whisky galore meets deliverance

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

So, you spend a few months planning a novel, then some more months writing the thing, then some more months editing it. Then if you’re lucky it gets signed up, edited, copy edited, proof read etc, etc. Then you have to boil it down to a Hollywood-style one-line pitch.

So my forthcoming novel Smokeheads is ‘Whisky Galore meets Deliverance‘. More accurately, it’s ‘Sideways-with-whisky-instead-of-wine meets Deliverance‘, but that’s not quite so catchy. Anyway, if you’re having trouble getting a feel for what Whisky Galore meets Deliverance might feel like, here’s a visual aid. Watch this:

Then watch this:

Two happy singalong songs to get you in the spirit of things. Or not. Actually, if you watch them both at once, it’s quite freaky.

But I like this idea of ‘something meets something’. What’s the best we can come up with? Caddyshack 2 meets Crime and Punishment? Dude Where’s My Car meets Paradise Lost? I’m sure you can come up with much better ones. Can you? Please?

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and so it begins

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

So, just getting geared up for the promotion of Smokeheads, out 3rd March, folks. Been interviewed a few times, and the first bit of coverage has appeared in Hot Press magazine in Ireland, and here it is. In which I slag off the London publishing industry. Doh. Silly me.

Look out for other coverage coming soon, including a mention in a Scottish Review of Books feature on the state of Scottish literature or something, an interview in The Herald and something in The List. More to follow, hopefully.

Also, I recently recorded a podcast with the inimitable Ryan van Winkle of the Scottish Poetry Library, to tie in with the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Let’s Get Lyrical Campaign. In which I extolled all listeners to kill themselves because, and I think I remember this correctly, ‘there are no answers’. How we laughed. Although they might edit that out. I really think I have to brush up on the interview technique. Or maybe not. I’ll link to the podcast once it’s up.

Aye so, that’s all for now. More very soon, especially some news about the launch party for Smokeheads. Which will include FREE whisky. Courtesy of some very nice whisky makers.

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journalism v creativity

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

So, I was interviewed earlier this week by Peter Murphy at Hot Press magazine. Who also happens to be a novelist as well as a journalist. It was the first interview I’ve done about the next novel Smokeheads, and I’d forgotten what a strange experience it is from the other side.

For the last eleven plus years I’ve been a journalist, music to start with, then a wide range of other shit. It’s only been since my first novel was published in 2006 that I’ve been interviewed myself much, although there was a smattering of it from various bands I’ve been in before that.

Anyway, the interview earlier this week got me thinking again about the strange conflict between being creative and writing about others’ creativity. No band or writer wants to be pigeonholed, as the cliche goes, or compared to others out there, but that’s a handy journalistic shorthand for getting across what the band or writer are like, so what’s the problem?

I’ve never really thought journalism was particularly high-minded, least of all the kind of stuff I was writing, but it always annoyed me when bands got the hump about something I’d written. Journalism doesn’t have the best reputation, but every journalist I’ve known has written with integrity and honesty. My books and albums that my bands have released have had good and bad reviews, and I’ve tended to take it all with a pinch of salt.

I guess it’s important to get good reviews and coverage, to try and get your ‘art’ out there into the wider world, but I find myself less and less bothered about what other people write about what I do. I’ve spent the last year out of the loop mostly, not buying papers or magazines, not reading much journalism, not keeping up with shit, and I find my mental health all the better for it. Whether that state of affairs continues when the next novel is out in March remains to be seen. But I hope not to get hung up on that review panic thing all writers seem to get. At least the ones that aren’t already so rich and famous they can afford not to give a shit.

Aye so, in summary. Being creative is hard. Writing good journalism is hard. Can’t we all just get along? Like, dude.

Dx

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smokeheads final cover

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Doug Johnstone

So we’ve settled on a final cover for my next novel, Smokeheads, published by Faber and Faber on March 3rd 2011. Here it is:

Whatcha think? I’m liking it. The proofs were plain, then we had flames, which was a bit flamey, now we’ve got glowing embers around the edge, which does the job, I think. Also a very nice quote from Chris Brookmyre on the front cover. That’ll do, eh?

