Anthony Addis's Blog

WHY DO RELATIONSHIPS MATTER?

To my mind, relationships = drama = story.

For a writer, they develop a ‘two for the price of one’ dynamic. Develop a good relationship between characters, and you’re also developing the characters. The warmth (or antipathy) of the relationship reveals important character traits, through actions, dialogue and inner monologues. When readers fear for Character A, they’re also worrying how the danger A faces will affect Character B.

I’ve tried several fairly long-running thriller series, but they often lack the essential drama of relationships that readers root for. Either that, or the relationships are transparently short-lived. Neither the protagonist, or the author, or me as the reader, care if they work out or not. An example is the James Bond series. I read all of Ian Fleming’s Bond novel last year, and he doesn’t sell relationships at all well. 

RELATIONSHIPS IN BOOKS

There is one long-running series that’s impressed me in term of its depiction of relationships, both across the series and within individual books. Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz, which successfully incorporates relationships readers care about, mainly because the protagonist is so inadequate at them!

Although not strictly a thriller series writer, David Morrell also knows how to write relationships! At first glance, the Rambo of First Blood seems a damaged lone wolf, but his relationship with Police Chief Teasle, and to some extent Colonel Trautman, are integral to the plot. Teasle’s wife has left him. Does that relationship affect his judgement as he and Rambo push against each other at the start of the novel?

In Morrell’s brilliant Brotherhood of the Rose trilogy, a series that rewrote the rules for thriller writers, father-son relationships, romantic relationships and ‘found-sibling’ relations all matter to the plot, to the characters, to the author and, therefore, to the reader. 

RELATIONSHIPS IN FILMS

Looking at famous thrillers from films, I would say the ones with relationships that matter are the ones that endure most in our memories: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casablanca (and not just the central love triangle; who can forget the closing line – “Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship”?), Lethal Weapon (Riggs and Murtagh, yes, but also Riggs’ relationship with his dead wife). It’s one of the reasons Die Hard didn’t quite land for me. There were no real relationships. 

And look at what happened between Jaws the book and Jaws the film. In the book, the relationships between the three main characters were almost non-existent. In the film, they mattered. I think it’s why the film has endured so much better than the book.

Angel of the South

No Way To Live is the first book of Angel of the South, a thriller series that explores the relationship between the two protagonists, Billie and Tom. I wanted to put their relationship front and centre throughout the series.

Although not siblings, Billie and Tom are trauma-bonded by their shared childhood. Neither seems to know how to escape the ties that link them. And do either of them really want to? Billie is a force of nature, while Tom, apparently, is more placid. Time and again, he gets dragged along in her wake. But you mess with Tom at your peril, and God help you if either of them thinks you’ve harmed the other. They have a very will they, won’t they push and pull relationship. The reader feels like the should sort of be together – but the result could be catastrophic!

Other relationships also run through the series: the Katie-Tom-Billie triangle, Billie and Sherine, Billie and her father. They matter, and they are all integral to the plot and overarching themes. There are others, between different characters, and hopefully they matter to readers as well. Friendships matter as well, even between the apparent villains of the story. In No Way To Live, Brandon is a pyromaniac ex-terrorist, yet his friendship with Katie’s father Niall is moving and heartfelt.

Links

David Morrell

Gregg Hurwitz

No Way To Live

The post The Importance of Relationships in a Thriller Series appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

Stay Alive

I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook Stay Alive, Scott Rowley’s biography of Stuart Adamson, which inspired me to compile a list of my top ten Big Country songs, more or less in order, in Top of the Pops fashion, along with a standout lyric from each song.

10. In This Place

One of Stuart Adamson’s most heart rending vocals, it’s about a community, being torn apart, ‘stone by stone, home by home.’

