You’ve probably heard those words too often, but this guy’s story really is incredible. He was shot at point blank range, twice, overdosed on drugs who knows how many times, and is still around to tell me all about it.
I’m just back from a lovely ‘holiday’ in Albania. I use the inverted commas because I did some work while I was out there for the video studio I used to work for, and then spent a day being a good daughter-in-law serving coffee and raki to visitors, and at the end of the my week there I got commissioned to write two articles on Easter themes.
It’s not been a great year for me. All work and not enough play made Karen a dull girl in 2023; Artemis’s avian romance ended in tragedy; and there was the major disappointment of not getting Eurovision tickets 😭 But it hasn’t been all bad. Let’s have a look at it.
Just a quick one to say that I’m giving a talk to the Old Glasgow Club this Thursday, 9th November, at the Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, G2 4JP. The talk is called Rambling Round Victorian Glasgow with Hugh MacDonald (although he will not be making an appearance in person).
Ok, perhaps a bit of a niche subject, but something I came across while working on Hugh MacDonald’s Rambles Round Glasgow (he knew a lot of poets, as well as being a poet himself), and thought I might as well get an article out of.
My recent book talks and book trails went very well, and thank you to everyone who has asked about them. It didn’t even rain on the book trails, which was nothing short of a miracle!
Not to be confused with the line dance called “county line”, county lines is a form of trafficking where drug traffickers get kids to ferry their drugs around for them. Child labour is very much a viable business option if you’re someone who’s not too concerned about breaking the law like, you know, drug traffickers.
It’s more common than you would think, and it doesn’t just involved “troubled” kids (not that they are any less valuable or deserving of protection). Anyway, you can read all about it in my new article for Premier NexGen, Premier’s youthwork arm. You have to register to read the whole thing, but it’s free and you don’t have to sign up for updates if you don’t want to.
I’ve just had an article accepted in principle by a history magazine. How much will I be paid for this meticulously researched piece of work (once I’ve actually written it)? Nothing, nowt, nada and nil. This isn’t as unusual as you’d think, and in this case I don’t mind because it’s on a subject related to Rambles Round Glasgow, so it counts as free advertising. But it’s another example of the complaint I increasingly find myself making: there’s no money in writing.
I sometimes think I should get business cards made that list my work as “professionally interesting”. Part of being an author means that I always have a random fact or interesting anecdote about anything that comes up, and it also means that I spend time at events, on the radio or in print, talking about the most interesting aspects of my books, my research or even just myself. (I have had an unusually full, interesting and long life for someone who likes to think she’s in her early 30s.)
After being somewhat secretive about it last year (it was a surprise for my father), I am now making a screeching change of direction and telling all and sundry that I have a new version of Hugh MacDonald’s Rambles Round Glasgow coming out.
K C Murdarasi 