From handshake to hug – at Bloody Scotland 2023

I simply couldn’t resist the opportunity of saying ‘Fletcher Moss, I presume?’ so had to start off this year’s Bloody Scotland with Alex Gray’s New Crimes, where she talks to new crime writers. She receives so many proofs every year that her house is in danger of collapsing. This year Alex – who apparently is the daughter of a seventh daughter – talked to Fulton Ross, who might be some sort of elf, to Jo Callaghan who knows about AI, and to Alex Hay (I like the rhyming!) who’s into historical heists. And then there’s the ‘thuggish looking deputy headteacher’ who was previously Fletcher Moss, but now writes as Martin Griffin, his real name. I think, anyway. He recognised me and we shook hands and we laughed about his long ago lack of book signing capabilities. It went better this time.

Next I trotted over to the Albert Halls where I denied all interest in Alex Gray several times, on the grounds I’d just seen her. But once I looked at the programme, and also discovered I didn’t seem to have the tickets I needed for my next event, I realised their eagerness in wanting to offer up Alex was that she was the one chatting to James Oswald, with a bit of help from Jonathan Whitelaw.

Unfortunately someone was sitting on my chair when I entered, but I sent witchy thoughts and eventually he moved. Before Alex and James were let loose, it was time for the two minutes in the spotlight from a new writer, reading from their first crime novel. In this case Axl Malton with Cries of Joy. (Took me a while to get his name right…)

You don’t want to watch television with James. He sits there with his notebook, ‘writing is a compulsion, it’s a terrible thing.’ According to James, if you plot, then that’s already been written and no good for when he wants to write. He has a whiteboard in his study, and he forgets his characters’ names. He’s less keen on swearing, but doesn’t mind violent murders. He gets depressed by the news and doesn’t read true crime. If it weren’t for copy editors he’d keep repeating the same clichés over and over.

Alex believes the police – especially in Scotland, who are different – are fine people. All large organisations, including the police, have rogues. And having chatted to lifers in prison, they do not look for inspiration for crime in fiction; reading is purely entertainment.

At the signing after, I was pleased to see that Axl got to sit with James and Alex. And I was glad I caught James before the queues took over, so I could say hello before I was driven home for dinner and a rest, before returning to the Albert Halls for more.

Val McDermid and Abir Mukherjee chatted and joked for an hour, and we all had fun. In fact, it was such fun and the hour was perhaps a little longer than they ordinarily are. Luckily the very determined Ann Landmann was on door duty and let Abir know it was time to stop. Eventually he heeded her, giving everyone enough time to prepare for the next event. I occasionally struggle with hearing things, and had they not handed out the first two chapters of Val’s new book, I’d have come away under the impression the title is Past Lines. It’s not. It is Past Lying. (I have an appointment at the Hearing Clinic this week…) But, as always, great fun to listen to these two talk.

The evening ended with the only slightly delayed event of CrimeMaster, very ably run by C L Taylor and ‘Little’ Luca Veste. (Because Vaseem [Khan] wasn’t there.) The five contestants were Abir Mukherjee, Gytha Lodge, Mark Billingham, Mark Edwards and Susi Holliday. They all brought bribes; some better than others. Then we were treated to the sight of them competing on a sunny Stirling square (last year), proving it’s not really possible to write a – very – short story while running. As for the running in general and crawling through tunnels and jumping over obstacles; well that didn’t go well either.

But the worst came at the end. They had to spell the title of a book with the help of alphabet pasta in tomato sauce, without using their hands. It was disgusting but they all lowered their little faces into the troughs, I mean plates, of pasta. A couple cheated by using each others’ hands. Yeah, I know. It was fun. Even without Vaseem. At least for the audience. I think there was a winner. Possibly Mark Billingham.

This kind of thing is not terribly literary. But it has entertainment value.

Let’s hope Vaseem will be back next year.

The next day was ladies’ day. As chair Jenny Brown pointed out, there were more of us in the audience. On stage we had three ladies; her and Karin Smirnoff and Denise Mina. Both Karin and Denise have recently written books featuring detectives originally invented by men, Stieg Larsson and Raymond Chandler. Similar idea, but they came at it quite differently. Denise of the weird clothes (they are glorious!) likes research and has looked very carefully into LA and all that she needs to know. She also mentioned a Nordic coach trip ( sounds unlikely, I know) where people were told to get off to admire the views and engage in small talk. In Glasgow everyone talks to everyone.

