New from Five Leaves: Blood Tears by Michael Malone

Michael Malone's Blood Tears is now in our office - bookshop stock will start to go out next week. We have described this novel as Scottish Catholic Noir, though the biggest problem in publishing it was not the wrath of the big man upstairs, but trying to get our two proof-readers to understand that people from the West of Scotland really do say "Come aff it", and that "aff" is not a misprint. There were many such changes where the Scottish wing of Five Leaves had to recorrect the corrections, sometimes twice. Perhaps I should have sent my colleagues on a training course involving reruns of early editions of Taggart. Michael Malone comes from Ayrshire, the home of Burns, though there is little poetic about his rather dark book. It did raise the issue of "dialect" though. The main text and the dialogue had to be comprehensible to Michael's readers outside of Scotland, but had to sound right to those within that country. By and large I share the general view in creative writing that dialect should be avoided, save for a little salting of the text to give flavour. Some writers, Lewis Grassic Gibbon for example, used mostly standard English but you can feel the rhythms of Scottish speech in his Sunset Song. With Blood Tears we were aiming for something more direct but I hope we have not clipped too much off Malone's coin in pandering to the southerners. Blood Tears is the first of a series by Michael Malone, meaning we now have two Scottish crime series running, with a new Russel McLean out this autumn.
Blood Tears is available from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/blood-tears/, though overseas readers will find it cheaper to order via http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ to get free overseas postage.

Today Cowdenbeath, tomorrow the world

Notes from the frozen north # 2

It will be obvious to anyone who has spent time in Scotland, particularly around Glasgow, that the country is short of names. Many men seem to be called Jimmy and many women Hen. This lack of names clearly affects Scottish writers too. Five Leaves has five Scottish writers on its list, or coming onto its list. One is J. David Simons. That is is name but if it was just David Simons the J. would have to be added to avoid confusion with the slightly better known American writer David Simons. Russel McLean became Russel D McLean to prevent confusion with someone similar. And we now have Michael Malone from Ayr joining us, his first crime novel will be out in 2012. Unfortunately there is already a crime writer called Michael Malone so he, ie our one, will become Michael J Malone. So that's 60% of our Scottish writers needing to use an initial due to this acute name shortage. Something needs to be done. Michael Malone though will have some problems as he is already a published poet sans J. So there is now Michael Malone the crime writer, Michael Malone the poet and Michael J Malone the crime writer. Surely some enterprising literature programmer should put them all on the same bill, for an evening with Michael Malones.

All gone to look for America

Five Leaves' Russel McLean is up for one of the Shamus awards for his first novel, The Good Son. The Shamus awards are organised and presented by the Private Eye Writers of America, Russel's book is published by Minotaur/St. Martin's over there, the same publisher as his second book, The Lost Sister, which is also Five Leaves on this side. He is shortlisted for the best new private eye story. First Dundee, then the world. Jute, jam, journalism and crime fiction...
http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/2010/08/pwa-cwa-award-nominations-2010.html

Vote early, vote often

Our chums over at Spinetingler magazine are having a pre-election vote to decide on assorted categories of crime writer awards. We'll be rooting for Russel D McLean in the rising stars category, since we publish him. One of the most interesting categories is for jackets. No, not tweed ones (though I'd vote for that).

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2010/03/31/2010-spinetingler-award-nominees-and-poll/

There's a world out there...

... and some parts of it are interested in what we do. So here's Dan Tunstall (Big and Clever) in Left Lion, a magazine in Nottingham for hip young people...
http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/2805

...and the hip late-middle-aged Mike Gerber (Jazz Jews) in Jewish News
http://www.totallyjewish.com:80/entertainment/features_and_reviews/

...and the hippest owner of a bus pass in the North East, Peter Mortimer (Camp Shatila) in Tynedale Life
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=2j1JX09s0rG3&EID=830eed07-bd48-48b0-b54f-a06ab4cf5deb&skip=

... just don't mention the word hip in front of the Dundee crime writer Russel McLean (The Lost Sister), reviewed on CrimeSquad, or he'll make you need a replacement
http://www.crimesquad.com/reviews.asp?year=2010&month=1

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!

To the right you will see a typical view towards Dundee, just with the sea a wee bit different in colour than normal. Poetry lovers will be reminded of McGonagall's well remembered (you cannot forget how awful it is) poem. We are glad to say that McLean's Great Dundee Crime Novel volume two is now in the shops, recently reaching number eight in the Scottish Waterstone's Scottish interest top ten. The book was launched in Dundee at "Droothies". Some of you will never have attended a book launch. Those demure events where the author makes an Oscars type speech, thanks various people, before reading an accessible piece of the text then the company returns to their fare of a small glass of dry red... You can see the Dundee version of this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyMyMup5fVs&feature=player_embedded