By popular demand

Because nothing says 'Christmas is just around the corner' like photos of dead mice, and because you're all a bunch of twisted weirdoes who get off on that kind of thing, I present to you the state of our back porch at the moment.



Ah Grendel, she looks like butter wouldn't melt (though why one would want to use a cat for melting butter is beyond me - a warmed saucepan or a swift blast in the microwave will leave your butter all soft and melty; sticking it in a cat will only make it hairy. And the cat's likely to eat it as well, because they're devious that way. In fact, never trust a cat offering to do anything with your dairy products, they can't be trusted!) but to the rodent population of Casa MacBride's surrounding environs she's the devil incarnate.



This happy little fellow looks so peaceful, lying there with the back of his head chewed off - not a trouble in the world. He looks a little flatter than he probably did in life, because I stepped on him. Not on purpose - I was only heading out to put something in the bin when all of a sudden... 'CRUNCH' and a strange, cold, sticky feeling between my toes. Mmm, mouse slippers.

And let's face it, it's a miracle she's catching anything at all at the moment. She's got a streaming cold. I've never seen a cat with a drippy nose before. It's like a little Niagara falls of feline bogies. She fell asleep on me while I was editing this afternoon, and left a big wet patch of snot on my sleeve. Lovely.

She looks at me funny when I stick a hanky under her nose and tell her to blow too.

Daft cat.

The Cat Diaries, Week One (And A Bit)

It would be nice to think that peace had broken out amongst the felines at Casa MacBride. In fact, it'd be bloody wonderful. But also deluded. We do seem to have achieved an uneasy stalemate though. Grendel now spends 40% of her time outside catching mice and eating their brains (I was going to post a picture of one of these lucky rodents, but then I remembered some of you out there are squeamish*); 30% of her time in the study with me -- mostly asleep; and the remaining 20% on top of the fridge freezer in the kitchen.

The Interlopers are confined to barracks at bedtime, and other than that they have the run of most of the house. They seem to spend 60% of their time asleep, and every waking moment either shouting, hissing, eating, or making vast stinky jobbies.

Honestly, it's like something out of a horror film; these cats are like TARDISes they produce about four times their own body mass in poop every day. That must be why they sleep so much -- shagged out from all that crapping. Every morning I go upstairs to let them out, put down some more food (poop doesn't grow on trees after all) and then turn to the litter tray... By the curly beard of Anne Widdicombe... It's like being confronted by a pair of vast brown pythons. Smelly pythons. Big, smelly pythons.

I recon that by the time they finally go back to their real family, they'll have produced enough bottom lumps to fill the Grand Canyon (or Paris Hilton). Grendel, on the other hand, barely poops at all. Not in the house anyway. She's like the Queen that way, only with better taste in hats.

And me? I spend 20% of my time trying to sleep, 50% of my time on the line edit, 5% cooking meals of loveliness for She Who Must Vanish Whenever There's A Litter Tray To Be Emptied; and the rest of my time shovelling Interloper poop.

God, it's a glamorous life...

* But I am prepared to bow to popular pressure, if the sick weirdoes out there fancy a bit of photographic mouse snuff.

Literature

I alluded earlier to a rambling post about the terror that is the word 'literature' and here it is. So if you want to sod off and get yourself a cup of tea, maybe a nice chocolate biscuit, I'll chunter away to myself here and you can probably come back to another post whinging on about my interloping cat problems instead.

Those of you daft enough to stay...

This whole thing stems from a review what I did get on Amazon.co.uk Now I know checking one's Amazon reviews is akin to playing Russian roulette with a howitzer, but I did it anyway. I was feeling masochistic that day. Anyway, the review is actually a good one: five shiny stars of shininess:

Broken skin but not broken momentum, 23 May 2007
By D. M. Bennett (Aberdeen, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Stuart Macbride's latest DS Macrae novel continues the momentum of the previous two. This fast action thriller takes the reader on a tour of Aberdeen and introduces the reader to a side of the Granite City that few will have opened their eyes to see. The storyline although a little fantastic, not least as it features Aberdeen Football Club being in contention for the league, keeps the reader gripped but is unlikely to win any literature prizes. Yet another good work from MacBride which I would thoroughly recommend the other writers in this genre must be concerned that MacBrides momentum will break their market.

"Well done, that bearded sex-god," I hear you say. But take another look. A close one. See if you can spot the bit that makes this lovely 5-star job into a 5-star jobbie in the mind of the paranoid twit... Did you spot it?

...is unlikely to win any literature prizes...

Now I have to say that the reviewer is 100% correct. It isn't. And what's more, it's not meant to. When I started writing I said to myself that I wasn't in the business of writing literature. I wanted to write stories that were good stories and people would want to read. That was it -- end of story. No highfalutin' pretensions of 'telling people how it is', or spending three pages describing the pattern of falling snow, with beautifully crafted passages where bugger all happens.