Standout Lyric

As I age so my learning grows
I still touch the vision
I still smell the rose in this place

9. This Blood’s for You

Not many of Big Country’s later material makes my top ten. This is partly because somewhere between The Seer (album 3) and Peace in our Time (album 4), Stuart Adamson started to acquire an American accent. For me, his voice became less authentic and more polished, but I preferred the rawer vocals of the first three albums. By the time he sang This Blood’s For You, the American accent had bedded in, but it’s a great song in which Adamson seems to suggest that all the suffering on earth is payback for Christ’s suffering on the cross.

Standout Lyric

Man, for every long, lost soul without a shoe
Hey, for all, for all that you do
This blood’s for you

8. Flame of the West

Ostensibly about an inspirational preacher, apparently it might have been written about Ronald Reagan. He was certainly president when Stuart Adamson wrote the song, but forty years later it could equally be about Donald Trump.

Standout Lyric

It’s just how it’s always been
One man with a ruling dream
And everyone falls for him

7. Lost Patrol

There’s a lyric here: ‘There is no beauty here, just the stench of wine and beer’ that has always stuck in my mind. And that’s not even the standout lyric! The inspiration for a fantasy book I wrote called Lost Company.

Standout Lyric

We save no souls
We break no promises

6. I Will Run For You (Theme From Restless Natives)

Soaring lyrics, great guitaring. This was what Big Country excelled at. Apparently, it was a difficult production, but you wouldn’t know it from this uplifting theme tune.

Standout Lyric

In the summer sun and the winter snow
They will come and clouds will go
And show that we are proud again

5. Chance

Many years ago, someone told me that a great song is one that, when it plays unexpectedly on the radio, you have to stop and listen. That’s what happened to me, in Tesco, in the fruit and veg aisle, when Chance started playing from the store’s speakers.

Standout Lyric

All the rain came down
On a cold new town
As he carried you away

4. Where the Rose is Sown

Told from two points of view: government propaganda and the young man who’s reading and responding to it. It’s stirring, outraged and wonderful, and Mark Brzezicki was made for this kind of militaristic drumming!

Standout Lyric

Our name will never die
This time will be forever

3. In a Big Country

‘In a big country, dreams stay with you…stay alive!’ Anthemic, it’s the band’s theme song. Great lyrics that are written about wide themes but with an intensely personal focus, as with many of Stuart Adamson’s songs. Apparently, he grew sick of the whole bagpipe guitars things, but I love them. For this one, I had to pick two sets of standout lyrics.

Standout Lyric 1

So take that look out of here, it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming

Standout Lyric 2

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

Standout Lyric 3

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

2. Look Away

What a song! Possibly inspired by Harry Tracy, who claimed to run with Butch Cassidy in the Wild Bunch. After Big Country (the song) this could be the song most people know when you say the band’s name.

Standout Lyric

So look away look away
Hide your eyes from the land where I lie cold.
Look away look away
From the lies in the stories that were told.
Look away look away
From the love that I hide way down deep in my soul.

1. Sailor

A slow start and sudden, increase in tempo combine to make Sailor almost seem like two songs in one. The lyrics inspired the arc for my thriller series Angel of the South, and the guitaring is possibly my favourite of all time, by anyone. What a way to end an album.

Standout Lyric

But now we are together we won’t turn back
Where the boats are burned and the ties are black
And I will cry no more, I will cry no more

Further Reading

Book Review: Stay Alive – The Life and Death of Stuart Adamson by Scott Rowley

No Way To Live, the first book of my Angel of the South series.

Feedback

This list could easily change by tomorrow! Look Away and In a Big Country might swap places, and Just A Shadow might well edge out In This Place. But at the time of writing, I stand by what I’ve written!

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Do you totally disagree? Do you prefer later Big Country songs to the early ones?

