After all those months of planning and looking forward to going, we've been and are home again, unpacking the pile of signed books and adding the new ones to their designated places on the shelves. It was a fantastic weekend. The good news is that there is going to be another one! Same weekend next year! I am tempted to book a room in the same hotel already.
So, to conclude my short pieces about the events we attended...
Event number 5 was on Sunday and called Wild Girls. It featured Karen Campbell and Denise Mina, and was chaired by Craig Robertson. What a fantastic event! Quite a lot of the time was spent discussing author gender and how female authors are perceived as crime writers. We were also treated to readings by both ladies from their latest books. The audience was lively and interested, so the questions for the authors flowed and the hour ended all too fast.
The final event was The Red Headed League, which included a reading of the Sherlock Holmes adventure with the same name. Ten of the authors who spoke during the festival had parts in the reading. It was superb.
Finally, this event was concluded with an award ceremony for the winner of the Glengoyne short story competion Worth The Wait that had been held prior to the festival. The winning story is first rate and has been published in an anthology of the best stories from the competition. It is available from its publisher, Blasted Heath.
The final award of the festival was given to the winner of the Scottish Crime Book of the year award. The short list of six (Charles Cumming – A Foreign Country (Harper Collins); Craig Russell – Dead Men & Broken Hearts (Quercus; Denise Mina – Gods & Beasts (Orion); Peter May – The Lewis Man (Quercus); Philip Kerr – Prague Fatale (Quercus; Will Jordan – Redemption (Random House)) must have been very difficult to choose from but the winner was Charles Cumming. Excellent choice.
I'll follow this post with links to various reviews and photos.
It is a real shame to be home and back to normal after such a great weekend. I have a whole year to start to look forward to the next one!
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