My first Bloody Scotland experience

Excitedly I made my way to the Golden Lion Ballroom for the first event of the day, a panel featuring CL Taylor, Claire Macintosh and Sarah Pinborough.Two of them I’ve read before and Sarah Pinborough was a new name to me, but what a time we had.

The morning was chaired by Jacky Collins, and through a series of questions I learned alot about the 3, slowly growing to be my 3 fave female authors. It was light hearted, laugh a minute, very entertaining and insightful.

A brief break, sitting watching Stirling go by, having lunch reading before my next event I indulged in a spot of geocaching, finding one that was just outside the Albert Halls venue (to find out more about geocaching see their excellent website www.geocaching.com).

Anyway, back to the point, my next stop was to hear the brilliant Peter May who most famously wrote the Lewis trilogy. But this talk focused on his life in France, becoming a French citizen the Enzo files, and a brief visit to the China Chronicles. Peter is a very humble and clever man, if you haven’t read him before I would highly recommend.

A wee booky break before the last afternoon session. I have to mention one of the wonderful sponsors of Bloody Scotland Bookdonors, at the 3 events I attended so far, they had a free book on every seat so everyone got a wee surprise. Some you may have heard of Book Donors. It is a great idea to get some brilliant 2nd hand books into the hands of people who my not have read them.

You can find out all about them www.bookdonors.co.uk.

Onto the next event, ‘Simenon et Margret: John Simenon & Graeme Macrae Burnet’. A bit of a French theme with this one, I do like learning something about which I know nothing about.

I did not know what to expect going to this but I went in open minded and was not disappointed. This was my wild card choice of the day, I found the whole talk fascinating and it made me want to actually get one of his books.

Before this day I had never heard of Georges Simenon or his famous detective Mairgret, keep your eyes on ITV as a certain Rowan Atkinson will be bringing Mairgret to the small screen.

I learned that Grahame Macrae Burnet has alot of respect and admiration for Georges and his son John Simenon, never new the writer but only ever knew the father. Also Penguin Books are currently re-releasing some of his extensive 49 book collection, an opportunity for people like myself who have yet to set foot into Mairgret’s world.

And last but not least on my whistle stop tour of Bloody Scotland is the ‘2 crime writers and a microphone’ live broadcast recording from Bloody Scotland. The usual hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste were joined by the musical maestro who wrote the theme to the show Stuart Neville. Every week they bring to your ears the best news, reviews and guests from all things crime book related.

This week was no different, the guests were, Eva Dolan (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eva-Dolan/e/B00GIKK5HE), Mark Billingham (https://markbillingham.com/), and Ian Rankin (https://www.ianrankin.net/)

The laughter wasn’t slow in starting as the panel covered everything from Donald Trump, blocking Stephen King on twitter, killing people in books, worst dates and what would happen to your work when you die.

To say I had a brilliant time at my first Bloody Scotland is an understatement and i urge anyone thinking about it next year, to go ahead and do it, you will not be disappointed. There will be something there to interest you, as this festival has something for everyone interested in crime fiction.