Catching up once more
I apologise for the long gap since my last diary entry. Despite my web mistress's attempts to persuade me to bring it up to date, I keep forgetting to write. But I'm still here, still working and still travelling. So here's a brief summary of what's happened since the last entry.
May took me to Shetland for the wedding of two close friends. They were married on the beach at St Ninian's, despite arctic temperatures and we celebrated that evening at String, the lovely little restaurant and bar, where we'd launched Wild Fire in September. The food was as delicious as it had been then.
June is usually a quiet month, a time for holidays and writing. Not this year. It started with two days of writing and reading workshops for the Unite Union in Bristol. I'd met their bus driver learning rep, the indefatigable Lou Guy, at a session in London and found myself agreeing to come to Bristol to work with her there. I'm so glad I did. It was huge fun, beautifully organized and we ended up with some great writing from the drivers.
Then it was further south for the Sidmouth Book Festival and an event at Greenway, which was once the holiday home of Agatha Christie. Then back to North Devon for a couple of days to catch my breath in Matthew Venn country, before a wonderful partnership gig with Crediton Library and the Crediton Community bookshop.
I left Devon for Portsmouth and the ferry for Le Havre and the festival Polar a la Plage. An international weekend with writers and readers from Scandinavia and France. Thanks to Ann and Dominique for the kindness and hospitality.
July took me back to another Scottish island, to Islay. There was an opportunity to catch up with old friends and to explore the island before Cathy Geldard and I brought Shetland to the round church in Bowmore with words and music.
Later this week, I leave for Harrogate, and Belfast and Armagh. But I promise not to leave it so long next time before we catch up again.
Posted by Ann on Tuesday, July 16th 2019 @ 04:35 PM GMT [link]
Thanks
It's nearly six weeks now since Wild Fire was published in paperback and it's been my bestselling novel to date, making it to number two in the Sunday Times paperback fiction best-seller list and staying in the top ten for five weeks. A huge thanks to all the wonderful readers who bought it and to the booksellers who displayed and sold it.
Thanks too to everybody who turned out to support me in my mini-tour of the UK, and to Pan Mac rep Gillian McKay who ferried me around in Scotland and looked after me brilliantly. There were so many highlights. Dunoon was fabulous and a great collaboration between a library and an independent bookshop; the glorious weather on the ferry across the Clyde just added to the magic. I loved sharing the stage with fellow squaddie Cath Staincliffe in Gateshead and Huddersfield, and with Killer Woman Mel McGrath in Winchester. Delivering the Dorothy Sayers lecture for the Essex book festival was daunting, but a wonderful supper hosted by the Sayers' Society beforehand calmed the nerves considerably.
My most recent event was at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow. This was another two-hander with my friend Alex Gray, who was celebrating the publication of her latest Lorimer book, The Stalker. The same afternoon I did a very different gig - in Barlinnie prison.
Finally, a very big thanks to everyone who listened to me chatting to Lauren Laverne on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. It was a unique experience. I've been listening to the show for as long as I can remember, but never thought that I'd be one of the castaways.
Posted by Ann on Wednesday, April 3rd 2019 @ 11:02 AM GMT [link]
A Big Day
Publication day is always a bit special, even paperback day when the book has already been out in the world for a while. But the back of this new paperback - the eighth and final Shetland book, Wild Fire - contains the first chapter of a book with the title of The Long Call. This is the first book in what my publishers and I have called the Two Rivers series. It's set in North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge flow into the sea, and features detective Matthew Venn. So while today I'm sorry to be marking the end of Shetland (in book form, at least) it's exciting to be sharing a small introduction to something entirely new.
I'm celebrating too, Brenda Blethyn's announcement yesterday that there will be another series of VERA. It's hard to believe that this will be series 10. When the pilot was made, we weren't even sure that the first series would be commissioned. Now the show sells into two hundred territories throughout the world and there's a universal affection for it. It's wonderful to think that very soon the team will be back in the north east to begin work.
Shetland, the TV drama, has been back on our screens for two weeks now. This isn't an adaptation of one of the novels, but an original story by lead writer Davy Kane over six parts, fast-paced, thought-provoking and beautifully acted.
All this is a little overwhelming. For the first twenty years of my writing career I had very little commercial success; few of the novels got as far as paperback and without the support of libraries I wouldn't still be a published author. I hope my story gives some reassurance to new and struggling authors. It's a lot harder now, but it's worth persisting if you love it. The market changes and occasionally a piece of luck might come your way.
