Archive
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.
Comfort and joy
There is one place, and one place alone, where every printed title on my catalogue is stored and available as a matter of principle.
It isn’t Amazon, and it isn’t Waterstone, and it isn’t WHS. No High Street bookstore has the space to stock over 40 titles, only my officially approved website, http://www.campbellreadbooks.com where every book sold is signed by me.
Christmas is coming, the turkeys are working their way through their rosaries, and festive dedications are available, on every title ordered by November 28.
Ebooks may be all the rage, but you try signing one.
Secluded
Today, after weeks of tinkering and prevarication, I go into full Skinner mode until further notice. That means that I do not open my email inbox, my blog, Facebook, nada, until 2pm at the earliest.
If you need to get in touch with me earlier than that, call my agent. If you really need to get in touch with me, use the phone. If you don’t have those numbers, you don’t really need to get in touch with me.
Music while I work
Stereophonics – Keep the Village Alive. Just downloaded this, after catching a sampler on Jools Holland last night. I’m halfway through and already I’m glad I did. Kelly Jones could sing the phone book and make it work.
Murth-ed
This is worth some of your time, particularly if you don’t like pompous TV interviewers who aren’t very good at their job.
Mmm.
In the great days of the British Empire, a new commanding officer was sent to a South African bush outpost to relieve the retiring colonel.
After welcoming his replacement and showing the usual courtesies (gin and tonic, cucumber sandwiches etc) which protocol decrees, the retiring colonel said, “You must meet my Adjutant, Captain Smithers, He’s my right-hand man and is really the strength of this office. His talent is simply boundless.”
Smithers was summoned and introduced to the new CO, who was surprised to meet a hunchback, one eyed, toothless, hairless, scabbed and pockmarked specimen of humanity, a particularly unattractive man less than three feet tall.
“Smithers, old man, tell your new CO about yourself.”
”Well, sir, I graduated with honours from Sandhurst, joined the regiment and won the Military Cross and Bar after three expeditions behind enemy lines. I’ve represented Great Britain in equestrian events and won a Silver Medal in the middleweight division of the Olympics. I have researched the history of…..”
At that point, the colonel interrupted, “Yes, yes, never mind that Smithers, he can find all that in your file. Tell him about the day you told the witch doctor to fuck off.”
Braid’s kids
A few days ago a message popped up on my Facebook timeline, from an author asking me to buy his book.
I know nothing about the guy, other than what I’ve read on his page and on this link.
https://www.facebook.com/Braids-kids-154206851434709/timeline/
Based on that, I’ll buy a copy. If you read it you may wish to also. Or you may not: no pressure. I said I’d do what I could and this is it. (Marcello Mega, is there a story here?)
Fatality
When you have a pool in your garden, even one as modest as ours, it can have benefits beyond healthy exercise. For example, I cannot tell you how many plot twists and possibilities have come to me as I’ve ploughed up and down, doing my lengths.
It can also be educational. Only last night, when I looked in the skimmer I was reminded (I say this because it’s happened before) of a sad but fundamental truth:
Mice can’t swim.
A lady’s tale
“Why I’m divorced.” Written by a woman.
That morning. I went downstairs for breakfast hoping my husband
would be pleasant and say, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and possibly have a
small present for me.
As it turned out, he barely said good morning, let alone ‘Happy Birthday.’
I thought….well, that’s marriage for you, but the kids…. they will
remember.
My kids came bouncing down stairs to breakfast and didn’t say a word.
So when I left for the office I felt pretty low and somewhat dejected.
As I walked into my office, my handsome boss, Rick, said, ‘Good
morning, lady, and by the way Happy Birthday!’ It felt a little
better that at least someone had remembered.
I worked until one o’clock, when Rick knocked on my door and said,
‘It’s such a beautiful day outside, and it is your birthday, what
do you say we go out to lunch, just you and me.’
I said, ‘Thanks, Rick, that’s the greatest thing I’ve heard all day. Let’s
go!’
We went to lunch. But we didn’t go where we normally would go. He
chose instead a quiet bistro with a private table. We had two
martinis each and I enjoyed the meal tremendously.
On the way back to the office, Rick said, ‘It’s such a beautiful
day…we don’t need to go straight back to the office, do we?’
