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Critical Death Theory, first draft: 43,100 words

The problem with going to book festivals is that you buy books.  Books that then get added to your TBR pile and sit there mutely demanding to be read.  The Cymera festival was no exception.  Worse yet, I attended a panel with three authors entirely unknown to me.  They were so funny and engaging, I had to buy their books.  Had to!

Anyway, having taken further liberties with my TBR pile, here is my take on the second of them: Ten Low, by Stark Holborn.

One of the great joys about reading science fiction is that it gives you a lot to unpack.  You have the surface level story, of course, but bubbling away underneath is a ferment of ideas and what-ifs that seep into the reader’s subconscious without them necessarily knowing.  Holborn’s Ten Low is a great example of that.

On the surface, Ten Low is a gritty, sci-fi Western, heavily reminiscent of Firefly.  Watch the pilot episode of that much-mourned TV show and it is easy to visualize Holborn’s adventure playing out against a near-identical backdrop of dust, horses, and advanced hardware in the bitter aftermath of a failed war of independence.

A combat medic who fought on the losing side, Ten Low finds herself washed up on the desert moon of Factus, a backwater world where the central authority is weak and people’s lives are dominated by armed gangs, an organ-stealing cult known as the Seekers, and a mysterious half-sensed presence that may, or may not, be real.  She spends her time here trying to use her considerable medical skills for good: a course of action that brings her to a crashed spaceship and a badly wounded child.  The child, it turns out, is a ruthless, genetically engineered soldier responsible for the death of many of Ten Low’s former comrades.  Despite this, and somewhat against her better judgment, she nurses the child back to health, fully aware that said child might kill her for her troubles.

That, though, is the easy part.  Hostile as her patient is, the two are forced into an uneasy alliance as it becomes clear that the crash was no accident.  Forces from both on and off world would like to see the both of them dead.  Woman and not-quite-child flee across Factus, enemies known and unknown in hot pursuit.  This is breathless, action-thriller stuff, well executed and fun to read.  If some of the incidents feel ginned-up just to keep things moving, it is a small thing and easy to forgive when everything else is so good.

So much for the surface.  Beneath the action-thriller stuff lies a nest of intriguing concepts that I don’t have room to lay out and which, I suspect, will be different for every reader: SF at its best!  For me, though, three things really hit home.

First, point of view is everything.  Two people sitting on opposite sides of a table will see the same pepper pot.  But to one, the pepper is on the left, to the other, the right.  The very human inability/refusal to see the other side is very much in play here.  Ten Low and the child see the war and its aftermath from the perspective of their own side.  Each makes sense.  Neither is inherently right or wrong.  Holborn has the wonderful knack of twisting the reader’s sensibilities as she jumps effortlessly from one side of the table to the other.

Second, a focus on where the pepper pot sits on the table can blind everyone to the fact that the table itself is rotten.  Now the war is over, both Ten Low and the child have been cast aside, their “usefulness” at an end.  Large organizations, be they governments or corporations, only care when it helps them achieve their aims.  Once that time is past, the people who relied upon and trusted them find themselves either abandoned or crushed underfoot.  Something for the reader to think about long after the pages are closed and Ten Low takes its place of honor on the bookshelf.

Third, there are a whole slew of ideas here that have not yet been fully developed.  Holborn’s world is far bigger than what we see in Ten Low.  Ten Low is a fine, stand-alone book but it leaves the reader wanting – and expecting – so much more from the sequel.  A lot of writers, when writing a series, write one story and chop it off arbitrarily at page whatever, leaving the reader feeling they’ve been conned.  A long story is not a series, it’s a long story.  The writer should finish it in one go.  Holborn does not make this mistake.  Ten Low is a story with an ending – and a good one at that.  It’s simply that there are more books here to be written.  Holborn’s is a world of depth and nuance with room to go deeper into the rabbit hole.  I, for one, will be delighted to follow along.

Once I’ve made a dent in my TBR pile, of course.

Critical Death Theory, first draft: 43,100 words.

So.  The Bloody Scotland Crime Festival.  Bloody brilliant.  As I always seem to do at book festivals, I had an absolute blast.  Stirling, Scotland, where the festival was held, is only 30 or so miles up the road from Edinburgh, so it was a much less epic journey than Shetland Noir.  I hopped on the train and, a few minutes later it felt like, there I was.