Now you can probably tell from the previous paragraph that I have some preconceived prejudices against books that get described as 'literature'. Prejudice is an ugly thing. Not quite as ugly as our nearest neighbour, but ugly enough. I like a book to grip me by the hairy parts and sweep me along on an adventure of some variety. It doesn't always have to involve dead bodies, cannibalism, or bondage either -- I've enjoyed a wide range of books in my time, but I wouldn't tar any of them with the dubious label 'literature'. But it has to gave something going for it, doesn't it? Otherwise there wouldn't be all those prizes getting dolled out by men with goatees and cardigans.

Still, the point is, in my ignorance of the 'genre' called 'literature'* I never wanted to write what I wouldn't want to read. Fair enough.

So why does that line niggle at me?

...is unlikely to win any literature prizes...

I don't want to write literature, so how come being told that I'm not makes me feel somehow inadequate? As if Doris Day** had turned up wearing nothing but strawberry yoghurt and a smile, but nothing was happening in my below-the-belly-button-regions (if you know what I mean).

What is it about the word literature that does this? Maybe it's the unspoken implication that what I'm writing is unworthy in some way? Or that it isn't edifying enough? It isn't meant to be edifying, it's meant to be exciting / thrilling / occasionally funny / a good read.

Of course what worries me most is that I'll try to do something about my unlitteratureness and end up screwing up Book Number The Fifth (which now has a working title -- don't bother asking, you and I both know it'll have to change when the marketing department at HarperCollins get their grubby paws on it) trying to be all clever about stuff. And things...

* Note the use of ironic single quotes, marking me out as a twit and a tit.
** When she was in her Calamity Jane days, not now when she's allegedly become a slightly hermit-like wrinkly cat lady. In her heyday though: va-va-voom!

The Cat Diaries: Day 2

Day two begins with terse words at Casa MacBride -- Little Miss remains traumatized by the presence of Interloper B and I'm doing my best not to shout random swearwords at the visiting cats. Mmm, domestic harmony... -- nothing like it*.




Every time Grendel tries to go from room to room, 'Wee One' who will from here on be referred to as 'Thuggy McBastard' has a go at her. They've not actually come to blows yet, but while the little fuzzy lady of the household is hiding upstairs in the junk of the house move (four years ago and the landing is still full of unpacked boxes -- Christ knows what's actually in them, probably all those vital things we can never find, but are sure we've got somewhere. Like the sushi mats I bought for making artistic creations in raw fish. Mmm, sushi... -- nothing like it**), TMcB has ensconces herself in the lounge, on the sofa, where she looks so bloody smug it's unbelievable. Seriously: she's like a politician who's shagging his mistress, three Filipino house boys, and a goat, while snorting cocaine off a dead hooker's backside -- but the tabloid papers can't touch him due to some sort of incriminating evidence he has over the editor. Which is pretty damn smug.

Part of me wants Grendel to stand up to her and batter that greasy grin off her face, but most of me wants her to steer well clear and not get into any fights that'll require me to make Interloper Cat Pie.

Ziggy, on the other hand, is fairly trouble-free as far as aggressive behaviour goes. But she will not shut up. All the time with the feline shouting. Shout, shout, shout, shout, shout. Lots of purring too -- she sounds like a faulty hammer drill, trying to bore its way through a small person's kneecap -- but mostly shouting.

* Seriously: this is nothing like domestic harmony.
** Well, the stuff we make is 'superficially' like it. I mean, it looks like sushi. A proper Japanese Gourmet would probably run in abject terror from the stuff, but we like it.

The Cat Diaries: Day 1

Day one and things aren't exactly off to a flying start. The Interlopers were confined to barracks from the time they arrived yesterday afternoon. Barracks in this case being the spare bedroom, all fitted out with water, food, litter, and a double bed with a nice comfy duvet. So not exactly slumming it.

The one attempt made to introduce Grendel (home owner) to the Interlopers (who... well... interlope) resulted in one of them throwing a hissing fit. And a bit of distance didn't seem to help that any.

They had the run of the house today, while Grendel was out decimating the local mouse population, and were then returned to their penthouse suite while I went off to do exciting things involving haircuts and train tickets. But at quarter to seven She Who Must let them out to mingle with Little Miss.

Cue hissing from Interloper B, again.

Unfortunately Interloper B - called 'Wee One' for some unfathomable reason, as she's about the same size as a tiger seal - is black and large, the spitting image of a cat who terrorised Grendel about six months ago. So when Wee One hisses, Grendel runs for it.

Lovely. My cat is being chased out of her own house.

Now She Who Must thinks this is all just a passing phase and they'll sort it out themselves, but personally I'm taking Grendel side. I don't want her fighting over the house - it's her bloody house in the first place. I especially don't want to have to haul her off to the vet to get various things stitched. Because if that happens, I might well be making Interloper Cat Pie for tea.

Can you tell I'm not happy?

