Hey Groovers

Hello beautiful people,
Since this is My Big Year I figured I’d get my website all reduxed, so thanks to the most spiffing Chris Dooks for sorting that out for me. There’s lots more on the site than there used to be, including video footage and new pics, and that’s mainly cos I’ve been very busy recently. In March I performed my ‘one-woman show’, The Moira Monologues, which was a blast. If you didn’t catch her at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow, you can still hear more from Moira next year. There’s a film version planned with Cora Bissett (no relation) in the lead role, and I intend to perform Moira myself at the Fringe in 2010.
Also in March, my other play, The Ching Room, opened at Oran Mor before moving to the Traverse Theatre. This starred Andy Clarke and Colin McCredie, who were both cream crackers. People seemed to really like it, so I suppose I’ll write some more plays. Will be chucking myself into that in 2010.
Worry not, readers, there’s a novel due this July too. I’ve been working on Death of a Ladies’ Man for quite a while, so I really hope you all like it. I think it’s definitely my best book. Darker and more adult than my previous novels, but that’s no bad thing. Details of it as they come, but I’m loving this advance quote from AL Kennedy:
“A remarkable book. An insane, hallucinatory mosaic of sexual dysfunction, humour, pathos and narrative energy.”
That sums things up pretty well, I think!
Also happening (told you I’m busy! like a midge in a sandstorm!) is that a short film which I wrote and narrated about the Grangemouth chemical plant in Falkirk, entitled The Shutdown and directed by Adam Stafford (of Y’all is Fantasy Island), will be shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June and the Silverdocs in Washington DC, where it has been shortlisted for an award. And there’s the small matter of the Boyracers film, for which a script is currently being hammered out by the writer of High Times, John Rooney. I’m looking forward to seeing that when it’s ready.
And I’m currently working on some new plays and a follow-up novel to Boyracers, catching up with those guys 8 years down the line, which will be out summer 2010.
Whee!
In the meantime, make sure you check out Sons and Daughters and Y’all is Fantasy Island at Hinterland on May 1st. I wrote a scene in Death of A Ladies’ Man where those two bands appear on the same bill in Glasgow, and lo and behold it taketh place. Hey, does this mean I have special powers? Where things I write come true? Maybe I should write a story about the economy being magically fixed. Or lions who walk on two legs like humans and organise a Pride parade down Sauchiehall Street?
Ciao, pop pickers. Check the blog regularly for more news. Speak soonsoonsoon.
A.x

The Newsblog of Alan Bissett

This is the newly-created newsblog of Glasgow-based author Alan Bisset. It will post news, video clips and more in the coming weeks! We hope you’ll enjoy it! It is linked to the main site on the right.