Local news for local people (and you)

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

Aye so, I was interviewed by The Edinburgh Evening News recently. Then they snapped me standing leaning against the shut door of a pub for no good reason.

Needless to say, Sandra Dick, who interviewed me, was very interested in the fact my main character was a murderous reporter for, ahem, The Edinburgh Evening Standard.

I’m reliably informed that in the paper version, I shared a double-page spread with the Vets and Pets column:

‘My goldfish has started to swim upside down a lot.’

‘I just can’t get my rescue cat to use the catflap.’

Thank God the vet had answers, as I wouldn’t have had a clue.

A bientot, furry friends!

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Crime Fiction Lover love it – boof!

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so my 3-year-old daughter has taken to saying ‘Boof!’ as a general expression of delight and amazement. I dunno where she got that from, but I like it and I’ve started copying her.

So I say BOOF!, check out Crime Fiction Lover‘s review of Hit & Run. Wow. They love it. Specifically, Eva Dolan loves it – cheers, Eva!

Sadly, I have a mental health policy where I only read every review once. Which is a pity, because this is the kind of review you could read seven or eight times, just to get your head/ego to swell right up. But I won’t. Lemme just cut to the chase:

Scottish crime fiction is a tough playground right now but with Hit and Run Doug Johnstone proves he can hold his own with the best of them.

That’s the stuff. A tough playground, sure enough, but I brought a fucking Stanley knife to school.

Enjoy!

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lightsabre cocksucking blues

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

I look after the kids on Fridays, so don’t really have the time to fuck around online posting bullshit all day. But I’ve decided I’m gonna post a tune every Friday, something that I’ve been listening to during the week. So here it is, turn it up, amigos!

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The first reviews of Hit & Run

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

Aye so, official publication date of Hit & Run is the 15th March, but some tasty reviews have already appeared, so here’s a wee round up. Thanks to all reviewers for taking the time to engage with the text.

Firstly, Andrew McPake gives it the once over on his blog. And you know what? He likes it. ‘This is a straight-up page turner with a scintillating premise,’ he writes, and he’s not wrong. What an astute guy.

Second, here’s a glowing review by author and blogger Malcolm Holt over on his A Bit On The Side blog. Apparently, ‘this is Johnstone’s best yet’. That’s not me talking, that’s Malcolm – cheers, sir!

Next up is Kirstie Long getting behind the wheel over at Shotsmag. She likes it. According to her it’s ‘a rounded story of a man losing his sanity because of one decision’. Dead straight, Kirstie.

And over at The Skinny, Amy Balloch is a bit more meh about it, giving it three stars, despite the fact that I am, apparently, ‘an exemplary author who works the ‘less is more’ angle perfectly’. Less IS more, Amy, it really is.

With all this attention for Hit & Run, you’d think poor little Smokeheads was being forgotten, but not a bit of it. Here’s (Female) Opinionated Reader giving it the thumbs up over on her blog. Cheers, whoever you are, with your opinions and everything. Although I should point out that Smokeheads is published by Faber, not Cargo.

More to follow soon, no doubt. Stay tuned!

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Books I reviewed in February (and some I didn’t)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, I’m trying to keep up with this thing of listing the books I’ve reviewed and the ones that I didn’t get to read yet because I was too busy reading books for review. I’m not complaining likes, gotta get paid and all that.

Anyway, here’s the list for February:

Edited by John Brockman, How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (Atlantic) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. Welcome to the future, baby. Bit of a mindfuck, very eye-opening, but also a bit repetitive.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. A different review from my one for The List, obviously. Still the same great comedy novel about a man who finds Anne Frank hiding in his attic.

Louis Barfe, the Trials and Triumphs of Les Dawson (Atlantic) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. A frank account of one of the UK’s most iconic comedians and curmudgeonly bastards.

Paul Watson, Up Pohnpei (Profile) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. A really sweet little book about a random football fan (comedian Mark Watson’s brother) who went to Micronesia and ended up managing the national team of Pohnpei. All about real football.

Colm Toibin, New Ways to Kill Your Mother (Viking) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. An intriguing and always well informed series of essays on writers and their families. Clever man.

Edited by Toby Manhire, The Arab Spring ( Guardian Books) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Really powerful collection of articles on last year’s remarkable events in the Middle East and North Africa. Also contains a brilliant edited selection of The Guardian’s live blog on the events.

I just noticed only one of these is fiction. Interesting, if you find that sort of thing interesting. I also notice these are all written or edited by men. Also interesting, if you think that’s interesting. These are both probably topics for another blog post. I do try to pitch a balanced list of titles to editors, you just never know what you’re going to get commissioned to cover.

While I was reviewing all of them, there were a few others I really wanted to – that To Be Read pile is getting bigger:

Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker (William Heinemann)
Elmore Leonard, Raylan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Stav Sherez, A Dark Redemption (Faber)

So, that was Feb. Highlights of March could be Dan Rhodes, Chris Pavone and Walter Mosley, but what do I know?

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My tweets are apparently news. Well, really Ian Rankin’s (@beathhigh) tweets.

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

My oh my. Apparently when you post something on Twitter, other people can see it! Wow, who knew?

Anyway, a tiny wee exchange I had with Ian Rankin (@beathhigh) has made it into the heady heights of The Independent on Sunday. OK, it’s not quite hard news, but still. Rebus the dog, what about that?

Actually, the real news in all this is that the newspaper considers me their ‘top reviewer’. Take that, fellow reviewers, I’m number one with a bullet! Only joking. Like at my son’s sports day ‘everyone’s a winner’, even the poor sap stuck in his sack at the start line.

