Slower than a slow thing

This not being able to use the internet, except when there's a prevailing wind and a downward slope is a pain in the bum. I've never had to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous dialup before. Working for and ISP, a dot.com disaster and a globally massive IT conglomerate I've always had huge, big fast connections where the bits and bytes whoooosh down the magic wires at breakneck speed. Being stuck on dialup is like having a very large sticking plaster removed very slowly from a very hairy limb. And as if the lack of speed wasn't bad enough, I keep getting kicked off the network. Maybe it's because my snail-like data packages keep tripping everyone else up?

I had a dose of the BT engineers today (apparently you can get a cream for it), they're playing 'hunt the interference' with fancy bits of kit that look like they've been used as makeshift goalposts in a game of kick the boulder. All grey and battle-scarred. Apparently there's possibly something a bit maybe slightly bit we can't be entirely sure yet, wrong with the wires between Casa MacBride and the next farm along but one. Probably fat-arsed pigeons bouncing up and down on the line. Damn fat pigeon bastards. Why don't they go out and get a job, eh? Spongers.

But Mr BT and his mate the Telecom Kid will be back tomorrow for more switching my phone off at the exchange and listening intently to wires. The only upside of this is that I can't do anything online all day and most of the night, so mighty has been the focus on the edit. I'm up to page 491 now, and I've already killed about 100 pages. Only 66 more to go, but I'm going to rewrite at least one, probably two of the remaining chapters.

At this rate I'll be finishing the damn thing on the plane back from Chicago...

Right, I have to be quick

Because even the fall-back dial-up access I've got is ropier than a 1970's macramé factory. Thousands of hippies making those weird owl wall hangers are less ropey than my internet connection. Bloody internet.

Anyway, I've got my schedule for the bookshop part of my bijou American tour, so if you're in the any of the following cites, on the following dates and are at a loose end at the following times, you might want to consider going somewhere else and hiding until the smoke clears...

Wednesday, August 16: New York

I'll be signing stock at:
Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren Street (b/w Church and Broadway)
Partners in Crime
44 Greenwich Avenue (b/w 6th and 7th)
And then going to a party at Black Orchid. So New York is relatively safe and beard event free. Lucky sods.

Thursday, August 17: Minneapolis

More stock being vandalised at
Uncle Edgar's
2864 Chicago Avenue South
And then at 7:00 PM it's
Once Upon a Crime
604 W. 26th Street
For a reading and general beardy mayhem.

Friday August 18: Madison

6:00 PM
Booked for Murder
2701 University Avenue
This will be my second actual US event, so by then I'll probably be blasé and drunk as a skunk, demanding that passers-by purchase sixteen copies of my book, or else. There may be singing and exposing of genetalia.

Saturday, August 19: Milwaukee

This is going to be an odd one:
11:00 AM
Mystery One
2109 N. Prospect Avenue
It's mid-morning(ish), so a good time for shoppers, and I'll have been up since about half four / five in the morning in order to make the flight from Madison. Expect giggling, wobbling about a bit, and the occasional bit of falling over.

Sunday, August 20: Chicago

My only event at a city not beginning with 'M'!
02:00 at
Borders Books and Music #20
1500 16th Street, Suite D
Last night at the proms time, with Pomp and Circumstance played on an improvised set of bagpipes made from a startled-looking Cairn Terrier, some old bits of bamboo and half a mile of ducktape. (or Duct Tape, if mallard-based adhesive is not available).

And after that it's home to dear old blighty for jet lag, mince and tatties, and a desperate attempt to be even vaguely human for an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on the 23rd. Where people can look forward to my every second sentence beginning with, "When I was on tour, in the States..."

Ah yes, you think I'm difficult to live with now: just you wait!

Saturday's child is also full of beer, but he's had more sleep

Morning is not a good thing for the majority of crime writers. Especially not after a night in the convention bar, so it's something of a surprise to come downstairs and find the breakfast room full of people. Probably thought that getting there early would entitle them to an extra sausage, or a real tomato. FOOLS!

I sit at a little table on my own, but Mr Billingham invites me to join him and his mate, Martyn Waites. Which is nice -- it means we get to take the piss out of eachother, the genre, talk about the panels we've enjoyed, and wish there were more sausages. Chief amongst the topics is Shane Maloney's performance yesterday, which we all loved, and a wonder that the Australians aren't taken more seriously in the crime world. Maybe it's the funny hats and bent sticks? Who knows?

After breakfast it's time for Martina Cole being interviewed by the lovely Natasha Cooper. One of the weirdest things is the difference between the two of them -- Martina's very Larrrrndan (being an Essex girl) while Natasha is about as Queen's English as you can get outside Her Majesty's bedroom. 'Oh... Oh... Oh yes Philip: one is arriving!' I got up early last year to hear Natasha talking to Reg Hill -- and this one's every bit as good. I have to admit that I've never read any of Martina's books, but after the event I'm definitely going to.

