Glasgow city has changed since. And it’s still changing, new buildings springing up, changing the skyline, bringing it closer, shutting off the vistas of orange sandstone and yellow brick I used to know. My granddad was caretaker of the Baltic Chambers, a big, rectangular sandstone office building, built around a dank central well where the sun rarely ever reaches the bottom. I almost manage to catch a glimpse of it before we sweep round a corner, and it’s gone.

HarperCollins is hosting a drinks reception in the Glasgow Hilton (where the BA Conference is being held), up in the Glenfiddich room, only there’s no whisky to be seen, but there is champagne! Hurrah! Something to help me get past that nasty little bump of self-conscious shyness. The wine will sparkle and so shall I. Honest. Any minute now… Fiona introduces Val and I to a couple of people, and we chat for a bit. As usual I’m more of a listener than a talker – partly because I’m still on my first glass of fizzy, but mostly because Val is a LOT more interesting than I am. Then, as she’s taken off to meet someone, I spy Mark Billingham (whom I know from the bath earlier) in conversation with Iain Rankin, and some other bloke I’m probably supposed to recognise, but don’t. He needn’t be upset, I don’t recognise 99.9% of the people in here. While Mr Rankin makes good his escape I tell Mark that I’ve got one of his books on the go at the moment (but don't mention being naked at the time), and that seems to break the ice. Plus we both know John Rickards in a sad internety, second-hand kind of way, and spend a jolly couple of minutes wondering how you pronounce his name – is it Rikaaaaards, or Rikrds? Will he be at Harrogate this year (Mark, not John – or any of the other apostles come to that) he will, and Edinburgh too. Mark’s a good bloke, tall, but trying to make himself look shorter by standing with his legs as far apart as possible, completely unaware that he’s laying himself wide open for a knee in the testicles if he says the wrong thing. Then again, maybe he’s trying to get someone pregnant, and this is some kind of Tai Chi stance, designed to keep the family jewels well aired and at optimum temperature. In which case he should have forgone the dinner jacket and opted for a kilt like me – danglin’ free…

Amanda (big, BIG boss at HC) comes over as the crowd is being enticed through to the ballroom, where we’ll be eating, and introduces me to the associate producer for the Richard and Judy Book Club. This is what I’m here for: to press the flesh and make an impression with the assembled great and good. I’m just getting ready to turn on the charm – well to be honest it’s already ‘on’, it just needs a wee moment to warm up (it happens when you get older) – when the last and final call for dinner is announced. Mrs Associate Producer and her enterage all turn their backs en masse to grab a last glass of the HC champagne to take through to the ballroom, and Yours Truly is forgotten, my red-hot charm rapidly cooling to tepid. And off into dinner I go. On me tod. So much for sweet-talking my book onto this year’s ‘must read’ list.

The dinner isn’t all that bad, and the company’s good: Julia Cove Smith, new with Waterstones; some reprobates from HC sales, marketing and publicity; and Paul Henderson, who’s about to leave Ottakars to set up his own vegetarian / fish restaurant. This year the awards are pretty much what you’d expect, only more so and go on for a whole hour and thirty seven minutes. It feels like a lot longer. Val gets up to present an award, pulls a laugh from the crowd, then gets back to her seat for a drink and a smoke, the cigarette drooping from her lips at thirty degrees to the horizontal, like a half-hearted erection in need of Viagra. The Independent Bookseller Of The Year award is accompanied by a three-person mini pipe band, who contribute a fair chunk of time to the ceremony’s hour and half, but come with a complementary nip of whisky from Rankin’s publishers, Orion. An obscene amount of which goes back to the bar untouched.

After the awards the serious drinking starts. People network, clique, drink, network again… I have determined to be modest, yet accessible, but it’s hard to play the reluctant celebrity when no one has a fucking clue who you are, and breaking into other people’s conversations is hard, thirsty work. In the end I take a pint of overpriced Stella down to a quiet seat in the main lobby and watch the world go by. The funny thing about Stella is that it’s lovely and alluring when cold and freshly-poured, but tastes like a monkey’s arse as soon as it starts to warm up. When I get back to the hotel I’ll hit the mini bar. That’ll teach it.

