Gordon Lawrie - Blethers & News

#NaNoWriMo Should Never Be a Treadmill

4/11/2019

Each November, writers familiar with the social media are entreated to take part in #NaNoWriMo, which is "National Novel Writing Month" to the rest of us. It even has it's own logo (see right).Wannabe novelists set themselves the target of writing a novel of at least 50,000 words over the 30 days from 1st to 30th inclusive. It's not as demanding as it sounds: only 1,666 words per day, plus 20 extra on the last, will do it. But if you're just reading this for the first time, you're behind already.

The idea began a couple of decades ago in San Francisco and spread to become an international jamboree, so in truth the hashtag should really be #InNoWriMo – it's not exactly 'national' any more. And it's bound to be a great idea for some. Not for me, though.

My problems with #NaNoWriMo are all to do with its artificiality. Why I am I forced to write in November? What if I don't have any plot ready to use on 1st November? If I do, does that mean I've cheated by preparing beforehand? If I write 50,000 words and my novel's not finished, have I completed the task? Most important of all, what if I feel I've finished my novel and, like George Orwell with Animal Farm, F. Scott Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby, Ray Bradbury with Farenheit 451 or, more recently, Ian McEwan with On Chesil Beach, it hasn't reached 50K? Failed? Really?

I'm all for letting writers set themselves goals, the discipline is great. I try to make a point of writing something each week –a short story, a piece of flash fiction, perhaps a poem or song lyrics. Maybe I try to brush up the completed crime novel that's sitting just waiting for me to send it on its way into the world. But the first requirement of writing a good novel is that the writer must have a story to tell. That doesn't necessarily present itself on the 31st October, certainly not for me.

Writing should never feel like you're on a treadmill, obliged to be completed for the sake of doing so. If it's a struggle for you to write something, it'll be even more of a struggle to read it.

So good luck to all of you undertaking #NaNoWriMo 2019, and see you on the 1st December. I'll be on the golf course, or reading a newspaper or someone else's book, or perhaps even watching His Dark Materials on the television.

When, not if, some great idea comes into my head (which happens surprisingly often on the golf course), I'll do some writing.

REVIEW: SARAH SMARSH AND KERRY HUDSON with Jenny Niven

28/8/2019

Edinburgh International Book Festival, 25th August

These two writers have something in common: they were each born into humble backgrounds, even into poverty. Smarsh grew up on a farm in Mid-West Kansas; Hudson in any number of deprived areas as her family moved from one town to another in search of employment. Each has written a book about returning her roots. In this 'comparison event', chaired by Creative Scotland's Jenny Niven, the two traded childhood and adolescent experiences.

They weren't nice, of course; poverty is ugly. They talked of the extent to which they felt poor (not always totally aware, but usually), how their peers perceived them and how they felt about their peers and, almost inevitably, about the sexual violence that young women in poverty often experience.

Each felt they'd been lucky but were reluctant to use the word 'escaped'. They both had, though, even though they might like to admit it. Smarsh, for instance, is a former professor of nonfiction writing and Hudson seems to be a flourishing writer now.

I'm not sure the format of the event entirely worked. Each of the writers deserved an event of her own, and I felt Smarsh – who at times underestimated her audience's understanding of American politics – took too long to give her answers, interesting as they were. Hudson was funnier, and I could even see her in standup with the right material. And Jenny Niven allowed the pair to speak for so long that there was next to no time at the end for questions from the audience.

It wouldn't stop me from reading either of their books, though. Each was interesting enough in her own right to make me look out for them in the future. And their event gave me food for thought about my own childhood and teenage years... but that's another story.

REVIEW: ALISTAIR MOFFAT with Brian Meechan

27/8/2019

Edinburgh International Book Festival, 25th August

Alistair Moffat is currently promoting a new book where he retraces (he assumes) the steps of St Cuthbert from Melrose down to Lindisfarne. Moffat is a fine speaker anyway, but I suspect most of the audience were there to hear his take on the Holy Island, which forms the centrepiece of his book.

Moffat was introduced and then walked on and spoke beautifully for fully thirty minutes, almost without any reference to notes at all; as a piece of public speaking it was a masterclass. In the process we learned much about Cuthbert, a great deal about Lindisfarne, but most of all about Moffat himself, his views on God and religion, churches, theology and the ability of 'place' and location to infuse the spirit with a sense of peace.