The good citizens of Stirling will probably not thank me for this but their downtown comes across as a mini-Edinburgh: all medieval stone and steep hills.  It is exceedingly picturesque.  The city makes a real effort around the event: there were posters everywhere, and the first thing the wait staff at Rishi’s Indian Restaurant asked when I dropped in to be fed was, “Are you here for the festival?”

This is Scotland, so there was an alcohol-fueled reception under the 15^th century arches of the Church of the Holy Rude.  King James VI of Scotland (later First of England), the son of Mary Queen of Scots, was crowned there in 1567.  I half-expected a party in a church to feel faintly blasphemous but it felt like nothing of the sort.  The ancient nave was filled with crime fiction buffs determined to meet each other and have a good time, together with a large number of volunteers ensuring that a good time was actually had.  The fact that it was absolutely chucking it down with rain did nothing to stop the attendees from marching (or weaving) up to Stirling Castle for a flaming torchlight procession to the city’s Albert Halls for a prize-giving ceremony. For obvious reasons, no umbrellas were allowed!

Unfortunately for yours truly, I had to skip the ceremony in order to prepare for my spotlight presentation the following morning.  It is a paradox of public speaking that the shorter the talk the longer the preparation.  Aimless rambling takes no preparation at all.  I, on the other hand, had three minutes to introduce myself, my book, and do a reading.  I was up half the night.

Fortunately, the final product was well received.  A Quiet Teacher sold out at the bookshop, I got to spend time with the great James Naughtie and Charles Cunningham, and people came up to me all the rest of the day to tell me how much they’d enjoyed the presentation.  It’s a somewhat surreal sensation to hear someone you’ve only just met quote your own words back to you.  Forget about walls, it’s the people who have ears.

Critical Death Theory, first draft: 38,900 words.

I’m sitting in my usual weekend coffee shop here in Edinburgh, taking a break from Critical Death Theory and looking up at Edinburgh Castle.  Even though Edinburgh Castle is bathed in sunlight, I’m wondering why it looks almost exactly the same as Edinburgh Castle not bathed in sunlight.  That is one dour, dour building.  Which probably has a lot to do with its dour, dour history.  I don’t know if this is true but it’s said that the infamous red wedding in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones was inspired by the so-called black dinner at Edinburgh Castle, a murderous — and all too real — event that took place in 1440.  One of many, I’m afraid.

I also don’t know if Stirling Castle, which is about thirty-five miles up the road from here, has a similarly bloody backstory but I intend to find out.  I’m visiting the city for Bloody Scotland, the international crime writers’ festival, next weekend.  I shall be wearing my (still new-feeling) crime writer’s hat and doing a short, spotlight piece on A Quiet Teacher.  By happy coincidence, A Quiet Teacher has just been named a Top-10 thriller/mystery debut by Booklist Reader.  So flattered about that!  Anyway, the spotlight piece should be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it. It’s at 10:30 on the Saturday morning, after which I can take in the rest of the festival free of further obligation.  A whole host of really cool authors will be there, including Val McDermid, Lisa Jewell, and Mick Herron.  It’s going to be a blast!

Still wearing my crime writer’s hat, my publisher tells me there’s a distinct  possibility that I will be turning up at another festival in the early part of next year.  I will let you know more once (if!) it gets nailed down.

And for the SF readers out there, I have not forgotten you!  E________ is in (I hope!) the final stages of editing.  Hopefully, there will be more to say on that front in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, Stirling, here we come!

Critical Death Theory, first draft: 29,800 words.

The problem with going to book festivals is that you buy books.  Books that then get added to your TBR pile and sit there mutely demanding to be read.  The Cymera festival was no exception.  Worse yet, I attended a panel with three authors entirely unknown to me.  They were so funny and engaging, I had to buy their books.  Had to!

Anyway, by admittedly taking liberties with other books in my TBR pile, here is my take on the first of them: Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell.

To call Winter’s Orbit Bridgerton in space is a lazy shorthand that does justice to neither the TV show nor Maxwell’s excellent novel.  Nonetheless, as laziness is a major specialism of mine, Bridgerton in space is what you’re going to get.  Winter’s Orbit is an engaging romance with just enough space opera in it to allow it to sit on an SF bookshelf without blushing.

