Personally speaking, (and it’s my website so I’m allowed) 2022 was a year of incredible highs and devastating lows.
But that’s life, ain’t it? Ups and downs, peaks and troughs, swing and roundabouts. All that jazz. As John Lennon said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans.
As Dickens wrote, it was the best times; it was the worst of times.
So, what was it all about, 2022?
Well, I was on the telly – three times! Four, you could say, because one was a two-parter. I think I was on screen even more than ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ this year, and that’s quite a feat.
First there was a documentary I presented on the Crime + Investigation Channel. Although I’ve appeared on the box many times over the years, it was the first time I’d ever actually fronted a full show and it was an interesting experience. It was filmed in 2021 but didn’t go out until earlier this year, as part of a strand called Once Upon a True Crime, which saw some top crime writers (and me) outline a case that inspired their writing. The other authors were Denise Mina, Mark Billingham and Peter James.
Mine, of course, was about the Ice Cream Wars in 1983/84 Glasgow. I’ve never used them directly in my fiction but I did co-author the true crime account of the case and what I learned during that period has informed most of my stories.
I had to drive a Ford Capri of the period. No power steering. No ABS. After driving it round and round in order to get the take the director wanted I had shoulders like Big Arnie and I had to start hitting the brakes a half mile before I wanted to stop.
Mr Billingham and I even launched the series at a special event in The British Library in London.
Later in the year I was one of the contributors to a BBC Scotland two-part investigation of the case. Reports tell me that the programme makers did a great job, but I still haven’t watched it because I really hate seeing myself.
Those two documentaries will be my last word on the tragic case.
This year I also made my second appearance on David Wilson’s Crime Files. Being interviewed by the professor is always daunting as I feel he is picking up on every bit of body language and psycho-analysing me. In fact, he probably is!
He’s a lovely guy and it was good of him to have me back.
We were talking about the Sandy Drummond case, an unsolved murder from Fife, which I find fascinating. I wrote about it in one of my true crime books many years ago, back when Caxton was still working his press.
When I walked into the studio I was greeted by the face and beard of an old friend – Stan Leech. Now a cameraman, he was part of the crew for the series. Amazingly, in a previous life, he played Sandy Drummond in a Crimewatch re-enactment. It’s a small world, right enough, but as someone once quipped, I wouldn’t like to paint it.
I had two books published – the fourth Rebecca Connolly thriller WHERE DEMONS HIDE (Polygon) and the first Jonas Flynt historical adventure AN HONOURABLE THIEF (Canelo).
It’s a thrill to have one book published, let alone two in a year, and I am grateful to the publishers and my agent, Jo Bell, for making it happen. Also to Denzil Meyrick for more or less forcing me to begin writing the Jonas Flynt tales. But that’s a story you should all know by now. And if you don’t, I tell it in the author’s note at the end of the book.
Yes, that’s an unashamed attempt at selling!
The two-book thing will be repeated in 2023, by the way, with another Rebecca, CHILDREN OF THE MIST, and another Jonas, A THIEF’S JUSTICE.
Another high spot of the year was when the third Rebecca Connolly A RATTLE OF BONES was longlisted for the McIlvanney Award.
That’s the third time I’ve made that prestigious list. Let’s hope it won’t be the last!
I had a busy year at festivals, appearing in Paisley, Aye Write, Bute, Stewarton, Bloody Scotland in Stirling, Grantown, even a stint hosting a table at one of the dinners in Harrogate. Not sure I’ll be as fortunate in 2023.
Author pal Gordon Brown and I teamed up for a double act to promote out new titles at a few venues, including Stewarton and Glasgow. It turned out to be a sort of Two Blokes in Search of a Plot. Or, given my advancing years, in search of a pot.
They were all fun and thank you to the bookstores and venues who hosted us.
Book Week Scotland was another busy period and I’m grateful for the libraries in Dundee, Motherwell, Musselburgh and Saltcoats for inviting me. I was crossing central Scotland like a bank robber on the lam.
That leaves the lows.
Ah, the lows.
Charles Dickens again, or maybe it was just Kermit the Frog – life is full of meetings and partings. I experienced both.
There’s a Hollywood adage for romantic comedies that breaks them down into the three-act structure of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. I’ve had the first two but the third is unlikely. Perhaps even impossible. But, as I said above, that’s life/other plans etc. I wish it wasn’t, but there we go.
Throwing myself with dramatic abandon into a slough of despond, I found myself once again grateful for my friends. They rallied round when my wife died three years ago and they did so again when this relationship died. I have some wonderful friends and if they read this – you know who you are, I won’t embarrass you – then I want them to know how much I appreciate them.
I also lost an old friend, who had been ill, on Christmas Day.
Stephen Wilkie was the most knowledgeable person regarding Scottish crime I have ever met. The consummate tabloid reporter, he was the guy I turned to whenever I needed to know something. If he didn’t know about it, it didn’t happen, simple as that. I often urged him to write a book but he never did.
I have many regrets in life. One of them is not being a better friend to him.
RIP, big guy. If there’s a news desk in the afterlife, I’ll lay odds you’re showing them how it’s done.
