Scotch and Story

Would you like to enjoy a story set in Scotland, accompanied by a single malt whisky crafted in Scotland? For free? No purchase necessary? Enter this sweepstakes, my spiffy peeps, and you can win a copy of Ink & Sigil plus a bottle of Glenfiddich 12!

The usual conditions you might expect apply here, such as you need to be 21 or older to enter. Contest runs until Sept. 4, and this is open to US residents only, as this is a sweepstakes sponsored by my US publisher and they very understandably would like to market to US readers. Should you win, the book and bottle will arrive separately, but absolutely no one is going to holler at you if you start enjoying whatever arrives first before the second one gets there!

And heck, I’m gonna say it: This book and a bottle of Scotch is a good buy in any case!

Ink & Sigil is set in the world of the Iron Druid Chronicles, but you don’t need to have read the other series at all to enjoy it; you can dive in here! You’ll get to meet Al MacBharrais, the sixty-three year old protagonist, a hobgoblin who goes by the rather cheeky name of Buck Foi, and Al’s accountant, Nadia, who moonlights as a pit fighter. Al is a sigil agent in Glasgow who writes and enforces magical contracts with the Fae and many pantheons of the world, but his apprentices keep dying in strange accidents. Maybe they’re…not accidents? When Al’s latest apprentice is slain by a raisin scone, Al has to play detective while actual detectives start investigating him, wondering why death seems to follow him around. Available in print, ebook, and audio, you can click here and you’ll land on a page with links to your favorite vendor, including Indiebound, which will help find an independent bookstore near you.

While doing my location scout for Ink & Sigil, I visited a remarkable pub in Glasgow called The Citizen that has a rather extraordinary whisky menu in their Editor’s Suite collection. £180 for a 25 ml pour of The Macallan M, for example, or £150 for a shot of a 35-year old bottle of The Dalmore. Anyway, The Citizen is a location in the novel—Al’s son (fictionally) works there—so you might enjoy taking a look around their website just to see photos of the place. Other places mentioned include the Necropolis, the Mitchell Library, St. Mungo’s mural on High Street, and Gin71 in Merchant City.

Hope you enjoy the story, spiffy humans! If you have half as much fun reading as I had writing, you’re in for a incredibly good time.