The premise that launches the book is an arranged (for arranged read forced) marriage between Prince Kiem, a minor royal of the Iskat Empire, a grandly titled but minor galactic power, and Count Jainan, a noble from one of the Empire’s vassal planets, following the sudden death of Jainan’s previous husband.  The marriage is a prerequisite for the renewal of a treaty with a shadowy organization known as the Resolution, which has a monopoly on interstellar navigation.  It is the Resolution that prevents more powerful empires from traveling to Iskat and swallowing it up, as will surely happen if the treaty is not renewed.

There are, however, a couple of flies in the ointment.  It turns out that Jainan’s former husband might very well have been murdered, and that the marriage certificate on its own will not be enough to renew the treaty: the relationship has to be genuine.  High jinks of a mostly romantic nature, albeit with a side helping of thriller, then ensue.

Romantically, this is a story of contrasting personalities who are hilariously unaware that the attraction each feels for the other is, in fact, mutual.  To say that Maxwell has a dry wit is rather like describing the Sahara as not very rainy.  It is deployed frequently and to good effect throughout the novel as miscommunications and misunderstandings pile one on top of the other to the point where you begin to wonder if these two will ever find a way through.  Spoiler alert: they do, and it is beautiful.  What I most liked about the dynamic between Kiem and Jainan is that they are both wonderful, talented individuals with low self-esteem.  Each needs the other to hold up a mirror to their true worth.

On the SF side, the novel is somewhat weaker.  I concede that I am out of step with a lot of people these days in that I like to see some science in my science fiction, so take my grumbling on that point with a large grain of salt.  I do not, however, feel the need to issue a health warning when it comes to my only other nit: both of these highly intelligent characters are sometimes uncharacteristically thick.  If you know that someone on your list of suspects is sabotaging aircars but you don’t know who, why would you then take an aircar to which the list of suspects has access and let said suspects know about it?  Predictable consequences followed — but it was extremely romantic!

Winter’s Orbit is a sweet, funny, deftly written book that I had trouble putting down.  If Bridgerton-style romance is your thing and you are at least SF-curious, this could be the perfect book for you.

Critical Death Theory: first draft, 15,400 words

Shetland, to which I recently traveled for the Shetland Noir crime writers’ event, was something else. I wouldn’t call it beautiful, exactly. Bronze age sheep denuded the islands of trees, leaving behind an ancient landscape of close-cropped, rolling hills that end abruptly in spectacular rocky shorelines: either the North Sea or the Atlantic, depending on which side you’re on. Stone Age boundary markers rise suddenly out of the thin soil, and the wind blows across everything. The overall effect is stark: handsome, rather than pretty. Austere instead of lush.

With the cleanest air I’ve ever breathed in my life.

And the hospitality was amazing. I always feel like a bit of an impostor as a crime writer. I didn’t set out to become one, it just happened. I woke up with Greg Abimbola in my head one day and he wouldn’t go away. A Quiet Teacher was born and now, here I am, working on its sequel, Critical Death Theory. But no one treated me as an impostor. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The whole atmosphere at Shetland Noir was like a big, not dysfunctional family. Even though some of the giants of the genre were there – Ann Cleeves, Val McDermid, Shari Lapena, among others – there was no sense of hierarchy. Everyone just mingled and chatted and it was quite impossible to tell who was who just by looking at how they were treated. And the Mareel, the center where all the activities took place, turned out to be the perfect venue, with amazing coffee, a suitably broad selection of alcoholic beverages, and stunning home baked cakes, courtesy of the islanders. All with a sea view!

Highlights for me included meeting some fellow Nigerians, pygmy goats, on a coach tour of the Mainland, emceed by local author Marsali Taylor, a wonderful writer and a driving force behind the whole Shetland Noir enterprise. At the gathering itself, I had forced myself to sign up for something they called speed dating. You paired up with another author, in my case the delightful Shari Lapena, and spent a couple of minutes each pitching your book to a table full of readers before moving on to the next table, and the next, and the next . . . To be honest, I’d been rather dreading it, but it turned out to be an absolute blast. Everyone was very receptive, the questions they asked were really interesting, and there were plenty of laughs. Plus, all my books sold out at the bookstore!

