Just for a change

Been too much in the way of nose-oriented whinging round here of late, so today I thought I'd whinge about writing instead. Hahahahaha! Didn't see that one coming, did you?

Well, not so much a whinge, more of an update. I've been finding it difficult to get up much momentum with NDC since the op -- there's too much starting and stopping to mop up blood going on and my head's not working at its 100% best, but I'm still getting there. Only not yesterday. Yesterday, instead of writing new stuff, I was 'finessing'.

Yea, I know having read my books it's difficult to see any signs of finesse, but that don't mean I don't put it in. I'm taking this as a good thing, it means I'm getting towards the point in the book where things are starting to all come together. I recon it's got about four or five days (story time) to go and it'll be finished. And I've got five weeks to do it in. Need to write a day's worth of action every week. No problems, right?

The compulsion to finesse is my way of making the stuff I've already written mesh with what's in my head as it comes to a conclusion. So back to the start I go and weed out all the bits Rob Souter's mum should be, but isn't. Then when I come to the finale of that strand it'll all make sense.

I much prefer to screw about like this as I go -- than come back and catch it in the edit (though I'm sure I'll end up doing a lot of that anyway) -- because it's my first draft that gets submitted to HarperCollins. I like it to be as clean as possible, but with enough rough edges on it to tear skin, if that's what's needed.

Right, now if you'll excuse me I have some blood to mop up, then I think I'll go be woozy for a while. Have fun now...

Blood and books

I think I should begin by offering a full and formal apology to the members of the Turriff readers' group, Liz from Turriff library, Richard, Dawn and everyone involved in BBC Radio Scotland's Cover Stories programme. Honestly -- I didn't expect things to get as messy as they did...

It started an hour before I was due to be there: a nosebleed. OK, so as you know, blood coming from my nose has been kind of a feature since my sinus surgery on Tuesday, but this was something special, even for me. Just a steady drip, drip, drip to start with, swiftly escalating to a trickle and then a full-on flood. Spwooooosh! An hour to go, and I'm loitering about the house with a tea towel full of ice clamped to the bridge of my nose and a wad of toilet paper trying to block the twin scarlet jets. We phone the Otolaryngologist responsible for the current state of my head, but he's not in, so we'll have to cope with Niagara Falls ourselves.

Of course, it's too late to cancel: Richard and Dawn will already be in Aberdeen, having got the train up from Edinburgh. The readers' group will be all ready too, sharpening their knives hungry for a slice of write-ist to devour. Hope they like it underdone, because that's the only option on the menu today: extra bloody. Everyone else made the effort and I'm damned if I'll let them down. Stupid? Yea, probably, but as I've said before: I'm none too bright.

She Who Must Remain Calm In A Crisis is given the enviable job of getting me into my patented David Hasselhoff Impersonator's Outfit, because I can't see anything over my triage tent of bogroll and tea towel. Takes a while, but eventually we're ready to roll, She Who Must driving while I continue to apply pressure in the faint hope it'll have stopped bleeding by the time we get to Turriff.

Fat bloody chance, but at least it's slowed to an intermittent trickle and drip. Now there's a large black plug of clotted blood sticking out my right nostril, like a playful slug. And I know that at some point during the proceedings it's going to go 'POP!' and everyone will be washed away in a tsunami of haemoglobin.

They're setting up when we arrive, handing round nice biscuits and cups of tea, then someone notices the big beardy bloke with the red-stained toilet paper clamped to his hooter. We do some introductions and I tell them about my surgical 'mishap' but that it'll be OK, as long as no one minds me bleeding quietly throughout the interview / talk. I get some wary looks, but they're up for it.

And it goes well, if you ignore the hairy bloke at the edge of the table, oozing red into a growing pile of bog roll, drinking warm water from a yellow duckie thermos -- God, how noir am I? -- because it's the only thing I can stand to take with my throat being the way it is. Remember I said it was sore, but I'd been given extra pills to cope with it? It's still bloody sore. I've not been able to eat anything the whole weekend, it just hurts too much to swallow. So I'm here on an empty stomach and wadges of medication. But it's not enough. I'm aware of being below par. It's difficult to sparkle when you're slowly bleeding to death through your nose.

But the book group are on good form, ask lots of questions (some of which are damn hard, but all interesting) and Richard keeps the whole thing going smoothly. The whole thing lasts about an hour and a bit, but it'll be broadcast at just under thirty minutes long once it's been edited down. Fingers crossed they'll be taking out all my burbling and dripping noises.

Afterwards I can't wait to get home, not because there's anything wrong with the group, or the library, but because I can feel the volcanic slug-plug starting to strain. My sinuses are beginning to fill up with blood, making my eyes feel like they're about to burst. I need to get back to the house and dig said clot out so the blood can escape, rather than back up and drown what little brain I have left.

And it's a doozy when it comes out too: same size as a ping pong ball, only dark red and gelatinous. The floodgates open. The sink goes from porcelain-white to bright scarlet. I spend the rest of the night feeling very, very strange between the ears. Still can't eat, but need to take more medication.

Worst of all is the fact that I've left it too late -- the blood filling my sinuses has clotted, leaving me clogged and bunged up and sore. Looking forward to another night spent sleeping sat up on the study couch (doctor's orders), and feeling more than a little sorry for myself.

Yes I am a bearded whinge monster, but fingers crossed tomorrow will see a miracle of medical science and I'll feel fine again. Or I'll go on the rampage with a fish slice and a jar of mayonnaise. That'll teach them.

Some one-handed ruminations

I've been getting a fair bit of time to think about things of late, sat with my head thrown back, turning various wodges of toilet paper bright-scarlet with my nose. Which only leaves one hand free to type: hence the title. Things like my ITW nomination -- best first novel.

What do I do? Do I shout about it from the rafters in a frenzy of, "LOOK AT ME! I'VE BEEN SHORTLISTED!", or do I maintain a dignified silence, safe in the knowledge I don't stand a chance in hell of actually winning? It's the ITW's first year, so that means I get to be in the inaugural bunch of nominees -- which is very cool, but it also means that there's no history to it. Not like an Edgar, or a Gumshoe, or some sort of Dagger. So the associated buzz seems to have been much, much smaller. Which is a shame, because I think in the years to come winning an ITW Thriller is going to be a very big deal indeed. Hell, I'm even considering going out to Thrillerfest to do my, 'I'm glad someone else won, because I don't really want to have to dust something like that every day and polish it and show it off to everyone within a three mile radius... *sigh*' smile. And it's in Arizona on the cusp of June / July, so you know it'll be like eating a gala dinner inside the oven it was cooked in. So -- big it up, or play it cool, big it up, or play it cool...?

