A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining four other authors in a Blackwell's at the Fringe event in the South Bridge shop. There were five of us, and I was the last on. (There's actually a flash fiction story about it, too.)

The four other writers were Jane MacKenzie, Hania Allen, poet Rita Bradd, and Olga Wojtas. I bought Hania Allen's book The Polish Detective for my son's birthday, and Olga's book for myself. Here's my review on Goodreads.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gordon-lawrie-the-blogger-who-came-in-from-the-cold-tickets-44634191067

STOP PRESS: They've gone, thanks to Oxfam!

Thanks to all who offered useful suggestions: toilet paper, wrapping fish suppers, blocking up draughty holes in the skirting, etc....

So what's it about? Well, here's the blurb...

Danny Marwick is a ‘blogger’ – he writes material to fill up catalogues and websites of firms looking to attract customers to buy their products. He’s by far the best in the world and his work is in great demand. Danny is also a singer-songwriter in an Edinburgh pub a couple of nights each week. But if his blogging is world-class, his song-writing is awful. So, too, is his love life.

One day he’s approached by a mysterious woman who offers him a lot of money to write holiday brochures for highly unlikely destinations. Somehow the two of them take to each other and she even encourages him to write some new songs. In no time at all, however, he’s caught up in a world of spies where nobody is quite what they seem, and he finds his life in real danger...


Let's hope you (and lots of other people) enjoy it. We'll keep you informed when we know more.

When did you first start writing?
Not that long ago, really. Until the summer of 2010 I worked full time as a teacher, then I got the opportunity to go part-time to write a novel... which wasn't very good. However I finished it, which proved that I had the necessary stamina, and along the way I cam up with a MUCH better idea for a novel – Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie.

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
In Edinburgh, which has meant that I like writing about the city. By any standards Edinburgh is a beautiful place, green, full of history and glorious architecture, but it also is a city of enormous contrasts: rich and poor, old and new.

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yes, and I'd rather not. It wasn't very good.

Who are your favorite authors?
Ah... where to start? I like crime fiction and right at the top of my list comes Donna Leon, whose urbane Venetian detective Guido Brunetti offers so much in so many ways. Leon's stories are so quiet that you can almost hear the water lapping around the stories. Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther is wonderful, as is Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch. Of the home detectives, Ian Rankin and James Oswald are great.

Away from crime, my recommendation would be James Hamilton-Paterson's Gerald Samper trilogy, the first of which is Cooking With Fernat Branca. It's the nearest in style to the stuff I write myself.

What is your writing process?
I sit with a laptop on my knee and write. Sometimes a lot comes out, sometimes very little. But I'm always thinking and surprisingly a lot comes to me while I'm on the golf course. An entire song in Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie came to me coming down the 17th fairway once, which was a little distracting. I try to remember good dialogue, too, although to be honest if it's not very memorable it's probably not very good.

Describe your desk
My desk is a laptop that sits... quite literally on my lap.

What do you read for pleasure?
Crime fiction, almost exclusively. And the papers. And anything my wife passes over to read.

What is your e-reading device of choice?
A Kindle, where I look for undiscovered writers. It's like panning for gold.

How do you approach cover design?
Generally, I try to get other people to design my covers. I can adapt other designers' ideas, but I'm not very original myself. And I once read that even expert cover designers are advised to get someone else to do their own – authors are generally poor at their own books.

When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
I play a bit of golf, although not very well. I'm a member of two wonderful golf clubs very close to each other on the east coast of Scotland; they straddle a nature reserve which gives me a chance to watch birds, another joy.

I run a self-publishing collective that publishes other writers' work, which is very satisfying. They're encouraged to be honest with each other, which they are with my my stuff to the point of brutality sometimes!

And I have grandchildren...

What are you working on next?
I'm currently working on the very thing I said I'd never manage: a crime novel. I keep starting and juddering to a halt. Crime fiction requires discipline, a control of plot and narrative. The author has to set everything up, know where they're going, then start fleshing out the characters, place and atmosphere.

Guy Fletcher's Walking With The Ghosts Of Dinosaurs, first published last year, is a delightfully accessible collection of his work.

Those familiar with Fletcher's work will recognise the themes. Guy still lives in Wales (his brother and fellow-poet Ian has moved to Taiwan) and much of his verse evokes the beauty of his native land, or moments in time. The best ones combine both, such as Saturday Afternoon By the River Taff or A Winter Sunday Service At Arafat Church.

Perhaps there's a sadness in some of his work, too. The Last Walk clearly contains something personal for the poet. At any rate there's more to Walking With The Ghosts Of Dinosaurs than mere description. And my personal favourite is the touching Craven Arms , which manages to capture an innocent moment when two readers on a train share a moment of shared pleasure, a book that the man and the woman both enjoy. The brief moment lasts only until the woman gets off at the next station, but the poem allows us to enjoy the meeting for a great deal longer.

