Well we have finished copies of the novel, just look:

If you want one and have a reasonable reason to have one (loft insulation doesn’t really count), drop me a line and I’ll get Faber to stick one in the post to you.

Here’s what it’s about:

Driving home from a party with his girlfriend and brother, all of them drunk and high on stolen pills, Billy Blackmore accidentally hits someone in the night. In a panic, they all decide to drive off. But the next day Billy wakes to find he has to cover the story for the local paper. It turns out the dead man was Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord and, as Billy struggles with what he’s done, he is sucked into a nightmare of guilt, retribution and violence.

Expect the onslaught of self-promotion to start very soon. Very soon. I’m really sorry. Gotta be done, though.

Have fun!

Doug x

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana (William Heinemann, January)

Already out and I’ve already read it and it’s fucking amazing – like a shotgun blast in the guts of literature. Terrifying, brutal but brilliant.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador, February)

Wish I had an author name like that. Auslander’s memoir, Foreskin’s Lament (yes, really), was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, so this first novel promises much.

Ron Rash, The Cove (Canongate, March)

Ron Rash’s last story collection won the Frank O’Connor prize, this novel will likely also mix top class literary writing with earthy wisdom.

Dan Rhodes, This is Life (Canongate, March)

A new Dan Rhodes book is always welcome, and this is apparently a missing baby mystery in gay Paris. Hurrah for Dan Rhodes!

Mark Leyner, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack (Little Brown, March)

I read Et Tu, Babe by Leyner many, many years ago, then he seemed to disappear. It was a totally mental book. The title of this alone suggests it will be awesome.

Irvine Welsh, Skagboys (Jonathan Cape, April)

Long-awaited prequel to some obscure book called Trainspotting. Sweeeet.

Megan Abbott, Dare Me (Picador, May)

Abbott’s The End of Everything was one of my favourites of 2011, so I’m now a complete Abbott fan, and cannae wait for this.

Ewan Morrison, Tales From The Mall (Cargo, May)

Twenty-first century dislocation and commercialism brought to vivid life by this experimental and revolutionary collection of stories from a controversial dude.

Richard Ford, Canada (Bloomsbury, June)

Yay, a new Richard Ford! It’s probably about Canada. I love Canada. And Richard Ford. Good times.

David Vann, Dirt (William Heinemann, June)

Vann moves from Alaska to the desert for this new novel. I bet it’s still bleak as fuck, though. Can’t wait.

And here are some of mine, below. I was asked by various people for my favourite shit. I told them. They printed it.

Here‘s my favourite book of the year over at Tony Black’s excellent Pulp Pusher blog, in some seriously impressive company.

Here‘s my round up of the year over at the fantastic Manic Pop Thrills site.

Here‘s my cultural highlights of 2011 and 2012 over at Faber’s Thoughtfox blog, in more seriously impressive company.

Recently I was asked to round up the best science books of the year by the Independent on Sunday and The Big Issue magazine. The latter isn’t online yet, as far as I know, but the Indy on Sunday piece is over here – please check it out.

Needless to say, the picture editor at the paper went with a big picture of the apparently sexy Prof Brian Cox. Since he’s not really my type, I’ve gone with the rather lovely cover of probably my favourite science book of the year – The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘biography of cancer’.

Get yer boffin caps on and enjoy!

– Smokeheads got a whopping 25 reviews from bloggers, newspapers and magazines. Some folk didn’t like it, but them’s the breaks. If you want to take a look at some of ‘em, they’re all collated here. Best quote I think has to be the reviewer who was ‘left with a similar feeling to watching a dog eat its own vomit’ after reading the book. Lovely. There were loads of great quotes but I can’t remember them, and I have a rule that I only read each review once, good or bad, then fling it up on the site. That way you don’t get bogged down in all that ‘he said, she said’ stuff.

– In a weirdly coincidental way, I was also interviewed 25 times by various publications and online folks. I was asked to interview myself, talk about cinema and hold deer antlers in the woods. All in a day’s work for yer slapdash novelist. If you wanna check out some of that shit, knock yerself out here.

– I performed at 27 events throughout the year. Wow. That’s quite a lot. They weren’t all together like in one massive busy month-long tour or anything. Some were more formal than others, some were more fun than others, most of them were a bit drunken. I played with Hugh Cornwell and got asked what the most illegal thing I’d ever done was. For a potted history of it all, check in here.

All of which was promoting my latest novel Smokeheads. As a cheeky wee pre-Christmas reminder, let me humbly point out that you can buy the book by clicking on the cover below.

And while I’m at it, I might as well mention that I was also promoting my most recent EP, ‘Keep It Afloat’. Got quite a few good reviews and some nice radio play. Can’t complain at all. You can listen to it, download it or buy a physical copy by clicking on the cover below.

Hell, it’s been a busy year. And 2012 will no doubt be another doozy. Got some exciting stuff in the pipeline, not least the publication of my next novel Hit and Run on 1st March. Click on the pic below for Amazon’s take on it. I won’t say anymore, as I’ll no doubt be boring you rigid with chat about the bloody thing for the forseeable.

Aye so, that’s that, really. Like I say, got some other exciting news in the offing, but I’ll keep my powder dry on that for now.

Have a great festivus one and all, and see you on the other side.