Posted by Ann on Thursday, February 21st 2019 @ 02:35 PM GMT [link]
New Year, New Reads
I get sent lots of proofs for endorsement, but often even the ones which catch my eye remain unread - I'm too busy, too tired, too disorganized to work through them. Sometimes I start a novel to find that, even though it might be beautifully written, it's just not to my taste. This Christmas however, I went on a real holiday, a week in the sun with time to spend with my family and to relax on the beach or by the pool with a good story, and every one of the books I'd taken with me were brilliant. It felt as though I'd won the lottery.
The first I'd bought for myself. Louise Penny is a good friend and I love her Inspector Gamache series, but she's a New York Times bestseller and needs no endorsement from me! Kingdom of the Blind takes us to Three Pines in the winter, to snow and warm fires and the friendship of a close community. But as always, with Penny, darkness and shards of ice lie within the heart of families and individuals. This is a story of betrayal and risk and I was captivated as always.
Alice Blanchard is another trans-Atlantic writer with the skill to create and explore small communities. Trace of Evil is the first book I've read and I'm grateful to Minotaur Books for sending me the proof. It's set in rural up-state New York, a small town where everyone thinks they know everyone else - they all went to school together after all - but there are secrets that somehow come to the surface and explode the myth of friendship and support. Natalie Lockhart is a great protagonist and I hope there are more books in the series.
Mel McGrath's book The Guilty Party, is about toxic friendship too I admired this book more than I can say, from a technical, writer's point of view, but also for its honesty and the emotional punch in the gut, the outstanding reading experience. It's set in London and in the island of Portland in Dorset and over different times, but it's never confusing. Every character and every incident is clearly drawn, beautifully written and even though the narrators have their own agendas, their own attempts to justify a contemptible act, we're swept along by them. We hope we would never have behaved as they did, but we almost understand.
The last of my list of recommended reads for the new year is Scrublands by Chris Hammer. Since the success of Jane Harper's The Dry, I've been sent a few Australian crime novels, but I've found this by far the most interesting and accomplished. Hammer is a journalist and so is his central character Martin Scarsden. It starts dramatically; a priest comes out of his church and shoots five members of the congregation who are waiting outside for the service to begin. A year later Scarsden is sent to explore the impact of the tragedy on the drought-ridden, inward-looking community of Riversend His arrival triggers more violence, and his image of himself as a journalist and a man is undermined. This is a perceptive, beautifully written book as well as a compulsive page-turner.
Happy New Year to you all. I hope you come across as many fantastic books as I have in this first month of 2019. Look out for a new season of Vera beginning on January 13th and a new season of Shetland coming soon after.
Posted by Ann on Saturday, January 12th 2019 @ 09:32 AM GMT [link]
A Tale of Two Cities
In the last few weeks I've been to two European Book Fairs, one in Helsinki and one in Bucharest. I'm published by small presses in Finnish and Romanian, and I was very happy to go along to help promote the books - and to visit cities I'd never previously visited. The fairs were public events, with author talks and lots of discounted books, and in both exhibitions the crowds turned out big style. It was great to sense the excitement of readers, the passion for reading.
A friend recently gave me a book called 'Debatable Lands' about the shifting border between England and Scotland and it seemed to me that both these cities were in debatable lands too. Over the centuries they've been part of different empires and alliances. In Helsinki road signs are in Swedish and Finnish, both national languages, and united Romania celebrates its centenary only this year. Of course there are differences: Helsinki seems an efficient, affluent city with great public transport. Romania is still blighted by the excesses of the Ceausescu era - he was overthrown during the 1989 revolution - and there are huge and rather ugly monuments to his vanity. The traffic is, apparently, the worst in Europe. But there is a similar spirit, I felt, especially in the young people. They don't feel so weighed down by tradition as we are, so complacent. The people have had to be adaptable and defiant to survive. They understand the need to forge links with neighbours.
While Scandinavia has a tradition of crime fiction, in Romania it isn't considered real literature. There is an intellectual tradition of philosophy and ideas and in the book fair, most titles were non-fiction or literary fiction. Very worthy. But crime has been discovered by young people as something new and interesting and perhaps a little subversive. At the fair and at the private launch party for The Seagull (Pescarusul) I was delighted that it was young bloggers and journalists and students who turned out. They still take their literature seriously though - I've never been asked in the UK if my title referred to the Chekhov play, but the question turned up a number of times in Bucharest...
Thanks to my publishers Crime Scene Press in Romania and Karisto in Finland. I received a magnificent welcome in both places. There was wonderful hospitality - I ate local food, drank too much and listened to many stories. In both cases, I returned to the UK having made new friends.