The post Top Ten Big Country songs appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

When I was a teenager, a friend introduced me to Big Country. I even remember the song he played: Fields of Fire. After that, I became an avid fan, buying and repeatedly listening to their first three albums. I’d got into them during the long wait for their fourth album, so The Crossing, Steeltown and The Seer got a lot of plays. Through university, and my entire adult life, I’ve turned to Big Country: for inspiration as a writer, for soundtracks to write to, and for enjoyment. Writing this Stay Alive Stuart Adamson book review feels like I’ve come full circle.

So I’ve been looking forward to Scott Rowley’s Stay Alive – The Life and Death of Stuart Adamson, a biography of the band’s lead singer, guitarist and song writer.

I ended up listening to the audiobook. Scottish actor Mark Bonnar did a great job of narrating and bringing to life the various voices involved in Adamson’s life: both wives, both children, Stuart himself and members of The Skids and Big Country.

No Happy Ending

There’s no happy ending to this story. In 2002, Adamson died aged forty-three, alone and drunk in a hotel room in Hawaii. He committed suicide, but as the book says, really the drink killed him.

The book starts with the build-up to that event. Writing wise, Rowley makes an interesting decision, telling the events of Adamson’s disappearance and his son Callum’s frantic search for him in the second person. It’s a clever way of making events almost twenty-five years ago intensely personal, moving and immediate. Rowley uses the same technique when he returns to Adamson’s death at the end of the novel.

Conflict

So the story doesn’t end well. A lot of the time it doesn’t go so well. Adamson was a very private, almost shy man who struggled terribly with the demands of fame. He was in the music game for the music, nothing else. Conflict is a constant, friom his time in the Skids, songwriting and performing with Richard Jobson to establishing and fronting Big Country. Most of all, the conflict was with alcohol. At times, it’s a grim, heartbreaking read of a man struggling with addiction who died too young and could have had so much more to give.

But along the way, you get a real sense of the kind of man and musician Adamson was. Committed to his Scottish roots, he loved football, fishing and folk music. He could be very funny, and he was a voracious reader who often had four books on the go. A lot of his lyrics sprouted from the books he read.

Song Insights

Rowley gives some great insights into the meanings and backgrounds of many of the songs, particularly on the first three albums. His theory about East of Eden from the Steeltown album was particularly interesting – I always thought it referred to the Steinbeck novel.

Perhaps most enlightening was his explanation of the lyric from Fields of Fire, that first Big Country song I ever listened to, “400 miles without a word until you smile, 400 miles on fields of fire.”

No spoilers, but I did sometimes wonder why it was 400 miles. Read the book (or listen to it) to find out.

A Minor Niggle

If I have one gripe, it’s that The Skids at the start of Adamson’s career were covered perhaps a bit too much. But then, I’m a Big Country fan, so I would say that, and it’s a very small flaw. Overall, Stay Alive is well-researched, authentic, sympathetic without being blind to its subject’s flaws, and well-written.

Further Reading

My Top 10 Big Country Songs

Links

Stay Alive – The Life and Death of Stuart Adamson

How Big Country Made Steeltown – an article by Scott Rowley

Comments

Have you read Stay Alive? Do you agree or disagree with my review? Or do you have any insights about Stuart Adamson you’d like to share?

The post Book Review: Stay Alive – The Life and Death of Stuart Adamson appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

For the drive from Egilstaddir to Acureyri (‘the capital of the north’), we left at 9.00am to avoid more incoming bad weather. Nevertheless, what should have been a three hour journey took seven, partly because of three detours. Mainly, though, it was because of, once again, extremely bad weather conditions. I’d hate to liken myself to an Ice Road Trucker, but I’m definitely an Ice Road Driver. So much so that I probably have my a web page dedicated to me on Road.is. We passed two deserted cars, one with its hazard lights still flashing, both of which had come off the road. 

Canyon Viewpoint

Our first detour was supposed to be a twenty-minute drive down to a canyon off the Ring Road. Because of icy conditions, it took close to an hour. In all honesty, the canyon, through no fault of its own, disappointed us. Snow covered the canyon so it looked more like a trench. We could have walked closer to the bottom of the canyon, but in the slippery conditions didn’t want to fall. The air this far below the Ring Road was cold, still and very dry. You could almost feel your lips beginning to chap.

