The Guardian Book Club with Neil Gaiman

The Guardian Book Club with Neil Gaiman
I bagged myself a last minute ticket for this event thanks to the very kind and lovely staff in the Press Office, and boy was I glad to get a seat. John Mullan chaired this star-studded analysis of Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, and I found myself sitting with Amanda Palmer behind me, Canongate publishers to the left of me, and Ian Rankin and Frank Skinner to the right of me.

As for the event, Gaiman is the master of selling while remaining everyone’s bet pal. “I like the way the people who have read this book are already ahead of the pack,” he explained, “but that you don’t quite know all that’s still to come,” referring to his new agreement with HBO to create a television series from the book.

He also revealed he will be writing the pilot episode for the new series, as well as the final episode and “very possibly one in the middle.” So for die-hard Gaiman fans it was already a memorable event—and there were more than a few of those in the audience, many from the U.S.A. it appeared.

Gaiman spoke at length of the process he went through to create American Gods, such as when the idea came for it, he had been letting it brew for some time but it hadn’t completely formed in his mind. “It was like this gooey black substance that hadn’t yet congealed in my brain,” he explained to his mesmerised fans. “It finally crystallised while I was on a layover in Iceland at about three in the morning. I wrote up a 3-page summary, slapped a temporary title on it—which was American Gods—and sent it to my agent and publisher. Three weeks later I got an email back with the design of the front cover of the book and the title right there so that was that.”

Following the event Gaiman entertained another very lengthy queue that wrapped itself around the innards of Charlotte Square. Always smiling, always joking, and always personal to all his fans, Gaiman is the ultimate example of how even the biggest stars can keep it real and down to earth. It’s no wonder his fans love him so much.

I spoke to Giulia Sandelewski who had travelled north from Stratford-upon-Avon without being able to get any accommodation, not caring about anything so long as she could get her book signed—which she did.

She looked like her smile would be enough to carry her home!

Author Event: Sam Leith and Simon Lelic

Sam Leith and Simon Lelic
The sun was well and truly out in Charlotte Square by 15.30 and already the day had been long, chilled, hard work, but very enjoyable.

Attendance in the Square looked to be very good with the sun brining people into the book festival to lie about (avoiding the mud), socialise and read in the shade. Summer was very much here for the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday.

My final event of the day involved two new writers for me, Sam Leith and Simon Lelic. Both writers have written quite remarkable novels in that they are very much satirical and often, judging by the readings, fantastical. “Sometimes reality is more absurd than fiction,” said Leith.

To quote from the book festival programme: “Leith’s, The Coincidence Engine, mashes up a gaggle of fantastical characters in a tale of an imaginary America haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity and unhealthy snacks. Lelic’s, The Facility, features a man tasked with running a secret government prison, where he has to deal with frightened inmates, the sinister Dr Silk and his own conscience.”

Interesting stuff, and as both writers read for their novels and then explained their backgrounds and what prompted them to write them, it became apparent that we may well have a couple of potential cult novelists on our hands.

Leith, in particular, cited Douglas Adams as a major influence, although he admitted that he “doesn’t know nearly as much science as Adams knew, which perhaps the novel could have done with.”

The comparisons between both writers are interesting also, in that Lelic and Leith were both journalists now turned fiction writers. “I much prefer creative writing,” said Lelic absolutely, whereas his contemporary admitted that he “really enjoys journalism and wouldn’t want to give it up.”

Author Event: Alexander McCall Smith

My final event of the day was the brilliant, Alexander McCall Smith, back at the book festival again to talk about his latest work Bertie Plays The Blues. McCall Smith is always hilarious: he tells great jokes, but one can also imagine quite easily, him sitting in his office writing and enjoying the process of writing his own fiction so much, he reduces himself to tears of laughter.

And that’s how it was for the audience tonight: reduced to tears of laughter as he went from one tangent to the other making up stories and tales and jokes as he went.

On a more serious note, Smith is planning on writing more Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansion books—he surely has to be Scotland’s busiest writer, churning out more books per annum than anyone else in the in industry.

He also revealed he has commissioned a tapestry of the entire history of Scotland, spanning from the Ice Age to the opening of the Scottish Parliament. At 107 meters long, it will take two years to create, but once complete any organisation can request to show any part of it, particularly if they have some political or geographical connection with that precise segment. “It’s something for the whole nation,” explained Smith.

Author Event: Stella Rimington

Here was a woman who needed no introduction: the ex-head of MI5 turned writer of spy fiction, Dame Stella Rimington. If ever there was a full RBS Main Tent more suspicious of itself, this was it. It filled form the back to front!

Rimington gave us an overview of why she turned to writing fiction following her retirement from MI5. To some it may seem a logical step but it would appear she fell into it after a process of trying other things; fiction writing is her sixth chosen career.

Her new novel involving British security office, Liz Carlyle, was vetted like the rest of her novels but was permitted to be released after the security services enjoyed it first. Personally, I think they’re abusing their position in order to get the scoop on a talented writer, but that’s beside the point. “I dread the day I hand them a completed manuscript,” she said, “for them to turn around and say, ‘you’ll have to change the entire plot’.”

Many of the questions asked by the audience deviated from the release of the actual book she had come to promote, Rip Tide, with the audience preferring to try and chip away at her previous career. The impact it had on her family for one, when her daughter only began to suspect her mother was different when two men in Macs turned up at the door one day and snapped a photograph of Rimington in the house; tabloid intrusion not for the first time—but it could have been worse.