Then it's time for a cup of tea, where I sweet talk the lady with the urn into giving me a refill, even though she's not supposed to. It's the beard, makes them weak at the knees it does. And then straight into Research -- the awful truth where Simon Kernick manages to make himself sound like a very, very sad man, freeloading off the fire brigade and living on park bench. Sad, but funny. Laura Wilson is the scary one, telling her, 'how I asked my boyfriend to try and drown me' story. Is it just me, or are crime writers all weird?

I was planning on going to the Gritty City panel, but I'm off for lunch with my editor Sarah and naughty old Agent Phil. We wander into town, pretty much at random until Sarah spots a place called the Drum and Monkey. The sign outside looks a bit like Agent Phil, so we go in for a lovely meal of fish with extra fish and some fish on the side. Mmm, fish. OK, it's no TOWER OF FISH, but it's nice nonetheless. Maybe next year? Mostly the talk is of books and writing and deadlines and editing, but we do make time for a detour about James and his writing. With Phil and I bigging him up to embarrassing heights. This is practice for my afternoon appointment, when I have to do the same thing for R.D. Wingfield for ITV 3. It's not till the end of the meal that we notice the moth-eaten, stuffed monkey playing a drum, perched up on the shelf high above one of the other tables. Thank God we're not sitting underneath it -- otherwise there might be taxidermic monkey poop to deal with.

Before anything else happens I need to sprint through the baking streets of Harrogate, looking for something to shave the unintentionally beardy bits of my face. I'd use the razor I'd brought down specially, but She Who Must's father nicked the thing in Newcastle. Damn Fifers -- can't trust them an inch when it comes to disposable items of personal grooming! By the time I get back to the hotel I'm drenched in running-about sweat, but that doesn't deter Betty, who wants me to sign her book. 'It's only a paperback, now,' she says in her naughty Irish brogue, 'Oi'm hopin' you don't think oi'm too cheap...' I wave this off with a magnanimous laugh -- she told me last night how Mr Betty had refused to turn the car round and drive the fifty miles back to their house to collect the hardback version she'd forgotten to pack. And then I open the book... and find it's already been signed.

It turns out Betty's been scrawling names in the thing for some sort of prize draw thing. She keeps telling me, 'It was tirty tree tousand euros...' as I flick through the book looking for any spare page she hasn't defaced with other people's names. Doesn't she know how fragile my ego is?

And then the bit I've been dreading all weekend. Actually, I've been dreading it for weeks, ever since I found out they were doing a TV series on TV sleuths and the books they came from. If you've been here before, you'll know I'm a big fan of the TOUCH OF FROST BOOKS, plus Mr Wingfield and I share an agent, so I've been asked to be one of those talking heads you see on telly the whole time these days. Ulp... I don't mind being on a panel. In fact I really enjoy it -- it's fun and it's fleeting. But radio and television are permanent. And when you make a tit of yourself on there, a lot more people know about it.

I've decided to go for 'enthusiasm' rather than some sort of considered / measured approach. If I'm going to look like an idiot, I might as well look like an animated idiot. And I do. Talking nineteen to the dozen, hands going everywhere, unfinished sentences and, 'Oh, yes, and the stuff with the bit: BRILLIANT!' Oh dear Jesus... When this thing goes out in the Autumn I'm going to look like a proper care in the community job. The only good bit is when the guy asking the questions tells me at the end it's been nice to see someone passionate about their subject, instead of scholarly. I leave feeling slightly better about it, even if I know it's the film-making equivalent of a pat on the head and a lollypop.

After this there's only one thing I can do: go to the bar where I manage to embarrass James by giving him a wind-up snail and telling everyone it's his birthday. He goes a very fetching shade of red.

There's a party going on in a little room off the main hall -- Hodder I think -- where the wine is slightly cooler and they've learned from last night's canapé experience by going for crisps instead. It is here that I learn that the lovely Jane, who's been running about like a mad thing all weekend with the 'any questions' microphone, trained as a painting restorer. Which I think is incredibly cool. Then I learn that people haven't stopped taking the piss out of Anne Cleeves for winning the Gold Dagger this year. Which is kinda sweet, but doesn't stop us being press ganged into 'mingling' at the Author Dinner.

"But," I say, "I'm not going to the author dinner, I'm scamming free wine from Hodder! No! Leave me alone! Help, HELP!!!" But a-mingling I must go. How the hell do you mingle with people sitting down to dinner? Anne and I hang about just inside the door, psyching ourselves up, then go for it. And you know what, even though I felt like a complete tit plonking myself down at someone's table and saying, "Hi, you've never heard of me, but I write books," everyone I spoke to was really, really nice. One lot even let me have some of their wine!