On the last day, I attended a workshop on how to write a crime novel (better late than never) and found myself sitting next to Dea Parkin, who is not only the coordinator for the Crime Writers’ Association and an editor but also, it turns out, someone I was at college with. Small world! I paired up with Dea on the workshop’s sole exercise: tell the story of Goldilocks in twelve sentences of no more than eight words each. I babbled some words, Dea edited them into coherence, and we knocked it out of the park. “Join the CWA,” she said. “We’d love to have you.”

So I did.

Critical Death Theory: first draft, 5,400 words

Part 3 first! Before we get to our adventures in the Shetlands, I have a book announcement. We have signed a contract for the sequel to A Quiet Teacher. I knew it was coming but it’s still a thrill to ink the deal. I’ve promised to deliver the manuscript by February of next year, so I’m assuming it will come out a few months after that. Of course, it’s July now so, in writing time, February is not so far away and I have only just started writing the story (I feel my agent, the estimable Brady, clutching his heart as he reads this). Fear not! As the story has been outlined to the nth degree, all I have to do is get it on the page. The hard part (plotting, clues, character development, etc.) has already been mapped out. All that remains is the fun bit: actual writing! Barring some massive geopolitical upheaval that screws around with my day job, I’m expecting pretty smooth sailing from here on in. Hopefully!

I have learned over time that my willingness to spend many, many weeks coming up with an outline identifies me as a particular “type.” In terms of how we go about putting words on a page, writers, I’ve discovered, are fond of dividing themselves into two camps: plotters and pantsers. Pantsers, according to this theory, write by the seat of their pants, throwing down words to see where it takes them, while plotters outline everything ahead of time, plotting each and every step from A to Z before writing a single word of manuscript. While most writers I’ve met so far identify as pantsers, I am very much at the opposite end of the spectrum. I like outlines. I like to know where I’m going. The thing I hate most about writing is “wasting” days of writing time wrestling with a plot problem I should have thought about earlier. When I’m writing I like to write!

Even by my standards, though, the outline for the AQT sequel is obsessive. It’s the most detailed outline I’ve ever written. There are two reasons for that. First, as this is a whodunnit, the clues have to fit exactly. I don’t have anywhere near as much room to maneuver as I would in a sci-fi novel. In a whodunnit, you can’t fly too far from your clues. Second, the outline is more detailed than for AQT because in this one there are not one but two murders. Double the clue plotting!

Now, having said all that, I don’t really buy into the plotters versus pantsers thing. Both are really doing the same thing, just framing it differently. A pantser’s first draft is basically just a very long outline: it bears little relationship to the final product. There are massive and multiple rewrites before the author is ready to show the fruits of their labors. An outline, conversely, is just a very short first draft. There’s a huge amount of writing still to be done before the completed manuscript is ready for the light of day. Either way, you end up with a book. And in reality, all writers plot and write by the seat of their pants. Otherwise, their books would either make no sense or lack any sense of inspiration. My personal view is that it comes down to how lazy you are. I am very lazy. The thought of writing tens of thousands of words just to get at the outline of a story brings me out in hives. The physical effort outweighs the joy of the writing. If you’re not lazy, on the other hand, why would you deprive yourself of a writing adventure just to save yourself a few keystrokes? Forget plotters and pantsers. You’re either lazy, or you’re not.

Back to the AQT sequel. I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while. I’m going to share the title! Critical Death Theory. As regular readers of this blog will know, no one, and I mean no one, likes my titles. They always get changed, the new titles are always better, and so I generally don’t feel the need to embarrass myself further by exposing the original moniker to public ridicule. This time, though, when I suggested it, neither the redoubtable Brady, nor his assistant James, nor Editor Rachel at Severn House shot it down. Who knows? It might even make it to publication.

As for E________, I’m still waiting for the axe to fall on that one. Or is it going to be two in a row?

Illness, work, and a compulsive desire to vent about AI have prevented me from bringing you up to speed about my June of festivals: Cymera and Shetland Noir. This week: Cymera.