By the time I catch up with Fiona again, the poor sod lumbered with driving us from the hotel to the convention and back again has been sitting outside since eleven. It’s now nearly two. And he’s going to have to get up a the crack of dawn to take his wife to work, in his Mercedes Benz. He tells me about his business as we negotiate the night-quiet streets back to One Devonshire Gardens, where the rock stars and unknown write-ists stay.

In the end I raid the mini bar for a £1.50 bottle of Strathmore mineral water. How rock and roll is that?

One day to go...

Only it’s not tomorrow. After nearly 4 years at INoGITCH I’m within 7.5 hours of the finishing line – back to the grindstone (ahem) on Thursday after the Gala Dinner and the monster, RSI-inducing signing session have worked their respective woes upon my liver, waistline and wrist tendons. I even started clearing out my desk today, or rather the dirty big cabinet thing that sits beside my desk, shielding me from the vulgar gaze of the Document Management team - they do like a good squinty-peer. God knows how I’ve managed to collect so much paper-based shite in only 4 years. Folders and folders and folders of the stuff. I swear there was a whole bloody forest’s worth of paper in my 6-foot-tall Document Management Screen. Most of which is now on its way to the great recycling centre in the sky.

I’ve packed up half my stuff and taken it home already, just in case someone wants to do one of those ‘let’s all go to the pub to celebrate getting shot of the old beardie-wierdie’ things. You never know. Perhaps it’ll be a couple of weeks before anyone notices I’ve gone, and then the fighting for my throne-like chair will begin. The thing is huge: like a cross between a standard typist's swivel chair and the ‘big seat’ on the Star Ship Enterprise, only with a blue carpet-like finish. I’ve already had people past to lay claim to it - and a pile of other things on my desk - festooning the whole area with orange Post-it notes. Thieving bastards. Well, technically I suppose it’s not thieving (except for the stuff that was actually mine in the first bloody place), it’s more like proto-thieving. Anyway, let’s just say that the vultures have already started circling, looking to pick clean the corpse of my cubicle and suck the marrow from its bones.

Nice to know you’ll be missed, isn’t it?

Now every man, to aid his clan, must plot and plan as best he can...

Yup, it’s TSA time and I been planning away like a mad thing. Today has been mostly spent working out how The Stand Alone is going to work out from start to finish. Kinda like a crib sheet for the entire book. This isn’t something I normally do, but I wanted to give Agent Phil (mine’s a large one) a ‘pitch’ for the book, and according to them what’s in the know this includes some form of kick-ass synopsis / blurb and possibly a handful of pages as well. My target is the first three chapters. I figure that if I’m not having fun by that point there’s no point in sending any of it anywhere – I don’t bloody well want to write it anyway. Right now the whole thing exists as a conglomeration of mind-maps, scribbled diagrams, character studies and one dirty-big flowchart thing. All of which is supposed to make the writing easier (well, that’s a lie: it’s all designed to sell the idea of the book).

So the current plan is to finish the plan tomorrow, and maybe the first chapter as well. Then on Tuesday I can try for chapter number 2 on the train to Glasgow, and number 3 on the way back to Aberdeen. This way I’ll have the whole ‘three chapters and a synopsis’ malarkey under my belt by the time the launch party comes round on the 27th.

“BUT,” I hear you cry, “how come you is going to the Glasgow, Stuart?” Well, I’ll tell you: I’ve been invited to the BA Conference Gala Dinner, where I shall rub shoulders with the bigwigs of the publishing and retail industry. And a bit of rubbing against some other people who’re also going along as guests of HarperCollins. Now I assume that they’ll be putting ‘people they want to impress’ on the tables with the famous guys and galls, and bearded unknowns on that little table next to the toilets, where the wait-persons deposit cutlery that’s been dropped on the floor, and half-eaten chicken fricassee. But I suppose that’ll mean all the half-eaten chicken fricassee I can eat! Bwahahahahaha… The next day, after all the showbiz glitz and glamour’s worn off, I’m off to do my marathon signing session. And then it’s back on the train and homeward bound.

Mmm… home.

A well-timed validation

Well, whilst Olav may have been unimpressed by Kald Granitt’s theme, at least I know there are a couple of people who don’t think my stuff sucks wet farts from the arses of dead pigeons. Interim feedback is in for Book 2 (along with hints about what’s going to happen to my nether-regions with bull-clips and battery acid if I don’t come up with a title for the damn thing pronto) and so far so good. Thank the Sainted Fish. No major rewrites on the horizon (not looking to rub it in John, just saying is all), and everything seems to have worked OK. Along with one scene currently being described as “probably one of the most gruesome things I've ever read, and will stay with me for quite some time.” but in a good way ;}# And, as it doesn’t involve children, Olav might quite like it too (though I doubt it).

