Stuff I’ve read or helped to write
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 do it in the book too.
I’m absolutely delighted to be doing my Glasgow book launch event in Category Is, one of my favourite places. Tickets are free but very limited so I don’t think they’ll be available for long. The event is on 8 December at 7pm and everything you need to know is at the end of this link.
Pre-orders of Carrie Kills A Man started arriving in readers’ homes this morning, and I received my author copies too. I had a bit of a moment when I opened the box and saw the pristine copies, because of course books are more than just paper and ink. They’re magical things.
I’ve had many books published, but not a book like this. It’s a very strange feeling to publish something so personal. Good strange, but strange nevertheless.
I’m absolutely delighted to be featured on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon podcast as his book of the week, and I’m particularly pleased that Damian found lots of joy in the book.
You can listen to me reading an extract on Damian’s Soundcloud, which I’ve included below.
Carrie Kills A Man will be book of the week on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon podcast on Wednesday, and that means I also got the opportunity to recommend some books that I think are well worth your time.
I don’t know what magic my publisher pulled to get Patton Oswalt to read and recommend my book, but as my best pal says, they have clearly sacrificed something.
I did my first ever literary event last night at the University of Glasgow as part of Publishing Scotland’s Creative Conversations series.
To say I was terrified would be an understatement. I barely slept in the days before, and during the day itself I managed to break two glasses and prang one of my neighbours’ cars because I was so preoccupied.
I posted about my fear to Twitter and got lots of reassuring replies, including one from Rebecca Lawther: “You got this! Book people are good people.”
She was right on both counts.
I had a blast and really enjoyed the readings from my fellow panelists Chitra Ramaswamy (an old friend from radio and a brilliant writer), Cynthia Rogerson (hilarious), Malachy Tallack (inspiring), Trishna Singh OBE (just gorgeous writing) and Mark Woolhouse OBE (fascinating). Despite being the only person on my panel without an OBE I think I did okay, and I loved chatting with other writers, publishing people and bookworms afterwards.
It’s a real honour to be invited to events like these, and I’m not just saying that because they fed us. I’m still not entirely comfortable – my impostor syndrome was through the roof – but book people are good people and they went out of their way to make me feel welcome and valued, for which I’m very grateful.
Hopefully my next book events won’t involve me damaging anybody’s cars.
I’m delighted to reveal the cover for my book, Carrie Kills A Man, which you can pre-order directly from my lovely publisher here. The cover, by the hugely talented Wolf, is just perfect.
You have no idea how hard it’s been to keep this secret.
I haven’t posted for a while, I know, and I’m sorry. Various personal dramas, work projects and family things have left me very short of time to blog here, and I’ve also found that constantly wading into the bad-faith dialogue and constant repetition of bullshit about trans people’s human rights has taken quite a toll. As I’ve written before, you can’t swim in dirty water without some of it getting on your skin.
Maybe it’s just that I’m really busy. We’ve been doing some more music, which I think is brilliant, and I’ve been working on the edits to Carrie Kills A Man with my amazing editor Kirstyn Smith, who’s taken the raw material of the book and turned it into something I’m really proud of; it’ll be out in November and you can pre-order it now. I’m told I’m also in the Bookseller magazine today, although it’s a subscription title for the trade so I don’t know if I’ve made an arse of myself or not.
But I think it’s more than just being busy. I’ve been blogging for a long time – seventeen years here and a few years before that on the likes of Blogger.com – but I don’t know if I want to keep doing it. It feels like the atmosphere around blogs has changed, that instead of publishing to like-minded souls you’re posting to an audience of bad actors seeking to find something they can take out of context to use against you. That leads to self-censorship and second-guessing, both of which are very tiring and suck the joy out of posting for me. I think until I find that joy again, it’s better to keep this a quiet place.
