Pressing the flesh

Last weekend I was in lovely Grantown-on-Spey, nestling close to the Cairngorms, for the town's Wee Crime Festival.

It's been three years since the festival was last held. First 2020 happened. Then 2021 came along. 2022 hasn't been THAT much better but at least the festival was back on.

It's organised by Marjory Marshall, the energetic owner of the town's bookshop, the Bookmark. It's a popular store, footfall is incredible - local bookshops can be part of the lifeblood of a town. Someone told me that property prices for towns with a bookstore are higher than those without.

Anyway, the festival...

I've been lucky enough to be a regular there for a number of years. Along with crime writers Caro Ramsay and Michael J. Malone, I present a comedy mystery play each year called Carry on Sleuthing (there are three of them! And the mystery is, where's the comedy?) We also chair some of the panels over the weekend as well as participating in others as ourselves, as it were.

It felt good to be back, and not just because Grantown is a lovely place to visit. It, and the other festivals I've been lucky enough to attend this year, made me realise how much I missed getting out there and seeing the whites of the readers eyes! 

When I began this lark we call authoring, when I was writing true crime and non-fiction, I wasn't called upon to do much in the way of public speaking. There were radio and TV interviews but I was invited to only one festival, where one man approached me following my talk to remonstrate with me over the fact that there were no photographs of dead bodies in my books. 

I backed away sharpish, looking for a safe space. Or a panic button.

But since embarking on the stormy seas of fiction, I've become an old hand at the festival game, which is amazing to me because I am actually shy, Mary Ellen. 

Meeting the reading community is a vital part of what we do. A couple of months ago  I attended an event for a 'celebrity author' who announced at the start that he would not be doing a signing at the end - all books on sale were pre-signed. I was incensed that the unwritten contract between author and reader had been broken. To my mind, signing books and sharing a few words with the people good enough to shell out their hard-earned folding green to buy them goes with the territory.

The message he sent was that he didn't care if anyone bought his book. (Actually, he said that at one point during the interview. Quite breathtakingly arrogant, I thought).

I didn't buy his book.

I'll be out again next week. Every year that fine and august body, the Scottish Book Trust, funds events across the country for a week long literary extravaganza called, cunningly, Book Week Scotland.

It sees authors traversing the face of Scotland, up hill, down glen, into the streets, to talk in libraries, community halls, phone booths. Okay, I made the last one up.

I've got a full week going coast to coast, for which I'm grateful. I'll be in Musselburgh (on the East Coast), Saltcoats (West Coast), Motherwell (Central Belt) and then Dundee (East Coast again). 

Granted, the phrase going coast-to-coast in Scotland doesn't mean the same as it does in the US of A.

It will be exhausting, for I am not a young man, but it will be fun appearing with other authors, talking about my work, having a laugh and - it is fervently hoped - if not selling books then at least inspiring readers to borrow them from those all-important libraries. 

When next we are together, dear reader, I'll tell you how it all works out.

Places in the memory

Book Week Scotland has only just ended.

This is an annual clambake of all things bookish thrown by the Scottish Book Trust and supported by Creative Scotland and the Scottish Library and Information Council. 

In previous  years it has seen authors going hither and yon to talk about their books, writing in general and meeting readers in events held within libraries, books stores and other venues.

Naturally, last year it was badly hit by the pandemic, with many events going on-line, but you can't keep a good book promotion down because this year, arms filled with vaccine, pockets with masks and hands liberally coated with various gels and unguents, many of us were once more traversing this great land to promote the written word. And ourselves, of course, for there is no ego like an author's ego. 

Well, maybe an actor. 

Or a rock star. 

Or a politician. 

OK, there are many egos like an author's ego but this isn't about those others. 

Early reports, however, indicate that in many cases audience numbers are down, with readers perhaps still hesitant to come out thanks to "the Rona." It's understandable but let's hope next year life is back an a more even keel.

One of my events took me back to Inverness, where my protagonist Rebecca Connolly is based. For those who don't know, Inverness is seen as the capital of the Scottish Highlands, situated on the Beauly Firth and at the head of the Caledonian Canal, that great waterway carved out of the Great Glen, linking various lochs to take shipping from west to north east and thus avoid the long and arduous passage up the west coast and traversing the blustery north.

I love the highlands, which is why I decided to set this series among their rolling hills, ragged mountains and lochs whose depths conceal many mysteries. This time I stayed in an inn with history going back hundreds of years situated on a road that was once a main arterial route in the days before internal combustion and oxygen having to be made available at petrol pumps to bring us round after the price shock.

I had some time to wander around the city, naturally signing copies of my books in the local Waterstones bookstore, and, on the way to Grantown-on-Spey to visit a fabulous independent store, the Bookmark, I took time to wander in a vast forest of Scots Pine so tall that it wasn't the breeze that stirred the tops but the breath of angels.

There are memories in these wild places for me. The route there and back took me past Pitlochry in Perthshire, where the autumn colours still clung to the trees as if reluctant to part from us. It was here I went camping for the very first time with my wife and even as I sped past all these years later I could smell the bacon frying in the morning. 

I passed the turn off for Kinloch Rannoch, 18 miles to the west, and my idea of heaven. We used to rent a cottage near there at least twice annually for many years.

The Beatles sang of the places they remember and it came into my head as I thought of Kinloch Rannoch and Schiehallion, the fairy mountain, rising from the mist. I thought of walks around the woodland, the leaves golden brown in the soft autumn sun, and wondering at the peace of the Black Wood, the largest tract of the ancient Caledonian forest in Scotland. I thought of the dogs that were once my companions on these walks and, naturally, of my late wife who loved the area as much as I love it. I thought of its history, rich with incident, red with blood as much of the highlands are. And I thought of Rannoch Moor;  vast, bleak and dark in its mystery. 

The thoughts ran through my head as if on fast forward as I sped north, passing the chasm of Killincrankie where once a battle was fought and, centuries later, I once walked with my wife and friends in dead of night as we made our way back from the pub to our campsite. 

But then I was beyond the area and all these memories were but ghosts in my rear view mirror.

Looking back, I believe that I was always at my happiest there and I have the urge to return and let Mickey (my dog) romp in the pawsteps of his much-loved predecessors. 

Maybe I will, if only one more time, for the good times. As the Carpenters once sang.

(Here are some images from the area)

Charlie, a dog who has long since left me, just seems to fit in.

One of the views with the ruins of a once grand house just visible beyond the tree

Dunalastair Water

Bleak Rannoch Moor

The autumn colours on the River Tummel are always breathtaking

Schiehallion rising above the mist

Even in the rain, the valley is spectacular