Myavatn Geothermal Area

Unfortunately, Myvatn was another no go. The whole brown, rugged geothermal landscape, where Apollo astronauts practised walking on the moon and collecting rock samples, was a literal whitewash, completely covered in snow. Luckily, we’d seen the Seltun Geothermal Area on our previous visit to Iceland so didn’t feel let down. The strong smell of sulpher there had made me feel a little bit nauseous.

Hotdogs and Petrol Stations

We stopped at a petrol station not far from Godafoss Waterfall. We spent a fair amount of time during our Ring Road tour filling up with petrol, mostly, luckily, before the war in Iranian started to bite, although prices did rise considerably while we were there. If ever you feel like a snack during a long driving stage of your tour, it’s worth factoring in a petrol station that sells hot dogs. They’re filled with onions and mustard or ketchup or both, with a surprising sprinkling of nachos to give them some texture and crunch. 

Godafoss Waterfall

This was the highlight of the day, and one of the highlights of the entire holiday, but my goodness it was cold. The car’s dashboard showed -10 degrees Celsius, but the wind chill factor made it even colder.

Apparently, Godafoss got its name because a Viking Chief in Iceland renounced his pagan ways and took up Christianity by throwing all his iconography of the old gods into the waterfall.  Certainly, there’s something majestic about seeing those falls constantly flowing among the snow and huge stalactites and stalagmites. We stayed longer than we expected – so long, in fact, that when we returned to the car half my face had numbed over and took a few minutes for me to get moving again. Jane thought I’d had a stroke.  Her first impulse at such a drastic event was to take a photograph, which I have declined to include in this post.

Akureyri – Finally!

We arrived in Akureyri seven hours after we’d left Egilstaddir. Even with our long detour to the canyon and waterfall (and relatively brief one at the petrol station, the journey should have taken just over five hours, so the difficult driving conditions had cost us two hours.  Considering we’d been advised back in Hofn not to even bother making the trip, it really wasn’t bad. In addition, the weather was now supposed to start warming up and improving for the rest of our trip.

Which, in fact, brought about its own problems.

Further Reading

Iceland (1): Land of Chess, Thrones and Soup

Iceland (2): Land of Diamonds, Glaciers and Snow

Iceland (3): Land of Horses, Viking Film Sets and Tourist Information Centres

Iceland (4): Land of Arrows, Thermal Baths and Robot Sculptures

The post Iceland (5): Land of Canyons, Waterfalls and Hot Dogs appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

One year ago, I made my first podcast appearance on The Funky Writer Show and my cat Bertie nearly sabotaged the whole thing with his ridiculously loud meowing. Today, I made my second appearance.

This time Bertie behaved himself. But my other cat?

Not so much.

And I haven’t even mentioned my family yet…

Preparations

For the mid-show reading, I chose a passage from my novella Change of Lifestyle that fitted of the topics Rob wanted to discuss (teacher burn-out). I even recorded myself reading it and listened to the recording.

I do podcast recordings and video calls in our kitchen, where the cats come and go through the cat flap. I was lucky, though: Nutmeg, the sleepy one, was upstairs, and Bertie was in the living room. I closed the kitchen door to prevent him from interrupting the recording.

The last time I was on a podcast, I spilled a bottle of water over my shirt when I opened the lid, so this time I poured water into a glass.

I was ready.

An Early Cat-astrophe

Rob has a lovely, enthusiastic manner that puts you at your ease. After a preliminary chat, he gave me time to have a quick swig of water, which I promptly spilled. Then he counted down to the start of the recording: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And welcome back to the The Funky Writers Show…. I’m your host Robert Batista!”