Last year, as you may recall, I attended Cymera ’22 as an author panelist. It was my first time ever at a book festival and I was simply blown away. This time, now that I’ve moved to Edinburgh where Cymera is held, I managed to wangle a gig as a panel moderator. Arriving in the green room 30 minutes before our panel, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow, and Ian McDonald, Cory confronted me with the blunt question: “What’s this panel about?” Fortunately, having had to wrestle with the same problem for some weeks as I read through their excellent books, I had an answer.

We trooped out onto what I like to think of as the Cymera main stage and launched into a wide-ranging discussion about AI, use and abuse of the internet, privacy, technological fixes for global warming, and the merits of a good old-fashioned handshake deal, as seen through the lens of their novels Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland. I thought it was going great guns – and it was – until Cory directed my attention to frantic waving offstage. I had run out of time and left no opportunity for audience questions. I can’t read a watch, apparently. Fortunately, I am a person of color. Had I been white, I would have been beetroot with embarrassment!

Cymera itself didn’t disappoint. The Blackwells on site bookshop was as awesome as I remembered it, everyone was happy and a lot of us were well lubricated. Shockingly, given that Cymera takes place in what passes for Edinburgh University’s Student Union, they ran out of beer! There were a couple of the highlights I particularly want to mention. First, a book signing with Samantha Shannon. I’m not a huge fantasy reader these days but I loved The Priory of the Orange Tree, which contains one of the best opening sentences of all time. The queue went out the door and well up the stairway but she was as gracious with the last person in line as she was with the first. Second, an all female panel called Final Frontiers with Stark Holborn, Everina Maxwell, and Emily Tesh. The discussion of their space operas Hel’s Eight, Ocean’s Echo, and Some Desperate Glory, was witty, ribald and perceptive by turns. So much so that, even though I was not familiar with any of them, I marched over to the bookstore, bought three of their books, and then waited patiently to get them signed. They were every bit as delightful face to face as they were on stage. As I get to them on my TBR list, I’ll drop you all a short review. But in the meantime, please take a look at Everina Maxwell’s signature. I watched her write it out freehand, in real time. I’ve never been proud of my penmanship. Now, I’m just humiliated.

Listening to the news right now, the end of the world is come at last. Not because of climate change, or incurable pandemics, or an enraged President Putin pressing the button.  This is something completely different.  Humanity will wink out of existence because of a word processor on steroids. ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program that can be pre-trained to generate conversational responses, emails, essays and the like, is our harbinger of doom.

Even the straitlaced end of the media spectrum is full of stories and opinion pieces claiming that ChatGPT means we are heartbeats away from the point where AI will develop its own plans and goals without input from humans.  From there, according to the normally sober Johnathan Freedland in the Guardian, ’tis but a short step to a scenario whereby “an AI bent on a goal to which the existence of humans had become an obstacle, or even an inconvenience, could set out to kill all by itself.”  Humans will be wiped from the face of the Earth.  AI will rule all.

To which I say: relax.  Read some science fiction.

First, let’s remember that software programs do not have hands. Trite as that may sound, a genius AI bent on the destruction of humanity can’t do much on its own. It could spread a ton of disinformation (something we’ve become very good at doing on our own, thank you very much) but it would still need a human being to turn the launch keys of a nuclear missile. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always found the Terminator movies fun but not frightening. Skynet could always have been stymied. Even assuming a real-world Skynet had access to the various killing machines in the movies, communications could be cut off, instructions corrupted.  An individual terminator, like any drone, could be isolated, reprogrammed, or otherwise rendered harmless. Better yet, just pull the plug the moment Skynet acts up.  The movies magically made that impossible, but in the real world?  C’mon.  For mechanisms powered by electricity it’s not that hard.

Second, science fiction and science fiction writers have been living with AI for over a hundred years.  We know a thing or two.  Rossum’s Universal Robots, the Czech play that actually invented the word robot, was first performed in 1920.  Isaac Asimov’s various robot stories date from the 1940s (for non-SF readers, Asimov’s I, Robot is as good a place to start your literary journey as any), and Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, where machine intelligences run the galaxy and humans mostly kick back and have fun, ran from 1987 (Consider Phlebas) to 2012 (The Hydrogen Sonata). What a century of science fiction teaches us is that humans can live with artificial intelligence pretty easily. AI can be a tool, or a partner, or an independent entity that frees us up for other things.  It is not an unavoidable omen of our own destruction: at least no more than nuclear weapons, or global warming, or a shocking complacency about natural-born pathogens. Humans adapt. It’s what we do.

