Events and interviews

 I've had a handful of events and interviews over the last couple of weeks, all of which went far better than I feared. I'm not a natural performer by any stretch of the imagination, but I found myself really enjoying these.

First of all, an interview with the new Bloody Scotland podcast, which can be found wherever you get your podcasts etc.

Bloody Scotland has been flying the flag for Scottish crime fiction for a number of years, and I was initially unsure why I'd been asked to talk to them. The Unrecovered might be many things (a new Scottish classic according to some discerning readers; a load of boring rubbish according to other, less discerning readers...) but it's definitely not a crime novel. However, there's certainly a mystery element to the story, one based in myth, legend and landscape rather than human action, and there's a reasonable amount of blood. It feels like Bloody Scotland are expanding their remit to cover this kind of fiction as well, and talking with Bob McDevitt and Lin Anderson (a celebrated crime author herself) made for a really interesting chat. As I reminded him, Bob used to work with my mum in the now-defunct branch of Waterstones at the east end of Princes Street in Edinburgh, all the way back in the 1990s. The world of writing and publishing, especially in Scotland, is exceptionally small ... 

Next was an event with the Far From the Madding Crowd bookshop in Linlithgow, which took place at the beautiful St Peter's Church on the High Street.

The sermon about to begin...

There was a good crowd of around 20 people and it was chaired by Sally, the manager. This was a really rewarding conversation, especially as I got to delve into my process a bit, and the questions at the end were great. There's nothing better than when an astute reader notices something in your novel that has escaped your own attention - it makes the whole process feel incredibly mysterious, and that you've been accessing levels you didn't consciously understand when writing it. And the setting for this event was just gorgeous, one of the most beautiful little churches I've ever seen.

Finally, a bigger event in East Linton hosted by Night Owl Books, and chaired by the manager Rebecca.

The crowd begins to gather...

Well over 30 people came to this, and it never ceases to amaze me that people would be willing to give up their time to come and hear me ramble on about my book. Again, the converstation was wide-ranging, I got to really dig into aspects of the novel and the whole journey to publication, and the questions at the end were great. I signed loads of books afterwards, including from someone who had already read the novel twice (!) and who said it was inspiring them to write their own fiction. That is high praise indeed, and really humbling. This was a great event, and Rebecca is to be commended for running these so well.

I don't have anything else lined up events-wise at the moment. I was hoping to get offered something from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, but given their funding woes I think I might have to wait for next year. In any case, I've surprised myself by enjoying these, once the initial nerves are overcome. In the run-up to the book launch in February I would idly daydream about changing my name and getting a job in the Hebrides on a fishing trawler rather than go through the nightmare terror of a public speaking event, but once they're underway they can be incredibly rewarding. It turns out I might be a secret egomaniac, and I quite like having a captive audience forced to listen to me wax lyrical about my own work. Who would have thought?

Publication day, and a book launch

 Thursday 13th February 2025, a day that shall live in infamy...

Yesterday my debut novel 'The Unrecovered' was published, and we had the book launch at Golden Hare Books in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. (A short informative sentence that encapsulates pretty much everything I've been working towards for about 25 years.)

In the afternoon my editor Alison took me around various bookshops to sign stock (which made me feel like a proper writer) and then in the early evening we headed to Golden Hare.

Mary Paulson-Ellis was the best chair I could have hoped for, an incredibly astute reader who steered the conversation into very interesting terrain. It's a strange thing to discuss your work like this, because it forces you to examine much of what is either inchoate or intuitive in your writing, teasing out themes or correspondences of which you might not have been consciously aware. I also did a short reading and fielded questions from the audience, and the hour was over much faster than I thought it would be. It was great to catch up with old friends and to see the novel firmly launched into the uncertain seas of literature. And then to start drinking heavily afterwards.

I have heard other writers speak of a strange sense of anti-climax once a book has finally been published, but it definitely feels like a point of culmination for me, having spent so long trying to get here. Reviews and sales and so on are all out of my hands now, and not really worth worrying about (although obviously I hope for colossal critical and commercial success...) The reviews so far have been great and hopefully there are more to come, but the book is the thing. It's out there now, for people to spot on a table or a shelf in the bookshops, to read if they choose, or to pass over in favour of something else. I certainly hope people take a chance on it.

2025: a look ahead

 2024 is over, and a new year is upon us. I thought I’d write a brief overview of what I have planned for 2025, with the proviso that nothing in writing ever goes entirely to plan, and that projects I might confidently summarise here could easily be dropped in favour of anything that announces itself more forcefully to my mind. With that caveat in place…

The main thing of course will be the publication of my debut novel, The Unrecovered, on 13^th February. The book launch will be at Edinburgh’s Golden Hare Books on that day, chaired (in something of a coup!) by Mary Paulson-Ellis.

Tickets for the launch, redeemable against a copy of the book, can be ordered here:

https://goldenharebooks.com/products/the-unrecovered-launch-event-with-richard-strachan-thursday-13th-february-2025

Pre-orders for signed and dedicated copies are available here:

https://goldenharebooks.com/products/the-unrecovered-by-richard-strachan-signed-and-dedicated-pre-order-13th-february-2025

And here’s a link to various other places where it can be preordered: https://linktr.ee/richstrach

It goes without saying that I’ve never had a book launch before, although I’ve been to plenty of them in my time. To say that the prospect fills me with raw terror would be an understatement, but I’m just pushing all the anxieties to one side for the moment. Hopefully it can be something I’ll actually enjoy once it’s up and running. Either way, I will finally have a proper novel out there in the wild.

 

Other than that, I’ll have the general round of edits to do on my second novel. I submitted the third draft in mid-December, and no doubt there will be lots of work to do on it during the year to get it into shape. It’s changed quite a lot since the first draft, but I’m comfortable with where it sits now.

I’ll also be trying to finish the first draft of a third novel, the final volume of a tentative thematic trilogy all about war, British history, archaeology, landscape and myth. I made a pretty good start on this in the second half of 2024, and hopefully I can get this into some vaguely completed form by summer 2025. After that there will be the usual rounds of intensely self-critical editing and redrafting etc before I can submit it.

Assuming that all goes to plan (see above), I want to spend the second half of 2025 looking over and redrafting a novella and some short stories for a possible collection. Most of the short stories have been published before, in various magazines, but the novella is something I’ve never managed to place anywhere. I’m intensely proud of it all the same, it’s like the distilled essence of every subject and style I care about the most. It was around 60,000 words the last time I checked, and ideally I’d get it down to about 35,000. The collection would be a bit more formally experimental than the novels I’m currently writing; less character and plot, more style and imagery.

On top of that (and already this seems a ridiculous amount to try and pack into one year), I want to start some very early sketches and notes towards a short novel I’ve had percolating in my head for a while. Again, this would be a more formally experimental piece, but of everything I can dimly perceive in the future it’s the work that’s most insistently demanding my attention. I wouldn’t start work on it properly until 2026, assuming my interest in it doesn’t flag, but I want to start outlining and researching and thinking about it when I’ve got the time.

 

Of course, none of this takes into consideration the usual unexpected life-events that always throw your plans off-track, and I’ve got a few events pencilled-in around the publication of The Unrecovered which will take up some time. But if I can get into a pretty steady work rate, I think much of this will be achievable. I’ll look back over it on New Year’s Day 2026, and that hollow laughter you’ll hear will be me contemptuously scorning my optimism…