He then read out Change of Lifestyle’s blurb and said, “This is from a captivating book by today’s guest author Anthony Addis. Anthony, welcome back to The Funky Writer Show!”

At this point Nutmeg, the cat I thought was asleep upstairs, came through the catflap and starting rubbing her head against my legs.

On the recording, my first words to Robert are slightly faint because while I was saying them, I stood up and shepherded Nutmeg into the living room.

Angel of the South

I knew Rob was interested mainly in Change of Lifestyle’s exploration of teacher burnout, but he still asked several questions about Angel of the South, my thriller series set in London and the Isle of Man.

Hopefully, I sold my enthusiasm for Billie Brindley, the main character, with all her complexities and the light and dark she carries through the books.

Fumbles, Word choices and Knocking

Nutmeg had thrown me off my game. For the first two minutes, I ummed and erred until I hit my stride. In terms of word choices, I made two mistakes.

The first was when I explained that in Change of Lifestyle, the protaganist Gabe Shaw is “Flatsitting for his friend’s…flat,” a sentence that landed, for want of a better word, flatly.

The second came later on when Rob brought up whether there are enough readers who want to buy books anymore. I meant to say there’s been a resurgance in book reading, but instead I said renaissance. Not as bad as the flat repetition, but for the next thirty seconds or so, I battled the urge to say “I meant resurgence!”

At one point, someone knocked on the front door. I figured my daughter had forgotten her keys. The knocking soon stopped, so I presumed Jane, my wife, had answered and carrried on talking to Rob.

Not quite, as I discovered later…

Three Stars and a Wish

Some schools have a penchant for marking children’s writing with three stars and a wish – three things that went well and one to aim for next time. Here are mine for my second appearance on The Funky Writer Show.

STAR 1: I enjoyed the conversation Robert and I had during the show. We covered a wide range of topics, including AI, teacher burnout, marketing and living in Indonesia. We also covered writer influences. I mentioned David Morrell and Gerald Seymour and also cited Joss Whedon’s quote, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

STAR 2: The reading of the passage from Change of Lifestyle went well. I sounded clear and expressive and didn’t make any fumbles, so the way I practised earlier obviously paid off.

STAR 3: I remembered that I’m not really appearing as me, I’m Anthony Addis – Author (as it says on my Facebook page). I’m representing my work. I talked enthusiastically about No Way To Live and Change of Lifestyle, and reflected honestly about my writing journey.

WISH: In my excitement or nerves, I answered Rob’s questions a bit too quickly, anxious not to leave any dead space. Next time, I’ll try to slow my responses to make sure I have key words (EG, resurgence) in my head before I start.

LOCKED OUT DURING THE RECORDING

When the recording ended, I went into the living room, expecting to see my wife and daughter. Nope. they’d gone out, apparently in my daughter’s car, which wasn’t in the drive.

Then I realised that Jane was sitting in our car. It turned out she’d been locked out. The knocking I’d heard earlier had been her. She hadn’t wanted to disturb the recording so sat in the car for about twenty minutes!

I think I owe her a meal out.

Links

Listen to the episode of The Funky Writer Show on PodBean and Spotify.

Listen to my previous appearance on the show.

Read about my first appearance

BUY

No Way To Live, Angel of the South Book 1

Change of Lifestyle

Do Not Keep Silent

The post My Podcast Appearance on the Funky Writer Show appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

Yesterday, I appeared on a writing podcast – The Funky Writer Show with Rob Batista. It’s a terrific show that features wide-ranging discussions about writing, marketing and books.

Rob himself is a charming and enthusiastic host. Our discussions ranged across Indonesia, AI, teacher burnout, writing influences (spoiler, I cited David Morrell) and how fictional characters intrude upon real life.

You can catch the full episode on PodBean or Spotify.

Tomorrow, I’ll post my reflections of the show – what went well, a catastrophe, and why I owe my wife a meal out!