From thence to the Courtyard restaurant with the rest of the HC contingent (after a hurried phone call to Agent Phil to make sure someone took James out for a birthday tea). We went here last year, only we managed to get back just in time to hear the answers being read out for the quiz. Which made us about as popular as a turd in a jar of mayonnaise. This year we're back in plenty of time to not come first, or even get placed. Even if I am a complete star and correctly identify that it's the NEW Avengers, not the old ones, during the theme tune round. And as far as I can tell, HarperCollins people were the only ones boogying on down while they were getting played. Did I mention all the wine?

Afterwards it's back to the bar. Again. More chat, more laughs, ending up with a spirited discussion on the nature and worth of reviews at six in the morning. Well, I'd always planned to enjoy a late night on the Saturday, if one was in the offing, so I did. Made all the more enjoyable by those reprobates from the Billingham Talk Zone. God bless them and all who sail in them.

By the time I lurch back to bed I'm too tired to worry about Claudia Schiffer and her legions of the night. Sleep is my undiscovered country and I'm going to bloody well map it!

Friday's child is full of beer

'No, Claudia, get off me! ... Yes, I do like pickled onions, but that's just not hygienic!' I awake, dripping with sweat from another Claudia Schiffer-induced nightmare. WHY WON'T SHE LEAVE ME ALONE? Eight in the morning and my mobile phone thing is pretending to be an alarm clock. I can't be arsed pretend to be awake and hit snooze instead. Ten minutes later it goes for an encore, so I reprise my role as button-pushing zombie. By the time the third set of warbling rings sounds I'm up and in the shower, knowing I'm going to have to get a serious shift on if I'm going to make the nine o'clock panel AND breakfast.

Thankfully I drank an obscene amount of water last night, had a couple of fizzy good make feel nice before bed and another couple on waking, so I'm up to the challenge of a huge breakfast. Only the hotel doesn't want to put it to the test, instead they serve a single plate consisting of a solitary sausage, fried egg, one rasher of bacon and a lonely tinned tomato. Haute cuisine it is not. But if it were any bigger I'd be late for the morning's opening session -- do men write better crime fiction than women? Which is entertaining, even if Buggerlugs Billingham makes everyone's stomach churn with talk of staying home and playing with his set of artificial lactating breasts. And then my reputation is sullied as Val McD tells everyone that it wasn't true women wrote more violent fiction than men -- she's only read one book this year that's turned her stomach. And when pressed, admits it was mine.

I have two choices, blush and rush out, embarrassed at being 'The Man Who Sickens Val McDermid', or brazen it out. I give myself a one man Mexican wave, figuring stupidity is the better part of valour.

Next up (for me anyway) is the new blood panel, and then lunch!

Lunch is a strange, silent affair in a little pub at the bottom of the Harrogate highstreet. James, John and Vincent munching away in what I have to assume is hungover silence. I know James's probably is, but then he did try to drink his own bodyweight in Old Peculiar. Afterwards I make my excuses and leg it -- I want to find a birthday present for Agent Phil -- who's not going to be arriving till later (something to do with a big party he had to go to on Thursday night). Only the toy shop is shut! No!!! So I'm going to have to buy him a slap-up birthday lunch instead. If he ever turns up.

Back to the hotel in time to catch the Unique Voices event -- billed as 'a panel of unique voices talking about the ups and downs of being different, and how their work is marketed in an industry which all too often pigeonholes writers.' What it should have said was, 'Come hear John Connolly rant!' And very entertaining it was too, with Mr Connolly telling everyone most crime fiction wasn't very good and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not experimenting and pushing the genre in new directions, while Shane Maloney got off some very funny one-liners when he could get a word in edgewise. Sometimes there's nothing like a little controversy to make something interesting, and the only thing this one lacked was a knock-down, drag-out bout of fisticuffs.

Then it was off to the bar, where the inimitable Alex Barclay (who isn't actually a man) made her usual dramatic appearance, telling everyone they looked gorgeous in a ninety mile an hour Southern Irish accent. Alex tends to create her own event horizon, frenetic energy building up to critical mass until it implodes into a gravitational well that pulls in men for miles around. Shameless hussy that she is.

God knows where she is when her panel's supposed to start, but she hammers down the central aisle just as the introductions are being made, skidding into the seat at the end of the table. It's a well-behaved panel, but then given the fireworks of 'Unique Voices' anything short of world war three would be. But I do give John and the rest of the panel the chance to be indiscreet by asking if they've got any weirdo freak stalkers yet. He, of course, immediately heads into the realms of pure filth, which gets him a very well deserved round of applause.

The joint forces of HarperCollins and Little, Brown are throwing a party! Last year this was an HC only affair -- chilled champagne and tempting morsels. This year it was very hot, crowded, and the hotel staff were busy setting tables for breakfast. But the wine is warm, free and plentiful, so it would be churlish to complain! I had fun anyway.

