That which does not kill me...

I got an object lesson yesterday in why you should always read the small print before eating something.

Take Fruittellas for example, those little fruity, sugar-free chews...

ASSORTED CHEWY SWEETS STRAWBERRY, ORANGE, LEMON FLAVOURED, WITH SWEETENERS.
INGREDIENTS: SWEETENERS (ISOMALT, MALTITOL SYRUP, SORBITOL, SUCRALOSE), HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL, FRUIT JUICES FROM CONCENTRATE, (STRAWBERRY, ORANGE, LEMON )(3%), GELATINE, ACID (CITRIC ACID), EMULSIFIERS (MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES OF FATTY ACIDS, SUCROSE ESTERS OF FATTY ACIDS), HUMECTANT (GLYCEROL), GELLING AGENT (GUM ARABIC), DEXTRIN, FLAVOURINGS, COULOURS (BETA APO-8'-CAROTENAL, BETA-CAROTENE, BEETROOT RED). EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION MAY PRODUCE LAXATIVE EFFECTS.

Jesus, they're not kidding about that last bit. Half a packet was enough to keep my innards re-enacting the battle of the Somme all Saturday.

I'm never buying a family fun-sized bag of Fruittella again.

I am not dead

OK, so I'll admit that I smell a bit dead, and I have taken to shambling round the house of late, but that's all just coincidental. While some people are out there showing off how alive they are, I've been sharpening the hell out of my nose on editing Book Number The Fourth.

But while I'm off being one of the nearly dead, I shall point you to a recent interview thing I did do with the slightly bizarre chaps at Gumshoe Review. They also have a review of the American version of BROKEN SKIN - BLOODSHOT up.

Other than that, I went down to sunny Dundee yesterday to be interviewed with that well known intellectual and pigeon-fancier, Allan Guthrie. Which, given that we're both labouring under the cloud of editing fun, turned into a little bit of a whinge. I suppose it's the same when anyone who do the same job get together:

"Bloody hell," says John, chief nipple-polisher to the stars, "I've had a crap week. It's been nothing but boobs the whole time. Boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs."
"Don't talk to me about bloody boobs," says his colleague Fred, "what ever happened to the good old days when we used to polish other parts of the superstars' anatomy. Like elbows?"
"Elbows... Ah, those were the days. Not like now. Bloody boobs."
"Yeah, bloody boobs."
And so on.

I know when I used to work in IT every day was an opportunity to whinge about something. So maybe it's not so surprising. Next time though, I'm going to take some happy pills before hand. And a large pint of gin. That should imbue proceedings with a touch of bonhomie!

By Santa's sainted-testicles!

Remember the good old days, when we was all children and winter was a time of wonder, and big woolly jumpers? Of frolicking in the snow and building snowmen? Of making a latticework on the front windows with black electrical tape, then spraying that nasty white stuff that came out looking like desiccated coconut and smelled like the underside of a tramp into the corners, in an effort to make your two-bedroomed terrace in a nondescript housing estate look like it fell out of Dickens? Of traipsing off to the local woods to buy a Christmas tree that would shed 40% of its needles in the car on the way home and the rest by the time you got all the blue and silver tinsel on it?

More importantly, do you remember when Christmas used to happen in December?

Before that we had things like the Trades Fortnight -- or the tattie picking holiday as we used to call it up here, which was pretty much an excuse for the local farmers to indulge in their love of child labour hefting potatoes out of the cold, claggy soil; Bonfire Night -- when they used to actually have bonfires, before the Health And Safety zombies sulked all the life of things; Halloween -- when we used to go guising, NOT TRICK OR BLOODY TREATING; and then you'd get a couple of weeks before the build up to Christmas began.

So how come when I was in my local Tesco* last week, they already had shelves groaning under the weight of festive provender? It's the first week in September! SEPTEMBER! Christmas isn't supposed to be till the end of December, that's nearly four months away! A third of a sodding year and they're already flogging mince bastarding pies.

It probably doesn't help that I hate mince pies. Even if you leave them in the back of the cupboard till the filling's started to ferment, they're still bloody horrible things. When I eat a mince pie, you know what I want to taste? Not nasty, over-spiced chunks of horrible dried fruit, that's for damn certain: I want bits of ground up animal, thank you very much. How in the name of all that is plastic, can you call that foul, gritty brown... yuck mincemeat?

OK, I understand that way back in the distant past, these vile little pastries would actually contain meat as well as all that gag-making fruit, but nowadays? Sod all. What's the point of having a Trades Description Act if we can't force these nasty things to be called what they really are?

"Ooh, Henry, listen to them loverly Carol singers, standin' outside in the snow. I'll go get them some of me fresh, home-baked Horrible Fusty Fruity Christmas Tart Things..."

