Facial Hair Wars!

Which is like Star Wars, only without the heavy reliance on special effects, and the dialogue is slightly less crap. Yes, this Wednesday coming (the 3rd) I'll be down in Greenwich, doing battle with Mark 'Buster' Billingham -- two men, two beards (well, one and a half beards, I mean his doesn't even have any sidey bits, does it? Look at it! What kind of a beard is that?) and a room full of wine and canapés.

Actually I have no idea if there'll be canapés this time, or wine, but I hope if I say it often enough it'll come true. I think it works much in the same way as 'clap your hands if you believe in fairies: or Tinkerbell will die!' Only without all the drugged out weirdness that usually comes before that bit. So: canapés, canapés, canapés, canapés, canapés, wine, wine, wine, wine, wine... That should do it.

Right, so get thee hence to Ottakars, 51 Greenwich Church Street, Greenwich, London, SE10 9BL at 19:00! And remember to wear your DIY beard kits, just in case things get violent. I want to know who's on my side. We will fight them in the cookery section, we will fight them in the coffee shop, we will fight them in that wee corner where they put all the dirty books and people pretend not to look at as they wander past for the fourth time, and we shall never surrender!

Unless there are more of them, and they're bigger than us. Then we run away and claim the moral high ground.

And the winner is...

No, not me silly -- the only chance I have of winning anything is to knobble the judges. Then kill them before they can be unknobbled and reknobbled again by some other unethical bastard. I'm not daft. No, this time it was the Watermill bookshop in Aberfeldy -- winners of the Scottish regional independent bookseller of the year and shortlisted for the UK title. There's another five shops in the running for the final, but obviously the Watermill is the only Scottish one, so it should win. Who are we to question God's law?

The only question is why the blue sizzling Hell they decided to ask me down to present the award. My guess is that all the good authors were busy so they had to settle for a beardy half-wit instead. Which meant a trip down on the train to the bustling metropolis of Perth (when you live in the arse-end of nowhere everywhere else is a bustling metropolis -- put a shed in your garden and you've got more buildings than we have round our house). And in true award ceremony fashion I'd just like to thank my Agent; my personal trainer; Mr Halitosis the business man who sat opposite me, talking into his bloody mobile phone all the way down from Aberdeen; and the woman with the two screaming children who demonstrated exactly why contraception is such a good idea.

The taxi ride from Perth to Aberfeldy was spectacular -- beautiful scenery and beautiful weather -- all seen from the passenger seat of Aberfeldy's only taxi. Yup, they only have the one and it comes complete with a sign that says 'Fine for soiling this cab: £30.00', so it's a damn good job I visited the toilet before leaving the station. I would have gone on the train, but Mr Halitosis looked like a sketchy bastard and liable to make off with my laptop if left alone with it for more than thirty seconds. That or he'd breathe on it and melt all the plastic parts.

Aberfeldy looks like one of those places that's forgotten to turn the clocks forward -- it's still 1960 there: a nice, quiet Scottish town with a backdrop of scenic hills. Yes, it gets a bit 'caravany' in the summer, but it's still beautiful. Which is probably why the richest woman in the country lives there. Well, has a holiday home there, anyway. And the Watermill is a lovely bookshop too -- they converted it about eleven months ago, and it's already made the grade as Scotland's best independent bookshop. Not bad for being in business for less than a year. Not bad at all.

So: in, tour of bookshop, art gallery, music shop, then down to the food bit for unusual tea and nice soup. Then the main business of the day -- presenting the award. We got a crowd of about six, including the press, but they didn't boo, or throw anything, even if my 'here's an award thingie' speech was a bit crap. Keith (who runs the place along with two other bookshops south of the border) did much better, then we shook hands in a variety of strange poses, and I signed all the stock in the shop. Well, all the stock of my books anyway, and by the end of the event we'd sold 40% of all their DYING LIGHTs, which is nice.

Then it was back in a different taxi -- held together with bits of green electrical tape and various prayers -- for a £41.00 ride back to Perth, where someone had been sick in the station toilets. Filling the sink with red, bitter-smelling chunks, a copy of the Sun and a tin of Strongbow Cider. Good job there wasn't a £30.00 fine in operation.

The train back was enlivened by Madame Flatulence, who sat behind me the whole way, making various farmyard smells all the way back. Lovely. Just the sort of thing to put you in the mood for writing. There is now no bloody chance in hell that I'm going to get anywhere near my deadline. Vwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwosh! That'll be the sound of my deadline going past so fast it'll blister your eyebrows.

Total time spent getting from Casa MacBride to bookshop: eight hours. Total time spent handing over prize: about twenty minutes. But time well spent I think. It's always nice to see an independent bookshop do well. Let's face it: it's nice to see any bookshop doing well, especially a Scottish one. Fingers crossed they get someone a bit more famous to hand over the 'nibby' (sounds dirty, but it isn't) for being the UK's best Independent Bookshop Of The Year when the thing gets decided on the 9th of May.

Vote Scottish -- you know it makes sense!

Houston we have lift off

Yes, I am now launched once more upon an unsuspecting public. The event itself was bloody surreal, I was expecting it to be in some sort of big room at Kings College, but it turned out to be a United Nations-style lecture theatre, complete with raked seating, desks and little microphones for everyone. I meandered about down in the little round bit on the lowest level, babbling inanities into a radio mike -- like a beardy Mr Smith Goes To Washington.

