'A Wilder Vein' is launched

'A Wilder Vein' was launched last week - twice! First we were at the Aberfeldy Watermill (pictured above left to right with Norma Gray and Ruth Tauber of the Watermill; contributors Andrew Greig, Alison Grant, Kenny Taylor, Mandy Haggith, and me). Then we were in Edinburgh as part of the Radical and Independent Book Fair where the readers were Judith Thurley, Jane Alexander, Ken Wilkie and Andrew Greig. It was wonderful to hear 'live' versions of the pieces I'd enjoyed on the page, and witness the diversity and the synergy between them.

I'm now looking forward to the feature on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage this Saturday at 10am when John McCarthy will be in conversation with contributors Andrew Greig and Sara Maitland. Local media are also making something of it here and there's a lovely review from Cameron McNeish here which also appears in TGO magazine.

Making a new radio play

I spent two days at the end of last week at the BBC in Glasgow to sit in on the recording of my new play 'The Three Knots'. It was great fun to return to that world after several years away. I heard the words I had hounded down and harnessed through numerous drafts springing into new life, was awed that they could mobilise five actors, a Director, three audio staff, an administrator and a whole world of electronic sound effects into a collaborative act of creation. To witness the nuances of meaning and subtext teased out through the sensibilities of the actors and Director; to remember that fewer words often mean more power; and to find that a terrifying storm can be invoked by layerings of sound, is a huge privilege. For the solitary fiction writer, this is a radically different, and a most exciting way of working.

L to R: Robbie Jack, Finn Den Hertog and Hannah Donaldson preparing for a scene.

'The Three Knots' is the realisation of an idea seeded at least three years ago when, while looking through back copies of the Scots magazine in the National Library of Scotland for something else, I stumbled upon an engraving of a remarkable vessel arriving on Loch Sunart in the West Highlands in 1846. It remained anchored there for ten years, and played a highly significant role in the spiritual and political life of the local community. I was intrigued. I have written about how it captivated me before, here. I walked the hills there, and started to inhabit the place with my imagined characters, until they grew, gathered to themselves relationships, conflicts, mythical associations, and so shaped a story.

Hear it as an afternoon play on Radio Four at 2.15 on December 22nd.

The Searching Glance comes out in paperback

Delighted that my short story collection, The Searching Glance is issued in a new paperback edition from Salt Publishing on 15th November, and available immediately direct from their website, at the great price of £7.99.

Reading by local authors at the Drovers' Tryst Walking Festival, Crieff, October 10th

I'm also running a 'walking and writing' workshop earlier that day in the beautiful setting of Innerpeffray Library.

Fellow of Winnie-the-Pooh

This week I started my new role as a Royal Literary Fund 'Fellow' at Stirling University. With over 100 institutions involved across Britain, this scheme has employed many creative writers over the last ten years in providing one-to-one support to students engaged in writing as part of their studies. Although not part of 'the institution' exactly, I am given a lovely home in the Department of English Studies on a campus that at this time of year and with this spell of weather, really comes into its own. Some of the buildings have rather tested my navigational skill but as the RLF scheme is principally funded by the AA Milne Trust, and I like to think of myself as a 'Winnie-the-Pooh fellow', I'm following a delightful precedent when walking in circles!

Joanne Kaar's paper boat exhibition and auction

Francis Drake's 'Pirate'

Here's my very simple contribution to Joanne Kaar's fleet of paper boats, but I had a lot of fun doing it and dug into some family history that I find quite inspiring (see below). My boat is made from paper that has on one side a chart of the north coast of Scotland of 1846 and on the other side a 19th century map of the Braunton area - each end of the journey the Pirate must have taken from Stromness to Braunton.

‘Pirate’ believed to be by J H Harrison, quayside painter, from the book: Braunton – Home of the Last Sailing Coasters by Robert D’Arcy Andrew
‘Pirate’ was a ketch built in Stromness, Orkney in 1888 by G & P Copeland. In the same year she transferred ownership to Robert and Francis Drake who ran the last sailing coasters, delivering coal, slate, etc around the British coasts from Braunton, North Devon. Sadly she foundered off Lavernock Point after a collision with SS Druidstone in 1913 on passage between Cardiff and Bideford, carrying coal.

My mother’s mother was a Drake from Braunton. Every Drake generation had its ‘Francis’, although my great Uncle Frank in Sidmouth, merchant seaman, was last of the line. We like to say that we are descendants from that original ‘Pirate’ of Elizabeth I (although I find it best to keep quiet about this ancestry in some parts of the world).