Writing about writing itself; namely my book and other stuff I write
Well, I’m all packed up and ready to go to the Solas Festival – camping gear, clothes, waterproofs (the weather forecast looks miserable) and a pile of books that hopefully people will be interested in buying. As you can see in the photo, it’s been quite a test of compact packing. My long train journey…
I’m thoroughly chuffed to announce that I’m going to be appearing at the Solas Festival later this month. If you’ve not heard of Solas before, it’s a wide-ranging annual arts festival based in Biggar, South Lanarkshire, and it features music, talks, performing arts, literature and a wide range of family-friendly activities. This year it will…
Out of a modicum of boredom more than anything else, I conducted a little experiment last week. I have a pile of copies of my first book, Up The Creek Without a Mullet (I may have mentioned it here once or twice), and decided to run little competitions on each of the social media platforms…
I got back this weekend from a six-day journey down the Inverness to Edinburgh train line. I stopped at every station, twenty-three in total, including my start and end points. I tried to spend at least a couple of hours in each place, staying overnight where timetables dictated. It was an interesting chance to see…
Happy World Book Day, everyone. If, of course, you’re not too busy celebrating St David’s Day in Wales, National Pig Day in the USA or the rather enticing prospect of Iceland’s Beer Day. As part of World Book Day today, I was privileged to be invited to a local secondary school, Millburn Academy, to do…
The (self-imposed) deadline looms. As is all too depressingly obvious, it’s not long until Christmas and that is my deadline for finishing off my second book. This will, as I may have mentioned before, run on from UTCWAM, chart my adventures in England, Canada, New Zealand and the western USA, and effectively bring the mission…
I’m not long back from my Inverness Book Festival appearance, which was really good fun, and wonderfully supported by the brilliant staff at Eden Court. I was lucky enough to have a great audience who asked lots of interesting questions, and I hope my slideshow presentation tour of the mullet adventures (both those featured in…
I can now confirm the details of my appearance at the Inverness Book Festival next month – the unmissable date for your diary is Wednesday 10 August at 5pm in the OneTouch Theatre at Eden Court. Full details including online ticket booking are here on the book festival website. I’m really chuffed and excited to…
Today is my last day before going back to work after a month off spent writing. I’d set myself the target of finishing a first draft of my second book, and while I haven’t quite achieved that I am about 75% of the way there and am pleased with my progress. The momentum remains as…
Yesterday, I started a month’s annual leave, which – despite the temptation to disappear somewhere – I am using to get stuck into my second book. As I wrote a while ago, it’s been quite a battle getting into the groove of writing but I’ve recently broken through an important barrier. I would have been…
“It’s like apples,” he said. “You only need one or two bad ones to turn the rest bad. And that’s how it is with Muslims – maybe only 10% are fundamentalists, but they can turn the others.” It was a difficult conversation, for diplomatic rather than linguistic reasons. He spoke excellent English, but the situation…
I discovered quite by accident today that Up The Creek Without a Mullet is now available on iBooks, Apple’s rather funky ebook reader for the iPhone and iPad. Much as I am a huge fan of both ebooks as a concept and iBooks as an application, Apple don’t, for some reason, have as many titles…
I am all too rarely able to make it along to the monthly gatherings of the Highland Literary Salon, and last night was one such occasion. It was a “slam night”, which, far from being a chance to practice ones wrestling moves as I first speculated, was in fact a chance for participants to sign…
Tomorrow night is my book reading and discussion in Dingwall – 7.30pm at the Greenhouse, details on the events page. Please do come if you can, and please don’t if you can’t. It is more of an “in conversation” format than a fully author-led format, so I’m looking forward to seeing what questions are thrown…
I was tickled to be directed by Fraser to this competition on the Bradt website – a travel writing competition with the theme “up the creek”. I’ve no idea if they’ve been inspired by UTCWAM but part of me is sorely tempted to enter simply by posting them a copy. I’ll not be doing, though…
Until my previous post earlier today, it was three weeks since I last blogged. Perhaps a record. Not that I have ever committed to any frequency on here, but the absence does reflect a similar lack of finger-to-keyboard when it comes to other writing, and most acutely the sequel to Up The Creek Without a…
You might remember me recently reporting that I will be presenting at a Night of Adventure – the first Scottish date in a long-running series of charity fundraisers organised by Alastair Humphreys in aid of Hope & Homes for Children. Details are have now been confirmed, and you can find them here (and here on…
It’s been a busy and packed couple of days. I got back last night from an overnight trip that saw me take in Dundee, Stirling and Cupar for work, involving seven different trains and time spent waiting on freezing platforms in illustrious highlights of the Scottish rail network such as Perth and Ladybank. I suppose…
Things have been quiet for me on the events front lately, but two forthcoming talks about all things “mullet” are now confirmed and I’m excited to be able to tell you all about them. Firstly, Sandstone Press, my publishers, have commenced a series of monthly events featuring their books, and I will be doing one on…
If you survived to the end of Up The Creek Without a Mullet, you might recall mention (on p206) of the Adelaide-based amateur touch rugby team The Mullets, whose member Natalie wrote to me when my 2005 trip to hunt Australian mullets made a few headlines. She told me about some of the fun quirks…