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Digital stocking filler
Special Christmas offer: the Kindle version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow will be cut to £1.99, VAT included, from November 12 through to December 26. A similar discount will apply in the UK.
Unashamed campaigning
The Crime Writers’ Association has asked book lovers across the nation to nominate their favourite crime authors for the 2016 Dagger In The Library award. This is the only award that QJ has ever cared about winning. I’ve been nominated once, but I haven’t given up on it, so if anyone should care to nominate me, I’d be very pleased.
This literary prize is a unique part of the CWA Dagger Awards because the nominations are made by crime readers and are in celebration of an author’s entire body of work, not just one individual book.
I grew up near my local library in Motherwell, and I go back there to speak whenever I’m invited. For many kids like me it all strats inLibraries, and it’s libraries that make them readeres. The Dagger In The Library was introduced to give them a voice in theDagger Awards, which endeavour to showcase the best of the best in the crime genre.
To nominate you should go to
http://cwadaggers.co.uk/cwa-daggers/nominate-dagger-in-the-library/
After completing their ballot, you will be entered automatically into a prize draw to win £200 in National Book Tokens. Not only that, you will also be asked to nominate your favourite library. The winner will be awarded some great CWA Dagger prizes
too.
The sad truth is that funding cuts, and. occasionally, unsympathetic councillors threatening the future of our libraries it’s even more important than ever to support them and celebrate the service they provide communities.
Centurion
My current leisure read is Fields of Glory, a new venture by my friend Michael Jecks, master of historical fiction. It’s the first in a saga of the Hundred Years War. (A large hint that there’s plenty more to come.)
This isn’t a review; you know QJ doesn’t do those, not being presumptuous enough to tell other witers how to write. But it is a very strong recommendation; I’m half way through and it’s a cracker. War has always been messy, and Fields of Glory tells it like it must have been. Well done, Jecksie.
Should he be trusted?
A couple of quick questions about yesterday’s WADA commission report into Russian athletics.
Dick Pound, the Canadian chair of the commission is a past president of WADA. In that post he built a reputation over several years as a fanatical pursuer of alleged ‘drug cheats’. He enjoyed also a very high media profile.
- With such a background, was he the best person to put in a position that demanded an objective and unbiased approach?
- Did his commission begin its work with an assumption of guilt?
Working
Sorry for the long radio silence. Blame Bob Skinner.
Quintin Jardine's blog 