Wednesday 17 February 2010

"I have felt a bag of compliments"

Allan Guthrie is interviewed over at Liberi de Scrivere, with thanks to the lovely Paul Brazill. Paul also sent me the official translation but, quite frankly, Al makes much more sense if you run his ramblings through Babelfish. Here he is answering a question on how he got started writing, courtesy of Babelfish "My first history is appeared in the newspaper of the school, when I had five years. Me memory that was be a matter of a pic-NIC, but I do not succeed to remember all the details. I have written my first novel, when I had nine years." All I can say is never ever go on a pic-NIC with Allan Guthrie, otherwise he might utter the quote in the title of this post, and you wouldn't want him to feel your bag of compliments, would you?

I can't say that I understand all the ins-and-outs here, but a row breaks out in Scottish publishing over...well, I'm not sure quite what, it all seems like reinventing the wheel. And I agree with one of the commenters. I love the booksfromscotland.com site, and what's the point of replacing it with something else? And another stramash involving Creative Scotland.

Fallen behind on Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street? Catch up here. And, talking of Alexander McCall Smith, after all his recent travelling, his next book launch is much closer to home.

Edinburgh libraries are holding loads of crime fiction events as part of their Crime In The City programme.

An interview with Tony Black in Crime Time.

Alan Cranis reviews Ian Rankin's DOORS OPEN for Bookgasm.

And, finally, money for old rope?

2 comments:

  1. love the babelfish thing, Donna. And it's all gone a bit pete tong over at the Arts Council eh? There was another article in the times which did not make good reading for the "think tank" who all thunk themselves individually into receiving a fair degree of benefit from any re-shuffle. Vested interests much? And of course while all these bureacrats are trying to sort things out/ wasting money there are loads of writers etc who are losing out.

    Eeesh, it's getting late. G'night.

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  2. Yep - feels very much like jobs for the boys.Why, in heavens name, do there always need to be more bureaucrats than anything else?

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