Postcards

My Icelandic friend. I think I can call him that, he’s the only one I have of the icelandic persuasion anyways, and we get on well enough to warrant me calling him a friend – we’ve bought each other beer on a number of occasions.

Here, I’m getting away from my point. He’s a very clever bloke. PhD qualified, Uni lecturing, travel memoir writer among many other things. It’s probably enough for you to know that he’s one of the good guys. Well he started a blog a while back. Loads of people have contributed. I wanted to show you mine. Have a look. Let me know what you think. Or not.

It’s called Postcard from Stirling

rare haggis sightings…

My spell as a chair at the bwf went as well as I could have hoped for. The first and only real difficulty was the elevated stage. Having the kilt on meant audience members potential for beneath tartan glimpses ran high. I apologised just in case. Everybody giggled. It was a starter for ten. It put a crack in the dam. It didn’t take too much more for a very generous audience to pour their laughter all over the panellists.

Nick Earls steamed in with a steady flow of frothy anecdotes full of writerly wisdom and easy humour. It was quality. It’s why festival peeps love him. Disco Boy and Chaser original, Dominic Knight gave the waters of authorial comedy a stir of his own and the session rapidly turned into a rush of unadulterated entertainment. I laughed my way through it. I even managed to float a couple of questions.

The boys performed like gentlemen and as the chair I had very little to do. You could say it was plain sailing.

A wee seat at the bwf

It’s on innit? The writers festival’s started. Fully swinging. Not a single South Bank car park to be had. Writers and readers wandering round, bumping into each other, spilling words all over the place.

If you see me say hullo. I’ll have my head down with the tunes on. I’m nervous see.  I’m doing a wee bit. Event 68. A quiet affair on the Queensland Terrace. Saturday 11:30-12:30.

I’ll be asking Dominic Knight and Nick Earls ‘What’s in the Name’ of their new books. I’ll be a chair. Hopefully a sharp edged glittery one with clean lines and a sleek cover. But more like the fat auld stinky number with burst cushions and a wee rip across the back that’s been lying on the deck in the weather too long.

It’s the audience I’m nervous of. All them people. Looking at us. Listening. Aye and probably laughing.

Which, of course, is what we’re aiming for. Nick Earls has some lovely stories and Dominic Knight was one of the Chaser originals. He’s bound to have a story or two.

Maybe see ye there.

Here’s a wee link to the bwf thing… so you can have a look over shenanigans planned for the weekend.

hands like a buffalo’s hooves

Some days I just can’t pick things up. Not physically, mentally. Like if my brain had hands, they wouldn’t have fingers, they’d be hooved stumps. 

It’s because I’m oh so very busy. Writing, reading, teaching. It’s mental. Variety is the spice of life, but too many flavours can turn the soup to paste. Which is where my wee brain is at. A thick bookish paste.

It’s because of the books see? Reading them for friends, for the BWF (post to follow shortly), for work and sometimes if I’m lucky, just for fun. And then there’s the writing of them. My own in particular. I’ve started into a more structurally sound draft of the two-week manuscript. I’m enjoying it. But all this book business is too much for my wee brain (I’m really not very clever). It’s been working at maximum capacity for too long. And it’s a wee bit tired, ye know stretched. So I’m having a job gathering new info and keeping it there. I keep falling over myself. It’s harder to break the fall with buffalo’s hooves for hands.

Keeping up with the blog is another thing that’s been getting missed. In a vain effort to regain some normalcy in the places where electronic interaction can go beyond giving a messy inbox a good seeing to, I have (all puns and innuendo aside) found a way to explain myself. Even if it’s not very clearly.

This is only the beginning.

Writing a book in 2 weeks.

I’ve written a novel. My second. I wrote it in 15 days. 55,000 words. Started on July 16. Completed on July 30. It would have taken the best part of 200 hours. So I didn’t see much of my kids. I only managed it because my incredibly understanding wife gave me the invisibility coat we keep for this and similar adventures.

I have to say I’m pleased with myself. It was a slog. A brutal, coffee-wired, head-bending, eye-burning slog, but I’m here, sitting with a manuscript in my hand. In the few days afterward my brain would drop out like a wonky dial-up internet connection. I’d be having a conversation with someone and my mind would just fall away. Not just miss a beat; I’d miss the verse, the chorus and the bridge.

But the book’s done. Better still, it fits together. Obviously it needs a wee edit. First drafts always do. I’m not so worried about the editing. If I’m honest, I’m looking forward to it.

Since then I’ve also written a short story – based on ideas that bounced off each other in my head and landed on the paper. The ideas popped in there mid book, while I was busy tiptoeing the line separating madness from ordinary nonsense. Oh aye, it was a fair old ride.

Postscript to my holiday mindfulness:

Brisbane is much brighter now, but it’s because I know that one day I must and will return to live in Scotland.

I understand that being at home wherever my family are is essential to my well being; living in another country for the good of those closest is fundamental to my soul’s wealth, health and happiness. But being a part of something as colourful, cultured and comical as Scotland is having the sun in my heart, not just on my face.

Sláinte

away home with the unachieved

Last day of the holidays. There’s more shopping and a list of a million other things still to be done. There’s even more things we haven’t seen, places we haven’t been and a hundred people we need to say goodbye to. We’re never going to make it of course. When we get on the plane, we’ll still be saying – we should’ve took the wee yin to the castle, we should’ve seen young Michael, we should’ve headed to London and Leicestershire. We keep telling ourselves we’ll be back next year and we’ll have more time then. If we’d had more time this time, we’d have an even bigger list of unachievements. 

I’m shattered. The time I’ve spent relaxing could be balanced on the edge of the wife’s superheated credit card. Like the card, I’m in need of a wee rest. Time for a breath and a few slow moments. I knew coming home to Scotland would be a bruising affair, emotionally and physically. I didn’t expect to feel quite this battered. Now, I’m looking forward to returning to Brisbane, which only leaves me with another mouthful of questions around where we should be in the world.

Scotland – home and away

I’m in Scotland. It’s brilliant. Rolls n Sausage, Fish Suppers, pickled onions, Irn Bru, warm family, drunk aunties, rainy barbecues and filthy kids. It makes me homesick. Homesick for Scotland. I live in Brisbane now. Have done for the best part of 11 years. But I miss my home land. I really miss it. Coming back makes me realise just how much. This is summer here. It’s holiday time and the family have made an extra effort for us. We really appreciate it too. It’s humbling and exciting and fun. I realise it’s not this brilliant or even welcoming all the time. I also know, before long, I will be hankering for the wide open skies and swimming pools and sunny heat of Brisbane. I realise with no small amount of fear that Scotland may never be home again, I realise with even more fear that Brisbane might never be enough. I’m not sure where it leaves me.

Home and Away

This is it. This is the new home of my wee blog. Nice int it?
The football fiction stuff will continue. It may not be as regular because obviously I’ve now given the rod in my back the digital equivalent of a galvanised coat. It will of course continue to be the grist in the mill of my PhD and my research which forwards the notion that a football fiction genre does exist.

Now as an added bonus, if you like, there will be the added gravitas of  non-football fiction content… stuff about writing, my own writing and other peoples, what I think of the world, the writing industry, how my current YA novel is progressing and all sorts of other nonsense. 

So this now home and but it’s away as well. – the football references will always be there