Just typed ‘THE END’ on the first/second draft of my next, next novel, THE JUMP. It’s set in the shadow of the Forth Road Bridge, involves suicide, and is as cheery as that sounds. Actually, though it is the saddest thing I’ve written, it is also kind of uplifting, maybe. Kind of.
It also features this terrific tune by Frightened Rabbit:
Some of you might know that I was one of the co-founders of the Scotland Writers football team. Here we are in this picture, all happy cos we had just beaten Austria. Anyway, I wrote a blog about it over at the Dear Scotland website, please do check it out.
Cheers, Dx
illustration by Mitch Blunt
Aye so, here is my Big Issue column reviewing Barracuda (Atlantic) by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic) and The Virgins (John Murray) by Pamela Erens. Both fine in their own, very different ways.
Aye so, I didn’t much like Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens. Here’s my review in the Independent on Sunday today. Why do authors feel the need to write the Great American Novel? Just tell stories, guys.
I’ll be honest, until recently I didn’t even realise that Readers Digest had international editions, but it does, loads of em! And several of them have bought condensed rights for Gone Again, meaning that abridged translations of the novel are winging their way to subscribers soon in Portugal, Brazil and the Spanish-speaking parts of the globe. That’s 165,000 copies, mind, not to be sniffed at!
Also, while I’m here, WF Howes Ltd have just published a large print edition of the same novel, which you can order here or by clicking on the pic above.
I had the good fortune to meet up with terrific Aussie author Christos Tsiolkas last weekend while he was in Edinburgh for an event. I was interviewing him for the Independent on Sunday, mostly about his new novel Barracuda. He was a completely delightful individual, very friendly, thoughtful and funny. And the new book is great. Why not check out the interview here, eh?
It’s that time of year again when writers scurry over to the PLR website and check how much in the way of library royalties they’ve made. You might not realise it but we get something like just over 6p per book loan. So anyhoo I had loads more books loaned out of libraries than in previous years, over 13,000, which is kind of mind boggling. Thanks to everyone who borrowed a book, and all the library staff for doing such a great job.
Have a good weekend, folks!
Dx
…and then she wrote this book about it and then I came along and read it and liked it and reviewed it in the Independent on Sunday.
Crazy.
Dx
I was going through some old files on the computer and found this lurking at the back. It’s a piece of flash fiction I wrote that first appeared in The Herald in October 2006. I had completely forgotten about it.
Reading it now, it’s got a lot of the same themes as the stuff I’ve been writing recently, which is a bit weird. It was always there at the back of my mind, I guess, even eight years ago. The prose is a little over-egged for my tastes now, but I’ve resisted the temptation to cut away at it, so it’s as it appeared in the paper originally.
So anyway here you go, 310 words of beach-based sadness! Let me know what you think.
The Beachcomber
by
Doug Johnstone
He preferred the beach in winter. Portobello in the summer had more blatant charms, the dawn creeping above the dirty smudges from Cockenzie power station’s pencil-thin chimneys, but the place was too busy with dog-walkers early in the day. On dark winter mornings, as the wind blew clear down from the Arctic and stern-faced gulls dive-bombed the surf, he often had the mile-long stretch to himself.
In fifteen years he’d found plenty of interesting debris on the beach, but really he didn’t come here for the flotsam and jetsam so much as for the sense of freedom that the indifferent mass of the sea gave him. He’d occasionally seen seals out there, their snub noses poking the surface as they skimmed the shore. Several times he’d seen dolphins capering around, and once a basking shark sifting languorously through the shallows.
Today there was no such exotic wildlife, just a few oystercatchers and curlews pecking nervously at the sand. From a distance he saw something that could’ve been a hunk of driftwood or an oil drum. As he trudged closer his body tensed. The wind dragged tears from his eyes and the rain seeped down his collar as he reached the body, turned it over and checked. Dead. She was young, maybe twenty, and pretty, with a peaceful look on her face. Something plastic was pinned to the breast of her red duffel coat. It was a laminated sign. ‘To whoever finds me, please contact my mum, Mary Robertson, 42 Promenade, Portobello. Tell her I’m sorry.’
His first thought was nothing sad or morbid, but this: Who the hell laminates a suicide note? Two more thoughts crept upon him as he stood there. The first was that he could never come beachcombing here again, the second was that his life would forever now be entwined with that of poor Mary Robertson.
Aye so, here’s my review of Bending Adversity by David Pilling in the Independent on Sunday, a really interesting look at Japanese society, culture and the way they’ve coped or otherwise with recent tragedies.
Doug Johnstone 