Why the Vile City title isn't a slur on Glasgow

Since Vile City was published I've had a few people tell me that they love Glasgow and thought the title was having a go at the fair city. What's more the thought of someone picking a fight with Glasgow had

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I lived in the city for well over a decade and came to think of it as home. The people are the friendliest in Scotland and if the Scottish parliament had been located in the best place it would be Glasgow not Edinburgh.

Vile City, a former winner of the Scottish Association of Writers Pitlochry Quaich for a crime novel is so named for one reason and it's nothing to do with the city its based in.

The crimes described in the book namely the abduction of women, are truly vile.

The City in the title is important too as the next 3 books in the series which will be out soon -

Cannibal City - A killer is stalking Glasgow men, killing them and eating their livers.

Vigilante City -
When Douglas John MacDonald stands trial for the rape and murder of schoolgirl Kylie Donovan, everybody expects him to be convicted.
When he walks free there's a public outcry, but not everybody is content to just get angry.
When MacDonald is later found murdered with his pinkie removed just like his 15-year-old victim, the police think it's an isolated incident, but more murders follow and they begin to realise they're on the trail of a vigilante killer.

Romeo City - Dating is quite literally murder.
When Dennis McCombe is found with his throat slit from ear to ear in a bath in an empty house with the words Where's my beloved? written on the bath, the police realise this is no ordinary murder.
A serial killer is on the loose and she’s targeting the desperately dateless in Glasgow on blind dates - and she's just only got started. How else is she going to find her beloved?

Stay tuned and ask yourself - Is Inspector Duncan Waddell going crazy or us his best friend and colleague Stevie who's in a coma, really talking to him?

Who killed schoolgirl Caroline Glachan? - BREAKING NEWS - 3 arrests - Could the case have finally been solved?

UPDATED: - November 25th, 2021 -

2 MEN AND A WOMAN HELD IN CUSTODY CHARGED WITH CAROLINE'S MURDER 
Donna Brand, Andrew Kelly and Robert O'Brien are alleged to have killed Caroline Glachan more than 25 years ago. 

When they allgedly murdered the 14 year-old schoolgirl, they would have been 17, 16 and 18. A postmortem on vivacious Caroline showed she was alive when she was dumped in the water. 

I never knew Caroline but I often think about her and the terror she suffered in her final moments. It makes me both sad and angry so imagine how those who loved her feel?

Hopefully, Caroline and her family will finally get justice at last. 

Read more here 

Caroline had her life stolen from her 

Twenty-two long years ago, on Sunday 25 August 1996, 14-year-old schoolgirl Caroline Glachan was found dead on the water’s edge of the River Leven near Bonhill, Dunbartonshire in Scotland.

One of the last people to see Caroline alive was her friend Joanne Menzies. Caroline left Joanne and a group of friends at some shops just before midnight. She was going to meet her boyfriend in nearby Renton which was a mile away.

She never made it. She took a shortcut through the woods.

What happened next nobody knows.  

Where the teen's lifeless body was found

She was found dead on the banks of the River Leven in Dunbartonshire. She'd been badly beaten and possibly drowned. It wasn't clear if she was dead or alive when she'd ended up in the water. She could have been unconscious.

The ambitious teenager with a feisty attitude, never made it to fifteen as her life was snatched away.

A killer among us? 

Caroline's mother and Police in Scotland believe the answer to who killed Caroline lies within the local community. Could the killer of the teen be walking amongst them?

Caroline's murder was featured on TV true crime show Crimewatch two years ago, where her mum Mrs McKeich spoke in heartbreaking detail of how she found out her daughter was dead on her 40th birthday.

For her life didn't begin at forty, she said, it ended. She'd lost her only child.

"There's two questions I need answered - who and why."

Could this be the man who killed her?

After her murder, police released a photo of a man in a dark green hooded top who was seen by a taxi driver walking near Caroline as she made her way along Dillichip Loan around 12.15am on Sunday, August 25, 1996. The man was described as having sharp features.

He was asked to come forward.  The call was never answered.

Was this man her killer?

How watching bad movies can improve your writing

 

What just happened?

I just finished watching possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen, The Wilding on Netflix. 

The characters were completely unfleshed out and cardboard cutouts and because of that and other issues I found myself not caring about what happened to them. Strangely though, I still couldn't stop watching. 

The movie seemed perfect for me. A great cast. The story was an interesting one: a family struggle to adapt back to normal family life after the daughter leaves psychiatric care.

What could and should have been a taut and twisty thriller, turned into a big hot mess. 

So what went wrong?

Give characters character

1. There were too many characters for starters and too many of them were being treated like main characters without any characterisation going on to tell me who those people were. This meant I didn't care what happened to them. 

What that taught me about writing a novel - every character has got to earn the right to be in your novel. Make them all interesting especially your main characters. Novels hinge on the main characters just as movies do. Make them weak and ruin your novel. 

~Choose your main character carefully~

Lisbeth Salander - now that's what you call
a great lead character. 

2. The main character in the movie who had the most screen time was the most uninteresting one of the lot. Not because they were a bad actor but because the writing/direction/editing or all three was a complete mess. 

Especially when it came to the editing which looked like an Andrex puppy have been allowed to run about with the film. Hey, I do know a lot of it's done digitally these days, but you get my drift.

What that taught me about writing a novel - Make sure your main character is the most interesting person in the novel. This is especially important if your main character is going to be in a series of books like my DI Duncan Waddell in my Detective in a Coma series. They have to possess enough depth to make people read on. 

Is that really the end?

3. An extremely confusing ending that made me think someone had cut the last 5 to 10 minutes off of the film. Either that or it was the first episode of a series. It wasn't. 

What that taught me about writing a novel - You don't need to have everything sewn up at the end of a novel but your ending has to be a clear and satisfying one. 

You don't want people to be setting scratching the heads and say "Where's the rest of the novel?"

Movies and novels are a completely different form but they do have things in common. Just as you can learn things from reading what you consider to be bad novels, you can also do the same when you're watching bad movies.

And everyone thinks I just watch Netflix so I don't have to write:)