While it’s unpleasant to get kicked in the nads by someone you’ve never met, or heard of, it’s very nice to get positive feedback from people you’ve got a lot of respect for.

Good old Jane and Sarah – gawdblessem.

And the skies are all cloudy and grey...

Which is to say that someone has said a discouraging word. More than one to be perfectly honest. Yes, we always knew this day would come – the first dreadful review has just hit my inbox. And by ‘dreadful’, I don’t mean that it’s a bit negative, ‘dreadful’ in this context implies that the reviewer would sooner chew off his, or her, left testicle than ever have anything more to do with this book-thing that I have written. Which is nice.

Reviews are a funny thing, especially those in a foreign language, and up till now I’ve been blissfully unaware of anything bad being said. But a friend of a friend reads Norwegian and, for a small bribe, they agreed to translate some of the reviews and interviews that cover Kald Granitt’s publication by Tiden. Saying that there’s a WIDE range of responses to the book is a bit like saying stapling a pickled herring to your forehead is likely to get you some funny looks. Is the book “…complex and believable. Grotesque but never absurd.”, is it “properly considered and socially critical”, or does it “suck steaming piles of donkeys’ wing-wangs”? (OK, I’m paraphrasing a little bit with that last one)

Sarah asked the question a while ago – “What’s it like to get your first bad review?” Well, to be fair, I’ve had nicer experiences. No one likes to be told they’ve an ugly baby, even if the person commentating is three sheets to the wind on mentholated spirits and peering at the neighbour’s miniature schnauzer with lustful abandon. But there’s no point getting angry about it: it’s one person’s opinion. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, right? And while it would have been nice to have nothing but good feedback, I have to bear in mind that this thing’s been picked up by seven different major publishers around the world – they can all be wrong, can they?

Still, for your delectation, delight (and quite probably schadenfreude), I give you the review of DOOM by the new Norwegian Head of the Stuart MacBride International Fan Club:

Stuart MacBride “Cold Granite”
Keep away!
Crime can be exciting. “Cold Granite” by Stuart MacBride is seldom so. On the other hand the disgust factor is well over the average. It deals with, among other things, murdered and abused toddlers.
It a bad theme. And the author has in some way or another got caught fast in it - with a richness of detail that is most questionable.
For there is not much gravity in this book. The main character - investigator Logan McRae - is a variation on a very old cliché. Here we once again have a disillusioned policeman with an drink problem, and who chews pills which contribute to making his drinking and hangovers even worse.
But of course he solves the case - albeit long after this reader had become fed up with both the character and the whole book
Olav Begby”

Sorry Olav…

But I think the one I’ll be putting up in the study will be the one that starts off with: “Note the name Stuart MacBride. In a few years time he could be a world famous author.”

Well, we can always hope ;}#

On sober reflection…

Well, not all that sober, but alcohol free anyway. As there’s still no sign of the interview on the Scotland on Sunday website, I decided to take matters into my own hands and type the damn thing up myself. Fiona at HC hadn’t read it, and neither had Agent Phil (small, but wiry), so it was going to be the only way they could bask in my reflected glory (ahem) or shout at me for saying stupid things to the national press.

Going back over it – as one has to while typing in all one thousand, three hundred and thirteen words (not including the huge bit on my fellow interviewee Lee Hutcheon, because it’s not about me and that’s kinda the point of StuartMacbride.com – surprisingly enough) – I realise that I’ve maybe painted an unfairly dim picture of the article in my previous post. Yes there’s a bit of ‘Edinburgh does everything better than a pokey, wee hole like Aberdeen’, but mostly it’s very good. Well written and it does say nice things about the book, which is all I wanted in the first place. Though, now I come to think of it, Aidan doesn’t actually say if he liked the thing or not. Hmm…

I think reading about yourself in print – from my extremely limited experience – is much the same as hearing yourself on tape. Everyone, unless they’re a monster egomaniac, is horrified: “I don’t sound like that!” they shout, before running off with their fingers in their ears. Only where one can’t argue that ‘the tape recorder never lies’, an article is different. It’s not an accurate, faithful, objective representation of what’s been said; it’s been filtered through someone else’s head. The journalist will have snipped and edited and shifted stuff about a bit, maybe even made some things up to covey the sense of what was said, but without the mindless rambling of the subject. And when that’s done the duty editor gets his, or her, editorial claws into it.

