Most of you who follow my blogs will know something of the publication history of “The Blackhouse” – how it was rejected by all the major publishing houses in the UK before being snapped up by my French publisher, Le Rouergue.  They then sold it all around Europe and brokered a three-book deal with London publishing house, Quercus, UK publisher of the year in 2011.

Well, “The Blackhouse” was finally published in the UK in February last year, and went straight into the top twenty hardback bestsellers chart at No.16.

Meantime, back in France, the book (in it’s French incarnation, “L’île des chasseurs d’oiseaux”) had already won the readers’ prize at the prestigious Le Havre crime writing festival, but was then, to my delight, shortlisted for one of the biggest readers’ prizes in the world – the Prix Cezam.  Ten books from around Europe are selected for the Cezam shortlist, then read and voted on by more than 3,500 readers in adjudicated groups all over France.

A rare moment to relax on a deserted Breton beach

That nomination obliged me to travel widely around the country talking to these groups about the book, and about my writing in general – during which time I was also busy writing the third book in what is now called “The Lewis Trilogy” (“The Blackhouse” being the first).  In hotel rooms and trains I spent countless hours tapping away on my laptop, criss-crossing France – from Brittany to Paris, from Lyon to Nantes.

I also spent the Spring in training for a research trip in June to the mountains of south-west Lewis.  This entailed getting sturdy walking boots a waterproof jacket, a woolly hat and walking stick, and tramping up hill and down dale to get myself fit.

In the event, nothing could prepare me for the appalling climatic conditions that battered me on my arrival on the island.  Up in the mountains winds were gusting to a 100 kph, spitting rain and stinging hail into my face.  During a week of bruising weather, I hiked through some of the most rugged, desolate and inaccessible wilderness in Scotland.

Returning to France, satisfied but exhausted, I learned that “The Blackhouse” had been selected as one of eight books for the Richard & Judy Autumn Book Club – which is now sponsored by WH Smith, the biggest bookseller in Britain, with more than 1000 retail outlets.

So at the end of August I headed off to London to record an interview with Richard and Judy to coincide with the paperback publication of “The Blackhouse” and the announcement of the autumn list.  

The book shot straight into the top ten.  In all, it spent nearly three months in the top thirty, and sold more than 100,000 copies.  And because it turned out to be the bestselling book of the R&J autumn selection, it received its own extended display in all WH Smith stores after Christmas and is still selling like hotcakes.

Receiving the CEZAM in Strasbourg

As if all this wasn’t heady enough, I learned in September that I had won the Prix Cezam!  Not just the national prize, but 21 out of the 25 regional prizes as well.  This obliged me to attend the national prize-giving in Strasbourg in mid-October, before embarking on a two month tour of France to collect the regional awards.

Then came the news to top it all off.  The Lewis Trilogy had been bought by Silver Oak, the Quercus imprint of Sterling, one of the biggest publishing houses in America. “The Blackhouse” will make its first US appearance in September, with an initial hardback print run of more than 50,000 copies.

As I sit here writing this, the second book in the trilogy, “The Lewis Man”, has just been published.  Quercus tell me that advance sales already guarantee its status as a bestseller, and if the first reviews are anything to go by, it looks set to surpass the success of its predecessor.

To promote the publication, Quercus commissioned a glossy book trailer from big name music video producers, The Forest of Black, and to be honest I think it is one of the best book trailers I have seen.

Even as I stop to draw breath, I have learned that “The Lewis Man” (already out in France under the title “L’homme de Lewis”) has been shortlisted for a literary prize awarded by the readers of the French daily newspaper, Le Télégramme.  And so it all begins again!

But what of the writing.  It’s easy to forget amid this maelstrom that, in the end, the writing is what it’s all about.  Well, I have completed the third book in the trilogy, “The Chess Men”, and just signed a new three-book contract.

However, I have to confess to a deep melancholy.