Other cud upon which to chew is the future of me as a write-ist. HarperCollins have hinted, obliquely, and without wanting to, you know, catch cooties, that they might like another three books. Preferably Logan ones. Can I do another three Logan books? I like him as a character, but NDC is proving to be so multilayered that there aren't going to be many crimes left for me to do without some hairy-arsed anorak going, but you did this one before! Maybe two Logie's and a standalone? But then a standalone breaks the momentum of a series. So, ponder, ponder, ponder...

Then there's the Writer For Hire gig I was approached about (along with another couple of writers - I'm not that super special) from a very reputable publisher with an intriguingly vague subject that I'm not allowed to talk about. Just have to say that the timescales were WAY too aggressive for me at the moment -- what with the looming deadline and all -- so I had to turn it down. Turning down money, Stuart? Are you MAD?????!?!?!??!?!?

And lastly, there's the decision to have this stupid nasal surgery. It's now day five and I'm leaking haemoglobin like a leaky thing. Were this a WWII movie, I'd be telling people to go on without me, I'll only slow them down. And they'd do it too, bastards. Abandoning me... It's weird just how quickly bizarre things can become commonplace. This morning I was making the cat's breakfast, trying to arrange things so I dripped blood in the sink, instead of down my front, or into her bowl. Even now I'm typing this with my right hand, because the left's being used to stem the crimson tide. And it doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.

This afternoon's going to be a sodding disaster, I can feels it in me water!

Whinge (part 2 of X*)

I never thought a sore throat could be so damn painful. I mean, prior to this my pain threshold had been horse-related. Like some sort of new-man idiot I decided to try partaking in my wife's hobby: horse riding. Cut a long story short, my second lesson ended in an 'exhilarating' gallop (after everyone else, including our instructor, had fallen off) and a fractured ankle. Tore all the ligaments too, so it was a fun way to bring my equestrian career to a hobbling halt.

Only trouble was, when I went up to A&E they thought it was just sprained, so I got a tube bandage, a walking stick, and told to bugger off out of it. Three days later I'm back again and they decide that, it's fractured after all. The tube bandage will have to go, it's cast time. Fair enough, but the fracture had already started to heal -- in the wrong direction -- so they had to 'encourage' it straight again. Which basically means breaking it. Without an anaesthetic. THAT was my number 10 on the old painometer.

Now, normally when you get a general anaesthetic they stick a dirty big tube down your throat to make sure you keep breathing. This can lead to a bit of a sore throat, but it goes away (allegedly) after a day or so. Not for me. Nope, not only do I get to have the nose that keeps on bleeding, I also get an ulcerated Uvula. Yup, the dangly bit at the back of my throat looks like a scrotum that's been shaved with a rotary lawnmower. And the bloody thing HURTS! All the time, like barbed wire being drawn across the roof of my mouth. Made all the worse because I can't breathe through my blood-clotted nose, so it's drying out the whole time and getting aggravated. Makes the re-breaking of a limb seem tame in comparison.

So today She Who Must Dress Up As A Nurse More Often took me back to the hospital to see mine surgeon. Who hoovered out the inside of my right nostril for some bizarre reason. Still, I suppose we all need a hobby. Then gave me a prescription for a whole host of new drugs, most of which taste bloody awful. I rattle when I walk now. And the new painkillers make everything go WHOOSH! when I look at them.

God knows what I'm going to be like for tomorrow's radio-and-reader-fest. I can't actually speak today without sounding like Marlon Brando's unintelligible cousin Elmer. Worse yet, there are going to be 'members of the local press' there to take photographs, and I'll still be Mr. Swollen Potato-Head.

Ah yes, another great opportunity to debase the old ego. I'm getting spoiled for choice these days...

* Where X is the distance between here and exactly how far I can kick the arse of whoever recommended sinus surgery to me in the first place.

Whinge (part 1 of X*)

"I don't trust anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die."

Mr Garrison, South Park

Oh yes, three days on and things are looking... well not so much up as sideways, pinching the bridge of its nose and wishing it had never gone ahead with nasal bloody surgery. Three days of sleep deprivation -- never more than an hour a night, which is bad even for me –a permanent bloody drip (both figurative and literal), and a throat like the underside of a hedgehog have turned my 'Joie de Vie' into something more like 'Joie de Mort'.

And it's not my Mort I'm Joie-ing, either.

Phoned my surgeon today to tell him I'm still oozing blood, like fresh roadkill, to be told that it's not normal. Well, that's just fine and dandy. So not only am I in a hooring amount of discomfort, now I'm abnormal as well. How proud am I? Apparently this will all just go away on its own and I'll be right as rain in no time.

I hope so: I've got a thing with the Turrif Reading Group on Sunday, discussing the new book -- Radio Scotland are coming up to make a programme of it. And they'll be all like, "Dude, what the hell were you thinking when you wrote the finger scene?" and I'll be, "Mmmmshghg, gnnngnningn, fmmmninfin fnns..." while my nose does a Carrie on Prom Night.

That's pure showbiz magic, right there.

* Where X is a number between now and next Wednesday.

Farewell to nose

If you're looking for a good time, then I can wholeheartedly recommend giving Nasal surgery a miss. Oh, yea, it sounds like a bag of laughs: the excitement, the glamour, having someone crawl up your nose with a huge knife -- what's not to like? And yet, somehow, the reality just doesn't live up to the hype.

The surgery itself isn't that bad -- except for the papery gown thing, which is a bit 'peek-a-boo' for my tastes -- and you get a nice injection that works like three double whiskies in rapid succession. Wheeeee... But that's because you spend the nose-hacking part asleep. The nasty stuff only really kicks in when you wake up.

Noses are designed for a very specific job, they keep our glasses from falling off our faces, give people something to pick in their cars, produce nasty squonking noises and bogies. What they're not designed for is hacking bits out of. They're the wrong shape -- long twisty-turney tunnels reaching way back into your head, so it's a pretty intrusive procedure. And from the looks of things the surgeons have used my face as a knee-rest.

Yes, I am Mr Swollen potato head.

One of the worst bits about this kind of surgery is the packing they stuff all the way up into your sinuses. Not the putting in, because you're generally unconscious at the time, but the taking out. The idea is that with half a ton of cotton wool up your hooter there's not too much bleeding -- but there is an alternative to cavity wall insulation: cauterization. Basically they burn the inside of your nose and sinuses so they don't pee blood everywhere. This is what I've just had done. So imagine the irony when I have to spend half the recreating the gorier scenes from Night Of The Living Dead. Everywhere. Squoosh! Squoosh! Squoosh!!!

