Sandra Ireland's Blog, page 8
August 8, 2016
If it’s good enough for JK…
I don’t have any aspirations to write about a boy wizard but I couldn’t help posing in front of the place where it all began!
This Edinburgh cafe must be the most famous in the world, and not for it’s menu. The fact that J.K.Rowling scribbled her best seller here over a cup of cold coffee is the stuff of literary legend, and there were scores of festival goers queuing up to share the experience on my recent trip to the city. I didn’t see any dog-eared, coffee-stained manuscripts, but plenty of cameras and smartphones!
It’s made me think about my own writing habits and whether anyone in the future will be interested in the fact that I:
a) write in my bare feet (‘in’, not ‘with’)
b) drink cold tea from mug with a wren on it.
c) cower under the Cloak of Darkness on cold mornings. That’s actually a fleecy throw and nothing to do with Hogwarts.
What are your legendary writing habits?!
Barry Mill: A Creative Residency
Thanks to Creative Scotland funding and the support of the National Trust for Scotland, I am now ‘resident’ at this gorgeous place for twelve months.
This will allow me to write my second novel, a mill-inspired psychological thriller entitled The Bone Harp, and deliver five community writing workshops.
Barry Mill has a rich history, going back to the late Middle Ages, and brings with it a wealth of associated folklore and oral tradition. There are more stories than mine to be unearthed here…and I can’t wait to start digging!
Read my weekly Barry Mill Blog here:
Beneath the Skin: the cover!
The grand reveal! The gorgeous cover of my debut novel Beneath the Skin, which will hit the bookshelves in September. Finally the long journey towards becoming a published author feels real. For the past twelve months I’ve been a bit like a kid on a road trip, constantly wondering ‘are we there yet?’ There have been lots of exciting diversions along the way: meeting my agent Jenny Brown over tea and biscuits, going to the Birlinn offices for the first time (the coolest book-filled basement ever!) and signing a publishing contract with a borrowed biro. (Why do writers never have pens?) But when I saw this classy and enigmatic cover; when I realised this would contain my very own words…I FINALLY thought YES! I’ve arrived!
News blog
Keep up-to-date with this writer’s life! Random thoughts and interesting happenings…