Karin, on the other hand, did no research. She paid someone to do it for her. Although that might have backfired. Being a Swede and from the north of the country as well, she doesn’t like chatting. In her own quiet, non-assuming ways, Karin was actually quite funny. I’d been intending to introduce myself to her at the signing, but felt disinclined to disturb Karin’s Swedish silence, and left her to her queue of fans. After all, why would two Swedes chitchat such a long way from home?

The last day, Sunday, we went to the last panel of the weekend. The ballroom at the Golden Lion was packed to the rafters; a complete sellout. Barry Hutchison, aka J D Kirk, appeared with Marion Todd and Colin MacIntyre, chaired by Caro Ramsay. I’ve never seen quite so many seats in there, and was grateful for my chair in the far corner next to the marble column. I may have rested my head on it when things got a little too ‘Jo Nesbø-ish’ at times.

Marion was a fun new acquaintance for us, who seems to like murdering people in St Andrews. And Barry – aka J D – was pretty relaxed about his writing. He does no research, which is why he murders on home ground where he knows what’s what. He writes 4000 words doing 12,000 steps (he writes on a treadmill thingy). Or some such numbers.

It was clear quite a few people were there for him, issuing stern instructions on not killing any [more] dogs. After some parting words from Gordon Brown, we went to queue outside. The first man in line for Barry hauled six paperbacks out of his rucksack. That’s proper dedication, that is. The queue was long, so I had to wait for my hug, but I got it in the end.

So that was a pretty good Bloody weekend in Scotland, and with some luck Vaseem will be back next year…

Awards night in Southwark

It was just as well I opted for the easy 30 minutes – or more like 45 in the end – of the Society of Authors’ awards in Southwark Cathedral as a livestream. It would have been hard work mingling away in person, and it’s not as if I was up for any awards. Joanne Harris started the proceedings, and if she has any sense, then next year she will come with her own official whistler, to make people notice and to shut up. As it was, in the end someone did whistle, and there was some shutting up too.

And then it was Val McDermid’s turn to give a keynote speech, and she is a wise quine of crime who wanted the shortlisted authors to bask in the glory of being shortlisted. Winning isn’t everything, and this is worth remembering as you stand there, unprepared, thanking your cat instead of your agent. It took Val ten years to become an ‘overnight sensation.’

There were eleven prizes, and it took quite some time to go through them all, even at a fast trot. Not everyone was present, but there were enough to sprint forward, shake Val’s hand and pose for a photo. Someone sent her mother. I like mothers. And by the time Olaf Falafel won the Queen’s Knickers award, he ignored instructions not to speak, and mentioned that he was wearing a borrowed pair of the Queen’s knickers, just for the occasion. We didn’t get to see them.

After all that, they all had to return on stage for the group photo. And everyone was told to buy all the books.

It was nice to see, and nicer for me being at home. Had looked forward to watching the BSL interpreter, but he was hidden behind the Society’s address and other information…

Hot, or not

With my very senior witch’s hat on I – erm – signed up for this event twice. Nearly three times, in fact. I’m obviously quite keen. ‘How to Write a Crime Fiction Bestseller’ was the way for some Tuesday morning skiving off work, to hang out with Vaseem Khan on Zoom, courtesy of The Society of Authors. It was really for budding crime writers, but as I have no novel – crime or otherwise – in me, I was able to lean back and enjoy.

With two pointy implements behind him – his Historical Dagger Award, and a cactus – plus a suitably messy bookcase, Vaseem looked the business. Apparently crime pays, or at least, it outsells other genres. Beer helps, if he’s to be believed.

I already loved Vaseem, but to find out he used to be a Terry Pratchett wannabe was a lovely surprise. When that didn’t pay, and didn’t even let him escape getting an education, he went to LSE, became a management consultant and went to India to work for ten years. And for twenty long years he wrote seven novels that all failed to go anywhere, possibly because he wrote what he thought was wanted; white, English books.

Success came when he wrote something much more himself, and then added a baby elephant, and there we were. The hook (he kept mentioning the need for hooks) for him was the first sentence: ‘On the day he was due to retire, Inspector Ashwin Chopra discovered that he had inherited an elephant.’ I remember quite liking that.

