Quintin Jardine's blog

I hope you get a lot of fun from your Christmas present. Yes, it could be a good way to burn money, but if it suits your lifestyle, go for it. You’ve prompted me to look at my own Kindle listings. As far as I can see all the titles are there, apart from Blood Red, Skinner’s Round and Autographs in the Rain. Enquiries will be made!

That’s nice to know. Since you’re East Lothian based, and on Murmuring the Judges, I’m wondering. Have you ever taken a walk out to inspect the submarine in Aberlady Bay? If you follow the tide out, you can do it.

I can only hope that your 4-year-old wasn’t too hungry by the time you’d finished. Looking at your travel timing, having Skinner 20, ‘A Rush of Blood’ in your luggage, shouldn’t be a problem. Be careful reading in the sun; it melts the glue.

Glad to have hubby’s attention. Let me know if it becomes a problem. The books are listed in order on the website.

That’s the way book retailing is these days. It’s where you have to be if you want to be noticed by new readers. That works to the advantage of the existing fan base as well, so everybody should be happy. Unfortunately the big black cloud hanging over this is the contraction in the number of book stores after years of expansion. Go back thirty years and in Edinburgh you’d find James Thin and John Menzies, a newsagent that sold books. Go back ten years and you’d find the same two, although Menzies had become W H smith by then, plus Ottakars, Waterstone and Borders. Go there now and you’ll find Waterstone and WHS.

What’s happened?  Well, Amazon has, for a start, but everyone sells on-line these days, including me. There’s no doubt that has impacted on the High Street. That wasn’t foreseen in the years of expansion, but neither was the voraciousness of supermarkets, their expansion into areas that are miles away from their core business and their practice of listing only the top-selling titles, often at loss leader prices. It could be argued that every time a book is sold in Tesco  it’s another nail in the coffin of the traditional book trade.

That’s a very good question. Blood Red will be available digitally, soon, and I expect it to be available first in Sony-compatible format, through Waterstones. (I’d love to have my work available in downloadable form on Campbell Read Books, but there are lots of things to be sorted before that can happen.) However, if you own a Kindle reader, it will only process volumes that you buy from Amazon. Once a book is digitised by Headline, it’s available to them for adaptation, but it’s down to them to decide when to add it to their library.

So, the most precise answer I can give you is . . . I don’t know.

I’m assuming, Neil, that you have a Kindle. If so, I’d be interested to know how you’re getting on with it. Amazon has put a lot of development money into its reader, but Sony beat it into the marketplace. Then there’s the rumoured Apple tablet, which will do what they do and more, although there’s an application out already that will let you download books on to an iPhone. Indeed, my editor told me this afternoon that he read Alice in Wonderland on his phone over Christmas. Crazy? Confusing? Undoubtedly, but with that sort of variety on the horizon, I’m not sure that Amazon will be able to make the Kindle pay, long-term, unless they find a very creative way of marketing them.

Thanks for that. It’s an excellent suggestion. If you see the names St John, McFadyen, Pettigrew, McBride or McClair in future books, you can claim credit.

I can understand you being taken aback by the Aussie price: I was. Al and I are pleased that your book arrived so promptly. I hope you enjoy Primavera, and FLW when the paperback is released.

Am I going to write another Skinner? Done it already, Gavin. ‘A Rush of Blood’ will be out next summer, and I’m 3000 words into Skinner 21 which will be the 2011 story. I wouldn’t mind coming back to NZ to promote them. I say this whenever the subject comes up: Christchurch is the most English city  I have ever visited, including any in England. I’ve still to reach Dunedin, to make the comparison with my home country.

Another one bites the dust.

In my younger days, New Year in Gullane tended to go on all night, but it’s been a while since everyone gathered at our house for bacon rolls at 6:30. 2009 went out with something of a bang, though, a party of 20 at the golf club, and a glass of something afterwards, but no seriously late finish.

I gave up making New Year Resolutions a long time ago. Instead, for 2010, I have two wishes. One, may Dom and Frida’s baby arrive safely and on schedule. Two, may all of those with whom we brought in this new year be around to welcome the next, and may our Christmas card list remain unaltered.

To everyone who reads this, may the year bring you all for which you wish, and none of what you fear.

The truth is, the advertised release date of most books is only a guideline. They don’t stay in the warehouse for long. Where are you in France? I have a number of friends there.

Regular visitors to my blog may wonder why I don’t enable comments on my posts. The answer’s simple. This is my site and only my axes will be ground here; I don’t want it to become a sounding board for any crank or idiot with a prejudice to air.

If anyone wants to counter or criticise any of my views posted here they should go back to the main website and use the ’email QJ’ facility, then check back here in a day or two to see whether they’re still afloat or holed below the waterline.

