Looking forward to this year’s Book Week Scotland programme, funded by Book Trust Scotland. I will be attending other writers’ events but also speaking at two of my own. My events this year will feature the Willie Morton thriller series that I write as Andrew Scott. I’ll be at Coldside Community Library, 150 Strathmartine Road, Dundee, on Wednesday 20th November at 2pm. Then Banff Library, High Street, Banff, on Thursday 21st November at 7pm. I’ll be reading extracts from the first two titles in the series, Deadly Secrecy and Scotched Nation. https://andrewmurrayscott.scot/home/novels/And discussing the pitfalls and pains of creating a contemporary thriller series set mainly in locations around Scotland. I hope to field some interesting questions from the audience and get a good blether going! Blether is the theme of this year’s BWS programme. It’s great that we have this annual celebration of books, reading and writing just at the start of the winter. There is nothing more pleasurable than staying in and enjoying a good book! My events are free but ticketed. Tickets and more information about the Banff event can be obtained from Live Life Aberdeenshire website / Events… Tickets for the Dundee event can be obtained from Eventbrite Andrew Scott – the Willie Morton series. The full BWS programme: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-scotland
Book Week Scotland 2019: Blether and My Books
Although new to podcasting, I’m giving it a try. I find reading stories aloud is a very effective way of editing the stories; refining what I’m trying to say. Also, of course, I hope my stories can find a new audience. I’m not sure about whether that’s true or not. I hope so. Anyway, they are out there now, on iTunes, Stitcher (for Androids), on TuneIn, PlayerFM, for good or ill. So far, four stories are on the platform, Telling U Stories. Ghosts – a young man drifts in and out of casual romance in Madrid, in the terrific summer heat and light. Twilight Incident, an anti-colonising narrative about the sins of Edward Beaton’s working life in Kampala, Uganda in the 1960s coming back to haunt him with a vengeance in a Gents’ Outfitters in 1980s Dundee. The Glasshouses, a gentle evocation of the diverging lives of a brother and sister as they visit the diverse habitats of the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens on a cold February day. And today, I’ve added Sharing, where hospital worker Stephen suffers the torment of knowing his girlfriend Susan has another lover. This is perhaps the most painfully autobiographical of the four stories although I have used aspects of my life in all of them. The stories have been recorded with fairly basic equipment and are presented without much embellishment, no music, no fanfares. I have no idea whether they will be listened to by any or many.