Bloody Scotland.....2014

I did promise last week that I was not going to mention ‘IT’ again as by the time you read this blog there is probably counting still going on. Fifty per cent of the population will be dancing in the street and the other fifty per cent will be thinking if they can afford enough gas to make sticking their head in the oven worthwhile.

                                                     
                                                         Craig Robertson, kilted footballer!

We could be looking at house prices tumbling by 40% and still nobody knows what currency we are going to use but one thing is for certain.... the Scotland v England football match at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival will have an extra bite to it!

                                    
                                         Mark Billingham, bearded footballer

  During the run up to ‘IT’ I have been accused of being unpatriotic but I will prove my patriotism in my role of ‘physio’ for the match, by having a lovely bucket of warm, scented water for the beautiful Scottish boys. And a bucket of skanky puddle water for the grumpy old gits from south of the border. I shall liberally add ice cubes and a few dead pigeons. (should not be a problem in Stirling).

                                                            

                                         This represents my therapeutic approach..

Here is a wee bit of Stirling to set the scene...

                                   

                                                               The hotel...

                                

                                                                The Castle


On the serious side of things I am going to be very busy. I am pleased to say that my first event was the first event to sell out … and while that is technically true the other two factors to consider are that  a) I am on with one of Scotland’s most popular crime writers (Alex Gray)
 b) and that we have the audience capacity of my broom cupboard at the event.

                                
                                         Fab Alex

 (I believe that some of the previous venues have been high jacked in case there is a re-count so we had to make do). So the event with Alex should go well.  I hope they give us time to get changed from our blood stained mock surgical scrubs outfit from the football match to my black shirt and tailored trousers for the event. 

Then I am hosting a table at the dinner which is OK for me but my other half, who is about as sociable as a deep sea angler fish, will find it very traumatic and with his PhD in political philosophy, he will not talk about IT.  It will all be troublesome.  But then, if it does turn to violence, there will at least be more material for the next novel.

Early the next day I am chairing an event with two writers although one of those writers is another two, (it’s a Michael Stanley situation) so I presume that that’s a fifty /fifty, or fifty/ twenty five /twenty five time split, and not a thirty three/ thirty three / thirty three split. I have checked that the male and female personages who wrote the book jointly are not married to each other although the book is written from two first person perspectives and the couple in the book are married to each other.  If I was the woman in the book married to that man he would be dead by page three and it would have been a very short book!! I am wondering how to phrase that politely....

                                    

                                                  Shari Low, and below, with her co conspirator.

                                                         

Later on that day I am doing another event with Shari low, in her alter ego of Shari King. She’s a very successful chick lit writer who has teamed up with her old pal – and local lad made good- the Hollywood show biz reporter for breakfast TV, Ross King.

                                                       

   So together they have penned a Hollywood bonkbuster, where three Glaswegians go to Hollywood, leaving their terrible or not so terrible crimes behind them---- but their secret past follows. It was a very funny read… looking out for who was based on who (Gerard Butler? Ewan McGregor?)…. The amount of sex in it was exhausting, some of it was physically impossible and on one occasion downright unhygienic.

It is difficult chairing an event, lots of reading, lots of thoughtful insightful questions that I shall nick from previous panels.  

I feel a Tunnocks Caramel wafer theme to the event coming on,

Caro  Ramsay 19 09 2014    Northern Europe.