Remember I told you (for which read 'boasted shamelessly') that Ottakar's in Aberdeen had sold over a thousand copies of COLD GRANITE? Well, I decided to mark this staggering achievement on their part with the creation of a new award: the Golden Rowie. All hand made from a big dod of wood that used to be a part of my house, a lump of Das Pronto clay I've had for years and a wee brass plaque. That bit I didn't make myself, so naturally that bit was a complete screw-up. I went to one of those little key cutting places in an Aberdeen shopping centre that also does house nameplates -- you know, the sort of place where they've borrowed their customer service manual from the Gestapo and crossed out all the bits that seem too friendly -- and asked them to engrave three lines of text. And it came back reading:

Golden Rowie
Ottakar's Aberdeen
Granite Cold

At the time I was all for taking the thing and ramming it up the moustachioed half-wit's fundament, before realising it was actually a lot more funny that way round. A perfect example of what happens when you trust someone with more hair on their top lip than the top of their head. And yes, that's a sweeping generalisation, but if you can see your own face reflected above their slack-jawed features, you know they spend more time polishing their head than using it.

Anyway, after about forty five minutes of mindless ramblings from beardy boy here, I whipped the crowd into a tumultuous, tumescent rendition of 'Happy Birthday To You' for Doreen, who made the mistake of telling me it was her birthday out in the hallway before we started, and then there was nothing left to do but drink wine and mingle! Well, for everyone other than me -- who spent the rest of the evening at the signing table, barely able to get down a lonely glass of wine for all the nice people wanting things signed. Including Janet from INoGITCH, who'd brought along a copy of the unabridged audio version of COLD GRANITE for me to scrawl on. I'd never even seen one of those before, so that was quite surreal. I'll have to go get Agent Phil to rattle some cages and get us a couple of copies. Provided he can see through his blanket of 1970's style hair.

Quarter past ten and it was a mad dash off to Pizza Express with Editor Sarah, Publicist Fiona, She Who Must Be Given Something To Eat Or People's Limbs Will Start To Go Missing, Mr James and Barbara. The latter two having come all the way up from Welsh Wales for the launch. Silly sods.

All in all a nice evening, even though we were too late at the restaurant to have more than one choice of wine, and no dessert. So there was no repeat of Agent Phil's cranachan wearing trick. In fact everyone was disturbingly well behaved -- clearly it's Agent Phil who leads us all astray, so fingers crossed he'll be able to make the next one!

I'll post some picks later, if I can get hold of any. Googling Brother had his camera with him...

Like Helen of Troy, only with a beard... and no boobs

Yes, today I are mostly being launching things. This morning it was Adult Learners' Week which was pretty cool. They had it in the Toll Booth -- the old jail for Aberdeen dating back to the Seventeenth Century -- and when all the photos were done we got a private tour by Chris the curator. Bwahahahahaaaaa! The perks of being a local 'celebrity' open brackets, "ha, ha", close brackets. But it was very interesting and I'm really going to have to use the place in a book. Far too good a location to miss.

The second ship on my slipway (see -- making that metaphor work for its money) is the launch of DYING LIGHT tonight. Which is a bit ironic, given that it's already for sale in Waterstones, Ottakar's and Costco, etc. But hopefully we'll do a brisk trade at the event, or I may never get another one ;}# Ah yes, I am that shallow.

That has to be something of a record

Yup, DYING LIGHT's not being launched until tomorrow and it's not officially published till the week after, but already someone's emailed me pointing out something I've got wrong. How freaky is that? A week before publication... Yes, so he also says: "...up to and including page 121, it's pretty damn good." and there are other nice things in his message, but that doesn't disguise the fact that I've screwed up.

To be honest I don't think it's a huge screw-up. Not on the scale I usually have to measure my screw-ups by, anyway, but it's still a screw-up. Who knew CS gas doesn't work on animals? Come on: show of hands... Anyone?

Yeah: now that I've said it you've all got your hands up pretending to know better than the daft beardy writer boy, but I know you're telling fibs.

I'm guessing the reason Lloyd (my correspondent and an officer with Grampian police) knows about the efficacy of CS gas on the fauna of these sceptred isles is that he's probably tried it out. Much better than getting your throat ripped out by some enraged Doberman. If it was me I'd be trying it out on any rabbit that even looked at me funny. Take that, Mr. Bunny! That'll teach you for being a leery, staring bastard! Ha! Yeah, you're not so bloody tough now are you, with your twitchy nose and little fluffy tail!

And that's something else that freaks me out: the thought that real police people in Grampian -- who are in a position to spot a lot of my cock-ups -- are reading my books. I've got a couple of emails from police officers about the book(s) and each time I keep waiting for them to launch into a 'what the hell were you thinking?' rant. But they've always been very nice.

Like I said: weird.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a launch to get ready for. I need to primp my beard and look out my lucky pants* for tomorrow. Then do that thing with the tea bags on the eyes you always see on the telly, only they never have cold tea dripping into their lugholes, do they? Cheating bastards.

* They're red, if you're interested. I have no idea why these are supposed to be 'lucky pants' but She Who Must Be Humored In Case She Has A Knife, decided a while back that red pants should be worn to interviews and events in order to ward off evil spirits. She's from Fife and it's easier not to argue with her. Safer too.

Seven days

Yup, it's now officially one week till my deadline for handing in NDC, and the forecast is: 'Not A Bloody Chance!' Which is a shame, but short of pulling several all night writing stints there's no way I'll make 150,000 words. And even if I did try to stay awake that long, it's likely I'll just wake up at four in the morning to find most of the new words have been made by my forehead impacting on the keyboard. And it's hellishly hard to clean drool out from round the spacebar.