Doug x

- Only 3 or 4 would be considered ‘literary’ fiction, the rest are crime, mostly noir. Even the ‘literary’ ones are very noirish. Make of that what you will.

– Only 1 or 2 (depending how you count – Hi, Helen!) are British. In fact Scottish, there are no English writers here. The rest are American except for Tsiolkas who’s Aussie. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, I’d love to know what your own favourites are, and what you make of this list. Sorry for not writing longer reviews, but I review for a living (and probably reviewed most if not all of these elsewhere during the year, sure you could google ‘em), so I’m kinda wiped out on the reviewing front for now.

Enjoy!

1. Matthew F Jones, A Single Shot (Mulholland)

This is a fantastic piece of American country noir, with this first UK edition foreworded by Daniel Woodrell. A poacher accidentally kills a teenage girl then finds a bag of money. Shit ensues. Very bad shit. Terse, tense, and scary as fuck, basically.

2. James Sallis, Drive (No Exit Press)

Prose doesn’t come much leaner than this. Hollywood stunt driver by day, getaway driver by night – what a fucking great idea. Hardbitten, existential noir at its most stripped back and brutal.

3. Megan Abbott, The End of Everything (Picador)

Strange, otherworldly feel to this tale of a suburban teenage girl going missing. There is a real creepiness and unsettling nature to this exploration of teenage sexuality that is highly disturbing. Great, in other words.

4. David Vann, Caribou Island (Penguin)

Vann’s Alaska is a treacherous place. When an elderly couple decide to build a cabin on a remote island, it goes so badly wrong as to be barely readable. The end is darkest blackness.

5. George Pelecanos, The Cut (Orion)

Great return to novel writing after a spell at The Wire, this is the start of a new series, apparently, as an Iraq veteran gets sucked into bad shit back home in Washington DC.

6. Sara Gran, City of the Dead (Faber)

I’m not much into detective fiction normally, but this is fantastic. Sassy, funny and profound, it sees private investigator Claire deWitt negotiating the badlands of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with only an old French guide to detecting and her considerable wits as company. Full of character.

7. Ray Banks, Dead Money (Blasted Heath)

Best British noir writer at the moment. This is a nasty story about a couple of double glazing salesmen in Manchester who get into all sorts of shit. Funny at times, but also genuinely disturbing, Banks takes you to places you don’t want to go, but you feel compelled to follow him.

8. Helen FitzGerald, The Donor (Faber)

Dilemma fiction, apparently. Whatever you call it, it’s brilliant, as a dad finds out both his teenage daughters have a potentially fatal kidney disease. What to do? FitzGerald is a master at characterisation and backstory, so you’re rooting for her characters no matter how fucked up they are.

9. Christa Faust, Choke Hold (Hard Case)

Wow, noir doesn’t come much more breakneck than this. Fantastic, rattling adrenaline ride as protagonist Angel gets sucked into a world of dodgy wrestling, drug dealing and shitloads more.

10. Christos Tsiolkas, Loaded (Vintage)

Author of The Slap’s first novel, published for the first time in the UK, this is a masterclass in equal-opportunities misanthropy, as the teenage Greek-Aussie gay narrator bounces around the shittier parts of Melbourne despising everything and everyone with such energy as to be utterly compelling.

By my reckoning this is the 25th review of the book, how about that, a quarter century. For anyone interested, the majority (14) have come from bloggers, with 11 appearing in the mainstream paper media. Pretty even. Whatever that means. Nothing, really.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the coverage, can’t believe it’s still getting flagged up after all this time – cool enough!

Doug x

Seems to be a lot of cool folk check out Reading Matters – a few comments after the piece saying they’re gonna try to get a copy of David Gates’ Preston Falls, which is all to the good, because it’s a truly amazing piece of work.

Getting to recommend books, eh? What a life.

Anyway, he’s coming TODAY. Yes, TODAY. At 5pm, in room LT509 in Livingstone Tower, Richmond Street, Glasgow. And it’s OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. And FREE. And there will be CHEAP WINE. And possibly CRISPS. And undoubtedly some QUALITY CHAT. And LAUGHS.

So please do come. It’ll be fun even if you’re not there, but it’ll be even more fun if you are there.

If you don’t know who Chris Brookmyre is, you really should. But if you don’t, here’s some blurb:

Chris Brookmyre was born in Glasgow in 1968 and educated at Glasgow University, where he earned an MA (Hons) in English and Theatre. He worked as a sub-editor in London and Edinburgh prior to the publication of his first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, which won the First Blood Award in 1996 for the best first crime novel of the year.

Thirteen further novels followed, garnering him two Sherlock awards and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing in 2006. In 2005 he was named Glasgow University Young Alumnus of the Year and in 2007 he won the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for writing. Brookmyre is renowned around the world as a fantastically entertaining performer of his own work, and this event promises to be a real cracker, so don’t miss out.

I’m appearing on the Sunday evening at the last event of the festival. It’s a double-header with Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, who has recently published a novel. Cool enough. We’re both gonna be reading, discussing and playing tunes. Then there’s some sort of aftershow thing. It’s all in The Star and Shadow, a pretty nice old cinema.

If yer in the neighbourhood, come along and say hi, sounds like it’ll be a great night. This is my last gig of the year, as far as I know, so I’ll no doubt be having a few cheeky wee drams. For a change.

See yeh there!