You need to flex your writing muscle, and presumably that’s what those seven unwanted novels did. With less expectation when you are a new writer, you have the potential to exceed those expectations and that’s good for numbers, for publishers. You need a theme, as well as a plot and characters. If you can write something that is the same – but different – as some successful books, that would be good. Comping is a thing. You will be compared to others, and hopefully a place will be found for you. Vaseem admitted to borrowing from the da Vinci Code (I will try to forgive him).

Another ‘magic ingredient’ is quality, which in Vaseem’s case is to attempt to write like Hemingway. Study your favourite style. Remember the hooks. Make sure you don’t say the police jeep has windows when it doesn’t, i.e. get your facts right. Ginger is not an ingredient for either Chopra or Vaseem (I might have to disown him after all).

Characters matter more than plot. Make sure you have some secondary characters, who are actually interesting. Consider what’s hot, or not. Psychological thrillers are in, as is cosy crime. Everyone wants to be Richard Osman. Or write Gone Girl. Vaseem loves Michael Connelly, but also admitted to basing Chopra on the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

On writing outside one’s own culture, Vaseem is all for it. (His book for next year is a standalone set in small town US…)

After a [very civilised] potty break, it was question time.

In a crime novel, every book plot needs to be finished. The characters can go on. And you should avoid saggy middles, which I gather is easier with an editor because they will catch anything that sags. For us older [sagging] forgetful readers Vaseem suggests adding reminders of what’s happened earlier in the book. (I thank you.) And female detectives are allowed to get things wrong, just like their male counterparts.

Vaseem likes events, both large and smaller ones. Anything that gets him out there to meet readers. You want book charisma to persuade people to want your book. Newsletters are the best way of selling yourself online. You are in control and can talk directly to fans who have chosen to be on your mailing list. Events are outside your control, but very good even so.

And for god’s sake, bring back Ganesh!!! (Those are my words.)

The double possessive

Over breakfast I handed the Resident IT Consultant a post-it note. I’d been reading an obituary in the Guardian, and shuddered at what I saw, and decided at long last to discover if I’ve been wrong all these years (so unlikely), or if I had made it up.

The dead woman had married ‘a friend of her brother’. I need for it to be ‘a friend of her brother’s’ but who am I to say? Fifty years of reasonable fluency proves nothing.

He looked at it, muttered something about dative (I wish he hadn’t!) and then agreed that he would expect the possessive too. But he asked what I’d been taught about dative, and I informed him that the first time I was made aware of it was when learning German where you simply can’t avoid it.

If we do dative in Sweden, I must have imbibed it with the proverbial baby milk. Similarly with English; where I have managed quite nicely to avoid grammar at most times and have no wish to begin now.

But the Resident IT Consultant is a thorough man, and he knew where to look things up (Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage), which to my shame I didn’t know, nor that we have a copy (of course we do), or where it would be.

And it seems that this brother of the bride and his friend are an example of the double possessive. Fowler’s appears to believe that ‘my’ version is the better one, although you can obviously say whatever you like in whatever way you prefer. It’s just that I have seen it so much, recently, and it’s getting more and more common. Since the Guardian has a style guide – I think, anyway – one has to assume they have opted for a more single possessive.

Languages evolve. And so they should. It’s just that it grated on the eyes. And I suddenly feared I’d spent fifty years being wrong, because what’s learned early has a tendency to stick. Even when incorrect.

Launching with song

Despite some minor technical issues over photographs, Candy Gourlay’s second launch of Wild Song, online with Nikki Gamble last night, was probably the best ‘zoomy’ event I’ve attended. So, well done! A good event for a good book.

And those photos. Well, they helped. I’m never a great fan of too many pictures like that, but these really opened my eyes to what went on around the last turn of the century, and how they inspired the birth of Wild Song. I’m glad they did. And it seems many of us in the audience were relieved that Candy’s relatively slow writing process – over 15 years – moved the book from being about the birth of hot dogs, to introducing us to an intelligent young Igorot heroine in the Philippines, and her subsequent trip to St Louis.

Sometimes you just want to take things more seriously.

I learned a lot about growing up in the Philippines, both at the time Luki did, and also how it was for Candy.