Moffat isn't really a historian, although his excellent A History of Scotland Since Earliest Times sits in with Scottish history books on our bookshelves. Instead, he's a writer who writes about history. Here, he was speaking instead.

Given Moffat's 'performance approach', Brian Meechan (Scottish, but works for BBC Wales) chaired the event brilliantly, quietly allowing the audience to ask questions aside from the classic 'what's next?' one at the end.

REVIEW: FRANK GARDNER with Rebecca Curran

27/8/2019

Edinburgh International Book Festival, 23rd August

Frank Gardner is best known as the BBC's security correspondent, the one who was shot and paralysed from the waist down while reporting from Saudi Arabia in 2004. (His photographer was killed.) Here he was ostensibly talking about his latest novel Ultimatum, but in reality everyone simply wanted to know about his career both before and he was wounded.

Gardner is delightfully candid about his life. He doesn't seek sympathy, neither does he try to pretend he wouldn't rather have the use of his legs. But he's clearly grateful for the opportunities he has been given notwithstanding his limitations, including returning to some war zones.

Rebecca Curran, the rising BBC Scotland journalist, chaired the event. She said she was her first time and I thought it showed at times; she started slightly woodenly. I look for interaction between the chair and the author, but at times I felt that they had little in common apart from both working for the BBC as news journalists. She was fine, though, and she'll get better.

The questions from the audience were really wide-ranging. Some were about security, some about his disability, some, inevitably, about Brexit.

This was a good show. The event was sponsored by the family of Frederick Hood, a young man who died in a skiing accident in 2008, and his father spoke in his memory for a while at the end, before presenting Frank Gardner with one of Fred's trademark black fedora hats. It was too big, but as with everything else in his life, Gardner made the most of it.

REVIEW: GORDON BROWN with Alistair Moffat

27/8/2019

Gordon Brown is a magnificent orator. This was the first time I'd seen him in person for the best part of 50 years, and in that time he's honed his act – more capable of the light remark, more (but not entirely) self-deprecating, and non-stop – but just as intense.

Here he was notionally being interviewed/chaired/steered by Alistair Moffat, who succeeded in doing none of these, not that he really seemed interested anyway. Brown is still an angry man, but Brexit and nationalism have taken the place of economic and social inequalities and (it seems hard to believe now) devolution and Scottish identity.

Brown began with what can only be described as one of his trademark rants. If you agree with him – as did most in the audience – his extraordinary opening salvo, delivered for around twenty minutes while marching backwards and forwards across the stage, was wonderful. He rounded first on Brexit, then nationalism, presenting each as both stupid and evil cramming more into that opening than most speakers manage in an hour. I was reminded of Professor William Barclay's Sunday night lectures on Christianity, and his minister father might well have been the model for Brown's Pan Drop-length sermon.

The meeting was immediately opened to a variety of questions, most of which were on point. Time and again Brown repeated his mantras that 'we need to stop a No-Deal Brexit' and 'nationalism is a destructive waste of energy". But I found myself increasingly impatient as I listened to Brown telling us that we needed to stop a No-Deal Brexit, but never once turned to how we, the public, could do so – given that the views of Scots have been pointedly ignored for the past decade. And despite beginning with a story that we need to compromise more generally in politics, I never once heard Brown indicate what compromises he himself could settle for.

I felt Alistair Moffat could have done more, too. He could have challenged more himself, even just for the sake of argument, and he could have taken more questions from his left. Perhaps he has a back problem that prevents him from turning at all? Either way, he came across as a little lazy.

Right at the end, comedian and wannabe politician Eddie Izzard, who was in the audience, asked a question which did at least elicit an answer from Brown that exhorted us to sign petitions and so on. If only we'd heard that earlier, then we could have explored some of the options.

James Robertson, Aidan O'Rourke & Kit Downes at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

10/8/2019

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is back – hereinafter referred to as thhe 'Book Festival' or simply EIBF. Back in 2013 James Robertson, he of And The Land Lay Still, set about writing 365 Stories, one each day and each 365 words in length. The collection was eventually published a year or so later.