Posted by Ann on Wednesday, November 21st 2018 @ 02:58 PM GMT [link]
And Wild Fire at home...
It has been a totally bonkers month. If someone had told me ten years ago that I'd be touring the country with a book, talking not just to readers but to journalists and interviewers, on radio and TV, it would have been unbelievable, a strange fantasy. I'm still pinching myself.
It started on the first of the month with radio 4's Saturday Live, an easy chat with the presenters and other guests. Then it was overnight on the ferry to Shetland and a series of events (which I loved) and of interviews (which I found a bit exhausting). But it was Shetland and the weather was glorious and lots of my friends were there. And I was very looked after by my wonderful publicist. Next, it was Orkney and a chance to catch up with more friends and more readers.
We headed south to Norwich then, and to Bury St Edmund's and on to London and the launch party hosted by the magnificent Goldsborough Books. There was Shetland food and Shetland gin: the gin distillery Shetland Reel based in Unst has created a delicious Wild Fire gin - and Cathy Geldard played the tune for Jimmy Perez. We stayed south for David's Bookshop in Letchworth Garden City, for the Reading Ahead launch with Unison, then bobbed up to Harrogate for a great joint event with the library and Imagined Things Bookshop. Back to London for two more library gigs: Bourne End and Uxbridge. And we ended our tour of the south with a lovely evening at the Chiswick Book Festival (more food thanks to Marion Armitage and more gin).
In the middle of the month we were north again. Far from the Madding Crowd bookshop in Linlithgow is delightful and their events, fuelled by home-made cakes, are always a sell-out. The storm hit as I arrived in St Boswell's, and then blew its worst while we travelled to Perth and Dundee, but still staff and readers turned out. It was the same in Falkirk and in Waterstone's Glasgow Sauchiehall Street. Thanks so much to everyone who battled the weather to come to join us. By the time we arrived to The Edinburgh Bookshop the sun was shining and it was calm again. We had morning coffee and scones and cakes and chatted to a very welcoming crowd.
By now the tour was almost at its end but there was a quick flight south so I could do Graham Norton's show on radio 2. I was a bit scared about this, but he was relaxed and welcoming and very warm. Thanks Graham! Back to Scotland and Stirling to catch up with my friend and fellow crime-writer Louise Penny. A wonderful Bloody Scotland event, packed to the rafters with readers chaired by the incomparable Alex Gray.
Now I'm home, with a few days to catch my breath before heading to Forum Books and the Wigtown Festival at the weekend. The fun bit about being a writer is making up the stories and meeting the readers and I'd like to acknowledge the team that makes it all happen behind the scenes - the editors, marketing team and my wonderful publicist Maura. And particularly the regional sales people, who are on the road making contacts with booksellers and smoothing the way. Thanks to you all!
Posted by Ann on Monday, September 24th 2018 @ 11:44 AM GMT [link]
Wild Fire Down Under
Photo © Liz Martin
Wild Fire, the latest and last Shetland novel, will be published on Tuesday September 4th in the US and on Thursday September 6th in the UK. Of course I'll be in the islands to celebrate and to thank all the locals who have helped me throughout the series. But in Australia the novel came out a few weeks early to coincide with my visit to the Bendigo Writers' Festival. Bendigo is a couple of hours inland from Melbourne and the festival is friendly, informal, a little quirky, a bit like the former gold-mining town that hosts it. The world-wide launch of the book was in the small library at Boort, which was tiny, very rural, and where I felt completely at home. It could have been Shetland: people had travelled from all over the region to celebrate the extension of their library, the mayor was there, and the whole community turned out. And there were home-bakes!
Lemn Sissay, the brilliant poet and advocate for children in care was at Bendigo. It was great to meet him and to see how his performance moved the people lucky enough to be in the audience. I came across some terrific Australian crime-writers for the first time and caught up with Penelope Curtin, an old friend from Adelaide, who interviewed me. Without exemption, the writers, volunteers and organisers were welcoming and efficient.
From Bendigo my fabulous publicist Yvonne Sewankambo and I moved on to Brisbane, a beautiful city that was new to me. I very much enjoyed talking to Sarah Kanowski of ABC for their Conversations programme. We did two library events in suburbs of Brisbane - one in Chermside and one in Carindale. I loved these, the enthusiastic readers and library staff. Thanks to everyone who turned out to make them such a success.
Then it was the long flight home, and a few days to catch my breath before the Edinburgh Festival event with Dougie Henshall on the 25th, and the beginning of the UK Wild Fire tour.
Posted by Ann on Sunday, August 19th 2018 @ 10:28 AM GMT [link]