Plus it's getting a bit hard to concentrate: since the surgery I've had the same bloody headache, all day, every day. With that and feeling sick, it's a bit like having a permanent hangover, only without the nice bit of getting drunk first. So the words are coming slower, and slower, and s l o w e r . . . I'm going to get such a spanking when I go down to sign the contract for books 4, 5 and 6. And not the fun slap and tickle kind either. *sigh*

Yesterday didn't help either: morning spent picking a huge chunk of metal up from the vets, then a couple of hours in town getting She Who Must Look Less Scruffy At Work a new black suit, and then back to Chez MacBride to play host to Googling Brother and his family. He'd brought three quarters of the EC Pizza Mountain with him, which we all managed to eat while watching a DVD of the new King Kong. Which was... Well, lets just say it needs a bloody good edit in the same way that Peter Jackson needs a bloody good slap. SIL Kim's one word review: 'Pants'. I didn't think it was quite that bad, but it was bloody ridiculous.

Still, a fun enough way to spend an afternoon. The only thing missing was a whole pile of beer, but then booze and I aren't seeing eye-to-eye at the moment. Possibly because of the permanent hangover thing. Mind you, I can just bend down and stand up quickly: that's a bit like being very, very drunk.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pretend to do some work.

Have blood, will dribble - listen, you can hear it drip...

Yup, it's 'listen again' time on the BBC Radio Scotland website. Right now you can point your naughty mice in this direction and hear the Cover Stories episode from Turriff Library*. The one where I was between surgeries and doing a fair impersonation of an abattoir in full swing. James has had a listen and he says:

"...there are a few spoilers in there, and you certainly sounded like someone who's bleeding profusely from both nostrils..."

Not the best of reviews, but don't say you've not been warned, OK? I've not heard it myself -- Real Player is refusing to download for some reason, possibly to do with sunspots, badger-oriented civil unrest, unhappy haddock, or some new variety of yogurt -- but that's probably a good thing. I always cringe when I hear myself doing pretty much anything.

I was the same when I was flirting with a career treading the boards. Some people would clap their little hands with glee when the video of whatever production was being passed round, but I dreaded it. In the end I gave up the acting lark because a friend forced me to watch myself and I just couldn't believe how fucking awful I was. Everyone else said differently, but we all know they're demented anyway. So I did hang up my thespianistical things and put away the greasepaint.

Which makes me wonder -- when I'm doing panels and talks and things, am I completely crap? Or is it one of those quantum things where the crapness is undetermined until I've witnessed it on tape? Up until then it could have been garbage or not so bad. Observing it changes the result and suddenly everyone else wakes up thinking, 'Actually, that was quite pish...'

Hmm, possibly not the best of topics to be ruminating on when I've got a launch thing coming up on Tuesday and a room of about 400 people to bore the pants off.

In unrelated news, it's now eight days till deadline. And if you'll excuse me I have to go hide in a darkened room.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArhg!

* It's only going to be up for a week, so if you're reading this after Thursday the 28th of April, you've had a lucky escape.

No canned apes for Mr P

Yes, Agent Phil fans will be disappointed to hear that the hairy wonder will not be joining us to launch book two on an unsuspecting public next week. Which means a lot more wine for everyone else. Unfortunately he's been conned into a whole stack of meetings the day after and there's no way in hell he'll be able to get from Aberdeen down to London in time for the first one. Not to mention the inevitable hangover he'd have to deal with.

So that means the naughtiness quotient of the event has just been reduced by a factor of twelve. Now who will we get to wear dessert in their hair? Who will tell tales of Mamarologists and dinosaur sex? Sarah (one of my lovely editors at HC -- it's complicated, so don't ask) is far too refined and Fiona (publicist to the stars and bearded halfwits alike) gets all defensive when her sanity is questioned... So Agent Phil's diminutive shoes are going to be hard to fill. I wouldn't want to try, not unless they'd been decontaminated beforehand anyway. Ah yes, he has the hair of a 1970's rock star, but the foot of an athlete.

In other news, I've decided Neil Diamond is a freak. They were playing 'Beautiful Noise' on the alarm clock radio thing this morning, and the lyrics point to a seriously unhinged mind:

It's a beautiful noise
And it's a sound that I love
And it makes me feel good
Like a hand in a glove
Yes it does, yes it does...

Sorry? Putting your hand in a glove makes you feel good? What are you -- some sort of pervert you have to get your jollies putting gloves on? Groaning away in departments stores, going, "Oh God, mittens... with the string for your sleeves... ooh!" Can you imagine a fun night in at the Diamond house? All his ancient rock star friends are sitting round the grand piano doing lines of coke off naked strippers, while he sits there playing with a pair of Marigolds.

There's something very unwholesome about that.

I been Glasgowing

The interview with Murray from The Australian went well... I think. It's always difficult to tell till you see the finished article. Oh, yes, he seemed nice enough, and asked good questions, and didn't probe too deeply into that whole 'cross-dressing as a lama' thing, but Australians might still be waking up to the headline, 'Beardy Writing Boy's A Poncy Bastard!' Who knows?

After that it was the train to Glasgow for me, where I managed to get a whole 1,500 words done and only one episode where I nearly vomited all over the carriage. Hurrah! Less 'hurrah' was the taxi ride from the station to my hotel -- we were going down Wellington Street and was telling the driver that my granddad was the live-in caretaker at the Baltic Chambers. It's a big red, sandstone building, and doesn't seem to have changed much since I visited there as a wee toot 'embarrassed coughing noises' ago. Well, except that the buildings surrounding it have shed their skins to become vast glass and steel things that tower over the place my granny and grandpa used to live. And then the taxi driver tells me this is the red light district now. Crack hos and junkies. Which kinda spoils my warm fuzzy nostalgia moment.