A copy eventually reached fiddler Aidan O'Rourke, who was inspired to respond with a matching project of 365 tunes, and it was this 'matching' that was presented this evening at the New York times Theatre. O'Rourke had also enlisted the help of keyboard player Kit Downes, who accompanied both writer and fiddler on piano or reed organ.

Robertson's work was, naturally, the heart of the show. He has a wonderful voice, and the stories he selected were varied and well-paced. There was something for everyone here. I particularly liked the story about Jack and the Moon and the one about the Total Eclipse of Scotland, but they were all good. O'Rourke and Downes became a sort of sideshow, albeit a very good and welcome one, breaking up the performance.

I'm conscious that Robertson is (in my view) a bit hit and miss as a writer. I found The Testament of Gideon Mack hard going, for instance, so perhaps some of the other stories might not be so appealing. Still, this is a book I'll purchase, perhaps along with a download of the music. They'll get some money that way.

Winterplay: Janice Galloway & Susan Tomes

16/2/2019

Winterplay, a mini-arts festival based in the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh and directed by the city's own Susan Tomes, took place this year on 16th February, and I had the pleasure of attending a lovely programme of words and music from the writer Janice Galloway and Ms Tomes herself.

Tomes based the afternoon on Tchaikovsky's set of piano pieces The Seasons, which curiously contains twelve, each representing a different month of the year. Galloway, meantime, read twelve short poems, novel extracts and even a Telegraph newspaper article to complement each piece in turn.

I'd never seen either Tomes or Galloway in the flesh before, although I do treasure my CDs of Susan Tomes' piano quartet work with Domus. Neither disappointed at all. Galloway is a lovely reader/performer of the work of others: I particularly liked her rendition of the Scots works – Liz Lochhead's I wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine or Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child in Winter-Time. Tomes was consistently, effortlessly excellent: she started a couple of pieces on the left hand without even looking at the keyboard. I'm currently learning to play the April piece, Snowdrops, but one thing I've learned when attending any concert is to do my own miserable piano practice beforehand – I'd be too depressed otherwise.

They performed an encore – a Schiller poem and a piano piece that I recognised but neither identified; I wish someone had. But it was all wonderful, and it was a shame that more people weren't there to hear it. I'd pay to hear it all over again.

It wis a fair treat.

6 Basics for Successful Blogging

6/12/2018

I don’t do a lot of blogging, partly because I’m not convinced that many people actually read what I write. But some sort of web presence needs to be there just in case. In the meantime, here are a few basics that I’ve learned so far. Even if you know all of this already, it might still be interesting to compare notes.

Try to post regularly and often. The new material might be anything from a short story or an essay about something to information or thoughts about some trend in the news. Even routinely changing the background appearance of your website helps
Paid-for websites always do much more than free ones. Adverts irritate your reader. There’s no such thing as a free lunch: being repeatedly faced with adverts targeted using algorithms based on their web visiting behaviour will drive your readers away.
Try to include plenty of images and multimedia. Most people prefer books and ereaders for ordinary text, but a website wins hands down for the bells and whistles. Always play to those strengths.
Offer freebies. Advertise your for-sale work by all means, but make samples available for free.
Return favours. If a friend helps you along on their blog, or even simply follows you, follow them back and support them, too. You don’t do that? Learn.
Don’t be arrogant. Always remember that it’s arrogant to think your work is so wonderful that others should be reading your material when you don’t read anyone else’s. You’ve no idea how often I come across that attitude amongst other writers.

I wonder if anyone will actually read this?

Awesome Book Prices

29/11/2018

Last night, for no good reason at all, I checked the online availability of my latest novel, The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold. Of course it’s available at Amazon and so on; better still at our own Comely Bank Publishing website direct and direct from my own website. (These last two options give the author by far the best portion of the cover price.) Then I checked Waterstones, Blackwell’s and a number of other bookstores – fine. Not W. H. Smith, though, who are little better than Tesco. At the very least a bookseller should be able to order a book for you if it’s in print and has an ISBN: W. H. Smith appear not to be bothered, although the odd ebook pops up on their system.

