Davidtmanderson's Blog

Here he is, the devil himself. Or looking a bit like it anyway …

Ewan Morrison, author of the novels Swung and Distance, and with a new book Tales from the Mall coming out this year, visited the Scottish Writers’ Centre last week and blew us all away with his talk on The End of Books.

It was sharp, shocking, and it took no prisoners, a dash of icy water in the face of all those who believe in the wonderful new digital age.

Who exactly are the winners of the SOPA defeat and endless free cultural content? Could Google, Apple and Amazon, by any chance, have anything to do with it …?

A great talk by a challenging speaker that set the nerves jangling.

He’s on at Wigtown later in the year. Grab the chance to see him if you can. If you’re an author, a musician or an artist, you’ll never sleep soundly again …

The New Year brings new things, and with the sales of my book continuing to do well it’s time to look around for fresh challenges.

One is to learn a bit more about this screenwriting business – and for some time now I’ve been hankering to adapt Robert louis Stevenson’s famous ghost story ‘Thrawn Janet’ for television.

I love ghost stories, the Gothic, anything supernatural, and I don’t think it’s parochial at all to want to discover the rich seam of Scottish Gothic that lies underneath and within so many of our stories, tales and legends – in fact, it makes so much more sense of them.

But as for that story, it took me some time to find its key. But I did eventually at an academic conference, of all things, where Douglas Gifford, the retired professor of Scottish literature, handed me the point of the story during his talk.

So now the TV script is on its way and I’m quite pleased with it, which is always a dangerous sign. So much more to learn, no doubt. But at least a colleague of mine has offered to make it. Which is what I really need to learn how to do this.

I’ll keep you up to date with any developments.

Tomorrow off to the other side of the world – Edinburgh – to take part in the 26 Treasures gig, and more importantly the whole national celebration, at the newly revitalised and refurbished National Museum of Scotland.

That’s a bit of it above. You can see the idea – bold, beautiful and historic, a conscious mix of the old and the new.

26 writers will gather at 26 exhibits in the Museum and, 26 times, read their written piece, introduce themselves and say something about their involvement with the project.

I’m one of them. I’ll be on the 2nd floor, I think, by the document known as the Instrument of Authority. Other writers will be by Peden’s Mask, the Gown of Repentance and other objects with fascinating stories to tell.

There’s already been extensive coverage in The Scotsman and BBC Scotland, with more to follow, apparently, in the Book Cafe and other media outlets.

I’ll keep you posted.

Question.

What do you get when you put 50 novelists, screenwriters, graphic novelists, children’s writers, playwrights and film-makers in a room together, other than a headache?

Or to put it another way, how many writers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: as many as can turn full circle in a group while standing on a chair.

360 Narratives at the Barcelo Hotel in Stirling was an exercise in revolving ideas so dizzying and so packed with fun-filled japes that by the end I felt like a genius, or maybe that was the person beside me, I could no longer tell the difference.

We pitched, brainstormed, networked, crowd-sourced, speed-dated, cross-platformed and invented till the froth flew, and then we did it all again.

Courtesy of the Playwright’s Society, and run by some of the leading lights of eh … stuff such as Fiona Sturgeon Shea, Jenny Brown, Mark Grindle and Claire Dow, and with input from the Messiah Himself, Phil Parker, it was one of the most intense and rewarding weekends I’ve ever spent anywhere. And I include in that a disastrous trip to Scarborough when I was nine with my family, and a shameful alcohol-related incident in Johannesburg airport for which I am still receiving counselling.

There were far, far too many famous people taking part to name here, and anyway one shouldn’t. But among them were Beatrice Colin, Alice Thompson, Joan Lennon, Rodge Glass, Andrea Barr, David Griffith, Ros Borland, Virginia Heath and Vivien French. And many others too well-known to mention.

We got on great and loved each other to death.

But if anyone wants that story I developed in that group, and there’s money in it, it’s mine …

Mine, I tell you!

A recent chat with an old pal from schooldays, Ted Lawson, reminded me that at one time I wanted to be an actor. A star in fact.

I later reversed this decision to being a writer, but it was too late by then, the die was case and a cracked actor (in addition to cracked teacher/writer) I’ve always remained.

I had the chance to realise my ambition last week when cast in a student film. They didn’t tell me the title, the story or anything about it really other than the part I was to play.

“You’re just right for it” they assured me. “You’re Old Man.’

Of course I thanked them for this, knowing that they meant venerable, wise and far-seeing.

All the same, their admiration for me didn’t prevent them from having me stumble for several hours over a moor somewhere above Ayr while the storm blew in from the sea.