The fairly large audience chatted in the chat box, and enjoyed finding out more about this book, which I guess many had not had an opportunity to read yet, as it was only published on Thursday. But the thing is, after this chat Candy had with Nikki, everyone wanted to read it.

Having been somewhat sorry not to be able to go to the physical launch in London earlier in the week, it was good to see a short video from that event. It confirmed my long ago impression that Filipino people sing as much as us Swedes. As Candy said, considering what her book was about, it was only right to fill the London launch with local Igorot people, singing and dancing.

Terry Pratchett – A Life With Footnotes

He was there. All the way. And that makes a difference.

So thank you Rob Wilkins, for writing the biography of Terry Pratchett, and for writing it so well, making it almost as humorous as if Terry himself had had a go at it. But most of all, thank you for being there with Terry, especially towards the end, when it can’t have been much fun.*

It’s been a while since I enjoyed a book quite as much as this one. Even when tears threatened to overwhelm me towards the end of the book, it was still [sort of] funny.

The doubts were there from the beginning. Can Rob really write a book, and can he write this particular book? Well, yes, he can and he did. He had help, from Terry himself, who had begun to gather facts about his life, especially the early years. Convenient, since Rob wasn’t around then. Other people helped, like his UK editor Philippa Dickinson.** (When Philippa once talked to me about editing Terry’s books, it wasn’t at all obvious how much she did. Now I know.)

Setting aside the fame and the money and the ability to write all those lovely books, I discovered I had a lot in common with Terry. He was clearly more right than I was when he suggested this.***

And, I know this is not about me at all. But I could only read A Life With Footnotes by keeping in mind where and when our paths crossed. I was at some of the events mentioned. In other cases I was there before or right after. And it seems I was less wrong than I thought in ‘holding on to’ Terry on that September day in 2010. Also, much of the off the record information I’ve been keeping quiet about has now been revealed.

I’ve said this before; I am so glad I have as many books left to read as I do. Now that Rob has shared what went on backstage, I feel the urge to go and check stuff again.****

If you love Terry Pratchett, this is the book for you.

*That taxi ride in New York, for instance.

** Who is ‘not a cantankerous bat after all.’

***At our second interview in 2010.

****I will need to make lists.

The Spice Boys

They were tricked. Lured to the Project Room under false pretenses.

And everyone else knew. The emails had suggested the weather or football if you ran into them, and actually had to have a conversation. No slips of tongues permitted. I get very nervous when words like confidential and secret are used. I mean, it’s just asking for accidents to happen, isn’t it?

So, the Spice Boys. Arne and Bjarne. It’s like a double act. They were, ever since that day back in 1889 when they first met. (I always thought they looked old. But that’s the effect of teachers. They need to be.)

So, since 1989 (which seems like a much more realistic date) Norwegian Arne Kruse and Dane Bjarne Thomsen have prodded and polished countless students in the Scandinavian languages at the University of Edinburgh, including the current head of the Scandinavian department. And now they were retiring, and there was to be a celebratory gathering and a handing over of a festschrift put together by their old friends and colleagues.

They knew this. It’s just they thought it was for the other one. They’d contributed, and they had a speech. About the other one.

But they were so touched by the surprise that the speeches suffered a little.

I thought the gathering was surprisingly full of older people until it dawned on me that the ones needing to honour these two men would of necessity be a little older than the young people who had lied to Arne and Bjarne, and tried to keep this a secret for a couple of years. Then it dawned on me that I was also an old people, permitted to be present because the editor of Bjarne’s book actually invited their mother.

Tack!

There was much chat and tea and coffee before. After there was much more chat and cake and something in fancy glasses.

The Spice Boys name is from the 1990s when Arne and Bjarne started their annual mulled wine. Glögg.

Meeting Budge

I was sad to discover that Budge Wilson died last year. It felt as though this Canadian children’s author could, would, outlast us all. It’s been nearly fifteen years since we met, but I still have her address in my address book – both her summer address and the regular one – in case I might want to look her up if I ever get to Canada, and more specifically, Nova Scotia. These days of course, I live in the old Scotia.

