Friday, June 28, 2019

A sunny day !

Scotland is basking in a glorious heatwave.

It has not rained for 48 hours and that alone is some kind of record.

I have three books published this month.

The reprint of The Suffering Of Strangers with the new publisher.

                                

                                


The paperback version of  The Sideman.

                               

And the brand new standalone called Mosaic in hardback.

                              

To tell you the truth I have no idea where I am  or who I am.

The new PR person is putting in a lot of spadework, but  I had to turn down the last radio interview as I would be airborne ( in a plane) or waiting in a queue. She wants me to do all kinds of pieces to camera.

And the launches have been busy but all elsewhere, seems strange not to have a Glasgow Launch ( there will be Dundee/ London etc).

Here's the last picture of the Grand Day Oot, more about that later!
We are on the beach at St Andrews, right in front of the Royal And Ancient Club House.
We have crossed the entire country in one day for charity!
Note that Scottish people are naturally blue and they turn white in the sun.

Oh, sorry that was not the last picture.
 This is the last picture.
This was us having a water pistol fight.



These 'play type' pics  will not play as a video- you can get that later.
So the new PR  person wanted me to go out and film bits of the country that appear in books.  So here I am taking nonsense about that view, which is just before Glen Coe. Behind the cameraman were 45 German motorbikers and a bus load of Japanese filming me filming that.



here is the car park at the Glen Coe ski centre. In the book I am writing, the snow gates have closed, and the detective duo are passed from one Police Land Rover to another.
And then they get snowed in the Glen creating, I hope, a tense locked room mystery.

And this is part of the West Highland way- about 5  days of walking.... very often women walking on their own, with no mobile phone signal
and with nobody having a clue where they actually are.. 


Here is the west highland way itself, you can just make out a few figures on the path.
 The police and ambulance were busy picking up  walkers suffering from heatstroke.

This is back up at Glen Etive, where the next book is set.
It's the Skyfall location I told you about a while ago.
 I am standing  at the head of the Glen,  that road runs for miles to the head of the loch, after that it's water only all the way to the sea.

I saw this last time I was up the Glen, and a hillwalker friend told me that it's a coffin bridge.

 There are very few ways to cross the River Etive, well one proper bridge and the Coffin Bridge.
If you want to cross, you pull the box across on the pulley, get in, and pulley yourself back over.

The glen is pretty steep at this point.







Down at the river going for a relaxing pose with book and dog.
I was pining the latter to the ground as she's useless at staying still. 


Aiming for a wee bit to camera with my faithful researcher, Mathilda. 

The Ski lift was busy. Very busy, with folk going up carrying bikes and then cycling down the side of the mountain.
The air ambulance was busy with that as well.

A much less dangerous occupation, coffee, cake and the new book.
This is the  standalone book with the unreliable narrator, or is she a misunderstood reliable narrator. 
So far, all the reviews have been good.

then a hang glider appeared from no where, with the moon just behind it.
 it would be a better pic if I had taken my super duper camera.
 but this was with my phone...

I have no idea what that snorkel thing is!



The aftermath of a forest fire that was about ten years ago.... I thought it might be useful  in a future book as there's no way you can go across that without leaving tell tale footprints....

This is the lochan of the lost sword. I had to talk about it as I put a body in there  at the start of The Sideman.
It is on the West Highland Way so behind me were four very tired Dutch walkers who listened with interest as I did my piece to camera.  They seemed to be very keen on what I was saying.
 As we left, they stopped us and asked ' How far to the campsite?' and explained they had ran out of coffee.


Here's a picture of the dog's back end.
And a bridge at Tyndrum, which I am going to use in the next novel but I need the bridge about twenty miles further up the glen, so I shall just move it.

'He' is not here to  move the videos onto youtube so you will advised
 when they are ready!

Caro Ramsay











3 comments:

  1. You're simply amazing, Caro. So is Mathilda's back end. My congratulation to you both!

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  2. Brava, Caro! Moving readers AND bridges! What a woman!!

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  3. I hope you used sun screen!

    ReplyDelete