Above is a picture of the actual place we filmed. Actually it isn’t, it’s a public domain picture of Norway. But you get the idea.

They told me I was great and let me go after it got too dark to see. Later, when I was nearly home after an hour’s drive and feeling had returned to my hands and face, I felt like a bit of a star after all. Which made it all worth it.

The film’s been seen in the university apparently, to hoots of derision from my classes no doubt.

But still, that warm feeling of public attention will always be there to console me.

I shall happily take it to my grave.

A few days ago I blogged about my excursion into frame with the mighty Glaswegian organ the Evening Times.

Well, it’s happened. Run over to your local newsagent’s NOW and get hold of this rare and collectable edition.

Sadly, the editor has clearly got his story back to front, because the piece that appears there isn’t actually about me but more about other people. I phoned the newspaper to chin them about this but like media folk everywhere they’re deaf to any form of helpful criticism.

In face reading the article you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m relatively unimportant to the storytelling scene, a bit player in a drama about other people.

DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THIS!

I’m saddened by the depths to which modern journalism has sunk, but philosophical. What does it matter after all, in the grand scheme of things?

It’s on pages 16 and 17.

Not that I care.

This week I was interviewed by the world’s greatest (or possibly not) evening newspaper, The Evening Times.

The subject? National Tell-a-Story Day, run from the Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh, to be held on 28th October 2011.

The tall tale of the Tchai Ovna readings and a suitable pic of Yours Truly will be in the illustrious pages of that publication some time during that week or the week before. So keep your eyes peeled. And buy the Evening Times of course. That’s the whole point.

And – seriously for a second – it’s high time an event like this, which has been running for 10 years, was recognised as an important part of the city’s cultural life.

I do hope I can live with my newfound celebrity status!

I’ll post any further news about it here.

If there’s one thing that’s grown in importance over the last few years it has to be the Amazon review.

It’s gone from the most despised sort of criticism to the one authors crave and fight for the most. And I’m really glad to say that the Five Star one I gained recently (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Bodies-David-Manderson/dp/1849210950) came from none other than one of Scotland’s leading poets, Alan MacGillivray.

Alan’s own poems are sharply observed and deadly with irony, many of them collected in An Altitude Within, his biggest publication to date. A lecturer at Strathclyde University after a long career in teaching, he’s also written widely on aspects of Scottish literature like science fiction, Scottish poets of the First World War, and Scottish women’s writing.

But the best thing about his kind words here is that he’s a fellow writer, a very good one, and that he’d never have said them if he hadn’t meant them:

“Lost Bodies” is a knock-out of a book. Once you get into it, it is very hard to put it down. The combination of a heatwave in a seemingly innocent city suburb and the violent depths of a middle-aged man’s thoughts and feelings as he goes on digging his garden make for a sustained tension, to which horrific deeds provide a kind of release. This is not a book you will ever be able to forget.

You can find more about Alan’s own writing here http://www.crowlin.co.uk/

I can’t think of any contemporary poet I’d recommend more.

Looking forward to my next gig, which is at the Scotia Bar in Stockwell Street, Glasgow, courtesy of organiser and writer Jean Rafferty, on Monday night.

It’s a blast from the past for me, just as it is for many people in Glasgow. Whether you’re a writer, a musician, a Hell’s Angel or just someone who hangs around pubs a lot, The Scotia will have crossed your path, or you’ll have crossed its, in more than one way.

Back in the 60s and early 70s it was the folkie place, and the Humblebums, the JSD band and the young Scottish electric folk outfits all spent all their time and money there, drinking, performing and fighting.

Then it passed to new management and became the Hell’s Angels bar, a very strange and abrupt transformation.

I worked in Stockwell Street at that time, my first student job, in a wholesale paper shop under the railway bridge, cutting blocks of greaseproof paper into quires and selling them to chip shop owners.

The street was a stinking, roaring valley of traffic in contract to the remote car park it’s now become, Elton John’s Rocket Man was in the charts, and life beyond the confines of the shop and the roaring traffic, embodied by the  tumbledown look of The Scotia at the street’s far end, looked very sweet.

Years later, it became the city’s main literary venue, due to the energy and commitment of its then-owner, the inimitable Brendan McLaughlin. He started The Scotia Writers’ Prize, a city-wide competition for writers that became a publication, A Spiel Amang Us, in which I was published for almost the first time.

I was in my mid-thirties by then and I thought I’d made it.

So now it’s back to The Scotia again, only this time something really has changed  … good things have always happened for me there.

Stroll on Monday.