The most surreal bit comes at about nine-ish when She Who Must phones to see how I'm doing and I'm all like, "Er, can you call back later?" sounding a bit bunged up, holding a blood soaked rag to my nose, having just coughed up half a pint of haemoglobin, while Nurse One and Nurse Two try to hook up an IV and some morphine... Mmm, morphine... Thence follows an action-packed night of blood and frolics.

And while I'm pleased to say I managed to keep a reasonable sense of humour for most of the night, by the time five in the morning comes round I'm struggling really hard not to be Mr Grouchy Trousers. Not helped by the fact they're 'upgrading the hospital facilities for my convenience' which involves hammering and bashing and sawing away in the wee small hours right outside my room. Bastards.

Anyway, although I had all sorts of good intentions about doing some work while in here, the only thing I've been able to write is this. How crap am I?

And in case you're wondering, Thursday was more of the same, only with slightly less bleeding. And more vomiting blood. And some ice cream. So it wasn't all bad. But now that I'm home, bringing half their pharmacy with me (amazing what you can pick up in the dead of night when everyone's asleep), I'm giving serious consideration to some pills and a bit of a snooze. Then it'll be all, "Work Monkey Boy: WORK!!!"

LCC -- Saturday

Claudia Shiffer has been the bane of my life -- hiding in the bushes outside my house (sharing a thermos of Heinz cream of tomato soup with Trace), rummaging through my wheely bin, stealing my underpants off the washing line -- but even her ceaseless harassment and begging for sexual favours is nothing compared to the irritation of a hotel fire alarm going off at a quarter past four on a Saturday morning. Especially when you've only been in bed for an hour and a bit.

Get up, or burn, get up or burn, get up or-- the alarm stops, I lie back, groan, and start to drift off again... DWEEDLE DWEEDLE DWEEDLE DWEEDLE up again, eyes like pickled eggs. Silence... Swearing. And it's then that I hear the muffled sound of an alarm coming from the floor below. Then it goes quiet down there too. Maybe the blaze has melted the circuitry?

Sod it, go back to sleep. Warmth draws me down into the duvet, a small smile on my face as Claudia Shiffer offers to paint the outside of my house and DWEEDLE DWEEDLE DWEEDLE DWEEDLE. Only this time the alarm doesn't stop. Now they always say you should never go back for your personal possessions when there's a fire, but as I'm stark bullock naked anyway, I don't see there being any harm in taking a moment to get dressed. And pack up the laptop. I've been writing since the wardrobe-plane hybrid on the way down, so I'm damned if I'm abandoning the book now.

Plus my editor Sarah is here, and if I loose chapters she'll kill me, even if the fire doesn't.

From the looks of things as I clomp down the stairs from the forth floor, this fire could be a good career move for me. Only a tiny handful of people have bothered to get out of bed, in one fell swoop the competition will be wiped out, leaving only we glorious sensible few! And I can start bashing some of them over the head with my laptop, thinning the field out even further. Soon there will only be MACBRIDE! Bwahahahahahaaaa... *ahem*

By the time I and the other three potential survivors get as far as the hotel bar, it's become apparent that there is to be no mass culling of crime writers. So I sag over to join Sarah and Kevin Wingall who've not gone to bed yet. I've never met Kevin before, but he assures me in a voice laden with whisky and plumbs that he's not usually this patrician. Three or four times. A funny bloke, in a strange 'upper class smoking jackets pipe and slippers at dawn have you seen my butler?' kind of way. Not surprisingly the conversation turns to Opera when Zoë Sharp stomps in from the cold -- she made it all the way outside. Now I should be quite the opera buff. She Who Must Warned Not To Leave My Pants Where Claudia Schiffer Can Steal Them's sister is an opera singer with ENO. Her husband is one of their principal basses and a professional Jordie to boot, so I should be Mr Clever Opera Clogs, no? No.

My trouble is that I'm thick as two very short, very thick planks. When I was wee I was bright, had one of those IQ things and everything, but over the years I've traded smarts in for practicality. I can rewire a kitchen, tile a bathroom and put up plasterboard, but am thick as mince. But I know what I like, and it isn't Maria Callas. I know some people think she's the best thing since toast and jam, but I find her voice like a dentist drill being used on a cat. There is some disagreement on this point, but I'm the only one in the bar with a beard, so I have to be right.

To be honest this is the only bad thing about working in publishing -- everyone else is always knows a damn sight more than I do (except about Maria Callas being the singing equivalent of finding a pubic hair in your Gin). And they can remember all of it at the drop of a hat. Or in Kevin's case, his butler's hat. Me? I shared a flat with six people in Edinburgh for a year and it took me six months before I could actually remember their names. I know it looks like a brain on my CT Scan, but really it's a sieve.

By the time six am comes round I'm suffering from two late nights on top of a red eye flight and a 04:30 fire alarm call. Making even less sense than usual I slope off to bed, mumbling something about sleep and breakfast and Claudia Schiffer stealing my underwear.

Poached egg, sausage, beans, hash browns and mushrooms, preceded by an breakfast appetiser of mine own creation: smoked salmon and sliced strawberries with cracked black pepper. And I'm almost awake enough to go heckle Barclay the Irish whirlwind, but not awake enough to realise her panel started at nine, instead of half nine. Instead I shuffle off to see 'Walking The Mean Streets', in support of Mr Guthrie (we award nominated Scotsmen have to stick together you know). And it's a good one too. Which is a shame as it means I now have more books to go buy. Aberdeenshire council have already issued me with a health and safety warning for the size of mount TBR. Adding a few more foothills isn't going to help.

Lunchtime is noodles with Agent Phil in a wee place up the road from the hotel. Now I'm beginning to think that Agent Phil is having some sort of midlife crisis. When I first met him he was short, wore a suit and a shirt, had sensible shoes and a haircut, and carried a capacious man-bag. He's still short, but now he's got long hair, sideburns like a pair of rampant Brillo pads and it's all jeans, t-shirts and cigarettes. It'll be an opened-topped sports car, tattoo and a masseuse called 'Chardonnay' next. But he gets away with it because he's extremely likeable, bright (damn his tiny cotton socks), and good with small animals (which he kinda looks like these days). And tells some of the most scandalous anecdotes I've ever heard.

By the time I get back to the hotel I feel like I've been scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe -- and I'm not the only one. The whole hotel is filled with people slumping about like half-shut knives, eyes like piss-holes in the snow. But we have a bona fide celebrity staying in the hotel! Not Sam Neil -- who breaks wind in crowded elevators, and scurries about the place, head down, trying not to make eye-contact with any of these naughty writering types -- but Brian Murphy of George and Mildred fame! Yes, Mr Neil has been in a film featuring a lawyer getting eaten by a dinosaur (and that has to be a golden movie moment in anyone's book), but this is the guy from George and Mildred! And spookily enough he looks exactly the same as he did in 1976. If I looked the same way I did in 1976, my wife would be arrested.