But in the process I came across a site called awesomebooks.com that claimed to have a second-hand copy of my new book for sale in New York for… £77.68! That’s nonsense. Anyone wanting a copy of the book can have one for just a quarter of that figure, postage included. To America. A new copy costs just a tenner in the UK, postage included.

Meanwhile, watch out for genuine special offers. And please get in touch if you’d like a copy of any of my books and I’ll surely manage a better price than you can get in any bookstore or online from Amazon. And certainly from AwesomeBooks.

"Movember" Prostate Cancer Month

9/11/2018

My nephew Roddy in Canada is trying to raise money for prostate cancer research and has come up with a novel method.

Roddy has his one-man "band", Poor Farkwar and a website to go with it. I promise you that his music will expand your horizons.

I've pledged to pay him a set amount of money for each track I get through – there are 2o in total. (There's also a direct link to a Billy Connolly sketch: that doesn't count.) It doesn't matter how much, everything counts.

In case you think it's just a scam to raise money for himself, he'd like to point out that "the main guy in POOR FARKWAR is himself a cancer survivor, so would likely not consider this to be a particularly good choice (karma being what it is)." Roddy actually had testicular cancer but it's in the same postcode area, so we'll allow him a little wriggle-room.

Please could you think about supporting this worthy cause?

Forthcoming event at Gorebridge Library

9/11/2018

Why not come along? Admission free.
All my books will be available to buy at a discount.

A Very, Very Thick Skin

3/9/2018

Regular readers will recall how often I've told the story of the very first – and best – piece of advice I ever received: develop a very, very thick skin. (The second piece, from the same source, was pretty good, too: always have a Plan B, a Plan C, a Plan D and a Plan E.)

Sometimes, though, you find yourself under attack when you least expect it. In social company, I never volunteer any information about my writing progress, latest projects or book sales. I always wait until I'm asked. If no one asks, that's fine by me.

This morning I was out for coffee with a three friends. One, whom I know least well, didn't know I'd been actively writing (or publishing) at all and asked about it.

I think I managed about a dozen words when one of the others – who usually supports my functions – butted in to say to the polite and interested-sounding questioner, "That's enough, you can put the cotton wool back in your ears again." OK, it was meant to be funny, but combined with later statement that he couldn't understand many of the 100-word stories in the COMPLETELY FREE e-volume 100 Not Out, I began to wonder. (Tip for writers' friends: if you don't have anything positive to say, don't say anything at all.)

But the truth is that, for a writer, and probably for all who aspire to trade in the arts, the next kicking is just around the corner. You put yourself out there, and you just take whatever comes.

Denzil Meyrick

26/8/2018

This interesting article on the BBC's news website is about Denzil Meyrick, a Scottish crime writer who initially wrote as 'D. A. Meyrick'. I thought his 2012 first novel, Whisky from Small Glasses, was decent enough but sagged in the middle a little, but I was sure later D.I. Daley books would be better. Denzil didn't much care for me saying that on Goodreads at the time, but I think I was right. I think we've made it up, though. These days it's not published by Ringwood, incidentally.

Now it look as though he's hit the big time... well done, him! (Click on the image below to see more details.)

Review: Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar, by Olga Wojtas

16/8/2018

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.

Miss Blaines Prefect and The Golden Samovar

Miss Blaines Prefect and The Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is utterly bonkers. The basic premise is that Shona Ferguson, a librarian in her mid-fifties in Edinburgh's Morningside, is sent back in time to some point in 19th-century Russia by Miss Marcia Blaine founder of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. (The early part of the book covers the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie references.) Shona has no real idea what her mission is, simply that she has one.

Anyway, she ends up in the middle of serfdom Russia, although she can't work out an exact date. Is she to facilitate a romance between Lidia Ivanova and the dashing Sasha, or is she to work out if there's any foul play in the mysterious deaths of some of those around her? Is her own life in danger?

All this she has to work out while navigating the Scottish and Russian linguistic and cultural differences. But she does have, as her faithful assistant, "Old Vatrushkin", her own all-purpose serf comedy turn who is, naturally, not old at all.

More than that I won't say for fear of revealing too much. And the reader does have to concentrate quite a bit to avoid getting lost. There's a lot of 'Edinburgh' humour, and there are many historical and cultural jokes that I really enjoyed but might annoy others. Suspend belief on page one. But I laughed out a lot, though, which is always good, and it's a short book.