On which security agencies were better to work with: “there are various around Europe that are similar to ours but many that are different. The KGB, for example, clearly had no intention on changing to a democratic model when the Cold War ended but we went anyway. The American model is totally different—we’re the only real one that is civilian based.”

It was a fascination encounter with a woman who quite clearly enjoys the release that writing fiction allows, although being a Man Booker judge has been a double-edged sword once the lorries loads of books started to show up. She was pivotal in breaking the male-dominated “industry” as it was when she first joined, though, and her intelligence, seriousness and subtle humour were evident in every chosen word.

Author Event: Val McDermid

After what seems like far too long, Val McDermid returned to the book festival yesterday thereby fulfilling the needs of crime fans and writers alike. Dressed in trademark Bermuda shirt and shorts, her presence in the RBS Main Tent was palpable, as one of Scotland’s best-loved authors returned into the fold.

Val kicked off by revealing that although it had been advertised she would be talking about her last book, that wasn’t what was going to happen. Instead, copies of her fresh-off-the-press novel, The Retribution, which isn’t available anywhere yet, WOULD be on sale after the event for her to sign. A clever PR move that had her fans drooling at the prospect.

Val was as great as she always is: forthright, funny and overflowing with great sound-bites. On Oxbridge she urged people to “look past the image portrayed of it, because in her experience it wasn’t your background, your school or who your daddy was that mattered, it was your mind,” and when asked by Peter Guttridge if she fancied slowing it down and taking a couple of years to write her next novel: “I’d only end up farting around for a year.”

But perhaps her most compelling comment came when she talked about the books she read when she was a child, that helped shape and form her into the acclaimed novelist she is today, she said: “the books we read as kids shape our lives in ways we can’t imagine at the time.”

Author Event: Christopher Brookmyre

Despite the rain chucking it down for several hours beforehand, Christopher Brookmyre got an almost full house for his always popular annual appearance in Charlotte Square’s main tent.

Reading from his new book, Where the Bodies are Buried, he went on to reveal that he had already written the follow-up—“like a man possessed after the idea came”—and that it would be called When the Devil Drives.

The author of fourteen published novels, Brookmyre hails from the same area of the west of Scotland as this reviewer, and as a result, also supports the same football team: St Mirren F.C.

A winner of the seventh Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses An Eye, his novels have become famous for their trademark mixture of off-the-wall comedy, politics and social comment. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir writer; although I would say he has almost created his own genre through his distinct style of writing.

Closing up his event after a highly entertaining hour, he read a hilarious passage from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which he’d written as though it had been Irvine Welsh writing it. Full of Edinburgh slang and edgy humour, the audience were in stitches by the time he’d concluded.

Author Event: William McIlvanney

William McIlvanney, to me, stands for everything that is good in Scottish literature, as well as good old-fashioned stand-up values. He is a true gentleman and has what I would reckon to be the best smile in world literature.

He began his stint at the Edinburgh Book Festival with a 35-minute reading of selected poems, all related to the subject of life and the requirement for us to analyse ourselves. “An unexamined life,” he explained, “is like taking a lifetime to get down to the shops for a message, then forgetting what it was you went for.”

Many of the poems he read will end up in a collection he’s currently working on, which has required him to pen some new material as well as pulling out some of his old favourites and slimming them down somewhat. It was impossible to firmly say what poems were the old ones such was their quality and insight, each one keeping the audience enthralled and hanging on his every relaxed word.

Part of the process of analysing a human life requires us to look at sex, a subject that he admitted to still having great interest in even at the tender age of 74. McIlvanney said: “Sex is a leveller because you can’t lie during it; you can’t kid on you’ve not got an erection (not that I’ve had to). The bedroom is where the truth of ourselves is to be found.”

McIlvanney’s habit of pulling cracking one-liners out of the air continued as he commented on the state of the publishing industry today: “Many books are published for dubious reasons these days,” referring to vanity publishing and the greed of some of the larger publishing houses.

But it was when he was asked of his opinion on the recent riots in London and around England, did McIlvanney keep his best until last: “Hope,” he insisted, with a glint in his eye and sparkling white teeth, “true hope, begins in confronting the reality of experience.”

Long may this man continue to lead the way and be an inspiration to all writers and to all Scottish men and women.

Author Event: Lin Anderson and Tony Black

In this joint crime writing event, Tony Black joined Lin Anderson in Peppers Theatre to discuss the impact that the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh have had on both their careers. Glasgow girl Lin and Edinburgh resident Tony, both have used their home cities as inspiration as well as location for their novels.

Anderson read the opening chapter from her latest novel, Picture Her Dead, as Rhona MacLeod (this is Anderson’s final MacLeod novel) searched through a disused cinema in Glasgow, only to uncover something so unspeakable, Anderson was forced to slam shut the book she was reading from.

Black’s reading was somewhat different, in that while he created a similar level of intrigue and mystery by reading from his latest book, Truth Lies Bleeding – enough to persuade one to also rush out and buy his book, his chosen prose contained graphic descriptions of extreme violence that even the copper involved couldn’t stay conscious long enough to absorb the crime scene.

It’s always cool to watch the more “respectable” people in the audience when an author chooses this form of shock tactic.

I find the comparisons between each of these crime authors quite fascinating. In Lin Anderson you have a friendly and forthcoming author who writes fiction that appeals to a large spectrum of crime fans. In Black you have a man who actually looks as dark as his fiction, and with the slow nature of his speech it’s almost as though he’s climbed out of the pages of his latest novel.

With the Father of “Tartan Noir” sitting in the audience listening to the discussion, it is surely testament to both authors that if William McIlvanney is prepared to come along and hear you talk crime fiction, you must have something going for you!