I try to spend the afternoon writing, but only manage 754 words. What I should do is go for a nap, recharge the batteries and try again, but I'm convinced the words will come if only I try hard enough, even though I KNOW is a load of old bollocks (much like the sentences I keep writing and deleting).

Sod it: I'm going to the bar. The place is surprisingly empty -- the hotel has decided to apologise for its novelty fire alarms and comedy wakeup calls by throwing a free champagne reception before the LCC gala dinner. Did someone say 'free booze'?

The room is crowded shoulder to shoulder, and once more I'm struck by the thought that I could wipe out half the competition by poisoning the tomato salsa dip. Too late now though, I left all my strychnine in my room. Drinkity, drinkity, then off to dinner. Not the gala one, out with the HC crowd again, where there is much making fun of Alex for being an international bestseller, appearing on French TV (twice), only ever drinking champagne, and being an all round media success.

We've gone to the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, but for some reason I'm the only one having the oysters. Do they know something I don't? I know Kernick had some for lunch the other day, which probably explains his behaviour in the bar afterwards, but he didn't seem to suffer any ill effects. Of course what I really want to order is the 'TOWER OF FISH!!!' because it looks great. Who could resist a tower made of fish? It's the stuff dreams are made of. But it's the most expensive thing on the menu and I don't want to get a reputation for that sort of thing. The thought that I could have shared the thing with someone else doesn't occur to me until it's too late. *sigh* Tower of fish...

Which means there's only one thing left to do: go back to the hotel bar where John and I try to make a very drunk Russel pee himself by doing the 'Suits you!' gentlemen at him until he's folded in two, giggling like a bearded schoolgirl.

Bed time: 03:30

LCC -- Friday

There's something strangely 'wildlife documentary' about seeing a herd* of crime writers milling about outside a burning hotel in Bristol at half nine in the morning. Even if no one's sure whether or not we're actually looking at a scene from the towering inferno or some pain in the arse Corby trouser press related incident. Three fire engines, one of those fancy laddery jobs, and a woman in her bathrobe, what more do you need to put a smile on your day?

Yes it's day two and no sooner have the bold men and women of Bristol City Fire Brigade confiscated a rogue trouser press and the contents of someone's mini bar, than it's time for my second panel: 'Had I But Known -- Clichés in Crime Fiction'. Oh yes, two panels, I have no shame. Today's is a lot better than yesterdays, even though I went to bed last night at pretty much the same time I'd gotten up the day before to catch the red eye flight down here. It's about five minutes into the panel when I figure out why I've been invited to participate in this one, rather than 'Sexy Monkeys I Have Known (But Not In A Biblical Sense)'. You can play Cliché Bingo along with me if you like:

Chilly, but beautiful pathologist? CHECK!
Feisty female trying to make it in a man's world? CHECK!
Hardnosed DI with some sort of bizarre personal problem? CHECK!
Romantically entangled female in peril? CHECK!
Serial Killer? BINGO!

I win the forty-three-piece crockery set and half a dozen complementary steak knives.

I feel like standing up and saying, "Hi, my name's Stuart MacBride and I'm a clichéholic." The panel involves lots of giggling, more full frontal nudity, and after a disturbing discussion about the contents of Steve Brewer's beard and it's down to the signing room. Only unlike yesterday, this time there are people who actually want things signed! Hurrah! Obviously the early morning fire alarm has addled senses and encouraged a rash of hairy book buying.

Next up is the panel on Serial Killers and Psychological Thrillers which is interesting, and a little disturbing to boot. Especially when Keith McCarthy tells everyone how long it takes him to do a post mortem: 45 minutes. Bloody hell, how much of a clip do you have to be going at to get someone's insides out of them, examined and back in there again in three quarters of an hour? It takes me longer than that to make lunch.

And speaking of lunch, there's just time to order some before heading off to see Simon Kernick interviewing Lee Child. Well, that's what we think anyway. The hotel has other thoughts. So, childless I slink back to my room to fire up the laptop and please my editor (if you know what I mean).

Tonight Agent Phil and I are going out to dinner with the other HC authors (Mike, Alex, Steve and James), Sarah (the editor I've been pleasing all afternoon -- just don't tell She Who Must), Fiona our publicist and her mate Bianca. But first we're going to scam free drinks at the International Thriller Writers' Cocktail Party. Bwahahahaha... If there's any time you need to attract the attention of a large number of crime writers, throw a party with free drinks. Moths to the flame, flies to a mouldering corpse, members of parliament to dodgy sexual practices and stacks of used banknotes, that's us with free booze.

The party's being held to announce the Thrillers Shortlist, which I don't have to worry about, because I met Ali downstairs in the bar when I arrived on Thursday. We were talking about blurbing books, reviewing stuff and getting free books in the mail, when he told me that he's been one of the judges for the ITW Thrillers and had to wade through a phenomenal number of free books (180+ so the appeal was probably wearing thin for him).
"Oh," says I, "I think St. Martin's Press put me up for that."
He shakes his head sadly. "Nope, I didn't get anything in, for anyone from the UK."
So I'm happily hoovering up all the free drink I can get while the nominations are being read out, safe in the knowledge I don't have to pull on one of those fake smiles when I don't get shortlisted -- as they say: 'you've got to be in to win', and the same thing goes for loosing.

So it takes a wee while before the fact my name's just been read out for 'Best First Novel' filters through. More drinks! OK, so I know I haven't got a Shaved Monkey's chance in Rickards bedroom of winning, but it true what they say, it's nice to be shortlisted. I must be less tall than I thought. Maybe I'm shrinking?

After dinner it's down to the bar -- being St. Patrick's day the Barclay Monster is in full swing, and so is Declan Huges and Pat Mullan, jez, feck and begorrah-ing for all their worth while the rest of us put on dreadful Irish accents in a rash attempt to fit in. Then it's the big measure off where we find out that contrary to popular belief Whelk Boy is lying about his height after all. Only not in the way people think...

He claims to be between five seven and five eight, then insists that this makes everyone else in the room shorter than they really are. Safe in the knowledge that it'll upset people, dent their egos and deflate their libidos (leaving more hot shaven monkey action for him)**. But if he's five seven, I must be five nine tops. OK, It's been a while since I was last officially measured -- coming out at six foot on the nail -- and I'm prepared to believe I've shrunk a bit with age, but not three inches! So when I get home I get out the measuring tape: five foot, eleven and a half inches... Lying, whelky bastard!