Links

For now, you can listen to my reflections of my two previous writing podcast appearances:

Nerves, Genesis and a Noisy Cat

Writers, Mics and Mishaps

The Writing Life

The post Appearing on a Writing Podcast appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

The only thing missing from this picture is one of our cats, sitting on the keyboard.

A Good Start…

It started off so well. When the half-term holiday arrived, I downed teaching tools and started writing the third novel in my Angel of the South thriller series. In a week, I wrote 14,000 words. I was well on my way. (You can read about how pleased I felt with myself here.)

But over the following two weeks, I realised something was wrong. My lack of planning had cost me. The opening didn’t fit the Angel of the South gritty urban vibe, and I knew what, or rather who, it was: the antagonist.

Real Life Got In The Way

To be fair, it wasn’t entirely my fault. Before that February half-term, I’d intended to plan out the novel from start to finish. For different stories, I take different approaches to planning. I usually have a good idea of the end destination, but in terms of planning detail, I usually have three different go-tos.

plan a few chapters ahead every few chapterscarefully plan through every chapter and relationship strand make some brief bullet point notes just before I start the next chapter.

Unfortunately, The Killing Kind needed careful, thorough planning. There are several returning characters, plot points and threads left over from Books 1 and 2. Even the equipment used needs to be carefully thought out because it was itemised in Book 2.

Knowing that, I’d set aside my January writing times (usually an hour each evening after work, and two hours each on Saturday and Sunday) for planning.

But real life got in the way. Work was busy, and tiring, leaving me with little creative juice in the battery, and all sorts of other stuff was happening. Planning the novel kept getting pushed back.

One Day I Blinked

Then one day I blinked and it was half-term. With a week off work, I knew I should delay starting the novel to hone in on the planning. But I decided to just make a start. And the writing flowed, as it does given time and headspace.

Billie, my main character, was in full, abrasive flow. I was pleased with a new character I’d introduced, and the supporting cast were slotting into position nicely. There are two antagonists, and I was happy with the first, a recurring character from Book 2, an ex- Special Forces soldier with a grudge against Billie. At that stage, she was still slightly underwritten, but I knew she would come into her own.

Globetrotting Adventures

But the second antagonist, who appeared in several early chapters, did not fit the series brand at all. And because of him, some of the Book 3 locations were more like Ian Fleming’s James Bond than my Angel of the South. James Bond went on globetrotting adventures, but Billie definitely does not. As she said in Book 2:

“The Angel of the South. As in South London.”

So I went back to the drawing board, rewriting about 10,000 of that initial 14,000 word half-term flurry.

Diamond Beach in Iceland

After that, we had a busy Easter holiday travelling around Iceland, with not a word of writing being written. Although, to be fair, I don’t regret that at all. Iceland is amazing!

Hitting My Stride

I’m almost 50,000 words into the novel, and feel like I’ve hit my stride. The characters are all aligned perfectly for the second part, and there’s already been two important set pieces. The Setting feels authentic to the series and all the characters feel like they belong. And most importantly, I’m enjoying writing it. But I still wish I’d planned it out before starting to write.

FURTHER READING

Buy No Way To Live (Angel of the South Book 1)

Blog Post: How my thriller’s antagonist became the star of the show

Blog Post: How my Thriller Series was born

The post Work in Progress Update appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

Douglas Promenade, where the main character realises his old life has caught up with him.

Not many books are set on the Isle of Man, but when I wrote my own gangland novel, I found it makes a great setting for thrillers.

“The Sea Vista Hotel lurked on a dingy, narrow side street like it had wandered off the sea front and lost its way.”

Man On The Run

No Way To Live opens with Tom Adams arriving in his hotel in the Isle of Man. Until recently, Tom was a member of a powerful London gang. Now, he’s come to warn a Manx shop owner that his gang intends to apply pressure on him to sell his business by attacking his daughter. 

