Thrilling events in Perthshire!

If you follow me on Twitter or my Facebook books page, you'll probably know that last Thursday I took part in "2 Poets & A Novelist", a literary event at Strathearn Community Library in Crieff, Perthshire. 

The two poets were Kona MacPhee (far left) and Patricia Ace (to the right of me in the pic) and I, of course, was the novelist. By some strange conjunction of the stars, we all had new books out in the last month or so, which was why we decided to get together and make an evening of it. 

I'm very pleased to say that the event was a big success, with the small lecture theatre at the community campus very nearly packed out. This is not a given for book events - unless you are a very lucky or top best selling author, there are always those occasions where you find yourself talking to three people and a dog, and all of the people are friends or relations of yours! So it was wonderful to find the event so well supported. Three cheers for the book-loving residents of Crieff! 

I kicked the evening off with a slide show and talk about the real-life locations that have inspired my books - including the ruined castles of rural Germany, the high buildings of Ghent and the underground world of European sewers and catacombs. 

Patricia then took the floor and read from her collection of poems, Fabulous Beast. Patricia is a super reader and some of her work is very daring! If you want to find out just how daring, you'll have to get her book, though.

Third up was Kona, who regaled us all with the medical anomalies and frank monstrosities that have inspired her since she was a child poring over an old book of them. The slides that accompanied Kona's talk were pretty staggering. She did warn us that one medical nasty was too horrible to show in photographic form, so she showed us a stuffed toy version instead. This was the teratoma. She warned us not to look it up on Google Images. Of course, this was the very first thing I did when I got home after the event. I agree with Kona now. Don't look it up...

Anyway, big thankyous to all concerned, including Kirsty Brown at Strathearn Community Library, and all those who came along to support us. 

If you live within reach of Crieff and missed the event, but still have a thirst for all things literary, I am pleased to say that I have another one coming up in May. This time I shall be at Innerpeffray Library, which as you will know if you have read my previous blog posts about it, is one of my favourite places in the whole of Scotland. 

On Thursday May 16th I shall be running a Ghost Story Masterclass and Storytelling Evening. The Masterclass is an opportunity to learn all about the craft of writing spine-chilling tales, and will include tips, discussions and some literary "exercises"! The evening event is a chance to hear me read some of my own ghost stories and to hear excerpts from some of the creepier books in the library - which has books dating back to the 1500s. It should be an especially thrilling and atmospheric evening since we will be in the Library itself surrounded by its centuries-old book collection! You can attend the evening event without attending the Masterclass, if you wish. 

The Masterclass costs £20, which includes entry to the evening event too; alternatively the evening event only costs just £5 per person.

You can book by calling Innerpeffray Library on 01764 652819 or using the form available on the Library website, here: Ghost stories booking form

If you're not within travelling distance of Crieff: I'll be posting details of events elsewhere when I know them! I hope to make it back to Belgium too, at the very latest to launch my next book, The Demons of Ghent. Watch this space! 

In which an old dog learns new tricks...

Today I did something I had never done before: I went to an anime and manga convention - Doj Con, held at the student union in the University of Dundee. My daughter is a great fan of anime and manga but she is not quite old enough to be allowed to attend on her own - anyone aged 14 or under has to be accompanied by a responsible adult (that would be me). We also took along my daughter's friend, who was brave enough to attend in cosplay costume (ie. dressed up as an anime/manga character, in this case "L" from Death Note). I'm not quite as obsessed with the whole scene as the two of them, but you can't live in the same house as a manga fan without getting infected with it in the end. (My personal favourite is Black Butler - the drawings are simply beautiful and the storyline wonderfully gothic.) 

Doj Con was brilliant fun - very busy indeed (getting around the lower floor where the stalls were located required my best Aldi-on-special-offer-day elbows) and extremely friendly. I guess the life of a manga otaku is a bit lonely when 90% of the kids at school are into other stuff, and my daughter and her friend were simply thrilled to find themselves amongst like-minded people. They spent a lot of time suddenly pointing and squealing, "Look, it's Grell!" etc and the rest of it blowing months of carefully hoarded pocket money on posters, badges, DVDs and mugs. The day was proclaimed "awesome" on all sides. 