Craven Arms

I remember Craven Arms
as if it were only yesterday
signal problems ensured we were trapped
at this quiet station deep in nowhere.
It was a soporific day, the sultry, stale carriage air
caused frustrated passengers to wipe their brows.
People willed the wheels to move but in vain
and yet I was contented on the train:

a woman opposite was immersed in a book
and I mentioned I had read it too
before falling into the pages of her eyes.
We talked of other things but then
the train left the washing on the line behind
and verdant fields leading up to a wood.
She alighted at the next stop waving goodbye
then disappeared... under an azure sky.

Walking With The Ghosts Of Dinosaurs by Guy Fletcher, ISBN 9781911113676, is priced £3.99 and available from all good bookshops.

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Baillie Gifford Theatre

Mark Haddon has written all sorts of stuff, it seems – plays, poetry, children’s fiction and, of course, some adult fiction including the celebrated The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (The latter, we’re told, has sold 10 million copies, which must make him a reasonably wealthy man.) Now he’s turned his hand to some very dark short stories into a volume called The Pier Falls.
 
Here in the Baillie Gifford Main Theatre at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Haddon was interviewed by publisher and editor Lennie Goodings. He came across well and is a good speaker with a wry sense of humour, and – prompted well by Goodings – he kept the audience fully entertained for the allotted hour. Goodings asked him about the persistent darkness of the stories, which feature death throughout, it seems. Haddon didn’t really argue, or give any reason why: they just came out that way, it seems. He read briefly from one, Wadwo, a modern retelling of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight, then talked about where these stories came from – it was interesting to hear that several began as abandoned plays. As a result he informed the audience that he has permanently put aside his playwrighting amnitions, but we’ll see if that really proves to be the case.
 
As a writer, publisher and editor myself, I found his section on writing technique by far the most interesting. He claims he doesn’t set daily targets – he’s wealthy enough not to have to – and he’s pretty obsessive about redrafts of his manuscripts. Even his wife doesn’t get to see anything that hasn’t been re-written twenty times or so; how I wish all authors shared his sense of pride in their work.
 
The hour closed with a few audience questions, none of which seemed to relate to the new book. One questioner harked back to The Curious Incident and seemed to be desperate to make a point about a celebrated court case involving an autistic Scot found guilty of a financial crime in the USA; Haddon patiently waited, then answered by saying that he didn’t really know enough about autism to make a comment, a response so impressively adept that it probably drew the biggest round of applause of the entire hour. The (for the most part) poor questions didn’t spoil the event, however, which was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting hour spent in Charlotte Square. 

Guardian columnist Decca Aitkenhead entertained Edinburgh Book Festival audiences for an hour yesterday, talking primarily about her new book All At Sea. The book covers the events surrounding, and impact of, the tragic accident that led to the death of her partner Tony Wilkinson. Wilkinson, the father of Aitkenhead’s children, drowned in 2014 trying to save their older son while on holiday in the West Indies (the son survived).

Understandably, then, in conversation with the sympathetic and unobtrusive Steven Gale, she focused on bereavement, loss, memories and general ‘dealing with bad stuff’. Last year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which naturally had her wondering if her two boys would grow up missing both parents, but although she seems physically recovered now there are clearly still emotional scars to heal. She’s a tall, thoughtful figure, more used to questioning politicians than to being questioned herself, and she gave the impression of blinking in the spotlight a little.

She opened by reading the impressive prologue of All At Sea in full, then talked about her partner Tony, contrasting his past – transformed from former drug-dealer and prisoner into degree-educated charity worker – with her own ultra-liberal middle-class background. But I thought the most interesting sections were when she took questions from the audience. She treated each as if it were a new question that she herself had never considered before (I don’t believe that) and gave the most considered answers: helping her son (only four years old) cope with the guilt of triggering the events leading to his father’s death; the extraordinary relationship between Decca and Tony; the coolness of her family towards her partner. This event might have talked about her cancer, but there wasn’t much time.

Overall, I found it an interesting event, albeit I found the whole story of Decca Aitkenhead and her family so bizarre that I couldn’t bring myself to believe that it was true. Except that it seems it is.

One last thing: my apologies for the poor-quality photo. Decca Aitkenhead has cut her hair, and looks quite different from all the photos you’ll see on the internet. The only available decent likeliness of her is the Book Festival photo available from Getty Images. They wanted £163.50 to allow me the privilege of using it here, so you’ll have to make do with this link to the Getty website instead.