“Meeting Budge Wilson was rather like meeting a long lost Canadian aunt, if only I had one. I met Budge at her London hotel during her whirlwind British publicity tour for her book Before Green Gables. Things at the hotel weren’t working out very well, so Jodie from Puffin had some complaining to do, before we were given somewhere to talk. Once the practicalities were sorted and a number of confused hotel employees had got their act together with pots of tea and endless bottles of water, we were fine.

Budge looked lovely in a pink top and matching pink lipstick, which is the kind of colour co-ordinating I like. When I said that she looked just as she does in her photographs, she wondered if I’d also been able to see how short she is. To start with Budge is concerned because she’s not feeling a hundred percent well, but she perks up during the interview.

The meeting-my-aunt feeling continues when Budge starts off by interviewing me, which is very sweet, and I just wish I had more important information to share. I confess that I’m worried because I know very little about Budge, but she says “it’s lovely for me”. Being so well known in Canada, and particularly so in her native Nova Scotia, she has got tired of being asked the same thing over and over again.

Still feeling guilty about the insularity of the British book scene, where we tend to know far too little of even English language books from the rest of the world, I tell her that I Googled her the previous day, and was surprised to find my own review of Before Green Gables on the first page. If Budge hadn’t made a point of telling me her age, I wouldn’t have known she’ll be 81 in May. It makes the travelling to publicise a book much more impressive, and I’m amazed at her stamina.

I ask whether she has been to Britain before, and Budge tells me of the trip the family made in the late sixties when the children were young, touring the length of the country in a dormobile during five weeks. She describes it as “a fate worse than death”, which I suspect was more because it was tiring, than that this country was particularly horrible. It was a “hard, hard trip and I remember very little”, she says with a rueful smile.

This time, having left snow behind in Canada, Budge and her husband Alan really noticed the green fields of England as their plane came in to land. “All so tidy. I’m not used to tidy countryside. Like Prince Edward Island, with the hedgerows, like a child’s drawing.” Budge had time to study the London suburbs as the traffic crawled on their way in to central London, especially the architecture and people’s homes; “the stick-together houses” made from different materials than she’s used to.

As I admit to understanding the Canadian style wooden houses, on account of them being similar to Swedish ones, Budge reminisces about a trip she once made to Finland. It “was so like Nova Scotia you wouldn’t believe it”. She feels rather guilty over placing Anne Shirley in the middle of the woods in Nova Scotia, and says if she could write the book all over again she wouldn’t. But we discuss this, as there is obviously a need for Anne to have lived somewhere very different to Prince Edward Island, which strikes Anne as paradise.

It was L M Montgomery who gave Anne’s past a day trip to the seaside, and this forced Budge to give her somewhere inland to live. She spent days driving round trying to find where to place Bolingbroke and Marysville and “up the river”. She had to settle on a fictional area after finding red soil somewhere, which meant that it wouldn’t do for Anne, who had never seen that colour soil before coming to PEI. Budge reckons Bolingbroke might have been Truro, as it fits the description given by Montgomery.

“Prince Edward Island has so many Japanese in the summer, it’s surprising the island doesn’t sink”, says Budge, adding that she feels she has “short changed my province”. I suggest that she couldn’t very well write her Green Gables prequel with an eye to the tourist industry.

I’d read somewhere that Budge had been reluctant to take on the task of writing about Anne’s early years when she was approached and offered the job. “I didn’t want to write it”, she says. “I said I’ll think about it. I thought about it for two months”. One reason was that Budge had another book on the go, a collection of poems for the Swiss Air disaster near Halifax ten years ago. Being two thirds of the way through this, she knew she couldn’t both finish it and write the Green Gables prequel. And “I was concerned L M Montgomery might not want me to do this”.

Budge was also fully aware of the strong feelings she would incur by writing the book. There are many Canadians “whose hearts beat so strongly for Anne, they’d not want me to do this”. After she had decided to do it, Budge found that when it was announced to people, there were a few who didn’t have time to “fix their faces” on hearing about it. On the whole, though, reviews have been favourable, with only “one that did tear me to shreds”.

As she approached the task, Budge found it was “a puzzle to solve, with a heroine not of my making”. Here was a girl who had suffered verbal abuse, there was physical abuse that she was seeing, drunkenness, postnatal depression, and so on. Budge had never written anything historical before, so that was another challenge. She likes to do her “research by asking human beings”.

