My thanks to everyone who came along to Haddo House on Saturday 20th October, for my talk on ‘Sex, Lies and Poltergeists’. Good audience, good questions.
Thank also to the organisers, Public Image Events and the National Trust for Scotland, as well as the writer Allan Burnett, who gave us an excellent ‘Crime Tour of Haddo’ after the event.
Below you’ll find a few quick snaps from the event!
This week there’s a long piece on The Bloody History of Scotland: Edinburgh on STV’s online magazine.
Poisoning, murderous madams and ghastly torture and punishment all feature, adding greatly to the gaiety of nations. Don’t forget I’m giving an illustrated talk based on the book at Blackwell’s Bookshop on South Bridge on 6th November.
I’m just back from the WOMAD world music festival, and if you were lucky enough to be there you’ll know what a feast it was for head, heart and feet. One of the highlights for me was discovering the Bookshop Band, who write songs inspired by books, and play them in bookshops. Specifically, they read a book that an author will be reading from at an event in a bookshop, write two songs inspired by the book, and play them at the event. The books cover the waterfront from memoirs to steampunk, and from literary novels to folktales, and the music circulates around the genre of hushed spectral folk (cello and harmonium optional). Books, music, music inspired by books… how could it get any better? By spending an evening lying round on comfy cushions in a yurt, obviously. Brilliant.
On Tuesday 31st July I was interviewed on Radio Scotland’s John Beattie show, talking about Haunted St Andrews, the White Lady, the Haunted Tower, mummies, and the debate over the reality – or otherwise – of ghosts. Because the show deals with “News, comment and discussion on the top stories of the day” it rarely appears on the BBC i-Player for repeat listening, so my pearls of deathless wisdom probably remain lost in the ether, but rest assured I managed to use the word ‘paradigm’ more than once.
It’s hot, hot, hot, as Caribbean songsters Arrow once sang. And as Britain broils, bakes and burns, your humble author is spending his time… hidden away in libraries. (That’s right, I get to devote large amounts of time to doing things I love. Pity me.)
I’m delving deep into the research for Poltergeist over Scotland, and so librarians and archivists from Perth and Glasgow to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Cambridge have learned to fear my hunger for request slips.
Amazing stuff is being dredged from the archives, including episodes and facts that haven’t seen the light of day for more than a hundred years, if at all. Who would have thought that the history of Scottish poltergeists could be so extensive?
So if you see a pale figure tottering from bookstack to bookstack, his pallid skin untouched by scorching sun, you might just have glimpsed the elusive f=entity known as Ye Poltergeist Hunter of Olde Scotlande…
A few days ago I wrote that an essay I had written was selected for the shortlist of the prestigious THRESHOLDS International Feature Writing Competition, run by the University of Chichester, ‘home of the international short story forum’.
Today (Wednesday 25 April 2012) the winner was announced.
Me.
Crikey.
The winning essay, ‘We Recommend: H.P. Lovecraft’ can be found on the THRESHOLDS site, http://blogs.chi.ac.uk/shortstoryforum/?p=9723.
Comments from the judging panel: ‘an instantly engaging essay’; ‘sharp, rigorous but highly readable’; ‘exquisitely polished’; ‘rich in its use of language’; ‘wonderfully wry and stylish’; ‘expert, nuanced, energetic’; ‘I’ve never been particularly interested in Lovecraft but I certainly am now’.