Doug Johnstone

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.

So I was on BBC Two quiz show Eggheads last night, part of a team called the Criminal Element featuring myself, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Chris Brookmyre and Martyn Waites. And we only went and won!

It was a terrific experience, loads of fun, and the Eggheads and Jeremy Vine were all really lovely. I had the Geography category that no one else wanted, and almost took down Kevin, the real brainiac, but was let down in a tie-break by my knowledge of English counties. Ho hum. Anyhoo, if you missed it, you can watch it in the UK on BBC iplayer. Below is the moment we found out we’d won – sweet!

(both pics pinched from fellow writer Craig Sisterson’s Facebook page.)

Dx

I started writing a new book this week. A few thousand words in. Feels weird already. Anyhoo, working title is Fault Lines, and here are some visual clues what it’s about. Kind of.

Myself, Chris Brookmyre, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Martyn Waites are on Eggheads on Thursday 26th May, 6pm on BBC 2. Will I punch anyone? Will I swear? Tune in to find out.

It’s not online, but trust me, it’s a doozy. Here’s the final paragraph:

Thanks, Sabina, whoever you are!