My sadness comes from saying goodbye to the characters I have lived with 24/7 during these last few years.  Fin and Marsaili, Angel and Calum.  Donald, Tormud, Ceit, and others whom you have yet to meet.  They have been with me through all the ups and the downs, from the despair of rejection to the elation of success.  Characters whose lives I have lived with them, and sometimes for them.  People as real to me as family and friends.  And yet, as I wrote the final few words of the third book, I knew that I would never see them again.

The sense of loss is almost as great as the grief you experience with the death of a loved one, or the loss of a lover.  I have to admit to sitting at my computer weeping unashamedly as I typed the last lines of the final chapter.

I guess the only consolation is that new friends await me.  I have no idea yet who they are, but I know that together we have a roller-coaster few years ahead of us.

The Prix Litteraire Cezam Inter-CE, is notable for having one of the largest juries in the world of literary prizes. Throughout the year more than 3500 jurors meet in 330 reading groups across France to read, consider and discuss a shortlist of ten books from around Europe before voting using a points system. The votes are collected, verified and counted by the librarians and bookstore owners responsible for leading the groups.

The prize is in two parts, regional and national. Votes are counted first at a local level with prize winners being declared in each of 26 regions; then the points are amassed across France to calculate the winner of the National Award. “L’île des chasseurs d’oiseaux”, which is the French translation of “The Blackhouse”, won 21 out of the 26 regional prizes, making it the runaway national winner.

I picked up the national award in Strasbourg yesterday in the amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine, in front of an audience of 250 – participants in the vote who had come from all corners of France without knowing who the winner was.

On an enormous screen behind the stage, the ten nominated books were counted down one by one, according to their place in the vote, until only two remained. The winning book was then heralded by the arrival of a piper who entered through a door at the back of the amphitheatre. I was ushered on to the stage to the accompaniment of Scotland the Brave, proudly sporting my kilt, to receive a cheque, a hand-crafted fountain pen, bottles of wine, and a huge Alsation crockpot.

Following my thank-you speech, I was interviewed in front of the audience for an hour by Strasbourg bookstore owner, Gilles Million. The session ended with questions from the floor, the last of which was an enquiry about my age. I had to reveal that I would be 60 in two months, but added – to thunderous applause – that in the anglo-saxon world 60 was the new 40, and that life now begins at 60.

The presentation was followed by a two-hour signing session, which achieved a sellout of both The Blackhouse and The Lewis Man.

From today I will be embarking on a two-month tour of France to attend regional award ceremonies across the country. The tour is being combined with appearances at bookstores to promote “The Lewis Man” (L’homme de Lewis), the follow-up to “The Blackhouse”.

I recently had an email conversation with one of those British editors who originally rejected “The Blackhouse”, and who generously wrote to congratulate me on its success. She said, “At the time, I didn’t see how to sell it. Obviously I was wrong.”

I wrote back to say that I was not unhappy, since the book had found its time, and its place, with the right publisher – Quercus. But if it wasn’t for my French publisher, Le Rouergue, who rescued it from obscurity by buying world rights and selling it across Europe, the book would probably never have seen the light of day.

So it was particularly sweet to win this award in my adopted country – vindication for the French publisher who had faith in the book when no one else did.

Here is a list of the places I will be visiting between now and mid-December:

Macon
Bourg en Bresse
Annecy
Lyon
Clermont Ferrand
Angers
Nantes
Paris
Lorient
Brest
Quimpier
Angoulême
Gardanne
Toulon
Lyon (again)
Annonay
Villefranche de Rouergue

I linked to my blog from my Facebook fan page, which automatically posts it to Twitter.

And all afternoon, while trying to catch up on lost sleep, my iPad get chiming alerts from incoming tweets.