In Chapter Three, Tom walks along with Douglas promenade at night with the shop owner’s daughter. After a while, he realises two enforcers from the gang are following them…

So Why the Isle of Man?

I wanted a seaside town for Tom’s hideout scenes, a location very different from London’s chaotic, busy streets. At first, I played with the idea of Brighton, but the Isle of Man’s much greater distance from London made my mind up. My crime syndicate needed somewhere far from the Met’s prying eyes.

There were other advantages to choosing the Island as a setting. The insularity of it, so that the kind of crime and criminals suddenly being introduced in the novel felt new and terrifying. Also, the awkwardness of escaping once you’re there, plus it’s tax haven status, helped make it an obvious choice.

As Tom reflects: 

“Money could be cleaned and disappeared like it had never existed.’”

How Lockdown Affected the Decision

There was another reason to use the Isle of Man as a location. In 2020, with two university students to support, we decided I would teach in an international school in Saudi Arabia. It seemed like a good decision. Every holiday, I would hop on a plane and come home. I could send home most of my tax free earnings to support the voracious university students.

But then Covid, and lockdown, struck. Flying between countries became difficult. I wrote the first draft of No Way To Live in my dark, slightly dingy Riyadh flat from late October to December, 2020. I was unsure when I would next be able to go home, and unable even to leave the compound I was living on. So I combated homesickness by writing about the two places I know best: London and the Isle of Man. 

The Isle of Man was chosen because I grew up there, in Onchan, where Tom has a fight in the book. I worked on the deckchairs on Douglas promenade, back when that was a thing. Later, I worked in a tourist shop similar to the fictional Trove that features in No Way To Live. I still regularly visit.

Manx Locations

In the Isle of Man scenes, the Bee Gees statue and the Tower of Refuge do heavy symbolic lifting. Castletown, Port Jack Glen and, of course, the Fairy Bridge all make an appearance. Writing about them in my dark Riyadh flat cheered me up, and made me feel like I was back on the Island. Hopefully, you will too, even if you’ve never actually been.

No Way to Live

No Way To Live is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

Further Reading

How Angel of the South was born

How my Christmas thriller was born in a Riyadh flat

The post Why the Isle of Man Makes a Great Setting for Thrillers appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

The driving conditions were often much worse than this.A Nailbiting Drive

On Day 4 of our Ring Road tour, the receptionist of our Hofn hotel told us she wouldn’t drive to Egilstaddir in such bad conditions. Which was worrying, since that’s where we needed to go. However, we noticed a tour bus across the street, which she said was making the same drive. If the bus could do it, so could we, we decided.

As it turned out, the hotel receptionist came close to being proved right. At times, snow covered long stretches of road. Snow flurries kept blowing off the mountain towards the sea, making visibility non-existent. A couple of times we thought about turning back.

Djupivogur and the Arrow

By driving slowly in the middle of the roads to avoid the built up snow at the sides, we managed to make it to a town called Djupivogur. Shortly after, the same bus the receptionist back in Hofn had pointed out pulled into town.

Djupivogur. I’m not sure what the arrow is pointing to, unless it’s snow, falling.

The bus driver, who confirmed he was continuing on to Egilstaddir. He felt the roads would be improving because the snow ploughs were out, so we decided to carry on.

“Just go slowly and drive in the middle of the road,” he advised. Like I didn’t already know that!

We kind of had to leave anyway, because it was Easter Sunday and we wouldn’t have been able to book a room in Djupivogur.

Apparently, the town is famous for its thirty egg sculptures. I suspect the snow buried them, because the only sculpture we saw was a a rather fetching aquamarine arrow pointing up at the sky.

Vok Baths

After a few hair-raising skids on the road from Djupivogur to Egilstaddir, we arrived in fairly good time, about four and a half hours instead of the three hours it should have taken. Because of the weather conditions, we’d been unable to take our intended detour to the coastal town of Seydisfjordur.

