My first reading of the festivities was at the Big Red Door for the opening Fringe cabaret night. A  treat of multimedia circus, I had a scaly, glittery trapeze artist with witchy acrobat underneath as I read the tale of the creature in the caves.

Loved doing Story Shop at the book festival (thanks to City of Literature) with the cellist Lindsay Martindale – see the wee recording they made afterwards: http://audioboo.fm/boos/167233-storyshop-writer-morag-edward-reads-an-extract-from-cello-man There was a heatwave that day.

Then the new Unbound book festival cabaret on Tuesday 24th with Writers’ Bloc doing a damn fine line-up in the splendid Spiegeltent. We had a blast – and we have new fans! The Unbound cabaret series was a fantastic addition to the book festival menu, long may it continue.

Last gig of the season was the final farewell show at the Big Red Door, a seven hour cabaret to celebrate and say goodbye to this unique venue. There may be photographs. I was on stage just as the tattoo firework bombardment hit the skies…

I’m sure the others will tell you of their literary exploits if you buy them a beer

He will of course carry on the revolution from the sunny porch outside his rural farmhouse. As he sips vintage wine and samples fine cheeses, his thoughts will never be far from the people’s glorious struggle in rain-lashed Auld Reekie.

Stef will remain involved with Writers’ Bloc in every way he can, but we do expect the profanity percentage in our shows to take a significant dip.

Come to Stef’s last show for a while on Tuesday 24th as part of the Unbound programme at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square. It runs 9pm-11.15pm and entry is FREE.

Planet of the Apps takes place at the Ghillie Dhu, 2-6 Rutland Place, Edinburgh EH1 2AD, on Wednesday 21st July from 8pm. Admission is an affordable £4 (£2 concessions).

We’re trying something new too! We plan to have a live twitter feed during the show and we want you to get involved. As well as your general Bloc chat, we want you to submit twitter short stories leading up to and even during the show. The best story will receive a prize (more about that soon) and we’ll publish our favourites on the Bloc site.

Even more fun than that, we’re handing creative control to you, our beloved audience. As you may know, the titles for Bloc shows are rigorously researched months in advance, and much care and deliberation goes into the choice of theme and title…… honest.

Anyway, we want you guys to submit your ideas for themes and or titles for the show following our signature Halloween show. We’ll let you vote on the night for the best title/theme and we’ll make that the focus of our post-Halloween show. You have been warned.

You can follow us on twitter as Writers_Bloc_UK and use the hashtag #blocshow for all your tweets.

‘App killed App! App killed App!’

Use this information in the future, when you decide how vigorously to applaud each reader.

Nil by Mouth/The Secret of Scottish Football

• WHAT: Book launch, with live readings of original fiction

• WHO: Writers’ Bloc spoken-word performance group

• WHERE: Function suite, Easter Road Stadium, Easter Road, Edinburgh

• WHEN: 7.30 p.m., Thursday 27 May 2010

• HOW MUCH: FREE

• or follow us on Myspace, Facebook or Twitter

Writers’ Bloc is pleased to announce the launch of two new chapbooks, and has secured the function suite at Easter Road for the launch!

Andrew C. Ferguson’s The Secret of Scottish Football is a soccer book with a difference. Fife has spawned many famous footballers, but it’s also had its share of the supernatural. As these stories show, when the two collide, the results can be more surprising than the half-time pies at Stark’s Park.

Scotland on Sunday described one of these tales as having “all the energy and vigour of early Irvine Welsh, but with far more humour and nuance”. In his foreword, Pat Nevin says, “Harsh reality sits side by side with sometimes even harsher fantasy, in a long Scottish tradition that echoes much of the work of Robert Burns…”

Continuing the culinary theme, the stories in Morag Edwards’s Nil by Mouth are a dark, spicy mixture, topped off by recipes and Mo’s own fantastic artwork. Just make sure you follow the haggis recipe very carefully…

www.Booksquawk.com calls this chapbook “a fantastic example of the darkly witty Scottish sense of humour and a punchy little collection of stories that can be devoured in a lunch-break”.

The event starts at 7:30 p.m., and there’s a pay-as-you-go bar. Even Jambos will be made welcome.

http://www.booksquawk.com/2010/04/nil-by-mouth.html

On a recent trip to Edinburgh to celebrate my thirtieth year in this funny old world, I stumbled across a rather lovely specialist bookshop called Transreal Fiction (www.transreal.co.uk). Living in the Outer Hebrides has its advantages but a major disadvantage is the lack of choice in the local bookshop. My nearest is a great little shop if you like mass-market fiction, Gaelic books and tomes on local history; not so great if you are searching for something out of the ordinary. Then again, most major booksellers have a staggeringly limited range of titles thanks to the increasingly homogenised market of brain-dead celebrity memoirs and inane by-the-numbers thrillers. But I digress. Transreal Fiction is a cracking bookshop specialising in science fiction and fantasy. Best of all, they don’t seem to be afraid to stock works published by small, independent presses.

