I’m still hard at work on a novel set in Glasgow. It’s tentatively entitled Egypt, Glasgow, but that title is under negotiation: meaning, the publisher doesn't like it very much. This is standard practice in the marketplace, where labels, for better or worse, mean so much. A bad title can kill a book. The story concerns a Jewish cop who lives in a part of Glasgow called Egypt: nobody seems quite to know why that area is so called. I haven’t been able to find out yet, but I’m working on it. The story also involves the Glasgow Jewish community - some 5,000 people out of a population of 650,000. I don’t think much has been written, in fiction anyway, about this aspect of Glasgow life. 

Still on course for a reading at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August. I’ll be delighted to meet any of my readers who happen to be there. Now, back to Egypt….

The BBC4 reading of All That Really Matters
(US: I Hope You Have A Good Life) was broadcast the week beginning March 26 and continued over five days. It was read, splendidly, by Scots-born actor Brian Cox, and the abridgement by producer Jane Marshall was superb. The reading has had a very positive effect on British sales. I was delighted with the whole venture. 

The US paperback edition is coming out early in 2002, from Three Rivers Press. I hope this republication will bring the book to a wider American audience. 

Edinburgh Festival 2001: an appearance there has been confirmed for August 13th, at 5PM in The Studio Theatre, where I’ll be sharing the platform with thriller writer Robert Goddard. I look forward to this. Public appearances sometimes fill me with a cold terror. 

Writers are often very private people, fond of their own company, and friends with the characters they create in their heads. Going public can sometimes be spooky. I should be used to it by now, because I’ve done a number of public appearances around the world, but somehow there’s always a shot of nervousness before the event. I hope it doesn’t show.

The new novel, The Bad Fire, scheduled for publication in the UK in May, has been selected by The Scotsman for serialization over a period of three days. Since fiction hardly ever appears in national newspapers, this is exciting. 

When a new book comes out, there’s always an apprehension (it’s another kind of public appearance, basically), more so this time because The Bad Fire is set in Glasgow, my home town, and I’ve never written about the place before. I haven’t lived there since the middle of the 1960s, consequently I’ve made frequent trips to bring myself up to scratch on the city’s development - it is an absolutely wonderful Victorian city, and it’s a shame so many American tourists elect to visit Edinburgh rather than Glasgow. There’s a great buzz about Glasgow: it’s changed utterly since I was a kid there. 

I enjoyed writing about Glasgow so much I decided to set a second novel there; it’s about a Jewish cop who lives in an area of Glasgow called Egypt. Truly. The working title is Egypt, Glasgow, but the publishers will probably tell me that isn’t commercial enough. They usually do. 

Campbell Armstrong

I Hope You Have A Good Life is being reissued in paperback in the US; Spring of 2002, by Three Rivers Press. It is also being published in Germany by Schneekluth, probably next year.

I’m reading at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 15 at 3.30. If anybody who’s read my books wants to stop for a chat, I’d be happy to meet. The reading is being held in The Studio Theatre in Charlotte Square. 

Hard at work on a novel that began life as Egypt, Glasgow but has mutated into The Last Darkness. Same book, different title. I expect to finish it soon and it may see the light of day in the summer of 2002.

 - Campbell Armstrong

The Last Darkness is the title, and it will be published in the spring by HarperCollins (UK). The book reprises a character from The Bad Fire, Lou Perlman, a Detective-Sergeant working in Glasgow. The plot is intricate, and I wouldn’t want to begin to detail it here - it’s probably enough to say that it’s about family secrets, revenge, and international  embezzlement. 

The fun part of writing a book like this - for me anyway - is when I come to pieces of action that surprise me, because I hadn’t foreseen them, or when a character decides to do something I basically don’t want him to do. I know it sounds crazy, because these people are products of my own head, but often they rebel against the control of the author and take over, and the ghost of plot I had in mind when I started takes off in another direction.

A lot of writers like to blueprint everything before they start. I don’t. I want to sit down every morning and let the unfolding of the story surprise me. Sometimes it does. My feeling is that if it surprises me, it will probably surprise the reader too…

I’m enjoying the ongoing development of the character Lou Perlman, who first featured in The Bad Fire and who now has a central role in The Last Darkness. He’s good-natured, sometimes grumpy and caustic, and is defiantly proud of his lack of dress sense. In a way, he’s pure Glasgow; as tough as the city itself, and just as disheveled, and yet good-hearted too. 

