It’s Book Week Scotland this week, part of which is 100 Authors in 100 Libraries.
And as part of that, I’m at Arthurstone Library in Dundee on Friday 30th, talking about cases from my books Haunted Dundee and Paranormal Dundee.
Expect doppelgangers, apparitions and Spring-Heeled Jack.
The website machine-elves have been exceptionally industrious lately, and now all of my books are available from Amazon in one place, via a ‘streamlined shopping experience’ here. Crikey I appear to have written quite a lot of books. Just goes to show what happens when you’re having fun.
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.
Poltergeists. Secret mummified corpses in the Haunted Tower. Apparitions of the White Lady and other distaff spectres. Death warnings. Doppelgangers. Vortices of invisible evil.
All these subjects will be present and correct on Halloween night when I’m the guest of Abertay Historical Society at the St Andrews Preservation Trust Museum, 12 North Street, St Andrews, KY16 9PW.
The illustrated talk starts at 7.30pm and a small charge is made for non-members. Places are limited – it’s a small museum – so book a place at 01334 477629, or email curator@standrewspreservationtrust.org. Copies of Haunted St Andrews will be available for sale on the night.
‘Murder and Mayhem in the City where the Streets Ran with Blood’. Phew, you don’t get many headlines like that. That’s the introduction to a piece on my new book The Bloody History of Scotland: Edinburgh that appeared in the Daily Mail on Monday, October 22. You can read the full piece here, or by clicking on the image. The article is reproduced by kind permission of the Daily Mail and journalist Jim McBeth.
And a quick reminder that I’m giving an illustrated talk based on The Bloody History of Scotland: Edinburgh at Blackwell’s Bookshop, South Bridge, Edinburgh, on November 6. The event, which will have time for book signing, starts at 6.30 and tickets are free – details from the City of Literature website.
The Whitefield Halloween Festival in Bury, Greater Manchester, lasts for more than a week, with an impressive range of activities and events. On Wednesday 24th October I’m taking part in what is billed as a “Horror Writers Q & A”, a three-way event with fantasy novelist Ian Graham and Scott Stanford author of The Darker Side of Oz and Abaddon Rising.
The event is at the Welcome Inn (61 Bury Old Road, Whitefield, M45 6TA), starting at 7pm, and there will be ample opportunity for the audience to quiz the three of us – aspiring writers welcome. And if you turn up early at 5pm, you’ll catch bearded-weirdie cryptozoologist Richard Freeman talking about his adventures “In Search of Real Monsters” – definitely worth catching. See www.halloweenfest.org.uk/ for full details, follow on Facebook and check out the launch party video on that there YouTube.