So if ever a strange looking little bloke sidles up to you with jelled hair, tiny goatee an Eastbourne accent and faint whiff of mollusc, wanting to 'measure you up' run for the hills. It'll only end in tears otherwise.

Friday's time for bed: three am.

* What is the collective noun for crime writers? A 'drunk'? Or, if it's the usual crowd of miscreants: Kernick, Banks, Rickards, Guthrie, Barclay, Marshal, Wignall and Weinman, a 'Filth'.
** And no -- I'm not being figurative, I'm talking about genuine monkeys, or sometimes apes if he can get them drunk enough on banana wine and riled up with lemur porn.

Left Coast Crimearama

OK, so John's already posted his vague, alcohol-addled, rambling recollections of Left Coast Crime, but sod it: I'm doing mine anyway.

LCC - Thursday

The plane from Aberdeen to Bristol feels like it's been made by sticking a pair of wings to a small wardrobe. It's like jumping back in time to when kids used to fly for free and I'd accompany my father on trips, sooky boiled sweetie for take off and landing to stop your head exploding from the changes in pressure, the roar of the engines... Only difference being that when I was four-years-old the seats actually fitted. Now I'd need several limbs removed just to get into mine. And I wouldn't be able to stick them in an overhead storage locker after they'd been hacked off either, because there aren't any. A further blast from the past comes when the stewardess handing out the soor plooms and barley sugars pauses to wish each and every one of the twenty people crammed into our Ikea flat-pack wardrobe plane (some assembly may be required) a 'lucky trip'. Eh? Somehow that's not very comforting at twenty past six on a Thursday morning. But then, given the landing when we finally get to Bristol, I can see why it was necessary. The woman sitting opposite me lost fillings.

Because I want to get a bit of a feel for the place (and I'm stupid) I decide not to take a taxi from the airport straight to the hotel. No, I'll take a bus into the centre of town and walk! Experience the sights and sounds of sunny Bristol. And I have to say that a lot of the buildings are spectacular, sandstone confectionary, sitting cheek and jowl with but-hole-ugly concrete and brick. So I walk, getting increasingly confused by the fact the map I downloaded for finding the hotel bears bugger all resemblance to the ones Bristol City Council have dotted about the place. Presumably to take the piss out of idiot crime writers.

It takes a while, but eventually I find the hotel. Hot and knackered (me, not the hotel) I stomp up to reception, where I am confronted by PEOPLE! Well, three of them anyway. One is Sarah Weinman who eyes me suspiciously, then lunges in for a hug and a kiss. Having got up at half four in the morning, spent a couple of hours wodged into a noisy sardine tin, then tramped the length and breadth of Bristol, the only thing I can do is mumble, blink, point to the reception desk and sneak away before she goes in for a grope. Well, you never can tell with these American types, can you?

The other two people are Al Guthrie and his lovely lady Donna -- and it's from her I get the best advice of the whole conference: the sausages at breakfast are really good. A fact I confirm fifteen minutes later, having rushed up to my room to unpack, stared blearily at my reflection in the bathroom mirror -- wondering when I became such a fat bastard -- and headed down to the dining room for a HUGE fry up.

There follows some protracted hanging about in the bar, talking rubbish to anyone daft enough to listen, lunch with Diminutive Rude-Monkey Rickards and a random nutter (who wants John to understand that the wage bill was huge, but he wasn't supposed to know about it, but everyone would get paid, before lurching off to find someone else to harass). John tells me that he's a freak magnet. And looking at him I can believe it.

Apparently someone left a message for him at reception -- an unmarked note with his name on the front and 'YOU SMELL OF WHELKS' on the inside. He tries to pin the blame on me, but I deny everything. Though I have to admit the note-writer has a point: there is a faint mollusciness about him.

Afterwards it's time for my first panel: 'Cops and Cons'. It's up against 'Plotting Away From Home' which suffers from the aforementioned freak magnet and his odour de whelks. So if you felt the unconscious desire to go see stinky Rickards instead of lovely me, you may want to book an appointment with your therapist now.

The panel goes OK, but little sleep and other such excuses prevent much in the way of bearded sparkle. Though I do make several 'red leather thong' references, and ask H.R.F Keating if he's ever posed as a nude centrefold. Surprisingly enough, he doesn't take me up on it.

Thence to the bar for beer and nonsense with the usual bunch. Plus Mr Guthrie, who goes into this deep and philosophical discussion about anal stopwatches, necropiscefilia*, being t-total and eating fish poo. I don't know about you, but if ever have to eat fish poo there better be a hooring amount of alcohol involved. But then, that's what happens when you come from Orkney I suppose. He's a nice guy: the sort of bloke older women want to mother and younger ones want to stop sniffing their bicycle seats. Plus he gives me some damn fine pointers on screenwriting. Bwahahahaha... one day I shall take over the world.

But after that it just degenerates as Alex Barclay goads everyone into a late-night spiral of drink and giggling. And some singing. And then slopes off to bed, leaving idiots like me to keep the barman busy till two in the morning. This is to become something of a habit.

* I made it up: I can spell it how I like.

Redeye

Oh dear God no… Tomorrow (or today if you’re viewing this in black and white) I’ll be clambering on board the 06:45 flight from Aberdeen to Bristol. Unnnnng. If I’m lucky this will involve a scantily-clad air hostess baring all and lovely bloody Marys. But knowing my luck it’ll be some bloke called ‘Steve’ with athlete’s foot and a bad case of last night’s curry.

Regardless: I’ll be Bristol bound before the dawn chorus has got its slack-arsed act together. Thence follows four days of debauchery and napkins. And maybe some making fun of certain forgetful short-arsed crime writers.

Actually, there’s no ‘maybe’ about it. If God didn’t want us to make fun of them, he/she’d have made them taller.

Damn straight!

All aboard the bearded ego bus

Well, it turns out that Duncan the travelling Aberdonian wasn’t playing with my affections after all – so feast your eyes on the bounteous beauty that is having your name splattered on the side of a double-decker London omnibus. Well, technically it’s my name, but you know: use your imaginations.

Bloody weird, isn’t it?

And we have a winner…

Yes, it's dragged on for far too long -- so the Win Skeleton Bob Stuff competition is now officially ended. Really I should have closed the doors ages ago, but people kept teasing me with their promise of photographs. People like Duncan (the travelling Aberdonian) who showed a bit of skin, then flounced off without gettin' down and dirty. And my sister-in-law's sisters pulled a similar stunt. Damn this unrequited ego-driven advertising lust of mine…

But all that is behind us now. We can move on. Hold a book over our inappropriately-aroused loins, and make like nothing ever happened.

