The leaving do had been a mess.  A swanky hotel in the west end. As much food and drink as anyone could ingest and a room full of friends. But Charlie’s heart hadn’t been in it. He kept imagining it was someone else’s do. That it wasn’t him that was leaving. At one point, a few drinks to the wrong side, he had begun to believe it. Convinced himself that this really was someone else’s exit bash. He had cheered up and made a fool of himself by mucking up the leaving speech. Confusing everyone by thanking them all for coming to his best mate Jim Laidlaw’s leaving do. Jim was the most confused of the lot.

Charlie looked over the road beyond the gate at the storage buildings in the distance. He had been here for four decades but there was whisky lying in the stores that had been laid down before Elvis had his first number one. Charlie was a youngster compared to some of the barrels that oozed the angel’s share out year after year.

He didn’t even have anything to do today. He had been due to finish a week ago but when one of the other tour guides had fallen sick Charlie jumped at the opportunity to work one more week. But it had been a mistake. Charlie wasn’t needed. All the goodbyes had been said and when Charlie reappeared, awkward was the most used word of the day.

Charlie had never felt so unwanted.

The distillery opened at seven in the morning. Charlie rolled the gate home and sighed. Last day syndrome he called it. He’d been telling people about it for over a year. Ever since he had decided enough was enough and that his wife of thirty years deserved to see more of him than the whisky world allowed. Last day syndrome. Not to be confused with de-mob syndrome. That was reserved for those who don’t love their jobs. For the many out there who dreaded the alarm that each day brought them back to the reality of life.

For Charlie there was no feeling of elation as his last day approached. As the clock ran down, instead of cutting back, he had ramped it up. Putting in unpaid overtime. Filling in at weekends. In the last month there wasn’t a spare hour that he hadn’t grabbed. ‘You’d bloody live there Charlie!’ Nora was right. He would have loved to live there. But all good things come to an end. At least that’s what he had told himself when he informed the girl at HR that he wanted to call time on his job.

He’d expected a little resistance. ‘Why do you want to quit Charlie?’ ‘Have we done something Charlie?’ Not that his colleagues hadn’t been surprised.  But rather than challenge his decision they had taken the light hearted route.’ I thought they’d bury you here.’ ‘The place will collapse when you go.’ ‘Have you informed the papers?’

Charlie felt cheated.

It is a bad year for dictators – Somoza is overthrown in Nicaragua, Idi Amin in Uganda, and in Pakistan General Zia hangs his predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Happier times for Margaret Thatcher in the UK, who becomes Conservative Prime Minister, and immediately quashes Labour’s plans for devolution in Scotland and Wales.

It is a good year, though, for crime-related happenings, seeing the wild success of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and also the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song – an account of the dismal life of incompetent criminal and double murderer Gary Gilmore, whose claim to fame arises only because he is the first person executed in the US following the reintroduction of the death penalty three years earlier. Offered the choice of death by hanging or  firing squad, he chose the latter, ending his days in the deserted canning factory at the back of the prison strapped to a chair. Despite the bullet-damage, a large portion of him lived on, however, most of major organs sent for transplant, including his corneas, which earned him a place in one of the most memorable songs of the punk rock era: Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, words by T.V.Smith, frontman of The Adverts.

Speaking of murdering songs, it is also the year when Sid Vicious, bassist of the world’s first ever punk band, The Sex Pistols, dies, following various spells in prison charged first with stabbing his girlfriend to death, and then with assault. It was during a party celebrating his release from prison on bail that his mum had a load of heroin delivered. The next day, despite having been clean and sober for months, poor Sid was dead as the pet hamster from which he took his name.

Your family may not be perfect, but think on Sid’s and count your blessings.

And we absolutely cannot leave 1979 without commenting that it is the hundredth year since the Tay Bridge Disaster, which occurred on 28^th December 1879, and will be remembered for a very long time, according William Topaz McGonagall who is remembered for his stirring ballad on the tragedy, which ends with such good and sound advice:

For the stronger we our houses do build

The less chance we have of being killed.

