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I feel a little bit bad about the slagging I gave John Locke’s how-to manual, so I thought I’d redress the balance a little bit by mentioning Let’s Get Digital. If you’re looking for a manual on e-publishing, spend your money on Gaughran’s book, not Locke’s: Gaughran makes it abundantly clear that the work starts when [more]
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This year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest winners have been announced. This one is my favourite: As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand—who would take her away from all this—and who would not [more]
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It’s far too long, but this is still a great illustration of how you can tell any story you like on TV with careful editing. It’s the UK version of The Apprentice, re-edited and subtitled to tell the story of Lord Sugar’s mental problems. [via b3ta] [more]
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If you haven’t been tempted by my novel Coffin Dodgers so far, allow me to introduce my Super Awesome Holiday Promotion: to celebrate Glasgow Fair, when everybody in Glasgow traditionally takes a fortnight off work and goes to Rothesay, I’m slashing – slashing! – the price of Coffin Dodgers for a wee bit. It’s short, [more]
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It’s MetaFilter’s anniversary today, so here’s something I wrote about it on its tenth birthday, two years ago. Remember the song Stuck In The Middle With You and the line about “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right”? That’s a pretty good description of the Internet. When you spend as much time [more]
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This is interesting. Ray Banks – who is good – talks about ebooks with Allan Guthrie – who is also good – and the conversation turns to book piracy. Banks: Authors should be pleased they’re being pirated. I know I was. Over the last twenty years or so, branding has shifted from publisher to author, [more]
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This has the potential to be brilliant: a Sesame Street game for wee kids developed by Double Fine, which describes itself as “The World’s most talented and bearded video game development team, headed by Tim Schafer!” If you’re a parent of young children and you have an iOS device, the Sesame Street app Elmo’s Monster [more]
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Tracy from Booked Up says some nice things about my book. This book was a really quick, fun read. I romped through it, amused by the antics of the threesome and curious to find out what was going on and whether justice would be served. It’s set in a world that’s not too hard to [more]
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I’ve bought an awful lot of books over the years, but there’s only one I’m really attached to: Blood’s a Rover by James Ellroy. It’s not my favourite book – it’s not even my favourite Ellroy book – but it stands out from all the others because Ellroy signed it for me. Last night, I [more]
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I loved this bit of Hepworth’s post about liking The New Yorker: For most of your life the world is a frustrating place because it appears to be run by people older than you are. Then one morning you wake up and find that it’s a frustrating place because it’s run by people younger than you [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