Can you judge a book by its cover? Yeah, probably.

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bjork and preston falls

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Doug Johnstone

So a while ago I performed at the fantastic Words Per Minute. Someone there had a video camera and recorded it. The two tunes I played have turned up on youtube, so here they are.

This is called ‘Bjork Calling Out From The Wreckage’. I haven’t recorded it yet. It’ll probably be an Argentina 78 song. I wrote it on the M6 on the way back from the Big Chill festival, driving past a lot of car crashes. I am obsessed with car crashes, but that’s another story. Anyway.

This is ‘Preston Falls’, which is an old Northern Alliance song. It appeared on our Disaster For Scotland album, which is now sold out. The song is based on my favourite ever novel, Preston Falls by David Gates.

Which is the funniest book about a breakdown ever written. Also, I tagged a little bit of a cover version of a very familiar movie theme at the end. Which seemed to make sense at the time.

That’s all, carry on.

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highlights of 2010

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Doug Johnstone

Aye so, I was asked to write my cultural highlights of 2010 by my publisher Faber. They posted it in their excellent thoughtfox blog. You can read it here.

As I mention in it, the best thing on television this year by a country mile was The Trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. I can’t even really describe why it was good – it shouldn’t have worked, two middle aged comedians drifting around posh restaurants in the north of England, but it was utterly sublime at times, and very brave, especially from Coogan, who played up to his public image and subverted it at the same time. Here’s a clip of one of the sillier moments.

The other thing I didn’t have room to mention in the Faber thing was David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide, which came out in 2009, but I didn’t get round to reading until recently.

A quite astonishing collection of stories about the author’s father, who committed suicide when he was a kid. I can’t really describe why it’s so amazing either, mainly because there’s an event in the middle of the book so utterly shocking and transformative as to make the reader reassess everything that has gone before. And if you know about it, it’ll spoil it. Highly recommended, though.

That’s all for now. Keep warm folks.

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battle of the blurbs

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so I’ve written a couple of novels that haven’t been published. Yet. One of em I’m still working on a wee bit. Almost finished. One is The Crow Road meets Six Feet Under, the other is Sideways meets Deliverance. In my head, anyway. Here are the blurbs below. If you had to read one, and only one, at gunpoint, which would it be?

**
SMOKEHEADS

Four friends, one weekend, one island, millions of gallons of whisky. What could possibly go wrong?

Driven by amateur whisky nut Adam, four late-thirties ex-uni mates are heading to Islay, the remote Scottish island world famous for its single malts. The four guys have gone their separate ways since uni, but their love of whisky and shared outsider status have just about held their friendship together.

On the weekend, fund manager Roddy wants to show off, take coke and get laid, musician Luke wants to chill out and find some ‘peatreek’ or Scottish moonshine, Ethan just wants to get back to the security of his wife, suburban home and computing job, while Adam has a secret mission.

The trip is supposed to be research for a whisky book he’s writing, but Adam is really here to persuade his friends to invest in a business opportunity too good to miss, one that would finally transform him from perennial loser to man of substance.

Over a weekend soaked in the finest cask strength spirit, they meet young divorcee Molly who Adam has a soft spot for and vice versa, her little sister Ash who has all sorts of problems and Molly’s ex-husband Joe, a violent control freak who also happens to be the police on the island.

When the smokeheads and Molly crash their car in the wilderness, things look bad. Fighting for their lives and struggling for survival, the friends unearth a hidden, lawless world of illegal stills, chaotic lives, extreme landscapes and deadly violence. Some of them won’t make it out, some friends will be saved, some will be buried. Friendship is stretched to breaking point and beyond in an extreme tale of revenge, hate, love, redemption and survival.

**
THE COALBITER

Jim Williamson is about to turn fifty and has nothing to show for his waster life. A disinterested columnist for the local Edinburgh rag, he’s divorced, has two grown-up kids he never sees, a dad suffering dementia, no money and no future.

