OK, it’s not quite Roger Whittaker but the sentiment is accurate.
I’ll be visiting this historic city for the first time in August.
Along with bestselling author Denzil Meyrick, I’ll be chatting first to the book group based in Waterstones but also signing some copies of THUNDER BAY.
And it’s all happening on Saturday August 10.
If you’re in the area, be good to see you.
It has taken me some time to create this post – events overtook me – however, let me state right here and now that I am chuffed to bits to have THUNDER BAY make the longlist for the 2019 McIlvanney Prize.
Regular readers will know this is the second time I’ve managed to blag my way onto the list. The first was in 2016 – the very year the Scottish Crime Book of the Year was dedicated to William McIlvanney – and the book was the final Davie McCall thriller, OPEN WOUNDS.
This year, as it is every year, competition is as tough as a Fight Club stag night.
A baker’s dozen of books by some superb writers.
And me.
If you want to read more about the longlisted books and the authors, click here.
Please note, the photo they used of me was one when they asked me to pull a face. I don’t always look that stupid.
Well, not always…
Anyway, the shortlist will be announced by early September – the winner at Bloody Scotland’s opening ceremony – so in the meantime I shall do a bit of basking.
Someone peel me a grape, will you?
Not many people come here, not in winter.
There is only one way in and out, a single track road that ends on the cliff rim, then a narrow trail tilts steeply to where the sibilant sound of surf on shingle dies with a hiss. Rocks, ragged and jagged, guard the bay from all but the most experienced sailor. Cliff faces curve around the rocks and the seething water, sheer and dark and dotted with the nests of the sea birds that swoop and dart and hover in the air, watched over by the sea eagles, huge and majestic, sitting in their lair like sentinels at post.
And when the clouds billow in from the Atlantic, stained with rain, and the winds howl and rage against the island’s western shore, the waves hurl themselves against the rocks to erupt in a swirl of salt water, the sound echoing and booming around the towering cliffs like thunder.
Island lore has it that this is where the souls of the dead come to be taken across the water into the west, to the afterlife. There are those who claim to have seen them standing on the shore, waiting for the boat to spirit them away.
There has been blood spilled here. Monks, hiding from Norse raiders, were slaughtered where they stood. Their screams can still be heard, they say, but more likely it is just the shriek of gulls.
More likely but perhaps not the case.
It is a lonely place, even in summer, for not many tourists brave the steep downward path. The closest most get is the cliff edge, from where they snap their photographs then return to their vehicle and bounce back along the rutted track to the island’s main road.
Only the sea birds remain a constant, their cries, like the screams of the dead monks so long ago, becoming one with the wind and the surf.
Only the sea birds and the dead are at home in Thunder Bay.
Thunder Bay will be published by Polygon in paperback and ebook in March 2019.