This was the tirade that awaited me when I finally gave up on trying to sleep and looked to see who was making so much noise (broken up, of course into tweet-sized chunks). It was from someone called “Cabinflyer30″. No giveaway there, then…

“Your blog made me chuckle (oh yeah?). Jet2 always push to get their passengers to their destinations. Whatever obstacles are put in their way. Even a strike out of their control. Many airlines would simply cancel and strand you until the next available flight becomes available. They don’t have the facility for free drinks on board. There isn’t enough to go round everyone on the plane. Also, if you take no hold bags, let them choose your seat and pay by electron, the first price you see is the price you pay. All the other add ons are variable depending on what you select. One day you will experience a real ordeal when your flight gets cancelled by the likes of Ryanair.”

Wow! This company doesn’t like criticism, and comes chasing you down if you dare to take their name in vain. I replied, as follows, in more tweet-sized chunks:

“Who the hell has electron? And when I fly with my partner I want to sit beside her. They didn’t even carry their advertised refreshments, or make any allowance for the extra hours. Information was non-existent. Yesterday I did experience a real ordeal at the hands of an airline that doesn’t give a damn about customer care. Let them give me an honest price and if I don’t want a bag in the hold deduct it from the total. Just a little honesty, please. And I wonder who pays your wages!”

Back came Cabinflyer30:

“I wonder. LOL! I really care about my job. And believe me, they really do care about the customer. The easy option if they didn’t care would be to cancel the flight. What products didn’t they have available? Sandwiches? If so, these can sell out. There is only so much space in the chiller for these. With bags… all the competitors charge for bags. If they were included the base price would be higher than the competition. When you choose free online check-in, system gives you adjacent seats free of charge.”

I was getting tired of the vacuous stream of PR tat by then and replied, simply: “Give me a break!”

But Cabinflyer30 wouldn’t let it go:

“Give me a break, too. LOL. (Note the use of the light-hearted LOL to create the false impression of friendly banter.) The amount of planning just to get you to Nice requires an outrageous amount of extra planning and effort as well as money. Airlines are very complex businesses and sometime things don’t go to plan.”

Well, you know, despite the fact that the airline gave no warning or information (although knowing of the situation days in advance); despite the fact that they failed to stock up on food for passengers who were going to miss meals and be stuck on an aircraft for hours; despite failing to even offer water to thirsty and irritable customers; and even despite their deliberately misleading pricing system and confusing website, I wanted to give them due credit, even although it seems to me that the business of an airline is to carry passengers from A to B. So I conceded…

“Credit where it’s due. They did get us to our destination. But a little thoughtfulness might have taken the pain out of it. And I won’t fly with you again for reasons aforementioned.”

But, of course, I knew that Cabinflyer30 would want the last word, and I wasn’t wrong. Back came Jet2′s defender:

“Ok, fair enough. Maybe cancelling may have been better for you? Such a shame.”

So who, I wondered, was Cabinflyer30, exactly. No information given on the profile. However, here are some telling stats. Cabinflyer30 follows 31 people and has 12 followers. He/she/it has made a total of 222 tweets – most of them to me, it seems!

Honestly, how pathetic is that?

So why am I waking up in a hotel in Dunfermline, in Fife, a loooong way from Edinburgh? And why did I not get to my bed till 3am French time?

Well, it turns out that there is a strike of fuelers at Toulouse. Which actually turns out to have been going for a couple of days. But did the airline, Jet 2, tell us about it? No. Nothing on their website, no announcement at the airport. The first we knew that anything was wrong was when a girl arrived at the departures desk at the gate and put up a note on the screen warning that the flight was an hour late.

It was due to take off at 7.25pm. We weren’t aboard an aeroplane until 9pm. Only then did the pilot tell us about the strike and announce that he was going to have to fly to Nice to refuel.

So, after flying an hour in the wrong direction, and spending another hour on the ground perspiring in sweltering heat, we finally took off for Edinburgh, ETA 12.30am (1.30am French time). So did the airline offer a complementary drink, even a glass of water (given that there was no way we were going to get to eat when landing in Edinburgh)? No. They came round with their sales trolley, barely apologising for the fact that they didn’t actually have any of their advertised meals on board. So what was on offer? A packet of crisps (washed down with a miniature bottle of wine) a Twix bar and a horrible, stewed cup of watery coffee. And how much did they charge? £16.