When his sister’s body is found on Portobello beach, everything changes. Suddenly, he has the chance to start again, to be a father to his kids and a respectable member of the community, plus he has a longshot at love with a local academic well out of his league.

But family life isn’t what he expects. Two funerals, two suicide attempts, one Icelandic wedding, a few disastrous parties, several dark, looming family secrets, an exploding whale and an emergency home birth must all be negotiated during a year in which Jim finds out the true meaning of family, commitment, life and love.

Oh, and he also discovers he might be an archetypal figure from the medieval Icelandic sagas, a late-developer-turned-hero, a slacker for half a century who finally turns his dumb, useless life around. A Coalbiter, in other words.

The Coalbiter is a family saga for the twenty-first century spanning a year in the life of a hapless man given a second chance.

Plus you’ll never look at whales the same way again.
**

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free books – a small revolution

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Doug Johnstone

So I’ve been totally blown away by this thing called the Concord Free Press. The brainchild of author Stona Fitch, basically it’s a small press where everyone works for free, from writer to editor to designer to printer. Then they print books and give them away for free, only asking that recipients give money to a local charity and pass the book on. So far they’ve made over $30,000 from one book in the first few months, fucking amazing, really. 

The first novel was Stona’s own Give & Take, a brilliant and resonant story about a touring jazz musician who steals BMWs and diamonds from the rich and gives the proceeds to the poor.

The whole thing is kinda completely inspirational, it made me think about books and money and publishing in an entirely new light. Really. It’s hard to talk about without sounding hippy wanky, but I think Stona could be on to something here, a small revolution in the way we think about how artists interact with the world.

It helps that Fitch is a fucking amazing writer. Check out Senseless and Printers’ Devil for two of the finest novels written this decade. Not for the faint hearted, either of them, but simply amazing.

Here’s a thing I wrote about it all for the Independent on Sunday, which does a better job of summing it up than I’ve done here, what with being for a proper paper and all. 

As for Concord, they’ve got a second novel lined up for May, I’m already keeping tabs on the website to reserve my copy.

 Free books, whatever the fuck next, eh?

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six feet under

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Doug Johnstone

images-1

So I’m working my way through the Six Feet Under box set. It’s fucking amazing. Just simply the best television drama series ever. Everyone always bangs on about The Sopranos, The Wire and The West Wing, but I think Six Feet Under is totally underrated, full of all sorts of clever nuances and brilliant acting and resonant scripts, and it came before all those other shows, and totally paved the way for them. The basic premise of setting a family drama around an undertaking business is brilliant. Wish I had that idea. 

That’s all really. Carry on.

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the ossians launched, thanks

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Doug Johnstone

So, that’s two book launch shindigs out the way, had a great time both nights, thanks to everyone who came along and supported. It kinda goes without saying such support is MASSIVELY appreciated, but I’ll say it anyway. Such support is MASSIVELY appreciated.

Edinburgh was fun, the good people of Word Power were perfect hosts, a couple of dozen folks drank Danish lager and listened and clapped at the right bits, I guess. Then we went to the Pear Tree for a friendly argument about screenwriting.

London, took a while to get there, and stayed in my agent’s mum’s flat near Liverpool Street (thanks Lucy!), then treated Hackney’s finest to a long set of rambling drunken blether, a couple of readings, some inane chat and plenty of tunes, including a few new ones.  Thanks to Eleanor from Pages and Dom for sorting everything, and to Skippy for ordering pizzas in Biddles to soak up some of the booze. 

So, I could put up set lists here, but can’t really remember what I played. Amongst all the usual dross were a new Ossians song (I cannae help myself) called The Sleepwalker and a newish Northern Alliance (kind of) song, Bjork Is Calling Out From The Wreckage. I’m thinking once I record  that last one I’ll send a copy to Bjork, mibbes suggest a duet. That would be sweet. 

So, while we all wait for that Bjork duet, I’ll post up some more crap about screenwriting soon, and those other gigs that are coming up, and some other guff, no doubt. Cheers.

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