Badass

Somebody buy Adrian McKinty a wallet that says BAD MOTHERFECKER on it.

Here he is in the Wall Street Journal.

(Click the image for a closer look)

Thanks to the Spinetingler Magazine Facebook page for providing the jpg.

And if you're having trouble reading the jpg, I swiped this link from the wonderful Crime Always Pays.

Where am I… From?

A few weeks ago I posted links on Twitter and Facebook that led to Keith Nixon's review of my latest novella, WELCOME TO THE OCTAGON. Unfortunately, my posts were more concerned about the solitary comment from an anonymous source about where I’m ‘from’ rather than the content of the review. At the time I made light of the comment, because it seemed funny (like a clown and like a weirdo). I like to think I’m pretty good at not taking myself too seriously. Comments like that shouldn’t jibe with me.

But since then, it’s niggled once or twice.

Now, I know that the average anonymous comment is designed to niggle. I also know that I’ve been blessed if this is the only seemingly negative thing that’s been said about my work in the last month (to my knowledge!). But I figure if there’s an itch, you should scratch it. Or slap it, as a tattooist might suggest you deal with post-ink itching.

So, here’s the score:

Facts

My father is from West Belfast. My mother is from Omeath.

I lived in Omeath (seaside town, south of the border) for the first six years of my life.

We moved to Warrenpoint (seaside town, north of the border) and lived there for ten years.

When I was 16 we moved again to a really nice house that was somewhere between Warrenpoint and a little village called Burren (no seaside there).

My parents have since moved to an even nicer house in Burren, but I had my own place by then.

After a bit of messing about in The Holy Lands (Damascus Street, South Belfast), I moved to West Belfast with my girlfriend (who became my wife and the mother of my children). We lived in the Iveagh area, Beechmount and the Old Suffolk Road in the space of five years.

We moved to Dundrum when the kids started to arrive. I live there now but travel to Belfast most days for work.

I went to school in Omeath, Warrenpoint, Burren and Newry, respectively. All of my further and higher education happened in Belfast.

Perception

To be honest, I don’t know where I’m from. I imagine I had a southern accent when I lived in Omeath but don’t remember anybody taking the piss out of it in primary school. My accent has since become a strange hybrid of Belfast-y/County Down culchie. The hint of Belfast in my accent was remarked upon once (that I remember) when I went to post-primary school in Newry (St Colman’s College if you must know). It seemed that the accuser thought I was faking it. Trying to act hard, maybe. I think I just inherited a few twangy words from my da.

It’s no coincidence either that I can ham up a passable West Belfast accent. Years of listening to Westie grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins provided that. I used it in a short one-man show I performed a few years ago; An Irish Possession. I also managed a generic southern accent for one of the characters I played, though I’m not as good at that one.

So, I’ve got family in West Belfast, have lived in West Belfast, owned a house in West Belfast, but I’m not ‘from’ there. I’m from Omeath, I guess, because I was born there. But I’ve lived in Northern Ireland for a little under 30 years. I grew up in Warrenpoint (or was it Burren?), so maybe I’m from there? But here, I went to school in Newry… does that count for anything? How about the fact that I have lived in Dundrum for 9 years? Can I claim that as my stomping ground? Well, no. I’m a blow-in there, you see. Ask a local.

Tell you what, next time somebody asks me where I’m from, I’ll tell them I’m from all over the place. I can be claimed or denied by whoever, whenever. It's really not that big of a deal. But if an inquisitor presses me, I’ll borrow from my inherited West Belfast humour and cadence.

“Where are you from, Gerard? Really?”

“Your ma.”

Jun Tzu - Born in Belfast

If WEE ROCKETS ever gets made into a movie, I want this guy all over the soundtrack. A Belfast hip-hop beat poet.




But if you don't dig on rap music, you can always listen to my take on Belfast crime right here in this extract from WEE ROCKETS:
 

Peace!

NI crime scenes declining...

Crimes recorded in NI down by 3,000 on previous year

"There were 100,389 crimes recorded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2012/13 compared with 103,389 in 2011/12, a decrease of 3,000 (2.9%)..."

Read the full article here.

