The Real McCoy

          This is my favourite piece of writing. There will be ten books uploaded to Kindle over this spring and summer of  2011, but if I had to choose just one to survive, it would be The Real McCoy!

          When City Whitelight was being published by Mainstream Publishing, I was asked by my radio producer for a drama with a strong narrative line, so I adapted City Whitelight. I was always more interested in writing prose, but I was making money from writing scripts and I did try to combine these things. I would write books I couldn't get published and then adapt them for radio dramas.

           It was slightly different with The Real McCoy. The radio drama producer, Patrick Rayner, wanted  me to write something for radio and not adapt something. Also, at the time the studios in Queen Street were going to be out of operation for a year and the play would have to be done in London. Everything that I'd written so far for radio drama had been very Scottish and when the studios were mothballed, I thought that in London they must have Americans! Wonderful American voices!
   
          So I'm sitting with a few beers on holiday in Yugoslavia, and I'm thinking who would I like to be in this radio drama. Start a list. Albert Einstein. Albert Schweitzer. Sigmund Freud. Jesus Christ. God. My girlfriend was six months pregnant and this was the best of times. I thought I'd write a radio script and then write the novel.

         In London they have wonderful American voices!! The guy who played the commander who freaks out in Aliens played Jacob Merryweather. There was talent all the way through that production. Very clever actors indeed!

         I loved writing that novel. It had a lot in it about American politics. I read American history for three out of my four years at university. I've only ever been to America for a fortnight, but I do love it. American actors and writers and all of that. It would be a great place to live in if you had lots of money. Anyway, so I'm writing this satire of American politics and I'm doing it in the only time since I was thirty when I could write like a professional writer.  I had three months when my girlfriend was nursing the kiddo to write after the kiddo was born. Free time and a new kiddo. It was the best of times. I think that comes through in the writing.

          I sent the manuscript to everyone. I got wonderful rejection letters. It was really written for the turn of the millennium, but I had another look at it a couple of years ago when my agent failed to sell something else. So I updated it and re-wrote parts of it, and I loved doing that, getting my hands on it again. The agent told me he thought it was "wonderful". He tried to sell it at the Frankfort and London Book Fairs, but I think the satire on American politics put the big bucks off.

        There is a radio play embedded in this book. On the last re-write I added a few lines to the dialogue, but there is a radio play sitting in there somehow.

        When I was re-writing it, the character I based the physicality of Angus McSorley on died. I meant to put a dedication into the book, but in the storm of uploading this stuff I forgot. I'll contact his widow right now and see if she thinks that would be alright.
         
         I don't care if nobody buys it! It's a gem anyway.