Doug Johnstone

Sarah Hardy over at By the Letter Book Reviews has given The Jump another lovely review. Thanks, Sarah!

Folks, I’m now an accredited Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow. On the off chance that you work in higher education and might be interested, this means I can give academic writing workshops to students and staff. For a fee, likes.

Well, I have some good news. The Jump has been longlisted for Scottish Crime Book of the Year, now known as The McIlvanney Prize. Absolutely honoured and thrilled to be in such fine company!

Just found out that THE JUMP is part of Apple iBooks’ Irresistible Beach Reads summer promo campaign. 99p. I would link to it, but it’s yer iTunes and I have no idea. Just get it on yer iPad and that, eh?

Musselburgh! I’m doing an event at Mussy Library tonight, 7pm, talking about THE JUMP. Come along and ask hard questions. Please and thank you.

I was doing my cultural punditry thing on The Janice Forsyth Show the other day. Edi Stark was presenting, sitting in for Janice, and also punditing were Chitra Ramaswamy and Kirsty Logan. We nattered about Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls, Bonnie Greer’s radio play Ferguson and Laura Mvula’s second album The Dreaming Room. It’s all here, from 1hr 21mins in. Enjoy!

I took part in the Caledonian Challenge at the weekend, as part of a Bloody Scotland team. It’s a 24-mile walk from Fort William to Glen Coe through some amazing hills and scenery. We did it to raise money for Foundation Scotland, a great charity working with local community groups across the country.

Our team finished in 8hrs 47mins, which was seventh out of 43 competing teams! My personal time was 8hrs 15mins, which was 33rd out of 205. The team was me, Chris Brookmyre, Matt Bendoris, Craig Robertson and Gordon Brown, with Shortlist journalists Mandy Pang and Dusan Indic, and Bloody Scotland PR guru Snow Irwin.

You can still donate here if you feel so inclined. Great time had by all, and precious few blisters. Cheers!

My fifth novel, Gone Again, is now officially out in paperback in the US. Grab a copy, my American friends, and transport yourself to sunny Edinburgh!

Last week I started working as writer-in-residence for a funeral directors in Edinburgh. I’m already tremendously impressed with the respect, grace and empathy of all the staff I met. It’s going to be an intense and strange few months, but I’m very excited about it. So far, it has been not much at all like Six Feet Under. And before you ask, yes, I did see some dead bodies.