Now, I'm not going to suggest that there is a direct link between the fall of Northern Irish crime and the rise in Northern Irish crime fiction -- that'd be crazy talk -- but maybe the good people of NI owe it to the likes of Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Claire McGowan and the rest, to pick up one of their books. Maybe two. If nothing else, it'll fill the hole that a lack of criminal enterprise in 2013 has created.

Another No Alibis Event!

No Alibis Bookstore and Portnoy Press

Invite  You To The launch of

John McAllister’s

Latest novel

THE STATION SERGEANT

…..who will break his first case (of wine) at

No Alibis Bookstore,

83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast

On Wednesday 1^st May at 6.30pm.

When unpopular farmer, Stoop Taylor, is found dead in a field, Station Sergeant John Barlow has a feeling his comfortable life is about to be turned upside down.

Battling local hoodlums, the Dunlops, who are stealing cattle to order, and seeking a traumatised German soldier at large, Barlow finds his personal problems have multiplied as well. His schizophrenic wife turns violent, his daughter is growing up too fast, and the new District Inspector wants him demoted and transferred. To top it all off he has fallen in love with another woman.
The Station Sergeant - One man, one mission: to protect those he loves and find the killer in his community.

Please advise either JOHN or NO ALIBIS to keep a wine glass for you.

TONIGHT!

Scandinavian Crime Night - Arne Dahl, Antti Tuomainen & Stuart Neville

Monday 29th April 6:30PM

Tickets: FREE

Venue: Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens

No Alibis Bookstore are very pleased to invite you to an evening of Scandinavian Crime on Monday 29th April at 6:30PM in the Ulster Museum. Scandinavian authors Arne Dahl and Antti Tuomainen will be joined by local author Stuart Neville to talk about their latest books. Please note: this is a ticketed event. Tickets are FREE, and are available now.

Regarded as one of the finest literary crime writers in Scandinavia, celebrated author, critic and editor Jan Arnald is the man behind the bestselling Intercrime series, written under the pen name of Arne Dahl. The highly praised series of ten novels has sold more than 2.5 million copies and has won its creator such distinguished awards as the premier crime writing awards in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. In 2007 The Swedish Academy of Crime Writers awarded Arne Dahl a special prize for his "vitalization and development of the crime genre through his Intercrime series".

In 2011 Arne Dahl started writing the second book series, the Opcop quartet. The first installment, Chinese Whispers, was awarded The Swedish Academy of Crime Writers'' Award for ''Best Swedish Crime Novel'' of 2011. The series is already a big success in Germany, Denmark and Sweden, and the third novel in the series will be published in Sweden in May 2013.

Finnish Antti Tuomainen was a copywriter in the advertising industry before he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. The critically acclaimed Veljeni vartija (My Brother's Keeper) was published two years later. In 2011 Tuomainen's third novel, Parantaja (The Healer), was awarded the Clue Award for 'Best Finnish Crime Novel 2011'. The Finnish press labeled Parantaja – the story of a writer who is desperately searching for his missing wife in a post-apocalyptic Helsinki – as "unputdownable". With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen is one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime genre formula. Antti Tuomainen lives in Helsinki with his wife. His fourth novel will be published in Finland in June 2013.

Stuart Neville's debut novel, THE TWELVE (published in the USA as THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), won the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was picked as one of the top crime novels of 2009 by both the New York Times and the LA Times. He has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Barry, Macavity, Dilys awards, as well as the Irish Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year. He has twice been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. He has since published two critically acclaimed sequels, COLLUSION and STOLEN SOULS. Stuart's novels have been translated into various languages, including German, Japanese, Polish, Swedish, Greek and more. The French edition of The Ghosts of Belfast, Les Fantômes de Belfast, won Le Prix Mystère de la Critique du Meilleur Roman Étranger and Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger. His fourth novel, RATLINES, about Nazis harboured by the Irish state following WWII was published January 2013.

Book your tickets now by emailing David, or calling the shop on 9031 9607.

Bittersweety Bye-Bye

I really need to get some pun lessons from Declan Burke...