This is the airline that lies to you about the price of your flight to con you into buying a ticket – only for you to discover that you then have to pay for a seat, pay for booking on the internet, pay for using a credit card (although no alternative way of buying is offered), pay to put your bag in the hold. It is the airline that sends bag fascists around the seats at the departure gate to see if you are concealing a handbag – which is NOT allowed.

Remind me NEVER to fly with Jet 2 again.

However, that wasn’t the end of the story.

Finally arriving in Edinburgh just short of 1am, we queued in the cold and dark to wait for the shuttle that would take us the five minutes to our hotel – to be met by a grim-faced receptionist. They had given our room away, and there were no others in the hotel.

“I’ve got a taxi waiting at the door for you,” he said. “It will take you on a very short 20-minute ride to another hotel where I’ve managed to get you a room.”. He stuffed £60 in grubby notes into my hand to pay for the hotel and promised to send a taxi to pick us up and take us back to the airport in the morning.

I resisted the temptation to introduce him to the knuckles of my right hand, and we dragged ourselves off to the taxi, whose driver confessed he had no idea where he was going. But he did confide with a giggle, “That guy in there was brickin’ it!”

The short 20-minute ride turned into a 40-minute, £40 marathon in the dark, across the Forth road bridge into deepest, darkest Fife. Which is how I come to be waking up (after 5 hours’ sleep) in a hotel in Dunfermline.

I hardly dare wonder what today holds in store.

My book “The Blackhouse”, published in French as “L’île des chasseurs d’oiseaux” (The Island of the Bird Hunters), has been shortlisted for a very prestigious French literary award, the Prix Litteraire Cézam – one of ten novels selected from around Europe.

http://www.cezam.fr/?mode=prix_litteraire

I am going to talk to just some of the 4000 readers from around France who will read and vote on the books.  My first stop is a prison in Angers – yes, prisoners, too, get a voice in the decision-making process.

I will be speaking at 12 events in five days – a gruelling schedule, followed in May by a trip to south-east France, and in June to Paris, and a meeting with the other nominated writers.

The results of the vote will be returned for counting in September, and the winner announced at a glitzy event in Strasbourg in October.  In addition to the overall winner, each one of the twenty-two regions participating get the chance to vote for their own favourite.

Winner takes all – along with a massive boost to book sales.

Whether, in the end, it is my book or someone else’s which wins, remains to be seen.  But tomorrow I take the first step on that road to Strasbourg full of hope – that my French will be up to it!

So, naturally, I am in favour of the principle of royalties.

But the royalties field is a very uneven one, and if someone chooses to steal my work and sell it without paying me my due, in truth there is very little I can do about it.  And in this electronic age, pirates are plundering my assets left, right and centre.

Take Google, for example – those enlightened schoolboys who were going to change the world for the better.  They just stole almost everything I ever wrote and made it available to anyone on the internet for nothing.  Just copied it and put it up there.

And what can I do about it?  Sweet FA.

Of course, they face a class action from any number of writers who have suffered the same fate.  But that action is being led by a small, unrepresentative group who are advocating a settlement that will cost Google a lot of money, and if I’m lucky put 50 dollars in my pocket.  Big deal!

Now here’s the irony.

As someone who believes in paying due royalties, I went in search of the owners of the lyrics of the Elvis Presley song, “Heartbreak Hotel”, because I wanted to include four lines from the song in my follow-up to “The Blackhouse”, which is called “The Lewis Man”.

After a lengthy process of tracking down the company which licenses reprint permission, I was told that those four lines were going to cost me a sum of money which would, eventually, run to thousands – to cover all the international and paperback editions of the book.

