Monthly Archives: August 2008

Morning Edition

Ivan Watson, the NPR correspondent based in Istanbul, has found time between tracking the hostilities in Georgia and South Ossetia to edit the result of our exploration of Yashim’s city. It’s cooking, walking, and a few readings from The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone. My favourite is the opening of The Snake Stone – which I read, in an increasingly loud voice, in competition with the muezzins.

 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93572967

Getting out

Recently Barbara Nadel and I did a really enjoyable talk at Daunt’s Bookshop in Marylebone High Street. Lots of good questions – I found myself enumerating the advantages of Yashim’s unusual condition and could hardly stop…

Afterwards we rolled into a restaurant across the road called – is it kismet? – Topkapi. And the next day I was in Istanbul again.

One I’m really looking forward to is this weekend’s Crime and Mystery Conference at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where I’m talking on Sex and the Single Detective. I think it’s called giving a paper… so I need to do some serious thinking before Sunday. Are all detectives really eunuchs? Discuss. The indefatigable and generous Natasha Cooper is in the chair.

Closer to home, I’m going to be in Weymouth at the library on Wednesday 10th September. 7.30pm. I remember Weymouth as a Mecca for secondhand books so I’ll be arriving early. And on September 15th I’ll be in London for the SW11 Festival, talking about Yashim and The Bellini Card.

October is the monster convention for crime writers and readers, Bouchercon, (pron. Bow-chercon) in Baltimore. It’ll be my first time in that city. It’s the same month that The Snake Stone comes out in paperback in the US. More details later.

Later that month, too, I’ll be in Sheffield for the Off The Shelf Festival – the 22nd, I think.

Hope to meet some of you then!