When you’re very young, and your Dad takes you to football for the first time, you are inevitably fated to support his team. It’s like Tinkerbell landing on your shoulder and whispering in your ear. In my case, she whispered, ‘Tough shit, kid; you’re a Motherwell supporter.’ And so I have been, for around ** years. You are allowed to support other clubs, but that’s where your footballing soul will always lie. (For example, I have been a Man U fan from the day I met Matt Busby’s mother, and maybe even before that: maybe the seeds were sown when my Old Man came back from a schools’ international trip to England, telling me and everyone else who’d listen that he’d seen a boy called Duncan Edwards, who was destined to be the best player ever.)

But the commitment is reciprocal; support your club and it will support you. If you doubt me consider this. The Thursday Legends are still in existence, but the average age is now way below mine; indeed, I am the doyen. At our meeting a couple of weeks back, it was extremely cold, so cold that I pulled from my bag a pair of full-length Motherwell socks, a present from last Christmas that I had never had the effrontery to wear. I put them on, scored six goals, and they are now my official lucky socks.

A few days ago, my team sacked its manager. This is not something that its chairman is notorious for doing, so I’m not going to question his judgement. A couple of days later, the club announced the appointment, on an undefined basis, of a replacement, Craig Brown. This has been greeted with badly disguised derision by some people, the sort of pond life who add comments to articles in the Mail Online and the like. Not by me, though. Craig is an honest, intelligent, pleasant man, who’s devoted much of his life to football, and whose record as Scotland’s international team boss is better than any of his successors. He’s not going to use my club as a stepping stone, as did his predecessor, and his predecessor, and many others. We should be proud to have him, for however long he stays, and I for one hope that his appointment extends beyond the few weeks that have been suggested.

On top of all that, his arrival deals a significant blow against ageism. Craig is older than me. He’s even older than Sir Alex Ferguson. Happy Birthday, Fergie, 68 today.

Merry Christmas to you also, and a Happy New Year. Hey, you’ve finished Blood Red even before I’ve launched it. That’s a feat.

(That’s for all the James Brown fans out there, the seasonal song he never did, but should have.)

The day is almost upon us; less than nine hours of Christmas Eve are left. Eileen and I are in our winter fastness, where I am wondering at this moment whether all those Dreamers of a White Christmas would fancy it so much if they realised that all too soon it would become grey and slushy for a couple of hours, before the temperature dropped below freezing once more and it turned to ice. This morning, I drove (very carefully) my son to the airport. He’s in the air right now, bound for Japan via Schiphol, Amsterdam, bearing our good wishes to Akihiro-san and Yoshiko-san, his in-laws.  Our Kid will be driving home some time soon along the same road, and then, with her back safely in the village, the festivities  can begin. They’ll be quiet this year, with only one of our four collective offspring, and her man, around the table, the other three being in different countries, but we’ll have a quietly good time nonetheless, there will be ‘Ohhs’, and ‘Thanks’, and ‘Just what I needed’ , even though that isn’t entirely the point of Christmas. Doctor Who will be recorded, and may be watched later, depending on how big a dent has been made in the port decanter. The Queen’s Christmas Message will be missed. Citizen Kane will also be recorded. (By the way, it was his sledge.)

And now I must go and shave, so that I am not taken for Jim Royle.

To all of you who read this, and even those who don’t,  wherever you are on the planet, whether tomorrow has any significance for you or not, may it, and all your days that follow, pass peacefully and happily.

Long term followers of QJ’s journal may me aware that one of my favourite rock bands of all time is an outfit from British Columbia, called Default. I came across them in Las Vegas a few year ago, and I’ve been plugging them ever since. While they’re one of the world’s greatest, they must also be among the unluckiest on the planet, for a series of record company disasters have resulted in a gap of four years between their third and fourth albums. But their luck has turned, for they’ve been picked up by EMI Canada, and their fourth work, ‘Comes and Goes’ is available at last. It has still to be released in stores outside Canada, but it’s available via Amazon. If you’re a Classic FM listener like my wife, it’s not for you, but if you’re an unreconstructed old rocker like me, with many hours of John Peel and The Old Grey Whistle Test behind you, you may agree with me that it’s the album of the year.

Same to you and yours, Ray, and to all my friends in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, and around the globe.

Although the official publication date of Blood Red is January 7, a few copies have escaped from the warehouse and are now available, worldwide, through http://www.campbellreadbooks.com, signed by Yer Man.

The new novel is the second in the Primavera series; in addition, it’s my thirtieth published work, a landmark that gives me a little personal satisfaction and an occasional headache.

Check ‘Events’ for the launch schedule.

Enjoy.

I’ll be signing Blood Red in and around Edinburgh, yes, but not as far north as Inverness, because of time constraints. I’ll publish details in the blog’s events section.

That’s a very good question, Mary. To be honest, I haven’t . . . but I will. As for Mark Harmon as Skinner on-screen, the fact that would count against him in the final analysis is not that he’s American, but that he’s too old.