Check into the hotel and up to the room where I managed ANOTHER 1,500+ words. WooHoo! That's me done two days' worth of writing in one. So if HC want to send me off to a swanky hotel to make sure I hit my deadline, I'm all for it. But next time I'm raiding the minibar.

I never, ever touch the minibar. Well, that's not strictly true: last year, after the BA awards dinner, I helped myself to a bottle of mineral water, because what came out of the tap in the hotel looked more like yogurt than H2O, but other than that my conscience is clear. I am a minibar-free zone. I also picked the least expensive dinner option (eating in the hotel so I could get back to writing afterwards) because I knew HC were picking up the tab. I'm SO high-maintenance!

Next morning I nearly blew chunks all over the selection of cold meats while waiting for my poached egg: the antibiotics still screwing with my system even though I'd been off them for a whole nineteen hours. Bloody things. And the hotel didn't have any of those nasty wee bio-active drinky things either. So I went for the fry-up, figuring it would be much the same thing. And I actually spotted someone from INoGITCH at breakfast: one of the big bosses from Aberdeen. He didn't see me though, and I thought it would be a bit stalker-ish to go hunting for him in the little breakfast nooks and crannies.

Then it was off to the HarperCollins warehouse for a morning signing books, talking rubbish, laughing at a variety of outrageous anecdotes from Marie and Janis, eating chips and sandwiches, then signing more books. Last time I was down, Janis was joking about how she'd like to be a DI in a crime novel. Bwahahahahaha! I have an opening in book 4 for a Glaswegian, red head who can have been an old love interest for one of the main characters 20 years ago. She was delighted -- and according to Bob she's going to be impossible to work with when it actually comes out -- but she has no idea what I'm going to do to her! Once more: Bwahahahahahaha!

Gordon, who does a lot of driving proper authors about, as well as bearded gits like me, then whisked me off to Radio Clyde for my annual chat with Alex Dickson. He's been with the station for 30 years and used to run the place before retiring, only to be dragged back to keep on doing the book program on Monday nights (and other things). I've got no idea when our chat's going to go out –nothing like a normal interview, just him and me talking about stuff for half an hour which makes it fun to do -- but I think I made slightly less of a hash of it than I did last year. Well, hope springs eternal and all that.

The train home wasn't quite so productive as the train down, but then I think that had a lot to do with the impending feeling of nausea.

And today I feel like squeezed poop, but the local shop's all out, so I have to settle for dreadful instead. But time, tide and deadlines wait for no man. Especially not beardy write-ists.

To the grindstone!

Alanis Morissette can bugger right off

Ah yes, 'irony'. I've been told in the past that there's a film where people have to provide a definition of irony to get a job, or win a ferret or something, and apparently it's rather good, but I've never seen it. According to my Collins English Dictionary irony is a noun and in this context means: 'incongruity between what is expected to be and what actually is, or a situation or result showing such incongruity.'

My definition is a little less verbose and doesn't use the word 'incongruity' twice: 'Irony is God's way of telling us she's bored.'

Well, looks like she's bored again. I've been on antibiotics for weeks now. Double doses too, none of your girly single pills for me! And today is my very last day on the damn things. Sound bells and trumpets! Things might actually start tasting the way they should again. A glass of wine will no longer be verboten. No more feeling dizzy and nauseas. The idea is that all these nasty pills have been preventing my surgically attacked nose from developing some sort of horrendous infection and having to be amputated. Leaving me with some sort of bionic nose, with a flashlight in it, and a secret radio, and maybe every time you sneeze poison darts shoot out and kill people. Which sounds cool, till you take hayfever into account. The death toll would be horrendous.

Anyway, so no more antibiotics after lunchtime today. Double hurrah, because I have an appointment: HarperCollins Down Under have flown Murray Waldren (he writes for the Australian and is something of a literary bigwig) over to meet with some of their authors, and today he's been conned into visiting Aberdeen and me. Poor sod...

Actually Aberdeen looks like it's on its best behaviour at the moment (thought that could change very quickly) -- blue skies, sunshine, and a wind just this side of stripping the nipples off a polar bear.

Ah yes -- the irony bit. Here's me got an interview with Mr Waldren today, and another with Radio Clyde tomorrow, just coming off a month's worth of antibiotics, and it feels like someone's running up and down the back of my throat wearing crampons. OK, so it's probably just a virus and antibiotics don't do viruses, but still: give me a break! I need to make a good impression with the Antipodean press so I can con HC into sending me over there for some sort of tour / festival. Then I can eat all the prawns and Morton Bay Bugs in the place and drink all their wine! Bwahahahahahaha!

Right, I'm off to dose up on Strepsils and Lemsip. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just pretend I’m Simon Kernick, he sounds like he’s gargling with gravel at the best of times. No one will be able to tell the difference ;}#

Till something better comes along

I remembering hearing some author bloke on the radio (don't ask who, I haven't got a clue) and they were asked, "Of all the books you've written, which is your favourite?" There's a small pause and then the bloke replies, "The one I've just finished is always the one I love the best. Every time I finish a book it's always the same -- that one's my favourite."

I am not like this. The book I hate the most is the one I'm currently writing -- whichever one it is -- the book I think I'll never live up to is the last one, and the one I like the most is the one I'm going to write next.