Afterwards I'm incredibly lucky to be invited to dinner at a little Italian restaurant attempting the World Record for Longest Time Between Ordering Meal And Actually Getting Something To Eat. The food's good when it finally arrives, but by then we're all too old to remember what we were doing here in the first place. Valiantly, Agent Phil tries to keep James Twining awake by knocking a glass of iced water into his crotch. He's such a trooper. And now there's a much smaller chance of James-T's groin spontaneously combusting. These things are important. But the restaurant's taken so long we've missed both the Ian Rankin / John Harvey talk (which I'd been looking forward to) and the Foul Play event too. Curse those purveyors of slow-motion pasta!

The evening then heads back to the bar for beer, gin and tonic, and many, many glasses of water. By half two in the morning I slosh when I walk, but I'm in bed just in time to catch the thunderstorm. It's like being inside a very hot dustbin, repeatedly battered with sledgehammers. Pause -- two, three four -- BOOOOOOOM! Then the rain, drumming down in vertical sheets, hissing and gurgling, bringing the promise of a cool night. And not delivering. Bloody rain. Ten minutes later it's gone and the heat settles in once more.

I place the large clove of garlic I nicked from the hotel kitchens on my bedside table, next to the crucifix I've fashioned from two pencils, a biro and some sellotape. If Claudia Schiffer tries to start anything tonight, I'm ready for her.

We're having a heat wave

By the time I stagger into the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate I'm about ready to give up the ghost and die. Probably to become one of those bleached skeletons you see in westerns, only without the horns. Thursday: day three of an ill-advised trip into the slow cooker that is England. Yesterday and the day before, it was Newcastle to see She Who Must's sister Valerie and her hubband get joint doctorates from Northumbria Anniversary. Which sounds very cool, until you take into account the hooringly high temperatures and my steadfast refusal to wear a dinner jacket. If a kilt's good enough for Scotland, it's good enough for the rest of the world. OK, so it's going to be a bit hot, but they used to wear these things in India! She Who Must's dad wore one in Cypres for God's sake... Mind you, he did come back bald with no teeth, so maybe that should have been something of a hint.

It's sodding roasting beneath my kilt. If you ever see a Scotsman, properly attired, and he's standing shoulders back, hands on hips and legs planted far apart like he's in pantomime, it's because sweat is running down the inside of his thighs and into his socks. If he wriggles his hips, he's not being suggestive, he's just trying to encourage some sort of breeze around his poaching nether-regions. That and two nights of un-air-conditioned hotel rooms have left me sleep-deprived and dehydrated, so when the Old Swan Hotel looms out of a sun-haze through the taxi window I think I've died and gone to heaven.

And then I struggle up to my room, find it' doesn't have air conditioning, and realise that although I've may have died, I seem to have gone the other way.

Quick: to the bar!

It's an opulent place, fancy, wooden bits and enough magnolia paint to feed a family of four for six generations, but it still feels like someone's trying to slowly cook me. And there's no one in the bar either. At half past one I'm an hour early for registration and everyone else seems to have more sense, so I trudge back up to my private oven (with double bed and en-suite grill), peel off my sticky travel clothes, shower, then settle down in front of the computer to do some more editing.

Of course, I probably should have closed the curtains first. It wasn't till I was pacing the room, talking to myself, trying to get a bit of dialogue to work, that I realise that anyone looking out of their bedroom window in this direction will be getting an unpleasant eyeful. It'll be all over the papers tomorrow: 'Bearded Crime Write-ist Spotted In The Nip!' Screeching like a girl, I scurry for the bathroom, wrap a towel around my sinful ITW man-parts and creep back to the window. Look left, look right, shut the curtains and hope no one was out there with a video camera.

Half three and I'm back in the bar -- and so are people! Hurrah! Out into the sunshine with a pint of cold beer to speak a load of old bollocks with people who really should know better, and Jayne from the BTZ. Who looks a bit like Mystic Meg, only not so damn creepy. More beer, more people, more chat. And then James turns up, wearing his trademark tartan trousers. If nothing else, it'll make his unconscious body easy to identify when it's fished out of the rose bushes later after an obscene amount of Theakstons Old Peculiar.

He, the Rickards, and I wander into town for a small bite of supper at a little Tex-Mex place where I ignore all medical advice and go for a rib-eye steak the size of my head. Mmm, cow... Made all the sweeter by John having the vegetarian Chilli. Make mental note to keep an eye on him -- obviously he's not right in the head. Neither is Declan Hughes, who lurches up to our table, tells us he's had the early-bird special, denies having any sort of profile published in the New York Times, but does admit to being a bestseller in Germany. Make mental note to have him killed.

Back at the hotel, the bar-goers have spilled out into the evening light, laughing and clinking glasses, making merry in the run-up to the award ceremony. There have been writing workshops today -- and according to Betty they were good, especially the bit at the end where they all went out for wine -- but the main meat of the day is the award ceremony. I sit at the back with my rowdy dinner companions and cheer like a demented football fan when Val wins the prestigious mini barrel for THE TORMENT OF OTHERS.