So the winner is That Girl! That one over there, in the hat, who wins her very own Skeleton Bob original which I'll either stick in the post (if she sends me her address), or give to Russel 'Badger Boy' McLean when I see him at LCC this weekend. Maybe we'll dig up some other stuff too, who knows? It'll all depend on how drunk we all get ;}#

Beneath the Earth's surface

Yes, it's shameless pimpage time: the Stonking Huge Sci-Fi Cliché issue of Subterranean Magazine, featuring 'A Finite Number Of Typewriters' by some beardy crime write-ist bloke and other tales by people who actually know what they're doing, is ready for your pre-ordering pleasure.

It containeth:

• "Cliché Haiku" by Scott Westerfeld
• "A Finite Number of Typewriters" by Stuart MacBride
• "Hesperia and Glory" by Ann Leckie
• "Horrible Historians" by Gillian Polack
• 
  "The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe" by Elizabeth Bear
• "It Came From the Slush Pile" by John Joseph Adams
• "Labyrinth's Heart" by Bruce Arthurs
• "Last" by Chris Roberson
• "The Last Science Fiction Writer" by Allen M. Steele
• "Movie Clichés and the Sci-Fi Films That Love Them" by Ron Hogan
• "The NOMAD Gambit" by Dean Cochrane
• "Refuge" by David Klecha
• "Remarks on Some Clichés I Have (by Definition) Known Too Well" by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
• "Scene From a Dystopia" by Rachel Swirsky
• "Shoah Sry" by Tobias S. Buckell and Ilsa J. Bick
• "Tees and Sympathy" by Nick Sagan
• "The Third Brain" by Charles Coleman Finlay and James Allison
• "What a Piece of Work" by Jo Walton

There's two versions going out -- a $6 US normal edition and an $80 hardback version. Yes, I know, I know. For that you get it signed by some of the contributors and a free wee bookie with a story by John Scalzi, Sci-Fi author and guest editor.

And now, it's back to work. If the cat will let me.

Ask not for whom the nose honks, it honks for thee

Yes, it's eight days before someone goes spelunking up my nose with a big pointy knife. General anaesthetic, hack, hack, hack, machine that goes 'ping!', and all that kind of thing. I know people who've had one of the four procedures I'm going in for next Tuesday -- the one where they stick a hand blender into your sinuses -- and the thing I remember most about their account of the whole proceedings was the 'flags of all nations' magic trick the surgeon performs the day after the op. This is where they remove all the padding gauze they've stuffed up your hooter to stop you bleeding out and getting the hospital bed all dirty. Apparently it feels like your brain is walking out through your nose.

Mmm, fun.

When I was in seeing Mr Hussain, Otolaryngologist to the stars, he gave me a thing of 'Stérimar' to take away with me. This is to prepare my nasal passages for the ordeal to come. It's a 'Sea Water Nasal Spray':

"A pure sea water spray that gently mosturises and cleanses nasal passages, to help natural healthy breathing. STÉRIMAR ® can be used as often as required…"

As often as required? Eh? This may come as a surprise to most people, but I've never really felt the burning need to squoosh half a pint of seawater up each nostril. I feel dirty for saying so, but there it is. Not something that's ever crossed my mind. Hmm, nothing on the telly tonight, I think I'll try to inhale half the Atlantic Ocean.

I love the website, obviously suffering from translation-itis, which lists amongst the spray's special features, "An exclusive anatomically shaped and self-blocking nozzle." Well, that's all right then. Here was me thinking I'd have to block it myself.

And no -- you can't ask how the writing's going.

Messages...

I'm going to have to give the website a major overhaul I think. Especially the contact section. Give people the option to have 'public' and 'private' messages. You know the sort of thing, if you want to say, "See that MacBride he's shite!" you can click the 'share my message of hate with everyone' button, or you can be more intimate… wink, wink. But the idea will be that I'll post replies to questions there. Kinda like a little dialogue thing, without all the malarkey of a forum.

Speaking of which, I got this message yesterday:

ALAN WHITE posted this on Friday 10-Mar-2006
Hi Stuart , I am an Independent Bookseller in Brighton . I had some copies of Cold Granite with drawings in them , is it possible to send you a small box of Dying Light when published for signature and drawings ? I can have the books collected from your house so you are not put to too much trouble . I look forward to hearing from you . best wishes Alan

Which is nice, but of course the contact form has nowhere for Alan to stick his email address, so I've got NO IDEA how to get back in touch with him. Whereas I could just reply on the site, and tell him:

Hi Alan,

Much better to contact the HarperCollins Customer Services people -- I'll be signing stock at their warehouse and you can get it direct from them (they even take special requests) and you won't have to pay for double postage! Hurrah!

Stuart.

But I can't so I'll just have to hope he pops past here instead. But if he does, how will I know? I'm going to have to give this whole blog / website integration a good hard think.

Come on now, everybody hold hands and close their eyes… is there anybody out there?

Broken

I think I broke my head last night, because it hasn’t worked all morning. That’s the problem with suddenly leaping from writing NDC to proofing the abridgement of DYLING LIGHT. Hopping back and forth in time, trying to keep a handle on what’s going on in both places and not confuse them. Especially as NDC is proving to be tough one to write. Finishing up at stupid o'clock didn't help either.

In order to shake stuff up a bit, NDC isn’t a serial killer book*. That added to the fact I spent so long writing nothing but short stories before Christmas, is making it quite twisty and complicated. There’s a lot of layers in this one, all of which have to be juggled. Tough.

Plus I’m playing with a slightly different format. Normally what happens is that the crime starts at the beginning of the book, gets worked through, and concluded at the end. Not for NDC. Because there are multiple crimes, some start at the beginning, while others are coming to a halt at the same time, and others don’t even show their faces until halfway in. Stuff overlaps and changes all the time.

The idea is that you can usually tell when you’re being handed a red herring in a book, because if they’ve got someone in custody by page fifty, you can be pretty sure it’s going to be someone else. Not with NDC. Sometimes it’ll just be the end for that thread. But my natural tendency is to see patterns within patterns, draw things together. Which I’m fighting. I want NDC to almost be like a slice of time for the characters. Not every arc will be resolved. Because life’s not like that.

Just have to hope to hell I can pull it off. (in a non-dirty way).

*Partially to shake things up, and partly because Book 4 (if there is one) is going to be a biggie for serial. Like a warehouse full of cornflakes. That’s how serial it’s going to be.

Abridge too far...