It’s my plan to feature him in at least one more book, because there are elements of his character that appeal to the explorer in me. I have the specter of a plot in mind…

The memoir, I Hope You Have A Good Life, is being published in the USA in Spring 2002, by Three Rivers Press. 

Thanks to all the nice people who send email to me. I truly appreciate it. It’s a great way to kickstart a day with a note or two from readers, and I enjoy the communication. It’s a self-centered life writing books, and feedback from the outside world is welcome… 

e-mail Campbell

Later in March, BBC4 will feature the book as its Book of the Week, a five-piece adaptation. It’s hoped that the fine Scots actor Brian Cox will do the reading. Apart from appearances in films such as Rob Roy, and Miracle Man, he was also the original Hannibal Lector in the movie Manhunter. (Some say his is the more authentic version of that character - and I’d agree.) His stage work is considerable. 

Also in March, Corgi Books in the UK will publish the paperback edition of a suspense novel first published last year, entitled Deadline. This is one of those fast-moving twisty stories that skirts the edges of dementia. It was fun to write. I hope the end is suitably unpredictable.

In May, HarperCollins will publish The Bad Fire, the first fiction I’ve ever written that’s set entirely in my home town, Glasgow. It’s a story of family secrets, and old crimes, and a man’s return to the city of his birth. Researching this book was strange, at times disorienting - I visited places that were so fresh in memory and yet in reality they’d ceased to exist. My old school - gone: a vacant lot now, weeds and nettles. An old poolhall that’s a video arcade. A dancehall transformed into a huge supermarket. I felt I was tracking ghosts, and although I could glimpse them I could never confront them. I wanted the city to play a big part in the novel. I hope that comes across. 

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer, I’d like to read from The Bad Fire. 

In the UK and Ireland, Little Brown plans to publish a paperback edition of the book under the original British title, All That Really Matters, in March 2001. This will coincide with a five-day reading of the book on BBC4 Radio, which has an enormous audience. I am not absolutely sure why the American publishers changed the title. The cultural differences between the two countries are too enormous for me to fathom, and I’ve lived in both for long periods. (My bafflement is probably one of the reasons I live in the Republic of Ireland now, although Ireland is a conundrum all its own.)

Also in the UK, in April/May, a new novel entitled The Bad Fire is being published by HarperCollins. This is a novel of family secrets and crime, set in my home town of Glasgow, a city I’ve always wanted to write about. It’s a city both beautiful and demonic, and terrific background for a book. 

I expect to be at The Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, where I hope to read from this novel.

In connection with I Hope You Have A Good Life, a tentative plan is being worked out for me to do some readings in California in April; Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley. This is in the early stages of planning. More later.

THE LAST DARKNESS, my new book, (HarperCollins, London) comes out November 4; it’s set in Glasgow and centres around one of the characters who was at the heart of my last novel THE BAD FIRE (2001), also set in Glasgow. 

I usually don’t like the continuation of a character, although I’ve done it in the past with a character called Frank Pagan (Jig, Mazurka, Mambo, Jigsaw, Heat); there’s a tendency to write yourself into a corner, if the character becomes stubborn and refuses to change or grow - but I found myself coming back to the character of Lou Perlman, who features in THE BAD FIRE.

I can’t explain why one character grips and another fades away as soon as a book is finished. Who knows? It happens, and as a writer you sometimes find yourself enchanted by one character, and you want to know more about him or her…how does he live? does he contain the possibility of change? Whatever, I liked Perlman and decided I needed to explore him more - so the novel is concerned with Perlman and his immediate family, and a secret crime that threatens to wreck Perlman’s world…it’s about relationships as much as it is about crime. I welcome as always any comments from readers.

I appreciate the e-mails and letters I get from out there, and I answer them all. Even the critical ones; I’m not immune to criticism - if it’s good, you learn from it. I thank the people who still write to me about the memoir, All That Really Matters, because that book is still fresh in my heart. 

Since the last time I posted a newsletter, a couple of my older novels are chugging along the slow road to celluloid. One is Jigsaw, the other Blackout…there’s a long way to go in the process of making a book into a script and then into a movie, and sometimes these projects collapse in a heap, or just out of exhaustion - but writers need to be optimistic about their projects coming to life. Not always easy, but always necessary….