“Joy of joys!” I thought and pinched myself to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming or having another one of those episodes. No, the shop was still there, as was the great selection of writers I had never heard of. My hands began to shake and I could feel my credit card throbbing with anticipation in my pocket.

“Bloody hell!” I exclaimed to my bemused wife, “They even have a section entirely devoted to BattleTech novels!”

“This is all a bit Games Workshop, isn’t it?” my beloved pondered.

“Shhh!” I hissed as the gentleman behind the counter looked up, “Don’t ever mention that word, or they’ll take us out back and tickle us with tiny paintbrushes until we apologise. We’d have to roll a 00 on a 20-sided dice to get out of that one.”

Silenced by sheer terror at the prospect of such geekish tortures, or perhaps just wondering what the hell a 20-sided dice looks like, my wife browsed the selection of imported art books and I began to scour the shelves in search of obscure reads. I found a few before my ten month old daughter began to howl and we were forced to beat a hasty retreat to the nearest place we could change her nappy. I’ve decided to review the most obscure of the bunch, the one that you’ll probably have difficulty getting hold of a copy of unless you go to Edinburgh and pay a visit to Transreal Fiction yourselves. Why? Because I sincerely believe that there is a lot of talent hidden away in small presses that deserve publicity. That and the fact that Morag Edward’s Nil by Mouth is a fantastic example of the darkly witty Scottish sense of humour and a punchy little collection of stories that can be devoured in a lunch-break.

Writers Bloc is a spoken word performance collective based in Edinburgh. I couldn’t really glean much else about them from their website but from reading Nil by Mouth I wish I had picked up a few more of their books. Morag Edward’s book is a collection of five strange short stories, supplemented with even stranger recipes based on each tale. The stories are all quick, unchallenging reads and this simplicity is part of the collection’s strength as the reader is taken unawares by the dark twists and turns of the individual tales. Although I haven’t yet gathered up the courage to try any of the recipes (Deep-Fried Starfish, anyone?), their inclusion is no gimmick or mere afterthought. They appear to be the real deal, so if you’ve ever had the urge to make a vegetarian haggis or spiced thistles, this is the book to track down.

Examining the stories in great detail would probably spoil the deliciously wicked surprises lurking within so I’ll stick to a brief overview of each: “Pie for Tea” tells of an elderly lady whose empty larder doesn’t stop her from enjoying a decent meal; “The Anniversary” is a grisly tale whose twist, whilst a little predictable, is a nice little tribute to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus; “Serendipity Soup” is a far more pleasant affair detailing a gathering of friends – mercifully free of any outright unpleasantness; “The Wine Cellar” is a laugh-out-loud funny story of adolescent revenge; the collection is rounded off nicely with the supernatural shocker “Fleur na h-Alba” (Flower of Scotland, to non-Gaelic speakers).

Nil by Mouth was touching, stomach-turning and hilarious. That’s no mean feat for a collection of stories clocking in at a mere 40 pages. I can’t think of an established writer able to capture so disparate a range of emotions in such a small book. It’s a great little title and well worth the asking price. Unfortunately, being an extremely limited edition publication by a small press, Nil by Mouth is unlikely to get the audience it deserves. With luck, the author will choose to reprint or republish the stories online to make them available to others. In the meantime, if you live anywhere near Edinburgh, head on over to TransReal Fiction and pick up a copy before they’re all gone. Just don’t mention Games Workshop.

Hereward L. M. Proops

It will now consist of readings followed by discussion with Ken, and Writers’ Bloc personnel Charles Stross and Andrew J. Wilson. Ken’s own reading will be from The Restoration Game, and anyone pre-ordering at the event will get an early copy (signed, if you like). Charlie may well be reading from his novel-in-progress, Rule 34, and Andrew will offer a short story.

This event is ticketed, but all tickets are FREE. Tickets are available from the front desk at Blackwell Bookshop, 53-59 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1YS. For more information or to reserve tickets, please contact Ann Landmann on 0131 622 8206 or
events.edinburgh@blackwell.co.uk

The Restoration Game has been briefly and favourably reviewed in The Guardian [www.guardian.co.uk]:

As ever, MacLeod’s grasp of political intrigue is first rate, and in Lucy he’s created a complex heroine forever in doubt as to the true nature of events.

Hope you can make it,

Writers’ Bloc.
—
www.writers-bloc.org.uk