Annoyingly, the paper missed Ian’s later tweet: ‘Just finished Hit and Run. Great slice of noir. Congratulations, that man!’

Now THAT’s news!

Enjoy the nonsense!

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“What is it with you and car crashes?”

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so had my first ever event based on Hit & Run at the weekend there, a joint event at the Margins Festival in The Arches alongside fantastic writer and pal Helen FitzGerald, hosted by the equally talented Anneliese Mackintosh from Cargo Publishing. Here is a review of the event by Paul Cockburn for the Scottish Review of Books blog.

It was at 2pm in the afternoon, and we had the usual panic about no one turning up beforehand, but in the end there were humans with ears listening and eyes watching, and me and Helen and Anneliese blethering. Me and Helen had done some drinking beforehand on empty stomachs, so we were rather, ahem, ‘frank’ in our opinions. I was informed afterwards I was swearing a lot, to which I replied ‘fuck you’. Or something.

Anyway, was good to pop my Hit & Run cherry, so to speak. After, we sat around drinking some more and talking shite, and the three of us and another mate Ewan Morrison pitched ideas to Helen’s film producer mate Claire, while she rolled her eyes. I look forward to seeing Helen’s ‘Quantum Leap but with a teenager’ on a screen soon.

Good people. Good times.

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Books I read and reviewed in January (and some I didn’t)

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so one of the things I do to make ends meet is review books. This means that I am always reading shitloads of books. And sometimes it means I’m reading books that aren’t very good, when I could be reading books that are possibly great. Ho hum.

Anyway, I haven’t banged on about that shit here much in the past, but I figure I might as well flag it up, partly because I’ve already read a lot of good stuff this year.

Here’s a list:

Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday (Canongate) – Charming and insightful memoir from the recently deceased musical legend. A bit lopsided in terms of focus, but always interesting.

Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground (Serpent’s Tail) – Reviewed for The Herald. A cracking crime novel set in 1980s Belfast, like Ellroy on craic.

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana (William Heinemann) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Fantastic debut collection of hillbilly noir stories, some of the most visceral prose I’ve read in ages.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador) – Reviewed for The List magazine. Hilarious novel about a man who finds a decrepit old Anne Frank hiding in his attic.

David Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics (W.W. Norton) – Reviewed for Independent on Sunday. Intriguing but flawed account of leftfield physics dudes in 1970s California.

Ioan Grillo, El Narco (Bloomsbury) – Reviewed for The Scotsman, not online yet. A truly jaw-dropping account of the recent rise of Mexican drug cartels. A staggeringly fucked up situation, brilliantly revealed.

Alex Rosenberg, The Atheists’ Guide to Reality (W.W. Norton) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. A muddled, overwritten and rather pointless look at the finer points of atheism.

William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor (Viking) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Great and diverse collection of essays and other non-fiction from the man who brought you cyberspace.

Alexander MacLeod, Light Lifting (Jonathan Cape) – Reviewed, for Big Issue magazine, not online. Great debut collection of short stories from Canadian writer. Muscular, precise, resonant and profound.

While I was reviewing all of them, I didn’t (yet) have time to read these, despite really wanting to:

Peter Leonard, Voices of the Dead (Faber)
Peter May, The Lewis Man (Quercus)
Stuart Neville, Stolen Souls (Harvill Secker)
George Pelecanos, What It Was (Orion)

If the to-be-read list keeps stacking up like this, I’m gonna have thirty-six potentially great unread books by the end of the year to add to the already massive pile.

Still, worse ways to make a living, eh?

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Margins Festival – well good

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

Aye so, you all know about Margins Festival, right? Now in its second year, it’s the brainchild of Cargo Publishing benevolent dictator Mark Buckland, a cool book and music festival in The Arches in Glasgow spread over the weekend of 24-26th February.

This year has the likes of Roddy Woomble, Aidan Moffat, William McIlvanney, Don Paterson, Louise Welsh and a performance of Alasdair Gray’s Fleck featuring the great and good of Scottish writing. Click on the banner at the top for all the events.

There’s also a cheeky wee event featuring myself and the fantastic Helen FitzGerald at 1pm on Saturday 25th Feb. It’s £4 a ticket, which you can get here.

It’s the first time ever I’m gonna be reading from Hit & Run, and considering it’s not out till two weeks after the event, it’s something of a pre-season friendly outing. Strained hamstrings and all. Although myself and Helen might not be friendly, we might be incredibly antagonistic to each other. You never know.

You’ll be able to buy copies of Hit & Run at the event before it’s out, a further insult to the laws of causality after that whole faster-than-light neutrino thing. They still haven’t sorted that out, have they? Anyway, hope to see you down there, and here’s a cool picture of a neutrino detector to finish:

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Are you a book blogger or reviewer?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Doug Johnstone


Are you a book blogger or reviewer or some similar shit? Would you like a copy of my forthcoming novel, Hit & Run, to read or review or write about or use as loft insulation?

Well we have finished copies of the novel, just look:

If you want one and have a reasonable reason to have one (loft insulation doesn’t really count), drop me a line and I’ll get Faber to stick one in the post to you.

Here’s what it’s about:

Driving home from a party with his girlfriend and brother, all of them drunk and high on stolen pills, Billy Blackmore accidentally hits someone in the night. In a panic, they all decide to drive off. But the next day Billy wakes to find he has to cover the story for the local paper. It turns out the dead man was Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord and, as Billy struggles with what he’s done, he is sucked into a nightmare of guilt, retribution and violence.

Expect the onslaught of self-promotion to start very soon. Very soon. I’m really sorry. Gotta be done, though.

Have fun!

Doug x

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