I suppose it’s only human nature to latch onto the things you think are negative, forgetting about all the good stuff in the process. Bloody silly, but human nature nonetheless.

I been incognito

Which is a small place, just south of Oldmeldrum. For those of you who notice such things, I have been absent from the INTERNET OF DOOM over the weekend, due to pressing business in the garden. Saturday was spent digging the tattie patch (by which I do not mean standing about in afro and flares, looking at the tattie patch and saying ‘groooovy’ a lot) and Sunday was spent groaning, clutching tortured muscles and complaining about having spent all of Saturday digging the tattie patch. Oh, and a bit of lawn mowing and raking… Christ, the days are just packed, aren’t they?

The only vaguely write-ist thing I did this weekend (not including hurrying out to buy a copy of Scotland on Sunday) was talk to Fiona about ‘The Standalone’. Not sure if it was that good an idea to let my spouse into the dark jumble sale that is Stuart’s pre-writing planning stuff, as mostly it did make her go all a-squirm. Never have I heard the phrase ‘that’s horrible!’ repeated so often and with such conviction. Fiona thinks that about 90% of the book is far too nasty for words and can’t believe anyone in their right mind would ever want to read that kind of thing. Which makes me quietly confident that I’m onto something here - anything that makes Fiona writhe in revulsion has got to be worth a shot.

There’s just one bit to figure out in my head before I can actually sit down and start writing the thing (even though I’m still nowhere near finished on the researching front) and I’m looking forward to it. Much darkness and death will ensue. Bwahahahahahahaaaa….

So, how does it feel to be in the papers then?

Scotland on Sunday finally got round to running that interview thing they did a couple of weeks ago. So once more ‘She Who Must Not Be Woken Before Nine On A Sunday’ and I tootled off to the wee shop in the nearby village and handed over a shiny new pound coin for a copy. We resisted opening up the thing until we got home and discovered, splattered all over the front page of the Review section was a picture of Lee Hutcheon, all done up to look gritty and filmy (in that he makes film, not that he has some sort of skin forming over the top), complete with sensational, pulp fiction-style title*. Hmm… Just to be on the safe side I started making the scrambled eggs and got ‘She Who Must Be Fed Before Ten’ to read the thing out while I cooked.

All in all, it’s not that bad, I suppose. OK, Aidan Smith – journalist (35) – obviously has a point to prove about how Aberdeen’s nowhere near as scary as Edinburgh, but that kind of “we does stuff much better down south” thing is only to be expected. Just a shame he didn’t try the place on a Thursday or Friday night: I’m sure both Lee and I could’ve thought of a few places that would have frightened the living shite out of him.

The article spends it’s first page talking about Lee’s film and his past, relishing the fact that he couldn’t pick up his Best Drama award from the New York International Independent Film and Video Awards, due to being banged up for four months in Craiginches Prison for assault (I told you he was a LOT more noir than me, didn’t I?). And then it moves onto Yours Truly – a bearded bespectacled IT man with a hacking cough who is ‘unaccustomed to the sun’. Which is fair enough I suppose. To be honest, the interview isn’t bad, some of it’s quite good. Only one bit is taken salaciously out of context from the book, and there’s only one complete and utter lie: when I'm quoted as saying, “The place disna really cut a dash. Silk and suede are no-nos in all that rain.” Now I can assure you – in the same way that I can assure you that Genghis Khan isn’t going to turn up at your hamster’s third birthday party and tell the story of the decline of the Jute mills in North East Scotland through the medium of interpretive dance – that there’s no way in hell I ever said ‘disna’. But then, I does come from up narrrth where we do speak all funny… Ahem.

The parting blow is perhaps the harshest, depending on how you interpret it – “Better known and more accomplished movie-makers and fiction writers may eventually be drawn to Aberdeen, but these two can say with some pride that they were here first.” Hmm, I would have thought Lee winning an international drama film award, then taking his film on to the Cannes Film Festival, was quite an achievement in itself. As for me? Well, I’m just doing my best, I suppose. And who knows, maybe by the time these film and literary giants turn their cumbersome, whisky-blurred gaze north to the Granite City’s sparkling streets, we’ll have made some modest degree of success for ourselves and won’t have to back down into obscurity once more, a-tugging at our forelocks as we go.