Crazy, isn’t it?  Four lines from the lyrics of a song which are all over the internet.  Four lines from a song written more than fifty years ago, whose writers are both dead (and don’t need my royalty payments to pay their bills).  Four lines from a song which, had I paid for them, would promptly have been stolen by Google (and God knows who else) and made available to anyone who cared to download them.

So what did I do?  Well, I cut the four lines, of course.  It doesn’t make that much difference to the book, though of course it lost a little of its colour.

Madness or what?

My partner has just read The Blackhouse – she tells me it is the best book she has read for a long time!  My turn next! (AS)

and later…

I have just started the book – not sure if I can put it down though!!! (AS)

I’ve just finished reading The Blackhouse and I thought I’d like to send you my compliments on what I think is your finest work to date (and that’s saying something given the quality of your previous works!!). The book is completely compelling and the plot held me totally from the first page to the last… (PM) – no, it’s not me!

and this from a 15-year-old girl…

Four days ago on a shopping trip I spontaneously purchased ‘The Blackhouse’ by Peter May. I finished the book approximately 2 hours ago. I would like to congratulate you on a captivating novel.  I thought the book was incredibly unique, probably because of the detail and passion you expressed towards the Scottish traditions and cultures in the book…  To conclude, I would like to say that I think your writing style is very special and that I thoroughly relished every page of your book. (AD)

I am an avid reader and have just finished reading The Blackhouse. Truly one of the best books I have ever read. (LR)

I’d just like to tell you how much I enjoyed “The Blackhouse”. I’m from Greenock and live in Derbyshire now, so the Outer Hebrides might as well be on the moon, but the book brought Lewis to life in what felt like a very heartfelt novel…. A terrific and affecting read. (DP)

What a great, great book.  On the one hand I didn’t want to put it down, on the other hand I didn’t want to finish it, because I didn’t want the reading of it to come to an end… best thing I’ve read in a very long time. (DM)

this one cracked me up…

I would like to say that this is the first book of yours I have  read (The Blackhouse).  I wish I had read your other books, now I will… I could not put it down. I read the book instead of looking at the Welsh Rugby team playing England.  My wife could not believe it that I read a book instead of looking at the rugby match on TV (I am a Welsh man)! (KO)

and this I take as the greatest compliment of all, coming from the man who leads the real guga hunters out to a storm-lashed rock (Sulasgeir) in the North Atlantic every August…

Hi Pete, just to let you know how much the Sulasgeir crew liked The Blackhouse. I just could not put it down, reading till 1 am. every morning. I was knackered.  Thank God I finished it.  All the best from the Sulasgeir crew. (JDM)

Here, every small, medium and large town has its own annual book festival.  Writers from all over the country are invited to come and participate in debates and round tables, to meet readers and sign books.

The organisers, usually subsidised by Government arts money, pay all expenses.

The bookstores and libraries organise rencontres – events where writers are presented to readers by animateurs, like television presenters.  Extracts from the books are read by professional or semi-professional readers.

Above all, writers are treated with a level of respect that is rarely found in the English-speaking world.  You don’t have to be a bestseller to be recognised as having a unique talent.

I write thrillers, or crime books, a genre generally looked down upon by the sniffy literati in the UK.  In France, polars as they are called, are regarded in the same way as any other work of literature.  A book like “The Blackhouse” is described as a “roman noir” – literally a black novel – and is presented for literary prizes on the same level as any other novel.

“The Blackhouse” is one of ten European novels which have been shortlisted for a major national literary award called the CEZAM Prix Littéraire.  It is a prize organised by committées d’entreprises in the country’s 22 regions.  A commitée d’entreprise is similar to a British Chamber of Commerce.  The ten books having been shortlisted, committees are formed in all the regions, and the nominated writers invited to talk to readers in local bookstores, town halls, and even prisons.

The books are read by nearly 5000 readers who mark each one according to predetermined criteria – story, character, quality of writing etc.  Each region chooses its own winner, but the results are also aggregated, and a national winner will be announced this year in October at a prize-giving ceremony in Strasbourg.