Anyway, back to the supermarket. 'OK', I was thinking, in my usual even handed manner** 'maybe this is so those strange, organised people can get their festive foodstuffs bought well in advance and not have to worry about battling through the crowds at the last minute?' You know the sort of people: the ones who buy Christmas presents throughout the year when they see them, rather than leaving it all till the weekend before, when the shops resemble the third circle of hell (mind you, I think even Satan would balk at playing Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' on a continuous loop).

But that can't be the case: even if you were so anally retentive that you had to buy your Horrible Fusty Fruity Christmas Tart Things at the beginning of September -- just in case there's a rush on them later -- it's not going to do you any good. Because the 'best before' date on the damned things is the seventh of November, 2007! Now unless you're purposefully buying them in order to give carol singers food poisoning, what sodding use is that?

Are there really people out there so desperate for a taste of Horrible Fusty Fruity Christmas Tart Things that they can't wait till December to eat them?

Has the world gone mad, or is it just me?

* Other supermarkets are available
** Sometimes I sicken myself with this 'let's try see both sides of the argument' bollocks

Titles of titleishness...

As you probably know (due to my excessive whinging on about it) getting titles for the books has become increasingly difficult. DYING LIGHT took months of blood-from-a-stone style pain, BROKEN SKIN was even worse (especially as I had to go through the whole nightmarish exercise again for the American edition), and Book Number The Fourth has had me seriously contemplating fleeing the country, changing my name, and taking up mango farming. Or lemur wrangling, I haven't quite decided which yet.

However, sound bells and sodding trumpets, we finally have a title for the aforementioned volume of police-flavoured daring do! Yes, I can exclusively reveal* That Book Number The Fourth will be published as FLESH HOUSE. Which is apparently less offensive than my original suggestion. (What the hell's wrong with calling a novel, "Buy This Fucking Book You Bastards!"? honestly, marketing people...)

And the first two chapters are going to be stuffed into the back of the BROKEN SKIN paperback when it comes out on January the 7th.

Strangely that novella I've been hinting vaguely about was a one shot wonder, as far as the title was concerned: SAWBONES. A lot of fun to write and something a little different from my normal stuff. The only down side is that it's not going to be out till July 2008. Which is a bummer.

Other than that, She Who Must Attend Her Company's Annual Golf Outing is off getting boozed up in charge of a golf trolley this afternoon. I expect her home some time around midnight: staggering out of a taxi, clutching a bottle of champagne and singing rude songs in an mezzo-soprano / operatic stylie. Never one to say 'Green Cheese' I plan to have my own indulgent evening (once the day's editing is done**), only I can't actually think what that's going to entail. It's too short notice to get people out for a drink -- and I live in the middle of nowhere, so it's about at two hour lurch home from the pub. Especially when every other step goes in a random direction.

Any suggestions?

* But only because nobody else really cares enough to try and beat me to the scoop.
** He said, just in case anyone from HarperCollins is reading this -- you never know, they have their spies everywhere!

Curse of the MacBridervilles

You're probably wondering why I'm still at home instead of halfway down the country in deepest, darkest Cambridge. Or maybe you're not. Maybe you just don't give a toss one way or the other. Bastards.

Anyway, it looks like the age old curse has risen its grisly head once more -- whenever Billingham and MacBride get together, disaster follows! Well, maybe not all the time, but certainly more often than not. So far Mr B and I have been engaged for a total of 5 bookshop events -- and only two of them actually happened. Yes, that's the reason I'm still here at Casa MacBride, rather than sitting in a train, heading of to Cambridge: both tonight and tomorrow night's events have been cancelled. Oh, it's Bromsgrove all over again...

This has to be more than a coincidence. It has to be a conspiracy! I blame the Monarchy, clearly they have it in for sexy, bearded write-ists. After all, do any of them have a beard? No! Not one! Not so much as an apologetic goatee, or a shameful moustache. I'll bet they don't even have eyebrows -- those get edited onto their photos afterwards, by their evil hairless minions. This is all part of the royal family's secret anti-facial hair policy, designed to rebuild the Empire so they may once more rule the globe with an iron fist!

Or maybe it's just because people decided they had better things to do on a Tuesday and Wednesday night than come see a top-notch crime writer and his giggling, bearded, Scottish sidekick?

Or maybe it's because deep down, we all know that Mr B sacrifices goats on his ungodly alter accompanied by the wailing of the damned, the baying of the wolves, the clarion cry of the horns of war... on a weeknight when people are trying to sleep.

Whichever it is (and I'm still leaning towards the monarchist conspiracy -- Price Phillip's a shifty bugger after all, with all his hats and pointy teeth) I'm not going nowhere no how. At least not until that thing in Hamilton Town House Library. And as Mark 'Biscuity Goodness' Billingham won't be there, I can only assume it's not going to be cancelled at the last minute.

The man's a jinx, I tells ya, a jinx!