But in the end: my book and Lee’s film got a plug and housewives up and down the country got to have their Sunday porridge with our respective photos propped up against the bottle of milk. Which no doubt prompted much hurrying back to bed, clutching grateful husbands ;}# And it’s really not that bad an article. I don’t seem to come across as a bearded arse. And, with the exception of the bit of Cold Granite taken completely out of context, I seem to like Aberdeen – so delaying the witch-hunt by the tourist board until the book actually comes out. End of the day: things could be a lot worse and I have no right to grumble. Some writers never even get the opportunity to make a tit of themselves in the national press. I’m sure there will be times in the years to come when I look back and wish all my interviewers could be so nice.

Mustn’t grumble…

* I’ll provide a link, if I can find one, after the Scotsman.com website has finished being ‘taken off-line for essential maintenance’. Which is technical parlance for ‘it’s buggered an no one knows what’s wrong with it yet.’

Thieving Bastards (part 2)

First Amazon and now eBay – someone’s flogging an advance reading copy of the American edition of Cold Granite. I refer the house to my previous post for details of my feelings on this kind of thing. It’s bad enough this SoB is flogging something he’s not legally entitled to sell, but to add insult to injury - I don’t even have a copy of the US ARC yet! He (or she, to be politically correct, but I’m going to assume this bastard’s a man for brevity and chivalry’s sake) has had the book, read it and stuck it up for auction before I’ve even seen one! Well, I assume he’s read it, but the listing does say that the thing is ‘new’, so he might not even have opened the bloody cover.

I’m in two minds about what the best possible outcome would be to this one (other than wishing a crippling bout of haemorrhoids – piles the size of oranges... no: grapefruit! – along with a galloping dose of crabs and nasal warts on the thieving git). On the one hand it’d be nice to see the book valued. On the other, I want the burgling bastard to profit as little as possible from it.

After last time I got to thinking about the whole flogging of second-hand / ARC copies of books on places like Amazon and eBay and I think there is a way to make it fair on all parties. I’ve no doubt it’s been proposed before, but I’d like to see an ‘originator tax’ levied on the sales. Every time one of these books gets flogged online a set amount is charged to the seller to cover the author and the publisher. Wouldn’t be as much as the publisher would get from a new book, but then they wouldn’t have to produce a new book, it’d already exist. The author wouldn’t get screwed out of a sale, and the whole transaction would count towards earning out and keeping everyone in business. The seller gets to sell something they don’t want any more (or in the case of ARC’s got for free in the first place), the buyer gets to buy something they want, and the author gets to keep their job.

But I’d add to this the proviso that anyone who tries to flog an ARC before the books actually been released would be subject to a summary ‘kicking the shit out of’. Which is no less than they deserve.

Dr. Why?

I know it was a couple of days ago (I’ve been busy, so sue me), but the BBC has announced that Christopher Eccleston is quitting the new revamp of Dr. Who after only one series. Episode one came out, people seemed to like it, and Eccleston became terrified of being typecast. He has ‘artistic aspirations’ (according to MSN news) and thinks being recognised as Dr Who isn’t going to do those aspirations any good. Hmm… why sign up for a series and then wimp out because you’re scared people will recognise you as the character? Surely he had a bit of a think about the nature of actually being in a series before he signed up for it. No?

To be fair, I’ve not seen any of the new series (still have difficulty looking at Billie Piper without feeling nauseas), so I can’t tell if it’s crap or not, or if Eccleston comes across as an iconic doctor who will live in the hearts and minds of people for generations and blah, blah, blah. Still, I’m with Fiona who thinks it’s a pretty ungrateful thing to ditch a show so soon after accepting the job.

Worse yet, they’re looking at hiring David Tennant – who was going to be reading Cold Granite for the audio version, before I lucked out and got John Sessions instead (who I’m sure has done a MUCH better job of it) – and we’re bitter, twisted, bearded old men who hold grudges like some people hold badgers! Probably doesn’t help that when I was little, I really, really wanted to grow up to be Dr. Who.

Quick K-9: to the TARDIS!
(cue ‘whonnnnnk weeeeeeeee, whonnnnnk weeeeeeeee’ sound effects)