My New Book, Sunshine on Leith, Almost Done

Ahhh, the relief.


I am on the finishing straight of Sunshine on Leith, my tale of Sectarianism, Bigotry and the unremarkable cruelty of childhood - it's a comedy.


As I mentioned in the previous post about finishing the Bee-Man, my idea of being finished and the time when I will actually be finished working on the thing are poles apart. It will require tweaking and major tweaking and revision, and stuff, but it will eventually fall into its final shape. I am, at least, kind of finished working on it.


The title actually has nothing to do with The Proclaimers (how that became The Pretenders I don't know, but I am also incapable of remembering the name of the legal drama that I watch every Monday on BBC1, except that it begins with 'D' - perhaps something is starting to go a little wrong - anyway, I wouldn't have spotted that I'd written The Pretenders, my son Anthony noticed it and informed me and so did ol eagle-eye himself, Royston Robertson), it is to do with the phenomena of the sunshine hitting the vast open space at the foot of Leith Walk, Edinburgh's widest street, when viewed from the shadowed streets branching off from it. On a sunny day, it looks like a giant pot of gold is sitting somewhere in the distance.

For a brief minute, as you can see from one of the shots below, after finishing the layers in Photoshop I transferred it to Paintshop Pro where I toyed with the idea of laying half-tone dots on the cover, but it made the sunlight look less pure.

P.S. Gianfranco, if you are looking in, I finally remembered that link to AFNEWS, it's over there ->