Precisely.

Following hot on the heels of Ann Cleeves and Clio Gray…fellow writer, international marketeer, lover of all things crime fiction and Co-Founder of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival (does he ever sleep?) Gordon Brown has taken the brave step of writing a brand new and exclusive 12-part short crime story sure to get the creative juices, not to mention the whisky, flowing freely.

We’ll be publishing the story over the next few weeks in bite-sized 250-word chunks,  but before we do that, we caught up with Gordon to ask him a few questions about his writing career, his involvement in the Bloody Scotland Festival and that all-important question of where he gets his ideas from.

Keep your eye on the blog for the first update, and remember to check back each day for the next instalment!

So, Gordon, can you tell us a bit about how your short story developed?

‘Bottle’ started in a much darker place. As a crime thriller writer I had visions of bodies hidden deep in the distillery. Kidnap, murder – the usual. But after a kind invite up to Glengoyne I scrapped the original idea. After seeing the care that went into the making of their whisky it seemed a better idea to make the whisky the hero. The finished story was originally written as single piece but I liked the idea of releasing it bit by bit and changed it to allow 250 words to be published each day.

I’m delighted that Glengoyne are supporting the short story competition. As part of the discusions around Bloody Scotland it was key that we had an outlet for new talent and the shortly story competition is central to this. I’ll be intrigued to see what entries we get. With such an open theme in ‘Worth the Wait’ it gives license for the writers to explore a wide range of areas and with the opportunity to win a fantastic prize and have the story published we are hoping for some great stories.

How did your writing career start?

I’m sitting on the edge of my Gran and Grandpa’s creaking old brass double bed. It fills every inch of the room and it’s where I’ll one day divvy up the north east of Scotland allocation of tickets for the nineteen seventy six Scottish Cup Final between Rangers and Hearts (3-1 in case you wanted to know) – my Grandpa was connected to the Scottish Football Association. It’s the late summer of nineteen seventy-five and I’m three floors up on the corner of Cross St and Mid St in my dad’s home town of Fraserburgh and the smell of the fish gutting factory is heavy in the air. I’m thirteen years old and I’ve just finished ‘Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express’. Tom and his friend Bud Barclay have seen off the evil VIPER and I’m clean out of books. I’ve read every Hardy Boy, Tom Swift and Famous Five book going. Then my Gran walks into the room. ‘I’m going to the library. Do you want anything?

A book,’ I mumble. I’m so a teenager.

An hour later she returns and drops James Herbert’s The Fog on the bed. I pick it up and read the first line – “The village slowly began to shake off its slumber and comes to life.

Life changed.

People lopping off other people’s private parts – blood – violence – SEX. I was hooked and the fact I read it from cover to cover that afternoon and went out the next day to get James Herbert’s first book, The Rats,  told me that Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys were history.

Since that moment I can’t remember a day that I haven’t had at least one book on the go – more likely three or four. I was, and still am, a book junkie. And from this came a deep desire to write.

It is all so prescient now – right now – with my third novel in the offing novel and I can trace it all the way back to that day in Fraserburgh. Without my grandmother’s efforts to please her eldest grandchild I reckon my life as a novelist would have been stillborn.

Thanks Gran.

How did you get involved in the Bloody Scotland festival?

I’m a member of the Crime Writing Association (CWA) and the chair, Alex Gray, organises a monthly lunch for the members. About a year ago fine food and fine company were merging at the British Overseas Club and we were chatting and enjoying the view of Edinburgh Castle when the talk turned to Crime Writing Festivals. Alex along with Lin Anderson, two great authors, had, over a bottle of Proseco, discussed the idea of a Scottish Crime Writing Festival a few years before and Imade the mistake of asking why it hadn’t happened? Go figure but the next thing I’m banging on about ‘How hard can it be?’. One thing leads to another and a team was formed to talk over the opportunity. Clock forward to today and we are closing in on a forty author, twenty event, three day, two venue International Crime Writing Festival in September.