Well, no, not really, but you know, the need for a snappy title outweighs the need for the truth. Anyway, today and yesterday I are been mostly writing during the day and proof reading the abridged audio text for DYING LIGHT at night. Yesterday it was a 01:00 stop and I’ve just finished today’s little venture into the fun and frolic-filled world of abridgement.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: cutting a 400 page book down to 205 takes some skill. That’s nearly 50% gone. WHOOOOSH! How the hell do you cut half a book away and still have it make sense? Well, in order to answer this question I’ve conned Kati Nicholl – abridger to the stars – and she’s going to do an interview thing for the website. Which will be a first for me. I’m not an old hand at the interview malarkey like Sandra. An old, wrinkly, smelling of lavender and stale wee, hand like Sandra. Old and stinky… I’ve only ever been on the interviewee side of the table. So it’s likely to be a bumpy ride.

But tonight I have finished typing up mine comments and have emailed them off to the Powers That Be. Now All I have to worry about is meeting my deadline. And the fact that my nosectomy has been dragged forwards by a week. So I’ll only be back from Left Coast Crime for a couple of days before someone tries to climb up my nose with a sharp knife.

So if you’re at LCC, just remember – I’ll need anaesthetising. And beer works much better than a blow to the back of the head.

Lair of the foetid Monkey

AKA further adventures in the Land Of Blurbs. After my triumphant blurb for Tighty Whitey’s new book SECOND HAND GOODS I’ve been swamped with requests for my high-powered big name pimpage – open brackets, ha ha, close brackets. One I’ve done, the other is sitting on my desk leering at me like only a big pile of paper can. But it’ll have to wait as I’ve just got the abridged audio script for DYING LIGHT in and I need to approve / fiddle with it before Friday. So, needs must when the devil pokes you in the hairy buttocks with a pointy stick… At least I think it was a stick.

And why am I blurbing? Good question. Not like I’m a McDermid, Billingham or that hippy Rankin. Don’t think having my name on the back of someone’s book is really going to shift any more copies, but hey ho. It’s all part of that ‘paying it forward’ thing – Val McD blurbed for me, and I’m willing to bet her’s was a name that DID make a difference to my sales. So it’s only fair I do the same for someone else, if I can.

Then there’s the fact that I actually got a blurb the other day for DYING LIGHT from someone I consider to be the world’s greatest living crime writer*:

“Another brilliant, riveting police procedural from the new kid on the block. I'm green with envy!”
R.D. Wingfiled: Creator of A Touch Of Frost

And before you ask, no, he's not the one I was having the colly-wobbles about asking for a blurb. And yes, we do share Agent Phil (he gets him Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and always brings him back sticky), but I've never met Mr Wingfield, nor am I likely to as he's something of a recluse. However, I was so emboldened by Lynn’s generous post (and the blushingly flattering stuff people left in the comments), that I went cap in hand to Agent Phil and asked him if he would, you know… ask Mr W if he wanted to be my friend.

What amazes me is that he’s not more well known than he is. I was asked when I was up in Elgin what kind of writers I admired, so I says, “R.D. Wingfield,” blank looks. “Anyone seen Touch Of Frost on the telly?” and suddenly everyone knew what I was talking about. Shame. The books are very, very good. Much better than the TV series, which started off well… then they started making up their own storylines and it all went downhill from there. But the books, ah, the books.

I bought FROST AT CHRISTMAS in a lunch hour, went back to the office, ate me sarnie and read for fifteen minutes. Then went straight back to the bookshop and bought the rest of the series. Frost is a great character: he’s funny, touching, sad, rumpled and incredibly rude. Seriously: this is crime writing at its very, very best.

Mind you, I probably shouldn’t be pointing people at them, as they’re a damn sight better than my ones ;}#

Speaking of which: time to get back to the grindstone. My nose needs sharpened.

* And no, I’m not taking the piss. If you’ve never tried his books, you should. Now. Go out and buy the lot.

Just goes to show how much I know

For I’m not on one panel at Left Coast Crime after all. I’m on two. Yup, I’ll be taking my beard to the cliché panel on the Friday too, where it will growl at anyone making sudden movement, and if enraged, leap into the audience and maul anyone wearing orange.

We were asked about clichés at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, and I quoted Ian Rankin: ‘alcoholic loner detectives’ which I think was from Bouchercon last year. Or something like that. Some people thought I was having a go at him ;}# Silly sods. Maybe that’s why the RRFFF* hate me so much? Hmm…

Anyone got any clichés they’d like to see made fun of?

Anyway, so now I’m…

Thursday, 16 March - Merchant 5
17:00 - 18:00
COPS & ROBBERS

• Maureen Carter
• Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
• Russell James
• Stuart MacBride - (me)
  

Moderator: Michael Z Lewin

Friday, 17 March - Merchant 5
10.30 - 11.30
HAD I BUT KNOWN - CLICHÉS IN CRIME FICTION

• Donna Andrews
• Steve Brewer
• Kate Ellis
• Stuart MacBride - (eh?)
  

Moderator: Jan Burke

Incidentally, how come I'm always last on the list? And don't give me any of that 'alphabetical' nonsense. It's a conspiracy I tells ya, a conspiracy!

* Rabid Rankin Fan Fundamentalist Front – not affiliated with the great man in any way. Well, maybe in the same way that Phil Collins fans have a jihad against Buster Billingham. And YET AGAIN, for the record – I like Mr Rankin, he’s a nice chap and writes good books, even if he does need a bloody good haircut. Hippy.

Hearts of Darkness

Yes, the day of doom has arrived: I've bought a mobile phone. Never thought I'd see the day when I compromised my technophobia and bowed to the powers of the Evil Telecommunication Companies. Now people can phone me wherever I am. Out for a walk, in the supermarket, on the toilet. Can't a man have some privacy?

Well, no they can't because it's switched off. Hahahaahaha! Yes, I can go to the loo in peace. Plus I'm not giving anyone the number. Bwahahahahaha… And yes, I know that kind of defeats the purpose of having one, but tough.

I really only got it so that I could use it at Left Coast Crime to speak to She Who Must Be Spoken To When Husband Is Away To Make Sure She's Behaving Herself And Hasn't Blown Up The Kitchen By Leaving The Gas On Like Last Time. Well, that and so we'd have something to call for help with, should we get stuck in the 90 foot snowdrifts that blanket the world up here.

The only trouble, other than the fact that Tesco (where we bought the thing) have decided that I should be their marketing department's bitch (but if I sent them three million bits of information and a photocopy of my left testicle they'll take me off the list in 40 days), is that She Who Must has now decided that she wants one of her own.

We've gone for nearly 12 years without one, and now we've got to have two. Sigh, dear Stuart, sigh and roll your eyes in a theatrical manner. Apparently we can't share a phone because they're 'personal' things. Like a hairbrush.