After that we adjourn to the bar, until someone realises that the after-show party is going on, and that probably means free booze. And if there's free booze on the go, what the hell are we doing paying for it? There follows a stampede, and much drinking of Theakstons Old Peculiar.

It has to be said that when Mr Rickards is involved the conversational tone tends to take a dip for the gutter. But when he, James, Simon Kernick, and Kenneth Withnail are involved it heads for the sewer. Thank God Agent Phil's not here tonight, or it'd be half-way out to sea on a raft of used toilet paper by now. We try to be all serious and intellectual for a big group interview thing that's going into Spinetingler, but the only one sober enough to make even a token stab at it is Mr Guthrie, and he's suffering from heat-stroke, so it's fifty / fifty.

I have determined not to stay up late tonight, so it comes as something of a surprise to still be in the bar at half four in the morning, chatting away to naughty Irish ladies from Mark Billingham's forum and a strange bloke in sunglasses who invites me up to his hotel room with the promise of an ipod full of vintage punk. I tell him I'm not that kind of boy, but he tells me he's a millionaire with purloined beer. We all have our price...

As I lurch down the corridor back to my room at six in the morning, I think this was probably a mistake. I've not slept for three days in a row now and the world is beginning to rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. Last year I lasted all the way through to Saturday before staying up all night -- this year I've done it on day one.

It's been fun, but this does not bode well!

. . . - - - . . .

No internet access!

Telephone line buggered!

Send help!

On the subject of getting screwed...

I don't normally go in for political-style posts, but Gordon Brown's latest jolly taxation wheeze is just crying out for comment. Now, as you know, I'm not a big one on political parties -- politicians, as a breed, rank on my personal scale somewhere below people who sexually molest goldfish -- but I've got to express a grudging admiration for our current Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think he has to be the most prolific thieving bastard we've ever had.

OK, so as the guy in charge of the economy, his job is to screw the tax-paying public out of every last penny he can, in order to finance various half-baked projects that probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Every Chancellor since Sir John Baker donned the black mask, stripy jumper and big sack marked 'SWAG' sometime in the early sixteenth century, has seen it as their God given calling to help themselves to the nation's pockets. It's what they do. But I think Mr Brown has elevated it from bare-faced highway robbery to something of and art form. It can't be too long before we hand over our entire wage packet to the man and he'll give us back pocket money, if we've been good and done our homework.

Gordon Brown demonstrates the correct way to apply a condom, or make shadow bunnies, one of the two.

And yet, his latest wheeze 'swings the other way', if you know what I mean. From the 1st of July, he's snipping 12.5% off all condoms (hopefully from the end that already has the hole in it). In fact all contraceptives are going to be subject to a reduced VAT rate of 5%. So now for every twenty one bonks you have, one goes straight into the Chancellor's pocket*, before: he'd be getting a slippery pocketful every seventh.

So next time you make the beast with two backs, bump uglies, do the dirty, or make sweet, sweet love: lie back and think of think of Gordon... *shudder* That's your contraception, right there.

* Now there's an image.

Was it good for you darling?

Yes, pass me the post-coital cigarette, I've just been screwed. Well, I say 'just' but it was actually a while a go, I've only just realised the extent of said screwing today. Remember I bought a Jeep Cherokee a while back, in a fit of stupidity, to please She Who Must Go To Far Away Horsy Events With The Boy Rat? Well, it went in for its MOT today and there are a number of 'features' that have caused it to crash and burn spectacularly. And according to the bloke down the garage (who I trust, as I once got a bill from there for £9.40 -- and you don't see that often) the things it's failed on must have been like that for a while. Certainly since way before the last MOT.

Now I always regretted buying this car, pretty much from the moment I drove the thing away from the cramped little second-hand car place where we got it, but this takes the biscuit. If there's one thing that makes my blood boil, it's being ripped off. Well, that and sticking my head in a microwave, that'd make it boil too, but then it would solidify a bit like black pudding and my eyes would explode. BANG! Which is hell to clean up, if you've got no eyes and a microwaved head.

Where was I? Ah yes, ranting. Bastard! I don't believe in putting people I don't like into my books in order to enact some sort of fictionalised revenge. If you go into one of my books, it's because I like you. Give some fuckwit a character in the book, so they can be read about all over the world? No thanks -- people who piss me off I tend to ignore, not aggrandise. But this time... This time I am SO tempted to have a weasely second hand car dealer tortured to death in his own garage. Simon Kernick's hand drill scene in THE MURDER EXCHANGE will seem like an episode of Winnie the bastarding Poo, by the time I've finished with the greasy little sod. Aaaaargh!

It's going to cost us nearly a grand to fix what's wrong (thankfully the bodywork and everything else is in good shape) and then the things going straight to the sales. Bye, bye, we will say, waving her off into the sunset, drying our eyes on a cheque that'll probably be for half what we paid for her in the first place.