In three short weeks I will embark on an intensive seven days of public appearances in two of those regions – Brittany and the Pay de la Loire – talking to readers who will be voting on my book.

Two of those appearances will take place behind bars, talking to groups of literate prisoners who are among those 5000 voters.  Not my first time in a French penitentiary.  I had to talk to prisoners in the north-west of France in 2007 when nominated for the unique Prix Intramuros (prize between the walls) which is determined solely by French convicts.  On that occasion, I won.  But the competition is, perhaps, much stiffer this time around.

Last year’s winner was the Booker-nominated Irish author, Sebastian Barry, with “The Secret Scripture”.

As I set off at the beginning of April to meet my schedule of events, I will blog and tweet my way through the kilometers to give a flavour of what it is like for a writer on the road in France.  And those blogs and tweets are likely to be the only English passing through my head during those onerous early spring days.  For I will be expected to speak only French.

I’m just heading off now to brush up on my French prison slang!

Just three weeks ago, I returned for the first time to the city which was home to my first serious love.  Her name was Maria Nurita, and I was fourteen years old when I met her on holiday in Spain.

She inspired me to write my first book – an adolescent fantasy, much of which was set in the Catalonian city of Barcelona.

The publication of the Spanish edition of my latest and most successful book, “The Blackhouse” – La Isla de los cazadores de pájaros – took me back to that city many years later.  Of course, it was too much to hope that I would chance upon her in the street.  I wouldn’t know her now even if I had.  But I did have the spookiest sensation of haunting the streets of my own childhood where the ambition to write had been born.

Stranger still, however, was the journey back, two weeks ago, to the country of my birth – and the setting for “The Blackhouse” itself.  I have not lived in Scotland for ten years, and have only returned once in that time for the wedding of my daughter.  But to launch the book I flew to the capital for events at Blackwell’s in Edinburgh, and Waterstone’s in Glasgow.

It was a strangely emotional return, and I found myself once more walking the streets of my youth.  Edinburgh, where I trained as a journalist.  Glasgow, where I was born and grew up.  I kept having the feeling that I would turn a corner and bump into the teenage me.

But the defining moment came on the third day of my trip.  Quercus rep., John McColgan, was driving me to various bookstores across the Central Belt to sign stock.  We had lunch in Glasgow, and then he told me we would be going to the Waterstone’s store at Newton Mearns on the city’s south side during the afternoon.

Anderson's didn't quite look like this when I worked there!

My heart skipped a beat.  This was where I grew up and went to school – the school which had so ignominiously sent me packing halfway through my sixth year (I played in a band, and my hair was too long for the headmaster’s liking).  Dumped suddenly on to the street in a bleak mid-term, I took whatever job was going.  And that happened to be a position as trainee car salesman with a very prestigious Chrysler dealership in Newton Mearns.  I stayed for a year, and the sales office in Anderson’s car showroom was where I sat down one day and filled in a form that would change my life – an application for one of the 12 places available at an Edinburgh college which provided training for journalists.

Out of nearly 300 applicants I was lucky enough to win one of those places, and I never looked back, embarking on a career that segued from journalism into books, into television, and back to books.

That was when I was 18 years old, and I had never returned until John McColgan took me stock signing.

It was with an odd sense of déjà vu that we approached Mearns Cross.  Anderson’s had been on the south-west corner.  But when we got there, to my shock, it was gone.  Obliterated.  And replaced by a sprawling shopping centre.

The new shopping centre

It wasn’t until we parked the car and were making our way through the centre to Waterstone’s that I got my bearings and realised that the bookstore was right on top of the very spot where I had once sold cars.  I felt the hair rise up on the back of my neck.  It was as if I had stepped on my own grave and bumped into the ghost of the 18-year-old me.