"But," I said, in my best reasonable voice, "we do share a hairbrush."

"Oh… Do we?"

"Yes. You're thinking of 'toothbrush'."

She Who Must NEVER BE WATCHED Brushing Her Teeth shudders. "I still want my own phone."

And you can't argue with logic like that.

In other news I have a crick in my neck and we've got no eggs. So I had French Onion Soup for breakfast. And very nice it was too (the soup, not the crick, which is literally a pain in the neck).

Not dead

Yes, I have returned from the not-so-snowy hinterland. The police weren't kidding when they said conditions were 'unsuitable for driving', it was bloody horrible. For miles around our house the world had been rendered featureless, just a swollen blanket of white.

But in addition to being slippery as hell the roads were pretty quiet. Everyone else being brighter than me and following the official advice to sit at home on their bums, drinking coco and eating pickled onions. But it still took two and a half hours of hunched in the seat, peering through snow and dirty road-spray, windscreen wipers going twenty to the dozen, heater turned up to maximum, driving. Didn't help that I got stuck behind a sodding huge truck all the way.

And I was only five minutes late! Even managed to find the school, which was a miracle in itself. But I got a cup of tea in the staff room -- first time ever for me. I'd always imagined that teachers' lounges were pretty dingy places full of depressed adults, wondering what the hell they'd done in a former life to deserve this. But it wasn't. Or they'd hidden the Prozac cases in the stationary cupboard for my visit. Who can tell?

I was doing two assemblies, 13 and 14 year olds, twenty minute slots, half an hour apart. Bit rowdy to start with, settled down, listened to me rambling on about how I hated going to assemblies when I were a lad (and we rode dinosaurs to work and they hadn't invented electricity or boy bands) and how people who tear stories apart into simile and metaphor should have rabid weasels forced up their rectum without the benefit of lubricant. Except maybe Ralgex. Then the reading.

Now, there's a popular saying for public speaking which goes, "picture your audience naked". Let me be the first to say you shouldn't do this in schools, or you're going to end up in a Vietnamese prison with no hair and a startled expression.

The readings seemed to go quite well, or at least everyone went quiet. And only a few of them were actually asleep. I'd decided in advance that I wasn't going to fiddle with the text to tone it down too much -- after all, they're thirteen and fourteen, not six, so everything went in as it appears in the book. Except for the two 'fucks'. I edited them out. And the line, "Come back here you hairy wee SHITE!" got a good laugh too. Which was nice.

Then it was Q&A time. Tumbleweed. Then Jeff Dugdale -- my minder for the visit -- says, "Well, if you don't have any questions, you'll have to go back to class…" WHOOOOSH! A forest of hands go up. My favourite question being, "Have you ever thought about doing a story about zombies?"

In between the assemblies, I got another cup of tea in the library, chatting with Martha Bertrand who's here to talk to the kids about her book, 'Little Angels Don't Cry'. It's an autobiographical account of her time in an orphanage in Northern France, after she was rescued from the Vietnam War. Not the 'First World War', which was how she was introduced to me. Followed by an embarrassed pause, then, "Oh, sorry, no. The Second World War…" That went down well.

Afterwards it was into the school's radio studio thing. Which is incredibly cool -- BBC Radio Scotland have put in a little recording studio / remote station that connects to the main BBCRS. They did Fred MacAulay's morning show from there a couple of weeks ago, and they frequently do interviews with people visiting the school out on the air. I'd have loved that when I was at school. The most we could manage was a bit of string. No tin cans, we'd just sit about and look at the string until it was time to go home. Heady days.

Only trouble was that desk wasn't working properly, so Calum -- the poor sod on technical duties -- was left poking buttons and trying to get everything working again. With remarkably little swearing. And he managed too! Hurrah. So I didn't have to spent too much time attacking Melissa -- interviewer for the day, wants to be a drama teacher -- for her rabid toastaphobia, waiting for the kick-off. Question, chat, chat, chat, then another reading. Same bit as before, so at least I'd had some practise by then.

Drive home: not as crappy as drive up, but still pretty damn horrible. And about fifteen minutes after I got back I was asleep. Totally shattered. Didn't move again till tea time. So no writing got done. Not even a single word. Nothing.

Don't tell HarperCollins, for God's sake, OK? They still think everything's going great. This is just between you and me.

I may be some time...

Well, today is the day of the big trip to Elgin High School, and I’ve just phoned to check that the school’s actually open. 200 of them shut in the North East today, but not Elgin. Which is good. But there’s a severe weather warning around where I live and a number of roads closed by the snow. Which is not so good. But I have a Daihatsu 4Trak 4X4* thing. Which is good again. Sort of...

So I’m going.

And I’ve decided to give the kiddywinks (ha, 13 and 14 year olds would love that, wouldn’t they? Rampant hormones, RAMPANT!!!) the ‘fog and forest’ scene from DYING LIGHT. Have to watch as I read it though: it contains naughty words. I was going to give them the 05: Gold Rings shortie from the 12 days of Christmas collection… it’s the right length for this kind of thing, but it’s basically just a normal day in a funeral parlour. The twisty bit doesn’t come until the very end and I get the feeling attentions would start to wane.

Right, time to make a thermos of tea and dig out that tartan blanket I snatched from the cold dead hands of a frozen motorist last winter.

If you don’t here from me by teatime, send out the huskies. And dancing girls if you’ve got any**.

* Which is 16 – see, educational me.
** But make sure they wrap up warm, we don't want them catching their deaths now, do we?

Stuff what I get emailed about

Every now and then I get a tap on the shoulder from She Who Must to say I’ve got a new message from the website. This one got me thinking…

Paul posted this on Monday 27-Feb-2006
Can I be signed up to your newsletter?

No.

Nothing personal Paul, it’s just that I don’t have one. I know other people do - Val McD has one that Sandra speaks very highly of – but I’ve never really thought of putting one out. I’ve never signed up for anyone else’s newsletter, so I’m kinda at a disadvantage as to the whys and wherefores. What would go in it? Everything of note (and a lot that isn’t*) gets posted here anyway. What else would people want to know? And that’s not a rhetorical question, I’m really interested.

And in addition to this here websitey blog thingie, there’s also the HarperCollins Author Tracker. Which sounds slightly sinister. When HC did their website review of Casa MacBride, I got a small scolding for not pointing people in that direction. So I went there and signed up today. Thought it would be nice to see what I’m doing. And just to be on the safe side, I’m keeping an eye on Alex Barclay and Michael Marshall Smith’s movements as well. If I can figure out when they’re not in, I’m nipping round to steal their washing.

* Come on, let’s be honest here, most of it is complete and utter bollocks.