That said, we do have to get from the panicky present to the cool SF future. Real artificial intelligence will arrive at some point and the non-SF community needs to get comfortable with that.

Asimov’s solution to the threat of AI was his famous Three Laws of Robotics: (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.  In Asimov’s universe, these parameters are built into the robot’s positronic brain. In the real world, too, laws and regulations will be a good part of the answer. When cars, slow and clumsy as they were, first rolled on to our roads, laws were passed forbidding them from travelling faster than walking pace. In fact, they had to be preceded by an actual human being walking along the highway with a red flag. Absurd now, but necessary then to calm the public panic brought about by world-changing technology.

AI must also have its own “red flag” laws. Maybe computing power is limited, or kill switches are built in, or access to the outside world is somehow curtailed. Probably all of this and more. Humans are actually pretty good at the laws and regulations stuff. We just need to calm down and get on with it. AI has already given us brand new antibiotics and new treatments for brain tumors. Let’s put in some guard rails and allow AI to change the world for the better. Cool stuff is coming!

Now that we’ve taken a beat, consider this: it may not be coincidental that all these end-of-the-world news stories focus on software that generates words.  Perhaps the fear behind the headlines lies in the fact that next year’s news could be written by AI instead of a hard-bitten journalist.   I say nothing about whether that is a good or bad thing, but a sensible early law might be one that forbids AI-generated content from passing itself off as human.

After all, do you really know who wrote this?

Very excited to see the above pic, which comes from Hideo Kojima’s English language Twitter account. Hideo Kojima, for those of you who don’t know, is a video gaming legend, responsible, among other things, for the Metal Gear series of video games and, more recently, Death Stranding. To have him read a pre-publication version of the Japanese release and then talk about it on Twitter is an honor beyond words.

Also, loving the artwork! The depiction of the Archimedes on its long climb toward Tau Ceti is very close to the descriptions found in the actual book. Can’t wait to receive my own copy. Clearly, the artist has read the thing from cover to cover. In Japanese, I imagine. Apart from my name and the title, I have no idea what any of it says!

It is Edinburgh and it is raining. But in a few short weeks it will be June and one can hope for a bit of sun and temperatures somewhere above 15C/60F. After 23 years in the States, I’m pretty sure I will still be wearing an overcoat.

June also means book festivals, and I am lucky enough to be going to two of them. Although they could not be more different: in keeping with my split literary persona.

First, running from June 2-4, is the Cymera Book Festival, an amazing celebration of all things to do with SF, Fantasy, and Horror. Regular readers of this blog will know that I was lucky enough to take the stage there last year on a panel about space-based SF called Ad Astra, with fellow authors Ken MacLeod and Harry Josephine Giles. The panel was a blast but the festival itself was an eye opener. I’d never been to a book festival before. Wandering around shoulder to shoulder with SFFH authors and readers was an inspiration. Surrounded by so many people who take such unadulterated joy in reading and writing books was a real lift to the spirits. So much so that I vowed I would come back as a volunteer, even if it was only to stamp tickets.

Well, lo and behold, here I am! Ann Landmann, the force of nature behind Cymera (thank you, Ann, for everything that you do!), has been kind enough to allow me to chair one of the SF panels, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald. We will be discussing their respective new creations, Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland, in the context (both good and bad) of near-future tech. I am sooooo looking forward to it!

After that, it will be time to put my crime writer hat on and head to Shetland Noir, which takes place in Lerwick, Shetland from 16-18 June. Shetland is one of the archipelagoes that comprise Scotland’s Northern Isles, though they are remote from Scotland itself, being significantly closer to Norway. I am very much a small fish in the big, crime-writing ocean but I am very much looking forward to my panel: Crime on Distant Shores with Wendy Jones Nakanishi/Lea O’Harra and Alasdair “AJ” Liddle. This being my first crime writing festival, I have absolutely no idea what I’m in for. Except for one thing.

It’s guaranteed to be an adventure.