A birdie in the hand ...

So how did the golf go, I hear you ask?

Actually, it went entirely to plan. I only embarrassed myself moderately. Had one air shot, several scuffs and when I got the ball in the air it often went in the wrong direction. On the plus side, I hit two what I would class as good drives (in the air AND towards the hole), two chips that ended up a foot from the cup and earned the applause of my team mates, and I sank an eighteen foot birdie putt.

Jedburgh Golf Club, on the lower slopes of the Dunion Hill overlooking the town, is a wonderful setting. My fellow team members were three of the best amateur golfers I've ever witnessed in action; Harry Hogg, who used to stay three doors away from me in Allerley Crescent, his wife Pauline, the ladies club champion, and their son Connor, the youth champ. Team Hogg were unlucky enough to get me in the ballot when they could have had any of several members of the 1984 Scottish Grand Slam side, two former pro footballers or the local MSP. Young Connor hit the ball so far on the long par five that Gavin Hastings, who has a handicap so low that it's almost below freezing, called it obscene.

Thanks entirely to my playing partners we ended up just outside the prizes in fourth place. But it wasn't the winning that mattered, it was the taking part and raising money for the club, which is a wonderful asset to the town. It was a real pleasure to be asked and a bigger one to take part.

If you play golf and ever get the opportunity, do give the Jedburgh course a try. It's a glorious place, a real test and you're guaranteed a warm welcome from the very best of Border folk.

A very special agent

I had an interesting afternoon with Stan, my agent, yesterday at the Cafe Royal in Edinburgh. Your agent's job isn't just about selling your book ideas for vast amounts of money (in your dreams), but also to encourage, boost your confidence and inspire you to greater efforts.

Stan does all these things really well.

Last time it was about the US and film deals that were just around the corner. They're still around the corner, but the anticipation has kept me going for months.

Yesterday, they were filming some TV drama outside the pub. which seemed like a good omen. We talked about where I should be going next with my historical novels and he liked all the ideas I've come up with. I should have completed the first draughts of my next two books by the turn of the year  and I need to have something new to begin by around then. A lot depends on where the current trilogy is, which makes the paperback of Hero of Rome and the Defender of Rome hardback pretty crucial to my future.

He was also very complimentary about The Doomsday Testament (he's the only person outside the publisher who's read it). He thinks it's a great package that could really take off, which is what any writer likes to hear (see encouragement above). By coincidence, I'm reading the book proof of Doomsday at the moment and I think it feels like a cross between The Odessa File and The Da Vinci Code, which is a happy thought and one I'll nourish until it comes out on August 18!

Time for tee

One of the best things about writing for a living is that you get to meet so many great people, at signings, book festivals, workshops and the like.

This month I've been invited to take part in a pro-celebrity golf tournament in my home town of Jedburgh, at the fantastic 18-hole course on the Dunion hill. The fact that I haven't picked up a golf club for about three years hopefully won't spoil my enjoyment of the day.

Gavin Hastings at the Dunhill Cup. Do I want him on my side laughing at my
swing or on the other side shooting eagles? Photo: The Scotsman

Judging by the competition, I suspect I'll be out of the prizes, unless it's the booby prize. The rest of the invited guests are just about all proper celebrities, with half a dozen former Scotland rugby players and footballers among them. And you just know that they'll be low handicap golfers, as opposed to hackers like me.

So on the 24th June, I'll be teeing off beside Messrs Gavin Hastings, John Rutherford, Keith Robertson, Finlay Calder, Peter Dods, Jim Leishman, Pat Nevin and Andy Lawrie. Radio presenter and rugby coach Gary Parker, who I know from my days in Melrose will be there, along with local politicians and musicians.

Should be a great day.

One more step

A little treat for fans who enjoyed Hero of Rome. This is the first page of the sequel, Defender of Rome, and anyone who read the first book will realise that all is not as it seems.

The proof read copy of the MS appeared in the post today. I now have a fortnight to make any last minute changes and give it a couple more reads while two professional proof readers do the same thing for the publisher.

Wish me luck!

The lost manuscript

The other day I came across an e-mail I'd written a year and a half ago about a pitch I was making for a crime book I'd just completed. It was part of my master plan for making a living as a writer and I was looking for a quick answer. The  book wasn't quite right, my agent came back to me and I made the alterations he suggested ... and forgot all about it.

The reason I know this is because I've just finished a long-intended rewrite of the first novel in that series, which I started in about 2006, and I was searching for the original synopsis. I think they're both great books, with fantastic main characters, fast paced and a real story to tell, but because of everything that's happened in between they've ended up on the back burner.