Even if I wasn't keeping an maniacally obsessive eye on the word count of NDC I'd know it was getting close to the end (deadline is fifteen days away -- AAAAAAAAArgh!) because I've started having happy little thoughts about Logan's fourth outing. Scribbling down little snippets of dialogue like, "What's wrong with your inspector?"

"He's a grumpy fat bastard, and he hates you: that's what's wrong with him."

And having happy daydreams of eviscerated bodies and political infighting. According to my delusional subconscious, the next book is going to be great.

I thought the same thing when I was about to start DYING LIGHT, and NDC too. And no doubt by the time I'm halfway through Book 4 I'll loathe the thing, but as soon as I get near the end I'll start thinking Book 5 is the greatest thing since God invented boobies.

Is it just me, or does that seem unhealthy to anyone?

And what about you: do you love your current project, or are you twisted too?

Self-indulgent ramblings

Yea, I know, not much of a change there, but tough. Last year at about this time I got a huge wodge of tickets from the nice people at Ottakar's for my first ever book launch, and I looked at this pile of tickets and thought: "What the living hell am I going to do with all these? I don't know this many people! Even the people I know probably don't know enough people..." But we made a valiant effort and lots of lovely people turned up to the event and forced me to sign heaps of books while a couple of good friends kept me lubricated with glasses of purloined red wine.

This year it's been slightly different. This year tickets are like hens' teeth for some reason. Ottakar's printed off a heap more than last time and they've been evaporating. They've had posters up in the shop window and WHOOOOOOSH! the tickets have vanished. And the ones I've got have been doing the same. I've got 18 tickets left and about 43 people want them. Which is gratifying in an ego-massaging sense, but a bit worrying at the same time. Not wanting to disappoint people who're daft enough to want to come to the launch.

Of course, maybe they're just after some free wine and canapés? Maybe this year we won't sell eighty books. Maybe we'll sell three and the rest of the time will be spent with the crowd getting so plastered they run round the university in their pants (UK pants -- not American trousers) singing rude songs?

AND, just because the tickets have been in demand, doesn't mean people are actually going to turn up. It could still be me and She Who Must, standing in a big empty hall on our own, feeling self-conscious. At least until we drink enough wine to do the running around in our pants thing.

Better make sure I've got presentable underwear on, just in case.

An tiny rant

Today I are mostly be waiting in for people to deliver things. One lot of things are from ANC (not the African National Congress -- I think they're better organised than the delivery company). They tried on Monday when I was out, left a post card to say they'd been, complete with a contact number. Fair enough. So I phone up Tuesday morning and arrange for them to come past today again.

So what did I find poking through the letterbox not five minutes ago, but another bloody postcard. Even though I've been in the house, waiting for them all bloody day they'd managed to turn up, sod about, and bugger off again without actually bothering to let me know they were there. HOW? How the hell is that possible? I've been waiting for them. I've not been listening to heavy metal music at ear-melting volumes, or Mozart on a pair of headphones, I've not been operating power tools, or forcing lumps of camembert into my lugholes, I've just been sitting here, waiting for them to turn up. The loudest thing in the house are my fingers on the sodding keyboard.

So I phoned up the depot to ask what the blue sainted monkey's arse was going on. Not the best of responses from them, I have to admit. Apparently it's my fault they employ bloody mimes to deliver packages. MAKE SOME SODDING NOISE NEXT TIME! How hard can it be?

The best bit was when the guy on the other end of the phone said, "You have to admit that the driver was there..." Well, yes, I do. You got me there. He was indeed at my house. I have the postcard telling me he was there, right in my hand. It's just a shame he didn't try ooh, I don't know... knocking on the bloody door to let me know at the time?

Who knows, maybe the guy's afraid of meeting people. Perhaps he's beardaphobic?

Allegedly I'll find out tomorrow, which is when the bloke who sounded oh, so pissed-off at having to deal with customer complaints, promises me the amazing silent man will be back. Maybe I should take the laptop and go sit in the front garden, just to be sure the wee bugger doesn't get away again?

I hear voices...

Remember I was whinging on a couple of weeks ago about my trip to Turriff library to do an episode of Cover Stories? There I was, looking like a walking 'before' advert for nasal tampons, pouring blood all over the place while the production team and the Turriff Reading Group looked on with horror. Poor sods: imagine being confronted by a bleeding horrible crime writer?

Anyway, we didn't record any reading that day, mostly because everyone thought I was going drop dead from loss of blood at any moment, so yesterday I was booked into the BBC Scotland studios down at the old Beechgrove Garden in Aberdeen. Pretty straightforward stuff: in, do a bit of a reading go see the nose doctor for a check up. Easy.

But not if you are, like me, a moron. I looked out my reading copy of DYING LIGHT, placed it by the front door, where I'd have to step over it in order to get out of the house, and then somehow managed to completely forget the bloody thing. A fact I only discovered at 14:45, three quarters of an hour before I was due in the studio and a two hour round trip from my house. See what I mean? Moron.

My only excuse is that I've been feeling pretty rough in the head for about a week now. I can breathe through both nostrils now, but when I do it feels like my sinuses are going to explode, or implode, depending on whether I'm breathing in or out... Not much of an excuse, but I'm sticking to it. Luckily I'd bribed a friend with an ARC (or 'Bound Galley' as they're called over here) for helping me with some very dodgy research for book 3, and was able to break into his house while he was at work and thieve it back. Twit!

