Monthly Archives: November 2012

In which the Author appears in Tesco…

 

When you’re an author, people send you things – books, music, invitations, that sort of thing. Which is nice. Something new arrived the other day – what might be called my first example of a ‘book sighting’. “I was very surprised,” wrote my literary correspondent, “when I was shopping in Tesco in Dundee and came across the name Geoff Holder in the book section.” So surprised, indeed, that she took a photo on her mobile and sent it to me. Thank you, Sarah – this is the first time a reader has done that.

Three of my books on sale in Tesco. All this and points too.

Other photos of my books in situ welcome.

 
 

In which the author bloodies up Blackwell’s Bookshop in Edinburgh…

 

Battles. Massacres. Murders and assassinations. Beheadings and hangings. Fire and plague. Religious strife and clan enmities. Urban warfare and suicide squads. Pirates and riots. Bodysnatching and heads on spikes. Gunpowder plots. Sea battles inside Leith harbour. Witchcraft burnings on Castlehill. Breaking on the wheel. Drowning alive in a coffin in the Nor’ Loch.

 

Edinburgh hasn’t always been the Light in the North. Its past is a blood-splattered horrorshow of dark deeds, and on Tuesday 6 November I’ll be launching my new book The Bloody History of Scotland: Edinburgh with an illustrated talk at the famous Blackwells Bookshop on South Bridge, Edinburgh. This saunter through the sanguinary excesses of the city’s unsavoury history will cover everything from brothel creepers to the location of a cannibal’s oven – not to mention a mysterious medieval knight who turned out to be a woman.