In a recent interview, I was asked what advice I would give to a writer looking to be published. I thought about it for a long time, but there really was only one answer: persevere. I should probably have added: always check your e-mails and never throw away an idea.

Since I made that pitch I've written Defender of Rome, The Doomsday Testament and I'm half way through Avenger of Rome, with an epic battle still to fight. That means Brothers in Arms and War Games will stay on the back burner for a while, but I intend to persevere until they're in print too.

One of the great things about interviews is that you find yourself listening to your own advice: for once!

The memories that never leave you

Somebody was asking me the other day how I came up with the idea for my thriller The Doomsday Testament. I said that I just sat down one weekend, thought of a long forgotten artefact with world-changing potential, created a suitable myth around it set in a time I was interested in, then gave my character, Jamie Saintclair, the job of solving the mystery of where it had vanished to.

I now realise that isn't true.

The Doomsday Testament is actually about the secrets that men keep, even from their families. For years, ever since I was little, I'd asked my father that age old question 'What did you do in the war, daddy?' and he'd just smiled. Only gradually did he reveal that he'd been in Malaya during the Emergency (they were too coy to call it a war), but not as one of the famous Virgin Soldier conscripts, he'd had a great time and the only injury he'd suffered was on the football field.

My dad, centre, with two soldiers from an Irish regiment

It wasn't until he was in his seventies that I learned what really happened. At that point, he seemed to need to recall what had been the most traumatic and vivid time of his life and pass it on to me, his eldest son. In the late 1940s and early 50s he'd served one tour of duty with the Seaforth Highlanders, mainly in the uniquely dangerous position as platoon scout, patrolling the Malayan jungle looking for the enemy, CTs or communist terrorists. He'd killed and seen men, including his friends, die, some of them in terrible ways. But when he returned to Britain he immediately asked for a transfer so he could go back to Malaya on a second tour. This time he had to watch as his comrades in the Gordons went through the same deadly learning curve he'd already experienced, officers shunning the advice of a mere private. It culminated in one of the deadliest ambushes of the war, with a British major, a captain and a lieutenant killed along with many others.

He kept all this bottled up for more than fifty years, but I doubt that never a day passed without him remembering one or other aspect of that time in the jungle. When he did eventually speak, it was obvious those events had changed him and that the mental scars they'd caused still remained. A few months before he died last year he left me a history of his life in about 30-odd tight written pages.

I didn't see that 'journal' until many months after I'd come up with the idea for The Doomsday Testament, but the central theme of my book is a young man's journey of discovery through his grandfather's diary of the last days of World War Two.

And my point is? I don't really know. I just thought it was worth mentioning.

No news is good news

As I looked out the window today at the rain bouncing six inches off the pavement I was reminded of Juliette Mills in Avanti, telling Jack Lemmon how pleased she was to be in Italy because the British summer was two weeks in May and a week in June.

Simon, my editor, liked what I'd done with The Doomsday Testament, which was a relief, and I took a couple of days off during our few days of summer last week and drove up to Dunkeld, the little Perthshire town on the River Tay. It's a beautiful place, packed full of history and with gardens and walks along the river where I watched a fisherman catch a salmon (a rare event in my experience) and then lose it (which isn't). Earlier, we'd driven a couple of miles out of town to the Loch of the Lowes nature reserve where you can get incredible views of ospreys at the nest there. Once rare, you can now see these beautiful birds from the Highlands to the Borders. I once watched one swoop to take a trout from the Forth while I was fishing a couple of miles from my house and it completely took my breath away.

The bridge over the River Tay at Dunkeld

One of the most pleasant aspects of the past couple of weeks has been to sit back and watch all those big news events from a distance, instead of being in the middle of a freaked out newsroom and about two steps from a nervous breakdown.

The Royal Wedding? Managed to avoid it entirely, there's only so much oily sycophancy a man can take. Osama Bin Laden? How could the White House make such a hash of the aftermath? If you're going to commit state-sponsored murder what's the point of making feeble excuses about it? The Scottish elections? Utterly compelling. I've met Alex Salmond a couple of times and he's a charming man with an ego the size of Edinburgh Castle. Giving him an electoral majority is like putting a chocaholic in charge of a sweet shop. Mark my words, it's going to be messy.

So now it's back to Avenger of Rome and head down for a couple of months. Valerius ships out for Antioch and a date with destiny in the Armenian mountains. Can't wait to get there.