Now, Dawn, who's been looking after my sorry arse on the BBC's behalf was on the other end of an ISDN line from Edinburgh and after the usual 'hello' and 'how was your weekend' stuff we got down to the reading bit. Only instead of doing the bit that I've practiced, the bit I did for the kids at Elgin High School, the bit I know, Dawn wanted me to do other bits. Different bits... Oh God...

Bits with funny voices in them.

Reading one: Aberdonian.
Reading two: Edinburgh and Glaswegian (the 'finger' scene for anyone playing at home).
Reading three: DI Steel. I don't know why, but I've always avoided doing Steel when I pick a reading, but not this time. And it's been recorded for all posterity... Groan...

And worse yet, you can witness my moment of shame by tuning into Radio Scotland on Friday the 21st of April at 11:30. Or pick it up all the following week on their website.

I wonder if you'll be able to hear the blood dripping in the library segments?

Festering piles

No, not the kind you can treat with a discreet cream and an inflatable rubber ring, I'm taking about festering piles of poo. AKA writing and works in progress. There was a post on Casa De Goldberg the other day quoting John Connolly and what he calls 'The Wall': that point in writing a book that gives him an attack of screaming willies. Everything is crap -- plot, characters, premise, everything. Now Lee mentions that this (in his experience) seems to be a more common complaint among those writers who make stuff up as they go along, rather than plot and plan in advance. Which sort of makes sense. If you know exactly where your book's going, you should be confident in your plot and characters. Yeah?

Well, no. I plan. Believe it or not, I actually planned heaps for NDC. Mountains of plans. Like unto the EU plan mountain my study is. Only trouble being I abandoned half of it somewhere around chapter two. What looked perfectly logical and sensible in advance, didn't feel the way I wanted it to when I started writing. So two HUGE subplots got cut from the book before I'd written a word of either of them. And then I re-planned.

This is an old Project Management trick -- if your plan isn't working, you come up with a new plan. One that's realistic. What you don't do is charge ahead blindly, hoping to God everything's suddenly going to fall into place and the plan will work again. As soon as you step off that path, the plan is worthless. But the point of this rambling nonsense is that I plan. I seat of the pants and I plan. Both at the same time.

And I'm still convinced that everything I write is a huge steaming pile of festering arse (and I know the RFFF will back me up on that). I get the feeling most of us feel the same way at least once during a project, no matter how well we plan, because we're human. Unless we're complete ego-monsters with supreme confidence in our own ability, I suppose.

Maybe there are people who look out across the veldt of publishing and laugh at the writing pigmies, worrying all over the place. Making it look untidy. They are not like the pigmies, because they're feckin' rhinoceroses! Yea, rhinoceroses with Range Rovers (automatic ones because they don't have opposable thumbs and find manual gear sticks hard to use), thundering through the long grass, blaring their horns and shouting for all the world to hear: "I AM FECKIN' BRILLIANT, FOR I AM A RHINO! I NEVER GET THE FEAR!"

How cool would that be? Rhinoceroses driving Range Rovers, shadowing film crews as they graze upon the shrubs, or laze in the sun after a particularly hard edit. But they'd have to be careful: film crews can be violent if aroused and may charge the rhino's car, denting the body work and leaving long scratches in the paintwork with their cameras and sunglasses.

Yeah, so, the point is...

Nope, I've forgotten. Maybe it'll come back to me after lunch?

The fine line between fact and complete and utter bollocks

I like to be at least reasonably accurate with my research. That way when I bend the truth beyond all recognition I know I'm doing it. It's on purpose. But sometimes I just plain screw up. Take, for example, an email I got from the website over the weekend, from one of our proud ladies in blue -- yes, a genuine Grampian Police Officer. A WPC.

Or not as it turns out. Seems they dropped the 'W' part of the title ages ago, they are no longer Women Police Constables, now they're all just Police Constables. Bugger. I mean, it's all well and good in a touchy-feely, politically-correct, all mates together kind of way, but it makes my life more difficult, damnit! Now I can't get away with saying things like:

Logan grabbed his coat and a WPC, if he had to tell some eighty year old woman her only son was dead he was damned if he was doing it alone.

Now it's going to have to be all:

Logan grabbed his coat and a PC -- who also happened to be a woman, not that it was important in the scheme of things: women being every bit as good at cracking skulls and making prisoners fall down stairs as their male counterparts* -- if he had to tell some eighty year old woman her only son was dead he was damned if he was doing it alone.

Being able to lob a WPC about the place gave a bit of verisimilitude to an otherwise bland and uninspired narrative. Now I'm going to have to get all 'creative' and 'thinky'. If I want it to be a PC, who just happens to be female, then I'm going to have to find some other way of saying it. Taking off that one letter suddenly makes a whole lot of work.

Of course, I could just ignore it and pretend that it never happened. That in MY world they're still called WPCs... But then I'd feel like a fraud. Well, more like a fraud than normal anyway.

Next thing you know they'll be telling me female police officers don't wear short skirts and those jaunty little hats any more. Then where will we all go for our fantasies?

* Joke! Joke! Put down the truncheon!

In which I am reminded...

Looking out the study window this weekend I'm put in mind of my favorite crap review from Amazon.co.uk:

Warm Granite?, June 6, 2005
Reviewer: A reader from Scotland
Dear Mr MacBride,

Aberdeen was named Scotland's sunniest city in 2004.

