Category: Books

  • Everyone’s a winner

    Carrie Kills A Man was nominated for the British Book Awards this year, and while I didn’t win an award or expect to at the ceremony on Monday night (every other book in my category was a heavyweight, critically acclaimed book by an excellent author), I’m still really delighted to have been shortlisted: with an […]

  • Are you sitting comfortably?

    After a bit of a delay, Carrie Kills A Man is now available as an Audible audiobook read by yours truly. I had great fun recording it and I think you can hear that in the audio.

  • Why they come for books

    I had the great honour of delivering the closing remarks at this year’s Scottish Youth Publishers conference in Edinburgh, stepping into shoes previously worn by Denise Mina, Douglas Stuart and Nicola Sturgeon. My talk was about what I dubbed the four Ps of publishing: possibility, personality, power and people, and I’d like to share a […]

  • Lend me your lugs

    I love audiobooks, especially ones read by the author. And it turns out I really love recording audiobooks, especially ones written by me. The audiobook of CKAM is making its way to your favourite audiobook providers; it’s already live on Kobo and should appear on Audible very soon too. In addition to the narrator (me) […]

  • I’ll go full diva any day now

    I’m excited, delighted and absolutely stunned to be nominated in the 2023 British Book Awards, aka The Nibbies, for book of the year in the Discover category. When I see the company Carrie Kills A Man is in, I can only assume that somebody has made a terrible mistake. But until that’s discovered, I’m going […]

  • Knives

    I’m proud to be a contributor to the anthology How Do We Talk About Knives, which I think is going to be really interesting. There’s a free launch event for it in Edinburgh on 9 March, and if you can’t make it along it’ll be online too. Contemporary poets and writers in Scotland explore personal […]

  • Twenty-eight

    I’m one of the contributors to a new book, Twenty-Eight, which looks at the impact of the hateful anti-LGBT legislation that lasted from the late 1980s until the early 2000s. It’s generally agreed that Section 28 was a terrible stain on our history, but what people tend to forget is that the majority supported it. […]

  • Read it in books

    I read a lot of books this year. Here are some of my favourites. Orpheus Builds A Girl, by Heather Parry This tale of a man who believes he can cheat death is gloriously gothic, beautifully written and by the final act had me reading from behind my fingers. I’m Glad My Mom Died, by […]

  • Book people are good people

    Thanks so much to everybody who came along to my book launches this week, to the wonderful people at Argonaut Books in Edinburgh and at Category Is Books in Glasgow, and to my excellent hosts Kirstyn Smith and Louise Blain. Book people really are the best people, and I had the best time on both […]

  • “We’re just ordinary people who’d really appreciate decent healthcare and snacks”

    I’m in the new issue of the excellent Books from Scotland magazine, which you can read online for free. …we Scots are brilliant at mining comedy from pretty dark seams sometimes, and we’ll tell the most horrendously embarrassing stories to make our friends laugh. I’ve done that all my life, so it was natural to […]