Here I was, all these years later, back in the same space that younger me had once occupied, signing the books that the older me would write so many years later.

How could I ever have foreseen such a moment?

Fate?  Design?  Or just the closing of another circle?

That moment for me came, perhaps, earlier than most. I wrote my first book aged four. My parents had taught me to read and write even before I went to school, and something inside me, even at that early age, was impelling me to tell stories.

The Little Elf - cover

The book was called “The Little Elf”, and was nearly 120 words long, scrawled over eight pages in black crayon. I even created a cover for it, and sewed the pages together (with help, I guess, from my mother). I still have it. My very first story.

At school I always loved to create a short story when asked to write an essay in an exam. In my Higher English exam – the last before leaving secondary school – I got so engrossed in writing a short story about a man without papers travelling on a train through Franco’s Spain, that I didn’t leave nearly enough time for the rest of the exam.

By then, of course, there was no doubt at all in my mind that I would be a writer.

I suppose the clinching moment came when returning from a holiday in Spain with my family. I was fourteen years old, and had just met the first love of my teenage years. She was a Spanish girl, Maria Nurita Sanchez Pradell, on holiday with her family from Barcelona where her father was a lawyer.

Nurita - the only pic I have of her

I spent the whole holiday in the company of Nurita and her sister Christina, and a Scottish boy we had met called Ian Brockie. It was a holiday that changed the course of my future life.

Inspired by the strange teenage hormonal feelings aroused by the encounter, I wrote my first real book. It was around 50,000 words long – a fantasy romp about the teen band I then played with, and the two Spanish sisters. It was called “The Aristokrats in Spain” (The Aristokrats being the name of the band). Of course, the book was never published (and didn’t deserve to be), but was an experience that drove me on to write more, eventually having my first book published ten years later.

Such was the influence of that encounter in Spain, that I was first attracted to the girl I went on to marry because she looked like Nurita. A mistake, as it turned out. Although the one good thing to come out of it was my beautiful daughter Carol who, had it not been for that serendipitous Spanish romance, would never have existed.

The rest, in a sense, is history – journalism, television, books… But all of it driven from something innate, and a chance meeting at a Spanish hotel in the early sixties. Although we corresponded for some time after that holiday, I never did meet Nurita and her sister again, and she will have no idea how she inspired me to write, and changed my life forever. Chances are she probably doesn’t even remember me.

But there is one sad coda to this tale. Ian Brockie, whom we hung out with during that holiday, came from Wigtownshire in the south-west of Scotland. He and I did meet again. I went to stay with him at Wigtown and visit his family’s holiday cottage at the Isle of Whithorn (I also overnighted at that cottage some years later with members of the band after we had played a gig nearby). He came to stay with me in Glasgow.

The last time I set eyes on him, however, was at a Free Concert in Glasgow in 1970, in the outdoor arena at Kelvingrove Park. I had just embarked on a college course in journalism, and he was studying to be a mariner.

And then we lost touch, and I never heard of him again.

Straiton, South Ayrshire

Until many years later, when living in a small village in South Ayrshire, two elderly women stopped in at the local pub where I was lunching one day. With something like amazement I realised that one of them was Ian’s mother. I made myself known to her and asked after her son.

Her face clouded and she told me that he had been in a serious car accident, and was now confined to a wheelchair.

Fate leads us off in such very different directions.

And now I find myself coming full circle. On Sunday I set off on a trip to Barcelona to promote the Spanish translation of “The Blackhouse”, back to the home of the girl who sparked it all off. What an amazing twist of fate it would be if we were to meet again. But I know that will never happen, and I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to Maria Nurita Sanchez Pradell.

I guess I’ll never know.

For those of you interested in reading the full story of Ian the Elf, it can be seen in the following slideshow…

(No doubt my editor would tell me that I still have a predilection for starting sentences with “and”!)

The Book Depository offers FREE worldwide delivery of the hard cover edition of The Blackhouse (with 25% off the cover price, too).