It's good to see this sort of genuinely funny book being given shelf-space. It belongs in the same category as James Hamilton-Paterson's "Cooking with Fernat Branca" (Gerald Samper and Shona Ferguson share a degree of insufferability, actually) and even a couple of my own novels. So I'm bound to like it.

View all my reviews

"Blogger" Book Launch

1/7/2018

I'm not sure anyone actually reads these posts but – just in case – thanks to all who came along to the launch of The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold. I hope you all had a good time, enjoyed the free wine(!) and stumbled across someone you knew.

I certainly loved being interviewed by my daughter Helen Chomczuk, who is Head of Development at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. That's a non-creative role, though, so it was actually Helen's first experience of anything like that – she was terrific.

My only regret was that there wasn't long to sing something better than a snippet of The Accidental Christmas Carol, but mid-June isn't really the ideal time for Christmas music.

However I'm slated to do a slot at Blackwell's at the Fringe this year (date TBA) and I promise you all something new and very different that night.

The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold

11/6/2018

Available from 12th June – my latest novel, The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold!

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...

Would you like to be at the book launch? If so, it's at Blackwell's, South Bridge, Edinburgh starting at 6.30. If you do fancy it, make sure you book a seat, although the event is free. Here's the link:

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

The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold

23/1/2018

A first wee peek. Some advance copies of the book, due for publication on 12th June 2018, might be for sale – contact me directly. The background music was an accident, but it's OK so I just left it.

The Sad Story of Some Useless Books

10/1/2018

(Image: Judit Klein)

I need to share a very sad story with you.

As some of you might know, I run a small self-publishing collective called Comely Bank Publishing. At the moment six of us have published books, a total of either nine or ten titles depending on whether you count ebook-only publications. We do all right; in fact some of us do very nicely and almost all of our titles have gone to reprint. But our motto is damna ad reductum – keep losses to a minimum.

In the circumstances, then, you'll understand that the very notion of throwing out books, even destroying them, is anethema to our association. Yet that's exactly what I'm about to do. What makes it worse is the books in question are actually my own.

My 2013 novel Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie has gone to reprint a few times now (they're not big print runs, 100-200 at most). By 2015 sales were beginning to slow down, but I didn't want it to be out of print so I asked the printer I was using at the time, Berforts, to run off 40 copies for me.

When the books arrived a few weeks later, I didn't know what to make of them. The ink seemed very faint, the copies seemed rather thick and the paper had a rough texture. Back then I was still learning about printing (I still am, in truth) so I couldn't work out what the problem was. Fortunately I had some copies left from the previous print run so I wasn't panicking.

And then, just as I was about to complain, Berforts went bust. It had gone into administration. As John Cleese might have said, it had ceased to be. It was a dead printer. I had nobody to complain to.

I had to find a new printer fast, and fortunately managed (our current printers are 4edge) with the help of a former Berforts employee. But I also needed to find out what was wrong with the old books so I sent a copy to the new printer and one of their staff helpfully explained over the phone that... absolutely everythingwas wrong with it. The wrong paper had been used, they'd even cut it in the wrong direction. Presumably this was because the firm was struggling to meet orders and it was my misfortune to get caught up in all of it. Berforts should have been ashamed of it. Thankfully it wasn't a big print run.

I have enough decent copies of Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie. You can still buy it in the shops and it's available online, too. But what can I do with those unsaleable copies? Nobody seems to want them, even free, and they're taking up valuable space. We have new titles coming, including one of my own called The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold, and of course last year Comely Bank Publishing also published The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwell-Hume. Meanwhile, I keep tripping over these two unopened boxes of substandard books in the middle of the floor.

They have to go, and reluctantly I've come to the conclusion that means "recycling". I can't even burn them to stay warm this winter as it's a fossil fuel. Perhaps they'll compost nicely.

Gordon Lawrie

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....

Punctuation: the Semi-Colon and the Comma

5/1/2018

I've had a couple of interesting discussions recently with fellow writers and editors over the value of style manuals such as the Chicago Style Manual, Fowler, Grammar Girl and so on.