I think, on balance, that I'm not having a very good week.

Edity day 4 and some clarification

Not our bearded protagonist, but someone else entirely.

I managed to scare someone on Monday with the misleading post title -- 'Editing Monkey Man -- Day 1' By this I meant that I was a man monkey on an editing mission. But it turns out that Steve Brewer's new book is called MONKEY MAN. And as he's a very nice bloke with a fulsome and manly beard, I have to publicly state that I'm not taking my Ninja Red Pen Of Ninjadom to his book!

Let's be honest here: I wouldn't wish me as an editor on anyone. Well, maybe a couple of people, but they'd deserve it. Take that! I would shout, hacking and slashing away with my 0.7 Zebra J-Roller RX! But not for long, as I'm on my last one and it's on its last legs. And mighty would be the author's fear, and great their suffering. And probably loose their bowels, but we needn't go into that here. I would hate to have me as an editor... only I do, so the whole point is moot, I suppose. Take that, me! ... or something...

Anyway: right now the edit of DOOM is on its fourth day and I've slaughtered 7,607 words (that's a squink and a wink shy of 2,000 a day) And one thing I've come to realise during this process is that I can't write for toffee. If you were to walk in here right now, with a big bag of toffee and say, "Yo, Dude!" (because obviously you're some sort of Californian surfer stereotype) "These are, like, totally for you, if you write something for me!" And I'd sit there and say, "Well, thanks for the offer, dude-person-thing, but I'm afraid I can't write for those." And you'd say, "It's the shorts, isn't it? I knew I shouldn't have, but they were on sale in the bargain bin at Poundsavers." And I'd say, "It's not the shorts... well, maybe a little bit..." and then it would get all Shakespearian with witches and bizarre dialogue in iambic pentameter. Pretty standard Thursday night, in other words.

But at this rate I'll be all edited out before the end of the month, provided I can do some editing at Harrogate. Well, I wrote at Left Coast Crime, so I should be able to resist the lure of the bar this time too... but I've bought a rover ticket! That means I have to get value for money by heckling as many panels as possible. Including the boy Rickards and Madame Barclay's one. "Oy! What's that smell of whelks?"

And now, a word from our sponsors.

Sweaty lump

Editing has been a bit of a sod today, borne on the wings of disaster and perspiration. In a fit of idiocy I managed to crush the tow bar socket thing on my leperous old truck and blew both brakelights and the fuse that controls them. Bugger. Into the garage it goes. Which is fine in theory, until you stop to think that the garage is about three miles away and if they have the car, I don't actually have any way of getting home to the big pile of paper that awaits my ninja red pen of ninjadom. Well, except for walking, which takes a long, long time, especially in the blazing sunshine.

So half ten in the morning and I'm already a soggy, panting heap of bearded unfitness. It doesn't help that between Casa MacBride and the garage is a sodding huge mountainous cliff. The road winds vertiginously up the side of it, and it's a hard climb when you spend most of your days sat on your bum making up lies about people who don't exist.

Worse yet -- Kitty Miss Pookerton has a sore eye, she's been wandering round the house all day with her left eye squinched shut, like a pirate who's just hopped out of the shower to answer the door, forgetting to put on their eyepatch. Assuming that the pirate is about a foot tall, covered in grey fur, and with a thing for eating crunchy mouse heads.

So: car in garage, cycloptic cat, no way to get to vet. Once more with feeling: bugger.

Finally the garage calls to say they're done, and would I like to hoist up the petticoats of my bank account so they can have their wicked way with the contents. And the Vet says I can have a last minute, before the surgery officially opens, sneaky appointment, just as long as I can get there for twenty past five. With no car.

Well, I say no car, but really it's no working car -- that white elephant Jeep thing is still sitting outside my front door like a £5,000 dirty big paperweight. The damn battery's flat so it's no help with last minute, urgent cat transporting. This means but one thing -- running back to the garage, in the late afternoon scorchiness of a pitiless Scottish sun.

And thrice more, BUGGER!

I could have cooked clams in my pants by the time I got there. Hell, I could have used my groinal parts to steam off the wallpaper. Mighty was the warmth of my sinful man nether regions!

We made the vet's one minute too late, with Grendel howling the whole way about how she didn't like the car as it always went to the vets and couldn't we just go somewhere nice for a change and munch on crunchy rodent heads? But even though we were late the nice lady let us in, looked into the winger's eye and declared it an ulcer which could be treated with antibiotics. Hurrah! Now the only one in the house not on the damn things is She Who Must Feel Left Out By Being Healthy And Not A Sweaty, Sinus-Throbbing Wreck Like Her Husband. I might start leaving rusty nails about the place, so she can feel part of the club.

Little Miss shouted the whole way home too. Then sulked for a bit. Then posed for this picture. Isn't she a trooper?