Always makes me smile. I mean. When did you last see such an insightful review of a book? Cuts straight to the core of things. Especially as I sit here in April watching the bloody snow come down. Like big, fat flakes of wet confetti, swirling down from a sky the colour of clay. Yesterday morning She Who Must Go See The Boy Rat, As He's Off The Legs At The Moment had to scrape about a foot of snow off the car before heading off.

Aberdeen weather at its finest. Of course by about five in the afternoon there wasn't a single sign of snow -- not even rogue snowmen on their way to the north pole, just a vast expanse of wet and cold.

Of course the big shocker with the above weather-forecast review (other than the fact that whoever it was just didn't get that the book was set in the depths of winter) is that it doesn't mention Ian Rankin. Not once... Still, only three weeks to go before DYING LIGHT is out in the UK -- so I'm willing to bet the RFFF* will be out in force once more, sharpening their little pointy sticks to have another go at the upstart from Aberdeen ;}# It's quite sweet really. I think I'll be a bit disappointed if no one has a go this time...

Maybe they think I'll pee in his pint at Harrogate?

* Rankin Fanatic Freedom Front

Sex and cookies

Not both at the same time though, you just end up with crumbs in your personal niches. Which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, but I'm not. No, today I have been writing the former and eating the latter. It's easier than doing it the other way round.

I made oatmeal and raisin cookies yesterday. Don't know why, just felt like the thing to do as a bit of a break from the old writing malarkey. Very 'noir' of me, don't you think? Of course, we didn't have any raisins and the car's in getting it's wheely-thingies fixed (complicated mechanical stuff, I could explain it to you, but you wouldn't understand) after She Who Must Strike Each And Every Pothole In The Road At Very High Speed has been driving it for a couple of months. So I couldn't go get any and had to make do with leftover mixed fruit and peel stuff from Christmas and some nasty waxy American chocolate drop things my brother gave us about two years ago instead. And very nicely they came out too*.

Today I've been getting my strength back by shovelling the things down my throat like they were antibiotics. Washed on their merry way with gallon after gallon of tea. Mmm, wholesome.

I've also been writing sex. Or at least writing a prelude to sex, which has been fun, but very, very embarrassing because one character is taking it all very seriously and the other is putting on an Australian accent and taking the piss. But then again, that's sex for you.

On the non-sexual front, the book now weighs in at 112,706 words and I'm beginning to think that I'm not going to miss my deadline by as much as I'd previously thought. Yea, the operations and the bleeding have put a huge dent in my wordcount, but I seem to be getting over it. The book won't make 165,000 words as I'd hoped -- not unless I start waffling shamelessly -- but it's going to be finished. Hopefully in the next three weeks.

I'm determined not to sweat if it's a tiny bit over deadline -- especially as mine lovely editors have told me that they like the book so far. Which is always nice to hear. And it means I'm probably not going to have to completely re-do large chunks of it.

I think another 30,000 words (max) and this book will be ready to face the first draft board: Agent Phil and Mr James. Thence to HarperCollins, and hopefully a happy editorial team. And after that I'll be off the antibiotics, so it'll be champagne and otters' nipples all the way!

* Incidentally, anyone got a recipe for those nice, chewy American-style cookie things. Not the oatmealy ones, the other kind. I tried posting the question on Lynn's Friday Question Fest, but I don't think people grasped the very, very serious nature of the question. Mr Stuart needs to know!

It is decided

Books four five and six from the bearded brain and finger factory are going to be Logan ones. We've decided to follow the Billingham model, only without the embarrassing stint on Maid Marian and Her Merry Men*.

Mark was beginning to wish he'd spent more time at home, polishing his helmet...

So it'll be another three books before I break out into standalone country. Which I suppose makes it easier to go back to work part time later in the year. I've asked for a six month extension to my leave of absence from INoGITCH, so I can do the post-launch publicity stuff, go to the States for SMP, and generally act like a bearded egomaniac. It passes the time.

Plus I may have a super secret announcement this time next week about something I'm possibly going to be working on. Depends on how we all get on at a big, 'envisioning' meeting thing.

In other news, blackbirds are stupid, and my cat is scared of them. Plus she wouldn't chase a pair of fat bastard pigeons out the garden this morning. So she's in the dog house. Or she would be if I had one. Maybe I'll build one.

* Actually, who am I kidding -- I'd have LOVED to have done that.

Messages to me!

I've got that Blogger 'email me when someone comments' thing turned on -- so I can reply to people -- which is good when it works, and a bit confusing when it doesn't. Sometimes the notification comes through in seconds, other times it's days. Something that arrived today was from Robert:

1 thing confuses me, I go to Amazon and other publishers, and they say a book will be printed say Dec 06, or Jan 07. Sometimes it is quite clear the Author has finished the book, does it really take that long to print a book, or is there a waiting list to be published? It sours me to think that your new book has been finished since last year, but we have to wait 6 months. Can't the publishers speed up a bit?

In the comments Sandra brought up a good point about publishers needing to give places like Publisher's Weekly or Kirkus time to review (for the US market), and I thought I'd add in my tuppenth worth:

Another reason is the lead time needed to get a book through production. My current schedule needs me to deliver a year before publication date. Then the thing gets editied (which will take anything up to four months of going back and forth with questions and answers and tweaks and the like) then it gets internally sold to the publisher's marketing and sales teams so they're behind the project. Then the covers get designed and the title fought over and that takes another big chunk of time. Book goes away to the typesetters to be set for printing, which results in more checks and tweaks. THEN, it's produced as bound galley proofs for the booksellers and reviewers etc and sent out. After that, publication's only four months away and that time's used to get the PR in place, any blurbs sorted out, and the actual book published and distributed.