Personally, I don't care for them much. Particularly when writing fiction, language style is definitely what seems natural: there isn't a 'right' and 'wrong'. I concede that style manuals are fun to look at sometimes, and there are a few things – italicisation of newspapers or song titles and so on – that my generation wasn't taught at school.

Here are a couple of examples. Some people just hate semi-colons (a word that can be spelled without the hyphen, of course). A semi-colon should separate two linked sentences; the two sentences should be independently viable but feel better connected.

Another bad boy is the "comma splice", sometimes known as the "comma fault". Occasionally it feels right to separate two sections with a comma, the words just read better that way. But you can't lay down rules for any of this. (That comma could even be a semi-colon, for instance. Or just two sentences. Or a dash.)

To quote Lynne Truss (not the Tory cheese woman), "done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing." I'd suggest the rest of us should consider dashing.

Finally, it so happens I completely disagree with Grammar Girl on the use of commas – I just happen to think she's coming from completely the wrong angles. The use of a comma is generally easy for me: it's where you stop to breathe. Just about everyone of my generation would agree with me.

That doesn't mean she's wrong, though, it just means that her style and mine are different...

The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold

28/12/2017

At last!

My latest novel, The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold, is at the printers and is slated for publication in the summer of 2018.

It's been a while coming, which might be a good thing – there's been a lot of chance to review at each stage. But it's been frustrating trying to get things moving. In the meantime, I'm immensely grateful to a range of people, especially Emma Baird, Katie McGlew and Joseph White, whose iconic cover you can see on the left.

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.

Review: Shotlandiya by Lucy Lloyd

27/9/2017

Shotlandiya

Shotlandiya by Lucy Lloyd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was prompted to read Lucy Lloyd's Shotlandiya by a neighbour, and eventually got round to reading a Kindle version of it. I wasn't sure what it would be like – the neighbour doesn't really know me very well, far less my reading habits – so I approached it with some doubts.

I needn't have worried. This is a thoroughly modern tale, weaving politics, media intrigue and romance seamlessly. The story takes place in the immediate wake of Scottish independence. The Russians take advantage of Scottish government weaknesses (note: SNP supporters might not like this book) to stake a claim to Rockall, then the rest of the country. Anna, the central character and the narrator, works for the newly independent Scottish Broadcasting Corporation producing radio programmes, and she finds herself compromised as Russian media figures slowly come to take over the SBC and control her work. Like everyone else, Anna finds some of the Russians more difficult to work with than others.

As if that weren't complicated enough, she finds herself gradually falling in love with a Russian diplomat assigned to oversee Scottish-Russian media relations, a relationship which she naturally tries to conceal as far as possible. And for the most part her work is seen as good, if possibly subversive, so that her colleagues begin to wonder if she's simply a collaborator.

Anna and Grigory are sent to Russia with a production team to produce a series designed to inform Scots about the breadth of Russian culture. But the cold, and its vast expanse, are just the start of their problems...

I found the characters extremely credible. I liked Anna a lot, and the author skilfully allowed me to grow to like Grigory as Anna did. The other characters seemed pretty well-rounded, although curiously I found the Russians more vividly painted than the Scots. Lucy Lloyd, I understand, works for the BBC herself and her understanding of broadcast media politics shines through this novel. So, too, does her knowledge of Russia, which seemed encyclopaedic.

This hasn't been out long and needs more of a shout-out. It's good. Lucy Lloyd can write.

View all my reviews

Review: A Rather Too Incredible Story

12/9/2017

Natural Causes (Inspector McLean, #1)

Natural Causes by James Oswald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first James Oswald/Inspector McLean. Living in Edinburgh, it had a lot of appeal and I found the characters appealing as well – although Chief Inspector Duguid seemed a little too stereotypical at times. Even objectionable guys should have a few positive features just to give them colour.

Let's get this straight – I enjoyed the book. I also recognise that I read it late at night and therefore in short segments. However I found the plot at times ridiculously complex and at least one aspect required the reader to suspend belief above and beyond the usual required of any fiction. Frankly, there were too many bodies, many with daft names and I found it all rather confusing. I still haven't managed to work out the total number of fatalities.

