Titbits and Twists

Lots of stuff about Val McDermid today as she continues her tour of New Zealand and Australia. First of all, an audio interview on The Book Show on ABC, Craig at Crimewatch goes to see her in Auckland, and here's six words from Val at the always excellent Jen's Book Thoughts.

Caro Ramsay on becoming a crime writer by accident.

If you have a Sky account you can watch Ian Rankin on TV.

Alexander McCall Smith and the Green Pencil Award.

A (mostly SF) interview with Iain Banks.

Russel McLean is appearing at Houston's Murder By The Book on October 8th. Sadly, it's a couple of weeks before my event (gulp - what the heck am I going to do???) so I won't have the moral support of the lovely Russel.

Closer to home, Louise Welsh is appearing in Forres on 16th September and Alice Thompson will be at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh on 7th October for a Gliterary Lunch.

Irvine Welsh says that the only entrepreneurs in Scotland's housing schemes are the drug dealers. And it's probably a bit late for this, but there's a special screening of Trainspotting at Edinburgh's Dominion.

And I've mentioned it before, but if you're ever stuck for something to read, pop over to the brilliant A Twist of Noir, where there are plenty of great stories, 564 of them so far to be exact. And, in an additional twist, from story 600 onwards, the story number is also the number of words in the story. Genius.