But here, that's the end of The Sweety Bottle's regional tour. I'm kind of stuck for words, to be honest. It's been emotional, you know? Luckily, Terrence Blaine has plenty to say in his review. It starts out like this:

"When Joe Brennan was a boy growing up in Belfast, his grandfather took over a confectionery store in the Lower Falls area, and installed an illegal drinking club in it. Things that happened in the so-called 'Sweety Bottle', and the characters who drank there, swiftly became the stuff of family legend, and were much debated and discussed over the Brennan family dinner table. Forty years later, in collaboration with his son Gerard, Joe has woven a selection of Sweety Bottle stories together in a two-act play, revisiting a place now gone (levelled in the interests of urban redevelopment), but certainly not forgotten in the memories of those who grew up in the West Belfast area.

Good as the stories are (the audience is in a virtually constant state of hilarity), the danger is that The Sweety Bottle could easily have ended up seeming merely episodic, a string of unconnected anecdotes with no particular reason for putting them on a stage together.

The Brennans have, however, managed their raw material much more cleverly than that: from an early stage the narrative is bound together by lugubrious references to a certain Grinder McVeigh, who has torched a neighbouring shebeen for barring him..." 

Read the rest here.

Curious George

Rather timely meme in the light of yesterday's post...

Click the image to enlarge the print.

#QUBimpact Bonus Material

On Wednesday I was a guest at an event organised by Queen’s University Belfast, as an Irish crime writer. '"Thinking Forward Through the Past", a day of events across Belfast profiling the impact of research within the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.' They mentioned me in the flier and everything, which was quite cool.

My invitation to this event came from Dr Dominique Jeannerod, a French guy with incredibly good taste in Irish crime fiction. I say this with modesty intact; he hasn’t read my books. Yet. The good Dr Jeannerod kicked off the proceedings with a fascinating presentation on the impact of Irish crime fiction in France. Ken Bruen was described as the most famous among this exclusive set of aficionados who have had their work translated and published in France. Stuart Neville is also a prominent diplomat for the genre, and fair play to the Armagh lad for representing the latest generation of Northern Irish crime writers in such a discerning country. I feel qualified to describe French readers as discerning as I paid very close attention to the presentation. It held my interest despite knowing that I was soon to be interviewed by somebody with an impressive and intimidating wealth of knowledge in Irish crime fiction.

And rather than warm me up with a few easy questions, he hit me with this tricky one-two:

Are you comfortable with the description, Irish crime writer?

Are you equally comfortable with being included in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME or is that a contradiction?

Can of worms, meet chainsaw.

I can't remember what I said, word for word, but I'll rehash the gist of it...

I think it took me longer to get comfortable with calling myself a writer than it did to figure out my national identity. It was after the publication of THE POINT, actually, in October 2011. I'd achieved a decent amount before then, short story publications, co-editing a crime fiction anthology and Arts Council funding – I'd come excruciatingly close to publication with my novel WEE ROCKETS a couple of times as well. But it wasn't until I had the pleasure of signing paperback copies of my novella at No Alibis that I could look somebody in the eye and say, “Aye, I'm a writer, so I am.”

The Irish thing? Well, when it comes to ticking boxes on an application form, I'll pick Northern Irish if it's there, Irish if it's not. I was born south of the border but have lived in the North since I was six years old. I say Derry, not Londonderry. It 's a habit that comes from growing up Catholic. But I don't practice the faith I inherited except to go to christenings, weddings and funerals. But, yes, I'm comfortable with calling myself an Irish crime writer. And I'll not turn my nose up at the sub-categorisation of Northern Irish crime writer either.

Do I belong in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME?

Well, I have a British passport. A couple of years ago, I needed one fast and couldn't be arsed going to Dublin for it. How's that for swallowing your cultural heritage? A past version of myself might have been appalled at my lack of Irish pride. Nowadays, I'm not that bothered. It's just a wee red book. And TMBBBC is a big read book. I was honoured to have my story in a collection with some of the biggest names in British crime fiction (and a couple of great Irish writers who were also happy with the contradiction). In fact, I'd probably have been pissed off if being Irish had disqualified me. That British passport entitles me, you know!

The event lasted an hour and a half, but Dr Jeannerod (he may prefer Dominique, but I really like the look of Dr Jeannerod) didn't get through all of his questions. I got a copy of them from him and over the next week I'm going to select a handful and basically interview myself... with somebody else's questions. If that seems horribly self-indulgent to you, consider this post fair warning and avoid the blog for a week two.

#QUBimpact

Click on the image for a better look.