I also thought – but remember I was confused – that there was one enormous historical miscalculation. Let me get this right: a group of lawyers and so on who met at university in 1933 are still active when...? Around 2010, I think the story was set? The body at the start dated back "over 60 years" for sure. I reckon these people dancing about are all around 95. I'm amazed that no one here has picked up on that.

I'm trying not to give away any spoilers here but there's one thing anyone reading this should be aware of. I bought this as a crime/detective story, but if that's what you're looking for, you're definitely going to feel cheated at the end. I felt cheated, even if I still enjoyed it.

Unless I'm reassured that future McLean novels aren't going to pull that trick again, I'll leave them to other readers to enjoy.

View all my reviews

The Answer Is A Lemon

10/9/2017

A few months ago I fell out with a fellow writer about the supposed revelation of the real identity of the author Elena Ferrante. If you recall, a researcher into the author of My Brilliant Friend et al had unmasked her – correctly or otherwise – as a German translator.

Ferrante had asked for privacy, and Claudio Gatti, the researcher in question, made a poor defence of his right to find out more about her. He could have argued that she's made millions, enhanced in part by the secrecy surrounding her identity, for instance.

Instead, Gatti simply outed the German translator, saying that Ferrnate had lied about her past. I won't name the translator here because she, too, is entitled to as much privacy as I can offer. If Ferrante and this woman are not one and the same, then the researcher has ruined two lives, not one.

I suspect that at least part of the outrage amongst Ferrante's (mostly female) readership is that the author has always threatened to give up writing if she were ever exposed. And she undoubtedly has a right to privacy.

But where I disagreed with my writing friend (I'm still not sure we've made up yet) is that she, like many other women, saw something even more sinister in the fact that Gatti is male and Ferrante is (presumably) female: she saw a sexual motive. In the Guardian, psychoanalyst Fiona Sinclair suggested that,

.

Gatti tears off Ferrante's clothes, removes her cloak of invisibility, in something approaching a sexual act. Perhaps it was titillating for him.

.

I'd suggest that anyone who believes that – simply because Gatti is male and Ferrante is female, in other words – is themselves guilty of sexism. As a premise, it would suggest that only men can research the lives of men and women the lives of women. Which would be manifest rubbish.

Today, I came across an interesting parallel case, a woman who has re-branded herself to be known solely by her first name. I don't want to out her either so let's say that her real name is Jessica Lemon, and she wants to be known as "Jessica" in everything – Dr Jessica, Rev Jessica, Dame Jessica, even just "Jessica" on her passport. This isn't a cultural thing, it's purely a branding matter.

It causes problems on certain social media such as LinkedIn which demand accurate name disclosure. And I'm sure I'd be kicked off fast enough if I registered my second name as a symbol, which is what Jessica does. Technically she's not even asked for privacy, and she's choosing to play hide-and-seek with her surname. It's just her marketing ploy.

So does the fact that I'm faintly curious to know her real surname make me a sexual predator? I sure hope not.

Smashwords Interview

20/8/2017

This interview appears on Smashwords, but I thought it would look good here, too.

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.

The Discreet Charm Of Mary Maxwell-Hume

17/7/2017

I have a new project on the go! (Two, in fact, but I'll keep one of them to myself for the moment.)

Shortly after I wrote Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie, I decided to write a short story called The Piano Exam as a free publicity 'hook' to advertise the novel. In The Piano Exam, the central character decides to take on a piano exam and finds himself receiving lessons from a very unusual teacher called Mary Maxwell-Hume.

The story comes with its own piece of piano music. Years later, I sent it to a fellow writer in America, Bruce Levine, a massively experienced musician and musical director. Bruce liked Mary Maxwell-Hume in particular, and encouraged me to write more stories specifically about her. This novella is the result: The Discreet Charm Of Mary Maxwell-Hume. It's listed for publication later this year.

I'd be very interested in hearing what people think of it, and to encourage you, I'll offer a free (hard) copy of Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie to the first 15 people who email me to say that they'd like to read The Discreet Charm Of Mary Maxwell-Hume in electronic form, and send me back some sort of comment. (Offer ends 31st July 2017.) To be honest, I'd be very interested to find out if anyone actually reads this at all.