Like pulling teeth

Dentists are like hens teeth in the north east of Scotland. Mine is miles away in Banchory, we can't get anything nearer. When the dental practice in Oldmeldrum (our nearest one) decided to ditch all its NHS patients and force people to re-register as private patients it made the big newspapers -- hundreds of people queued up. That's how bad things are. And it's interfering with the editing, damn it!

Today I've only managed to assassinate 1,451 words with my red ninja pen of ninjaness. Which isn't the same as yesterday's mighty red pen of DOOM, which I've had to give a decent, pagan burial in the frog-shaped wicker wastepaper basket. It was new yesterday morning too. I'm hoping this one's going to last a bit longer, but I'm not counting anyone's chickens.

Anyway, from the cutting room floor comes:

Surprisingly enough, 'Operation Sheep-Shagger' wasn't its official title. It occupied the smallest incident room in FHQ, little bigger than a domestic bathroom with a tatty whiteboard and a couple of ancient computers, their plastic casings yellowy and covered with sticky marks. Someone had pinned a sheet of A3 on the wall opposite the door, with: 'YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PERVERT TO WORK HERE, BUT IT HELPS' on it in big black letters above a photo of the Prime Minister. The other walls were covered with A4, full-colour printouts: men, women and animals in various highly illegal and compromising positions. All the naughty bits covered with little yellow Post-it notes.

The room was littered with box files and forms, as two uniformed constables -- one male, one female -- tried to match the screenshots to people on the national register for sex offenders. Only unlike the officers working on Operation Vindaloo, they had the whole country to search and a suspect list that was probably only thirty percent accurate. It was usually only those stupid enough to get caught on camera who actually got convicted. God knew how many perverts were out there practising 'animal husbandry'.

Operation DarkFire -- to give it its proper name -- was going nowhere fast.

Editing Monkey Man -- day 1

In complete opposite of most day-to-day writing post things, I'm cheering on a decrease in wordcount. Yes, today marks the start of the great Book 3 editathon. When I was down in London last week I spent a very long lunch in a weird little gastro-pub in Hammersmith, talking through the editing notes and what I wanted to do with them. Which was a tad more radical than anyone had suggested. I had become a loose cannon, wanting to rip out characters and sub plots like a mad man, crazed on spaghetti with clams, chilli and garlic, and glasses of cold white wine.

And today I started. Book 3 (Broken Skin, it's called Broken Skin, go on, say it! -- Noooo! You can't make me!) had 153,191 words in it at the start of the day, and by the end (which is pretty much now) I'd managed to execute 3,445 of the little bastards. Not bad for 47 pages. Take that words! Bwahahahahahaha! See how they run screaming before my mighty red pen of DOOM!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a massacre of similar proportions, but I doubt it: I have to go see the dentist. Damn this frail human body with its pointy teeth and oh so sensual beard. *ahem* well, just a regular check-up thing, but it takes time away from the edit. And we can't be doing with that, can we?

I had a moment of utter panic on Saturday when I updated my calendar with all the things I've got to do this month and saw how little time that left for editing. Then looked at next month.

Then there was screaming.

In other news, I still have no idea who won the best new novel at Thrillerfest: Adam, Mark, Will, or David. I'm pretty sure it's not me, or someone would have emailed from the ITW to let me know. So it's got to be one of the others. BUT WHO?!? All the people who went, and who I thought would post results haven't. And neither have the ITW. So God knows what went on. Maybe some vast conspiracy involving trout and trousers and promising never to speak of this again?

Still, enquiring minds and all that...

Something very strange

When I was down in London last week, I had another weird experience -- I was recognised by someone I didn't know. I'd just managed to lock myself out of my hotel room and gone downstairs to reception to ask for another keycard...

• Me: Hello, I've just done something very stupid (explains stupidity)
• Man Behind Desk: (instantly suspicious of bearded idiot) Ah, I'll need to see some identification, do you have your credit card?
• Me: Yup (hands it over)
• MBD: Right... Stuart MacBride... (examines monitor then does double-take) THE Stuart MacBride?
• Me: Er... (first beads of panic beginning to swell in trouser parts) Yes? (wonders what on earth he's done wrong now -- have they found out about the mini-bar already?)
• MBD: Oh, I've got your book! (proceeds to be very nice and make our bearded protagonist blush)

What a bloody strange feeling. Thank God he didn't ask me to sign anything (especially as he had my credit card) or I would have died of embarrassment. How the hell proper celebs -- rock and movie stars, not fuckwits from reality TV or people sleeping with footballists -- cope with it on a daily basis I'll never know. Or experience ;}#

Anyway, as it's now Sunday morning I'm assuming someone's already won the ITW new novel thingie -- so congratulations whoever you are!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go be all celebrityish and present the awards at a fencing tournament. And before you say anything, yes, I know -- I feel exactly the same way, but a friend asked so I couldn't really say no. I'll just have to kid on that it's perfectly normal for a bearded twit who locks himself out of his hotel room, to hand over fencing trophies.