I responded, ‘I guess not. What do you have in mind?’
He said, ‘Let’s drop by my place, it’s just around the corner.
After arriving at his house, Rick turned to me and said, ‘If you
don’t mind, I’m going to step into the bedroom for just a moment.
I’ll be right back.’
‘Ok.’ I nervously replied.
He went into the bedroom and, after a couple of minutes, he came
out carrying a huge birthday cake, followed by my husband , my
kids, and dozens of my friends and co-workers, all singing ‘Happy Birthday.’
And I just sat there on the couch….
naked.
Nicked
I am very pleased to announce that I’ve been invited to Cuffed, the brand new Vancouver Crime Fiction Festival, which will take place from March 11 – 13, 2016, on Granville Island. It’s the creation of the redoubtable Alma Lee, and her friends Lonnie Propas and Susan Ogle, ensuring that it has ‘success’ written all over it, before the first ticket is sold.
As a trail-blazer for the Festival proper, my friend the mighty Ian Rankin will appear at a Cuffed – sponsored event in St Andrews Wesley, Vancouver on November 16. Tickets available from September 17, through cuffedfestival.com.
Details will be announced in due course on the above-named Festival website, but I’m looking forward already to a return visit to one of my favourite places on the planet.
A modern Stone Age family
A couple of days into the Corbyn reign and we’re back to the bad old days, with the union bully-boys who put him in place now triumphant and threatening to bring down the government. (Whether they’ve actually done that doesn’t matter, for the Daily Mail says that they have.)
The new Shadow Chancellor is firmly on record as wishing he could go back to the 80s and assassinate Thatcher. Leaving aside the unsuitability of such a thug for high public office, he’d be better advised to take his Tardis a decade further back, and assassinate Len Murray and the yobs in the TUC of the 70s, for they were the people who paved The Lady’s way into office by undermining a government of their own party.
If JC is to have a shred of credibility he’ll stamp early doors on McCluskey and his pals, but he can’t, because he’s their creature.
Ugly as sin, but a hell of a runner
What have I been doing for the last week? Well, I’ve been in Spain, tolerating a shamefully slow broadband service (Get your act together, Movistar!), thinking about Skinner 27, and driving the ugliest car on the road
to Barcelona and back. I’ve also been getting back to work on Skinher 27, but of that more later.
Review
You might like to take a look at this.
https://www.headline.co.uk/Blogs/Quintin+Jardine+in+Edinburgh.page
Warning
Tell everyone you know never to fly out of Edinburgh at 6:30am. Yesterday, my son drove us to the airport; we left Gullane at 4:50am and got to the turn-off into the airport approach at 5:25am. There we found ourselves in a mile-long tailback of cars and taxis, mostly the latter, and crawled all the way to the drop-off zone. That took 15 minutes. I had fast track security clearance, which you can buy on the airport website; it wasn’t fast because many others had bought it too, and because the entire security area, which is large, was thronged. We got to the gate just after 6 o’clock, as they began to board the flight.
What can the airport owners do about it? A separate Taxi zone with an approach through Ingliston? I don’t know, but they need to do something.
PS.
And one more thing; when you’re tight for time, it’s more than a little annoying to be sent on a winding route through the ‘duty free’ zone, before you actually enter the terminal.
Cheerio
it was inevitable, given the timing of the announcement and my publicly aired views on Police Scotland, that the resignation of the Chief Constable would be mentioned last night. I was ready for that. What took me by surprise was the spontaneous round of applause that the announcement provoked from the audience.
Now that Sir Stephen House has recognised the strength of public feeling and bowed to it, attention will turn to the appointment of his successor. I hope that the Scottish Police Authority and the Scottish Government will ensure that the person chosen has ground level, through the ranks, experience of policing in Scotland and is not another import from the tainted Metropolitan Police.
Cheers
Big thanks today to everyone who came along to the Baillie Gifford Theatre in Charlotte Square last night, and did me the honour of spending an hour with me. I enjoyed it greatly and hope that you did too.
Thanks also to Nick Barley, Roland Gulliver, and the Book Festival team, and to Al Senter, a late substitute, for chairing the event with such class and aplomb.
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