I ask if Budge knows when Anne was born, and whereas she had thought it might be in 1876, careful counting backwards from when Anne’s son Jem joins World War I, puts her year of birth as 1866. This meant Budge had to be careful and “never mention the date”, and she had to stay vague to avoid inconsistencies. Budge considered bare light bulbs for the orphanage, but was told not to “touch electricity”, which is wise advice in more ways than one. Other problem areas are clothes and how people work, where both safety pins and assembly lines needed avoiding. For those readers who remembers Anne’s puffed sleeves, it seems that L M Montgomery got that wrong, but Budge guesses she just wanted to use them, and so she did.

As Budge talks about the process of getting started, she waves her arms about, indicating Penguin to the right and the Montgomery family and law firm on her left. She first had to provide sample chapters, as well as a long outline of what she would write.

To her astonishment, Budge loved writing Before Green Gables. “I tend to write the first draft extremely quickly”, and she wrote a chapter a day, in 71, non-consecutive, days, finishing on her 80th birthday.

Usually Budge likes to take a long time over “the lovely editing process”, sitting in her bed, with all her papers spread out, and writing by hand. This time she had a deadline to meet, so had to rush things rather more. Penguin originally wanted 300 pages and Budge’s reaction to this was that she couldn’t possibly write that much. The finished book is 465 pages, and that’s after some of the pruning Budge had to do. She tried very hard and managed to cut about 2000 words, initially. The Americans wanted her to cut another 32,000 words, but all she felt able to prune was another 4000. The scenes between Anne and Mr Thomas were some of the ones they suggested removing, but Budge stuck to her guns and kept those passages.

While writing, her “saddest moment was when Anne gave the teddy to Noah”, and she muses over the fact that as the author she could have changed this, but felt she shouldn’t. Anne couldn’t have kept the teddy when she got to the orphanage anyway. I ask how much research Budge did as regards what orphanages were like. She looked into things very carefully, and found to her astonishment that whereas Canada had laws about the humane treatment of animals, the humane treatment of children came later, in the 1900s.

We discuss the dead men in Anne’s life; Mr Thomas and Mr Hammond, as well as Matthew. I admit to a fondness for the Eggman, and Budge says how “very crucial” he is, and how she had to delay things in the plot to prevent it being possible for Anne to be adopted. In all, there were so many possible good outcomes for Anne, and it was heartbreaking that Budge needed to “keep” Anne for Matthew and Marilla.

Something that had puzzled me when reading Budge’s book, was what age it’s intended for. Somewhere I’ve seen 8+, but whereas it’s about a young girl, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s suited for that age group. And I wouldn’t say Budge’s style is difficult, but it’s not dumbed down, either. Budge herself feels it’s very much a book for all ages, but it seems that most readers are adults.

Once Budge had finished Before Green Gables, she had a lesson in saying nothing in interviews, as the publisher wanted nothing given away too early. Budge says her blood pressure shot up, until she learnt to talk without saying very much. Unlike with me, where Budge suddenly starts worrying that she’s talking too much. She gets out a copy of my review of her book and asks me about the Ipecac. She felt it had to be included in the book, but she was so uncertain about whether it was safe, and Budge was intrigued to find I had used it. That brings us on to homeopathy in general, and then I feel it is I who talk too much.

We get chatting about book covers, and Budge shows me the Canadian cover. Under the dust wrapper the Canadian edition is really very attractive, with an old style faded look. I ask how the book is selling, and in Canada it’s “selling extremely well”, and had sold out before the launch. The launch, incidentally, was held on a day with a blizzard, which caused most of her family to be late for the event, although they arrived safely in the end.

Budge gets out her bag to show me. Her daughter made it specially for this trip, and although it’s not Budge’s usual colours, she really likes it. So do I. It’s a beautiful green fabric, with BGG appliquéd in orange on one side and the name Budge on the other. The handles are plaited in orange wool, and they are of course Anne’s hair. It’s the perfect Anne bag. Budge had expected the British to be so sophisticated that they wouldn’t appreciate a hand sewn bag, but everyone has liked it.

I say that people here have less time to make things, and Budge has noticed how much “everyone is rushing”. Apparently a sure sign of a Nova Scotian is that they stand still on escalators. I wonder what that makes me?