And that's a whole year in a book. Except that I kinda screwed the whole blurb thing up this year being shy. Not going to do that again. Next time I'm going to be pushy bastard boy.

With the US version they take a copy of the UK plates and run them, so there's less production time involved, but the publishers are also looking to have the book coming out at a time when they think it's going to do well. Not be swamped by a host of similar titles, so it won't get review space. Plus the way promotion works in bookstores there's only limited space made available, so you've got to book way in advance if you're going to make any use of it.

Amazon's a bit deceptive -- being pretty much instant unlike traditional bookshops. It looks like this massive international marketplace, but most of my books have actually been bought from bookshops. Amazon represents only a tiny fraction, which is why I don't sweat my Amazon ranking. Now and then Agent Phil will email me to say, "You're number 329!" and I'll smile, shrug, and get on with it, because I know the number is ultimately pretty meaningless. Doesn't mean I wouldn't celebrate a couple of weeks at number 1 thought ;}#

Anyone else got any ideas -- why do these damn book things take so long?

Don't panic Mr Mainwaring!

Holy fish-flavoured [insert religious deity of your choice]: I actually got some writing done today. A whole 1,542 words. OK, so it's hardly a quantity to be shouting from the rooftops when you're on a deadline, but it's better than the bugger all I've been doing of late.

Of course, there's a downside. Mr Nose has started his terminal drip, drip, drip of haemoglobin fun again. This morning was the first time in about three years I've been able to actually breathe through both -- count 'em -- nostrils and by the time mid day came round I'd started in on my favourite hobby again: very slowly bleeding to death.

But WORDS!!! Hahaha! I would have got more of the little sods too, but there were excuses, so I feel vindicated. Sort of. And a bit bunged up. Plus I was due to go to Glasgow tomorrow to do an overnight stay, stock signing binge, and interview with Radio Clyde, but thankfully that's been postponed. I still can't walk round the house without bumping into things -- head no work in straight lines. Standing up, go WHEEEEEEE... So hopefully I can spend the rest of the week recuperating and writing. Then maybe that deadline miracle will happen after all.

Plus I'm getting details in on the internet jungle drums that the book launch for DYING LIGHT is all sorted. We're going to Kings College for drinkies and nibbles and some sort of talk thing. Only trouble being I have to give the talk. And it's after the free booze, so I can even get giggly. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

And one final plus -- with the not eating, the 'unfortunate' surgeries, rampant blood loss, and the fever, I've lost a stone and a half in twelve days. Which isn't something I'd recommend, but it's nice to see my cheekbones again. I'd forgotten what they looked like. My face now looks about a foot and a half longer.

[insert religious deity of your choice] bless us every one.

Of an manner like unto iron

Ah yes, another day, another... well, day. You know how it goes, sun rises, sun sets, various things hurt, whinge, whinge, moan, moan. The usual. Trouble is: I got words. I know I got them, because I can hear the little bastards rattling about inside my head -- when it's not making swooooooshing noises and making all the colours bleed as the room revolves -- desperate to get out onto the screen. Only trouble is, I can't put them down in any sort of order.

I've never had proper hallucinations before, you know, joined up ones like you see on the telly where the same vision appears to pick up where it left off on the previous episode? This is like that, only with plots. I think. It sort of makes perfect sense at the time, then I get to the same point and look back at a huge clot of dark, black blood and think, 'What the HELL...?' and find it makes no sense at all. Not even vague sense. Even in Eastbourne -- Sanatogen country -- this wouldn't be understood. Oh, it follows a path of logic, it's just not a path recognisable by man nor beast. Well, maybe to schizophrenic whales, but they're odd that way.

I've usually had a pretty reliable brain. OK, it's not the sharpest thing in the toolbox, but it's consistent. Logical. I'm not used to it tucking its trousers into its socks and going for a run in the sand dunes at night. That's not what respectable brains do. BAD BRAIN! Naughty!

Which means I'm still not able to actually write. Because when I do it makes no sense. BUT -- and it's a small one, as I've lost a lot of ballast from down there, what with all the not eating -- it's getting better. The 'episodes' of lucidity are beginning to join up. And as long as I don't stand up suddenly my chances of falling over are vastly reduced. So I'm going to have a bash at getting down to it again tomorrow. At least for a couple of hours and see if I can produce something that reads like it hasn't been pulled out of a dung heap by a chicken with behavioural problems.

The downside is -- I'm definitely going to deliver late. Unless some sort of miracle happens. Which given my luck to date is pretty bloody unlikely. It was supposed to be a simple enough procedure, one night in hospital, and then a couple of days to recuperate. Not a fortnight of fevers, starvation, halluci-bloody-nations, and projectile bleeding.

But if anyone asks, remember to tell them it's all going well, OK? This is still just our little secret.

The bleeding, she has stopped

Well for now anyway. As you can probably tell, I've not been around here much of late -- I went back into hospital on Tuesday afternoon to get a chunk of my surgery re-done, and I been there ever since. But I'm home today. Hurrah. But still feeling like shite. Not hurrah. Ah yes, Lynn may be stoic and manly, I am a big sweaty, aching, shivering girl's blouse called 'Florence'.

On the plus side it's been good for loosing weight. I've not eaten since last Friday -- due to a nasty, ulcerated throat -- so the pounds are just melting away. On the less that plus side I think these last four day qualify as the worst of my entire life. And I think it's always nice to have that as a benchmark.

Number of new words written this week: bugger all!

God, it just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?