For me, the day was interesting for other reasons. It was wonderful to see the girls realising how glorious it is to get together with other enthusiasts, whether it is manga you are into, or rock-climbing, or gothic churches, or world music. The other thing was that nearly everyone was very, very much younger than I was. There was a smattering of other "responsible adults" but the majority were university students or their peers. Whilst we were standing in the (very long) queue to go in, we got chatting with a girl standing behind us, who was saying that, long though it was, this was not the longest queue she had ever been in. I said the longest queue I had ever been in was for the Tutankhamun exhibition in London in 1972. This remark got a blank (though not unfriendly) look in return. I guess the 1970s are such a long time ago (especially if you were born in the 1990s) that they are right off the radar. I might as well have said I remembered the queue to see Lenin lying in state in 1924. I suddenly felt old - but actually, not in a bad way. I thought, gosh, I can remember stuff from forty years ago. That is a long, long time. Think of all the stuff I have survived! And the stuff I have done! Although I'm not all that thrilled about getting wrinklier, I wouldn't go back to being 20 if it meant wiping the slate clean of all that. This thought was remarkably cheering. I hope I shall end up being a very jolly old lady of 95 and not one of those ones who grumbles about whippersnappers.

Anyway, although I didn't come home with quite as much plunder as the girls did, I did allow myself one small souvenir of Doj Con. I bought myself a badge. One of the disadvantages of being an old and *cough* wise person is that I cannot see things very well at close range without my reading glasses, so I had to choose this one without being able to see it properly at all! But I think it's rather lovely. 

Out and about in Perthshire

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am not getting very much actual work done this week because it is the school hols, and in addition to my own two children I am entertaining a young visitor from our former home town of Bad Münstereifel in Germany (where The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is set).   Naturally I don't want any of them to spend the week lying on the sofa (in spite of their best efforts, hem-hem), and I'd like to show our visitor some of the sights of Scotland. It is amazing, however, how quickly the costs of outings can skyrocket to an unmanageable extent, especially if there are four of you in the party. Edinburgh castle, for example, is completely out of the question because it would cost nearly 45 pounds for the four of us just to go in. So the reason for this blog post (which has very little to do with writing) is to say three cheers for those places that still offer a low cost day's entertainment for families.

On Tuesday we went to Huntingtower castle near Perth (pictured above left). This is the third time I have visited the castle and it never fails to entertain the kids. It is not a full-of-Louis-Quatorze-chairs type of castle; in fact there isn't a stick of furniture inside it. This makes it perhaps less interesting to adults but perfect for children because there is nothing to which they can apply their sticky fingers. Nor do they have to trail around listening to a tour guide; they can explore by themselves - though adult supervision is required on the roof because of the terrifying drop (not that I can quite manage "supervision" considering how terrified I am of heights; it tends to be more of a case of the children trying to coax me tremblingly along the battlements). Huntingtower castle has a super legend about a girl called Dorothea who made a death-defying ten foot leap from one tower to the other to avoid being caught in her boyfriend's bedroom. The children absolutely love this story and happily hang over the battlements measuring the gap with their eyes and wondering whether they could do it.

Speaking of legends, I must also say that an interest in local folklore and history really comes in handy when you are amusing a pack of children. A relatively ordinary walk can become far more exciting if you have some really nasty snippets of local legend to relate. Nearby Muthill had a horrible murder case back in the nineteenth century - you can read all about it here: http://www.highlandstrathearn.com/content/hey-gie’s-ma-haun…or-murder-most-foul
The murder came to light when a dog was seen trotting down the street with a human leg in its mouth, complete with stocking and shoe! That tale always goes down a storm with kids.

Leper squints are also popular with my kids (both Fowlis Wester church and Innerpeffray chapel have them); these are small windows that allowed lepers to watch the mass in a church without going inside and mingling with the other worshippers. We have peered through these on several occasions and felt a good deal of indignation imagining the poor lepers having to stand outside in all weathers, for the dubious benefit of seeing (but presumably not hearing) the service. I hope someone gave them a mug of hot soup afterwards but somehow I doubt it.

Finally, an extra special cheer for the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, that still has free entrance (although you are encouraged to make a donation). We mainly went yesterday because we thought our German visitor would like it, and my daughter was inclined to say that she had been there loads of times already, but there is always something new to see, and yesterday was no exception. The Edinburgh Science Festival is on until 7th April so there were loads of interesting stands in the Grand Gallery. Last year the kids' favourite was a tank of freezing cold water into which you were invited to plunge your hand. I forget what it was that that experiment was meant to show, but they immensely enjoyed it anyway. This time the top attraction was the deep sea lander with camera for filming strange aquatic creatures at 6,000 metres (pictured below). Tom the friendly marine biologist infected us all with his boundless enthusiasm for bony deep sea fish - if I were not already a graveyard geek I could imagine becoming a fish nerd!