I ask Budge to sign my copy of her book, and I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone consider so carefully what to write. When I read it, it’s an invitation to come to Nova Scotia, and that’s definitely a first. Budge has described her home province so vividly, that I don’t think she needs to be concerned that she’s not “selling it”. Their “springs are very grim” and Budge says she never makes school visits outside town in April, because it’s “ a hideous month”. She tells me to come in September to see their “magnificent fall”. I get the impression that autumn colours are better in Nova Scotia than anywhere else. And her description of the varying seascapes near her home, almost has me on the first plane to Halifax.

The next day, Good Friday, Budge and her husband Alan are going to Oxford to visit old friends. She’s brought a book to give them. Not Before Green Gables, but something else. Budge starts to tell me something to do with this, and then forgets what she was going to say. “Don’t you feel that the things you lose are always the ones you think are the most interesting?”

It’s an unkind thought, but I’m almost grateful for the migraine that cancelled Budge’s next interview, which gave us twice as long to talk. Had it not been for my train home, I may well have been there for much longer still. We find our way out, and Budge grabs the large, almost full, bottle of water, and says she’ll take it to her room. I admire someone who is sensible and thrifty.”

(This interview was first published in March 2008.)

Fictional New York?

I’m not able to keep track of all new books of this kind, or most kinds, actually, but this is a nice return to a nice children’s book, which I reviewed just over ten years ago. Doesn’t time fly?

“Liar & Spy is what I have taken to labelling a New York kind of children’s book. Do you know what I mean? I love them with a passion, and I’ll have to stop ridiculing the Americans for loving boarding schools and castles and other charming – and English – things.

Rebecca Stead has written a wonderfully warm story about Georges, who has to move with his parents from their house in Brooklyn to an apartment when they fall on hard(er) times. It’s close enough that he can stay at his school. But he is being bullied, and his only friend has joined the ‘other side.’

There are other children in the apartment block, and Georges makes friends with Safer and his sister Candy, who are home-schooled. Safer invites Georges to join his spy club and they take to spying on the neighbours, until things get a bit bad. Things at school are also not going well, but Georges doesn’t share any of this with his father.

We don’t see much of Georges’ mother because she works double shifts at the hospital. She leaves him messages by way of Scrabble tiles when he sleeps.

Eventually we learn why Safer spies on people, and Georges works out what to do about the situation at school. It is all very American. I don’t think this would work in the UK, and that’s the whole charm of Liar & Spy. I just loved it!”

Launching those Kings and Queens

I was standing on the pavement outside the National Library of Scotland yesterday, waiting for Daughter to join me, when someone prodded the back of my arm. I couldn’t work out how she could have snuck up from behind, so turned round and discovered a very yellow Kirkland Ciccone. One could almost have imagined it was Easter. But he was a pleasure to behold.

Almost eight years to the day from when we first met, at a Theresa Breslin event, here we were, for a Theresa Breslin event. She spent lockdown writing about some of Scotland’s many Kings and Queens, and the time had come to launch this gorgeous, historical picture book, with illustrations by Liza Tretyakova.

We started off watching Kirkie having tea and half a strawberry tart. (I mean Daughter and me. Not the whole audience.) Then we launched ourselves at the drinks table for some water. Although it’s hard to event and handle a wineglass at the same time. Said hello to Mr B, who was wearing his latest book creation t-shirt and looking great as ever. It had been too long.

Were informed we were too old for a goodie bag, so settled for saying hello to all the involved publisher people, who we’d not seen for years, either. And there was the wineglass of water, living a precarious life among people who might need to applaud.

As always, Theresa had attracted a large crowd. She began by reading one of the stories in Illustrated Legends of Scotland’s Kings and Queens. It was about Margaret in Dunfermline, and I was grateful to learn how Queensferry, both North and South, came about. This is the thing about Theresa and her many historical tales; you learn a bit of history in a very painless way. Nice story, and history.

After some Q&A it was time for book buying and book signing. Kirkie had already had to steal away to his train home, and Daughter and I crossed the George IV Bridge in search of almost invisible pizza.

It was all fine. But my foot hurt. And I managed to hurl my spectacles all over the pavement. (It seems to be all about glasses and pavements these days…) It’s very hard to see glasses on a dark pavement. Especially without your glasses on. But it all ended well, with no treading of feet on anything.