Instead, with the roads around Egilstaddir now ploughed and the snowfall finished, we visited Vok Thermal Baths. the heat, steam and long soak were much needed after the stress of the drive. Walking out into the thermal pools was extremely cold, but in them, the temperature is about thirty degrees celsius (much more in one of them).

Several people jumped into the icy waters of the lagoon that the spa borders, then rose, shivering, and plunged into the hottest pool. We, however, did not.

Icelandic people love their thermal baths. If you visit, you should definitely make time to go to at least one. We went to a second towards the end of our holiday, but more on that in a later post.

A Walk Round an Athletics Track

Opposite our hotel in Egilstaddir, there was what we thought was a park. It was covered in snow, yet people were walking in it, so we decided to visit. However, the park turned out to be an athletics stadium. The snow had piled onto the field part, so any shotputters or long jumpers were unable to train, but the red track was snow free, although a bit damp. The stadium is overlooked by a cliff with two rather fun robot sculptures at the top.

When we returned to the hotel, we discovered that for the next day, when we would be driving to Acureyri “the Capital of the North,” more snow was expected, and freezing conditions, so back we went to checking road.is every few minutes.

Further Reading

Iceland (1): Land of Chess, Thrones and Soup

Iceland (2): Land of Diamonds, Glaciers and Snow

Iceland (3): Land of Horses, Viking Film Sets and Tourist Information Centres

The post Iceland (4): Land of Arrows, Thermal Baths and Robot Sculptures appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.

From our expensive-soup selling country hotel, we drive to Hofn, but took a diversion to the Viking film set in the shadow of Vestrahorn, a mountain that supposedly looks like the Batcar, although I couldn’t seen the resemblance.

Horses

The road to the Viking film set is what Icelandic people call a gravel road, which seems to mean soft, crumbled tarmac with enormous potholes. It’s not too difficult to drive on, you just need to swerve at short notice on numerous occasions. On the way, we stopped to look at the horses. The two at the front of the picture were particularly playful, running up to each other in mock-attacks.

Apparently, the Vikings enjoyed horse fighting as a sport. I presume that meant watching horses fight, not fighting horses themselves.

The Viking Film Set

Paying to enter the Viking film set also allows entry to a spit of land including a lighthouse and black sand beach. The Viking film set itself was built, but never fulfilled its intended purpose. Years after it’s construction, it apparently did see some use in the TV series The Witcher. Although inauthentic in terms of being a genuinely historical site, it gives some insight into the lives of Vikings, subsisting in an inhospitable land with the enormous, sprawling Vestahorn behind and the the sea in front. Little wonder so many of them took to the ocean, and raiding.

Hofn Harbour

It’s all going on down at Hofn Harbour. By which I mean, the sunsets are stunning, the restaurants down there are great and there’s a tourist information centre. We ate at Pakka, and it was a really fantastic meal. I had lamb, Jane had herring (or haddock – one of the h fish). the restaurant is well designed in an old warehouse, overlooking the trawler that goes out each morning to catch the fish.

Before the meal, we walked around the harbour and up to a strange little sculpture on a little spit of land that I could make neither hide nor hair of.

We then went to the tourist information centre, because the weather reports looked bad for the next day. We needed advice. A somewhat gloomy man basically told us it was the end of the world and to give up all hope. No way were we going to be able to drive to Egilstadir, the next stop on our Ring Road tour. Snow, ice, low visibility, the works. Still, he did give me a free bendy ruler, the type you can snap around your wrist, so not all was lost.

At the hotel, the receptionist said pretty much the same thing. Keep watching road.is, they both said.

Further Reading

Iceland (1): Land of Chess, Thrones and Soup

Iceland (2): Land of Diamonds, Glaciers and Snow

Iceland (4): Land of Arrows, Thermal Baths and Robot Sculptures

The post Iceland (3): Land of Horses, Viking Film Sets and Tourist Information Centres appeared first on anthonyaddis.co.uk.