I gotta get me one of those

It's a hell of a long way from Casa MacBride to Kilmarnock -- four and a half hours of jolly motorway driving, including the vomited pile of half-chewed spaghetti that is Glasgow's roads. Normally when I have to do an event anywhere near Glasgow, by the time I get there I'm wound up and all set to kill someone. There then follows a period of having to calm down before strutting my slightly crumpled stuff.

But not on Saturday! Hurrah and hurray. She Who Must Occasionally Accompany Her Husband To Events So She Can See That He Really Is Working And Not Just Hanging About In Some Hotel Bar Drinking Drinks With Book-Type Floozies and I borrowed Googling Brother's Tom Tom system thing for the car. And it were perfect. I did arrive all nice and relaxed, hadn't had a nervous breakdown trying to get through Glasgow, or find the hotel. Ahhh... calm.

We checked into the hotel opposite Kilmarnock FC's home ground, which was actually pretty nice, even if the bar was full of post-Celtic-match people being INCREDIBLY noisy. Then the lovely Dawn from East Ayrshire Library Services took She Who Must and I for an early dinner and thence to the event, which actually went really well.

I'd love to take all the credit, but the audience was absolutely terrific. There are times when doing an event is like duct-taping your testicles to a rottweiler, then throwing sausages at an electric fence, but the crowd on Saturday night were brilliant -- up for a bit of a laugh from the off. Which meant it was a lot more enjoyable for everyone involved.

It's hard to believe that this was the first book festival the East Ayrshire Libraries have put on, because it was all slicker than a greasy weasel. And a load of library staff turned up to see the event too -- not just on a 'God sake, Mable, come along and make up the numbers!' front either. I can wholeheartedly recommend that if you ever get an invite to speak in Kilmarnock, you take it.

And I don't think I've ever signed so many books after a library event, ever.

Not only that, I bumped into a pair of John Rickards' fans. I know, strange to picture, but there you go -- I'd actually spent most of the event calling one of them a saucy minx and implying she was a bondage fiend -- apparently she always gets me and Captain 'Spanky' Rickards mixed up. God knows how. As you all know, I'm much prettier. I think there may have been hard liquor involved.

One of the many benefits of having She Who Must accompany me down the road was that I had someone to 'chill' with after the event. This we did in our hotel room (by then the hotel bar was full of bagpipes and people in ball gowns) with a wee nippy sweetie or two. And for once I actually managed a pretty decent night's sleep.

The Tom Tom thing managed to direct us seamlessly out of Kilmarnock the next morning (which is a vast improvement on the Hamilton Town House Library event last month, where we got completely and utterly lost trying to find our way back to the motorway in the dark), via Stirling Castle for a bit of a wander around, and then helped me create a sneaky detour to avoid one of the many bits of Dundee they're ruining with roadworks at the moment.

So, like I say: I gotta get me one of those.

In other news, Googling Brother's cats arrived this afternoon for their month-long visit (which is probably why he couldn't refuse me the loan of his favourite toy). So expect many posts in the not to distant about how everything is going very, very badly wrong.

To the litter tray!

Paws for thought

You can consider yourselves lucky -- today I was going to post a rumination on the power of the word 'literature' to make genre writers like myself come over all floppy and inadequate (or rabid and defensive, depending on how the mood takes us), and how a complete lack of intellectualism on my part means planning Book Number The Fifth is turning out to be more of a challenge than any of the previous volumes... But instead I'm going to point you to an interview in The List (Ian Rankin is their guest editor this issue) with me and the ever lovable Mr Allan Guthrie talking all things tartan and noir-ish.

Well, not all things, but some things anyway. Including a gratuitous buttock-grabbing reference. This was the interview I spoke about a wee while ago, and God bless Kirstin Innes for managing to edit out all the whinging and 'oh it's so hard to spend all day making up shite for a living'. They also give Logan a Rebus rating 3/5. "Right profession, but a bit too noble, dashing and heroic" Which is kind of nice. I think...

In other news, I'm going to be available for your public displays of affection this Saturday, when I'll be doing the opening 'Meet The Author' event at the East Ayrshire Book Festival from 19:30 till 21:00 in the Dick Institute*. Expect partial nudity, sexual swearwords, and scenes of an adult nature. And maybe some singing -- haven't decided on that one yet.

It's not the best time to be away from home for us, because Googling Brother moves out of his house on Monday. His own home's not ready for another month, so while he stays with the parents, She Who Must and I are going to be playing host to his 2 cats.

We've been trying to break the news gently to Grendel, but I'm not sure she's actually taking it in. She's going to have to go from 'Worlds Prettiest, But Most Spoiled Cat' to sharing her house and parents with two interlopers. Both of whom are older than her.

Not something we're really looking forward too, but if Tammy can take in her three nieces for months and months, I suppose we should produce a stiff upper lip and do the same with this pair of hairy interlopers. At least we won't have to drive them to school, buy them socks, and pick the lice out of their hair. Oh dear God, I hope not. I don't even know where we could buy cat socks from. Grendel always goes barefoot. Well, barepawed, but you know what I mean.

Family trauma, here we come...

* Tee hee - that sounds rude!