How would you suggest budding crime writers get their work published?

I attended a session at the Edinburgh Book Festival the year before my first book was published. Sad to say I can’t remember the name of the author. I had been bashing out pages of material since my twenties and had got nowhere. The talk was inspirational. Not because it was well presented or even that interesting but it triggered in me a memory of a book by Stephen King, called On Writing. When I got home I dug it out and re read it. It’s the best book I know on the craft and from then on I had one objective – write something that someone wants to read. Mr King had three rules – well he has a few more but the three that worked for me are:

a) Always write about something that you enjoy – it makes for a better story.

b) Set yourself a target – a hundred words a day, a thousand – whatever – that way you go from the phrase ‘I’m going to write a book,’ to the far better ‘I’m writing a book.’

c) Keep reading. It’s the best way to keep the stimulus coming for your own work.

After this it’s just perseverance and leg work. For any publisher or agent you need to check out if your work fits with what they want – it’s all on the internet. There’s no point sending a crime novel to someone looking for factual history books. Next step – make the letter and the synopsis a killer – work it until it hurts and then work it again. Make it as engaging and interesting as you can. If you can’t do this then why will they believe you can write a book. Then get down and dirty and start sending. And if all else fails maybe the book you have isn’t the winner. Then it gets tough but maybe you need to start a new one. Stories of authors that succeed after forty or fifty rejections are common but the reality is that it doesn’t happen that often. Many authors have a trail of unpublished manuscripts behind them. Not what the aspiring author wants to hear but why kid yourself?

Where does your inspiration come from?

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ It’s the most common question in the literary world. The short answer – from anywhere and everywhere. The long answer is that you need to find your own way to unlock the creativity in your head. In my day job I teach creativity and the good news is anyone can be more creative – it’s not an innate skill but a learned one. The secret is stimulation. Take it away from writing a book and look at the way ideas appear in the non literary world. Where do you have your best ideas? The shower, the bed, the pub? Not many people have their best ideas sitting a desk in front of a keyboard. Staring at a blank screen only works for a few. Find your own source of stimulation – take Raymond Chandler’s thought –  ’When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.’ Think it through. What would happen next? What are the implications for the characters? Where does it take you? Then forget about the man with the gun and see what you have left. I like being extreme. What if the main character died right now? What if their left leg fell off? Anything to get me out of that drying up river. Ideas are cheap and they don’t mind if you throw them away. So find as many as you can and choose the ones that work.

1978 is a momentous year for many reasons: David Berkowitz, aka ‘Son of Sam’, is given a life sentence for seven murders in the USA before going on to inspire comics, films, books and songs; Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II – the first non-Italian to be elected to Papal office in 456 years, and the first ever Polish one.

In England, Louise Brown gives birth to the first ‘test-tube’ baby, even as Japanese explorer Naomi Uemura reaches the North Pole all on his own – if you don’t count the dogs – the first person ever to do so. And up above them both, in the heavens, another kind of endurance record is being set, as several Soviet cosmonauts remain in orbit on the Salyut 6 space station for 139 days and 14 hours.

But forget all that – mere trifles!

For this was the year that also brought us such miracles of celluloid as The Deer Hunter (who had heard of Russian roulette, or The Cavatina, before then?) and Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata; close on the heels of these masterpieces come two more films that would soon stand as landmarks for the seventies: the very imitable National Lampoon’s Animal House, and the seminal one-word titled Grease, that boosted the sales of spray-on latex jumpsuits by about four and a half billion, which, by chance, is the approximate population of the world at the time.

All time-lines are by necessity incomplete, yet we cannot leave 1978 without marking the passing of Kurt Gödel, inventor of the Incompleteness Theorem, which dragged the Liar’s Paradox into the 20^th century, and squeezed it until it screamed…