Well, maybe in Bizarro World...

In the spirit of pre-emptive striking

It's just after nine pm here, so that makes it a completely different time in Phoenix where they're going to be handing out the Debut Thriller award at some point when I'm asleep, or wandering the house in the nip, yawning and scratching. Anyway, I'd like to wish Adam, Mark, Will, the ever lovely David the best of luck.

Go my proud beauties! Pillage, burn, make sweet love, take telephone numbers and promise to call...

Yea -- I've got sod all chance, but it's been cool as hell to have been nominated.

Sweat, swearing and daggers

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to go to the CWA awards thing this year, but HC asked me to come down and charm some booksellers, so I did. And thus began two days of transportation horror. Every single trip I've taken, from leaving the house to getting back into it again has been a complete and utter disaster. Usually in the baking heat of a sweltering London.

So consistently crap was my travelling streak that I even managed to be late for the Daggers. The inimitable Alex Barclay* was staying in Kensington too, so we decided to share a cab. So far so good -- we'd get to the event in plenty of time to down our complimentary 'welcome convention freaks' glass of champagne and catch up with the usual crowd of miscreants. Nope. What we ended up doing was being frozen in a traffic jam of epic proportions. Eventually the Barclay (she's a plain girl, but she makes do), and I clambered out into the boiling hot London evening and legged it up the Strand. Only to find most of it cordoned off with police tape and very strained looking policemen. Which mean a last-minute, frantic dash along back streets -- trying to get to the dinner before they got to the tea and coffee at the end -- wondering if any minute now we were going to hear a massive boom, the sound of shattering glass and car alarms.

If you're ever tempted to go scampering along through the alleyways of Central London, while wearing the full evening kilt ensemble: don't! There's about four and a half achres of wool in a kilt and it gets very, very hot under there. Heat leads to sweat, sweat leads to chafing, chafing leads to suffering... Alex didn't fair much better -- being dressed from head to toe in black wool -- but I didn't ask after the state of her thighs as She Who Must disapproves of such conversations.

And believe it or not, we got there just in time to miss the free fizzy and be hurried into the dining room with the last dregs of guests. Inside it was shoehorn time, the tables packed so closely together the waiting staff had to go single file and squeeze between the seat backs. If you'd yelled, "FIRE!" in there, half the UK's crime writing contingent would have been crushed to death.

The food was good, though the Wine Fairy was a bit too elusive for my liking, and then came the speeches. Now, let me give you Stuart's Top Tip For Speechifying:

If you've based your speech round what you think is a really cool theme that'll make you look dead clever and erudite, for God's sake tear it up and start again! You know the kind of thing: the Best Man gets up at a wedding and recites some bowel-twitchingly awful poem (and they always are) about the grooms exploits? Just gonnae no dae that? Eh? Just gonnae no!

Best speech of the night goes to Otis Twelve, who was self deprecating in his rumbly deep American accent and very, very funny. "People told me I wasn't smart enough to be a writer. Well, I've just spent over eight thousand pounds to win a five hundred pound prize. I'm a writer." Maybe you had to be there and suffering from the preceding speaker.

But what pissed me off no end was when someone from Duncan Lawrie Bank got up to say a few words before the last two awards. Now call me old-fashioned, but if someone's stumping up a cheque for £20,000 to award one of your peers for their book, the least everyone else can do is shut the fuck up and listen to the man for five minutes. He's paying what, £4,000 a minute for the privilege? Not too much to ask, is it?

Anyway, if Mr Twelve gets Stuart's Best Speech Of The Night Award** then the oddest goes to Anne Cleaves who'd lost her voice and had to get someone else to speak for her. Shame, it would have been a lot more fun told through the medium of interpretive dance. Or balloon modelling. Still, Anne is a lovely lady so good on her for winning. (and everyone else who picked up a pointy Dagger too)

Afterwards there was a Dynasty-style wine in the face episode (which I missed) and a trip to a seedy wee basement dance bar thing (which I didn't, but rather wish I had). There's nothing more garaunteed to make you feel like a complete and utter tit, than standing in full black tie and kilt get up, in a room the size of a living room, full of people flailing their limbs around to pounding dance music. Still, one did one's best and boogied. After all, if you already look like an idiot, you've got nothing to lose, right?

Time back to hotel: 02:15
Drunkenness level: sober

To be honest -- I liked it better last year. The Brewery was a bigger venue, so everyone didn't look like a colony of penguins, squeezed shoulder to shoulder in their black tie getup. It was a lunchtime so everyone could go to the pub and hang out with their mates afterwards; this time the event didn't finish till about 11:45 and the Waldorf shut the public bar about fifteen minutes later. WTF? Hello, large number of crime writers, in the same place, with publishers, booksellers, publicists and enthusiasts? They could have made a bloody fortune.

* People try to imit her, but they can't face all the weirdness involved.
** Prize purely titular and does not come with a cash bung.