I must admit, I was feeling pretty worn out after last weekend's trip to Bloody Scotland. It was a full-on three-and-a-bit days with not a lot of sleep, but also a really incredible weekend. I did take this week off to recover though (thank goodness), because I knew that I'd be heading to the Braemar Literary Festival this weekend and I wanted to be somewhat rested.
In the end, I went along feeling fairly rough (extremely husky from a combination of a cold and last weekend's karaoke yell-along), but it was so very, very worth it. Be warned, this is a photo-heavy post, because I really wanted to remember this incredible trip, so I actually remembered to take pictures for once.
The Braemar Literary Festival is a relatively new event, with this being its fifth year, and I was invited to kick off proceedings on Friday night with the community event held at the Highland Games Pavilion. Braemar is a gorgeous wee village in Royal Deeside, just down the road from Balmoral and Ballater, and famous for the Braemar Gathering, the last of the Highland Games in each year's season.
There's less caber-tossing and hammer-throwing at the literary festival, but it's no less exciting, and I'm not just saying that because I was the opening act.
We arrived in Braemar on Friday afternoon after driving up from Edinburgh and went straight to the amazing venue for a sound check.
I was then interviewed in front of a wonderfully attentive and engaged audience of around fifty people by Fiona Hunter, who did a fantastic job as chair.
I also got to meet (and answer a question from) Suzie Edge, another client of DHH Literary Agency who lives in the village and was kind enough to come along. And I sold out all of the paperbacks of A RELUCTANT SPY that I brought with me from Edinburgh, which was a bit of a result. My voice just about held out to the end of the signing line, though the last couple of readers got an extremely husky greeting.
After that we hustled back to the cottage we were staying in to get changed for the Festival's Gala Dinner, held at the Fife Arms, an incredible five-star hotel in the centre of the village.
It was an extremely glam affair, as this slideshow from the hotel shows:
We were very lucky that the first people we saw when we came in the door were Val McDermid and Prof. Jo Sharp, who I first met at Harrogate last year when I was lucky enough to win the eponymous McDermid Debut Award. Val introduced us to Prof. Louise Welsh and Prof. Zoe Strachan, who are both amazing novelists and creative writing professors at Glasgow University, and we sat with them at dinner and had the most amazing night.
And, of course, within a few minutes, the guest of honour arrived, namely Queen Camilla. If someone had told me a few years ago that making up stories about spies and spaceships would end up with me shaking the queen's hand, having dinner with Val McDermid and a bevy of other incredibly talented writers and sitting four down from Hugh Bonneville at a five star hotel, well... I wouldn't have believed you. And yet, here we are.
Yes, that is Hugh Bonneville at the back, doing a rather good photobomb face.
We eventually rolled home about midnight after a nightcap in the hotel cocktail bar (ginger beer for me, since I don't drink) and collapsed. This morning we'd planned to go to a couple of panels, but after breakfast with our very kind hosts and local family, we went for a short wander into Braemar for a coffee, then decided to get on the road back to Edinburgh. The two weeks of being a bit under the weather combined with hours and hours of talking in very loud rooms had finally got to us both.
The festival is on for another day, so if you're anywhere nearby and fancy a bit of book culture, I highly recommend you get along. It was an incredible experience even for the short time we were there and I really hope to return one day.
For now, though, I'll be content with memories of a surreal but incredibly fun 24 hours in Royal Deeside.