A short one this week, due to post-festival exhaustion.

Last week

A short work week for me. Managed to finish and send off FALSE START, as covered last week, but rather than focus on writing I prepared for chairing Mike Craven and Douglas Skelton by reading their most-recent novels – The Botanist and Where Demons Hide – and establishing a set of questions for the panel on Friday. Which went very very well, thankfully. Bute Noir is an incredible festival, the complete opposite of something like Crimefest. We had over 100 punters at the event, both authors sold a lot of books and I even had a guy ask me for a photo with him in the bar – not often I get that sort of thing! If you’re an author and get invited, definitely go to it. It’s a fun time.

Anyway, after I came last in the annual Brookmyre Cup putting competition, we visited Rothesay’s famous Victorian toilets, which were restored in the 90s. Only the gents are of that standard – I gather the ladies are a bit basic – but here’s a photo of a few of us interrupting Mark Edwards at the urinal:

Mark wasn’t actually peeing, obviously! We had to pretend we were in a political thriller and knocking on all the stall doors to make sure nobody was in there.

Anyway. I’m back home after a great festival. Took a very long drive up from the north ferry to Colintraive, where the safety warning lasts as long as the very short crossing, then up through the wilds of Argyll, including Loch Lomond. Even though my satnav tried to get me on a second ferry at Dunoon, I persisted with the road and was rewarded with some incredible scenery, then having to drive through central Glasgow because the M8 entry was closed. I plan to return to that part of the world, probably over to Arran and Campbeltown, then up the west coast (through villages and towns).

This week

Well, today’s all about getting my head back in the game. This is going to be the biggest activity!

The rest of the week, well I’m on a promise for Fenchurch 9 outline, which will be good to have a look at and revise, then I’m hoping some edits for FALSE START. Once that’s done, I’ll be getting deep into the first draft of Fenchurch 9, which I’m actually itching to start on.

Hope you have a great week. Here’s a photo of Arran taken from Ettrick bay on Bute:

Cheers,
Ed

source https://edjames.substack.com/p/inside-eds-head-fun-by-the-sea