Possibly our very favourite things in the National Museum of Scotland are the displays of old technology. We never get tired of marvelling at the very first Apple home computer, which was basically a mother board for which you had to build your own casing and use a TV set for the screen! That was in 1976. My son whipped out his iPod and took a photograph of it, with 2013 Apple technology. I was about his age when the Apple One came out so I find it slightly mind-bending to see how far and how fast technology has come on.

We also love Communicate!, the exhibition about the development of communications. In fact, I would say that this is probably my favourite thing in the entire museum. It charts the history of communication technology over the last two hundred years, encompassing the telegraph, the telephone, the telex, mobile phones and the internet. The very first exhibit is this (below):

Back in 1820, this was the fastest method of communication, with a carrier pigeon able to get from Edinburgh to London in a matter of hours. "I think that's hilarious," said my son. I do too - I love the fact that there is a stuffed pigeon in the display case alongside the computers and phones! 

As I said at the beginning, all of this has very little to do with writing, but I wanted to tell you about it anyway. Thank you for listening!

Publication Day at last!

Finally, it is April 4th and Silent Saturday's official UK publication date! I'm thrilled to see the book now available for order online (not just pre-order) and am looking forward to seeing it in real live bookshops too.
I'm not going to be doing anything particularly wild today (though perhaps considering the subject matter, I should be drinking illicit champagne in a deserted mansion to celebrate). I did most of my celebrating at the weekend in Belgium. In fact today feels rather like the civil ceremony day after a huge church wedding at the weekend! I'm definitely back in my everyday clothes. My two children have school holidays at the moment and we have a third child over from our former home town of Bad Münstereifel in Germany, so I shan't even get much work done - I shall be taking them all for a long country walk instead. This evening, however, I shall allow myself a small glass of Peterman bessenjenever!
Publication day means that Silent Saturday can now be reviewed on Amazon, etc. so if you read the book and enjoy it, a short review is always very welcome. If you read it and absolutely hate it, well, er...

Silent Saturday in Belgium!

On Friday I flew back to Belgium for the launch of my upcoming thriller Silent Saturday. The book is actually being published in the UK on Thursday 4th April, but since it is set in Belgium I particularly wanted to be there on Silent Saturday itself, which was 30th March this year. Waterstone's Brussels and Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren were kind enough to indulge this wish, and the Logistics Fairies were also kind enough to make sure that stock of the book was available a few days early especially for the events.

I hadn't actually been back to Belgium for over a year, although I spend nearly every working day in "virtual Flanders", and specifically in Ghent at the moment, as my current work-in-progress, The Demons of Ghent, is set there. I am pretty well settled in my new home in Scotland, but I do miss Belgium a lot, and when we touched down I had to resist the urge to kiss the tarmac like the Pope, which might have raised a few eyebrows!

I must say it was wonderful to be back. I loved living abroad, and the thrill of having my feet on foreign soil just never palls as far as I am concerned. Belgium was the first foreign country I ever visited, when I was just 13 years old, and I still haven't had enough of it. There wasn't time to do much sightseeing because I had a fairly tight schedule, but I did manage to slip away for a bit and pay a visit to this little fellow:

I've seen him probably dozens of times before, but I love to drop by and hear people saying, "Ooh, he's much smaller than I expected" in all sorts of different languages! Someone always does it. I took a German friend to see the Manneken Pis a few years ago and I told her that the tourists always say that. Sure enough, a British couple standing next to us obliged with those very words!

Anyway, to return to the launch events, many thanks to everyone who came to listen to me talking about Silent Saturday and bought signed copies at Waterstone's on Saturday and Treasure Trove on Sunday. If you wanted to come but were unable to, there is a limited number of signed copies available at Waterstone's (Adolphe Maxlaan, near City 2) and Treasure Trove will shortly have more stock of the book with signed bookplates. 

Below are some pics from the event at Waterstone's! 

 

I've got one final pic I just had to include. When I got back to Zaventem airport on Sunday evening for my flight home (sniff!) I saw this brilliant poster!

As you'll know if you've read my previous blog posts, Silent Saturday (Stille Zaterdag in Flemish) is so called because on that day the church bells do not ring; instead they supposedly fly to Rome to collect Easter eggs from the Pope. This advertisement for Brussels Airport has used the idea to suggest an Easter break by air!