Dear Diary,
I am so excited. I am still so very excited. I am still like a kid before Christmas morning. Well, it is the morning after, but I am still very much excited.
I’ve met Ian Rankin yesterday. If you do not know who he is, you’ve lived under the rock so far… Ian Rankin is the creator of Detective Rebus and is the author of 20 no 21 books about Rebus. Rankin is in Melbourne at the moment promoting his new book Rather be the Devil.
Never miss a chance to meet your hero. – Ian Rankin
Ian was fun. His humour was dry and contagious. He made audience laugh so many times one would wonder if Ian was crime writer at all. I guess writing crime needs some counterbalance for author to keep her/his sanity.
Ian was interesting and exciting. He said so many things that I should have written down but could not because I was too busy laughing and watching him and the audience. The hall was full to the brim, mind you. People do love Rankin.
The presenter, another crime author, Shane Malloney, did his best at being, well, Shane Malloney. I am lucky enough to have met Shane at one of the Crime Fiction conferences a few years back. This gentleman can keep you entertained and on the edge of your sit. Thus, this combination Rankin-Malloney worked extremely well to the point that they both were wearing brown corduroy pants (I guess it is crime fiction writers’ thing).
Those two were talking anything from Edinburgh history and sights to serial killers and shopping lists (that would never eventuate as in Rankin’s family). They laughed. They joked about extremely serious matters. They pondered the questions of faith, security and scope of human abilities (in terms what a human can and cannot possibly do).
Ian shared some stories from his travels around the world and around TV, writing, history and life in general…
And then it was over. And then we lined up for autographs. I was standing in the queue and thinking up all sorts of smart and witty comments to say to the author. I changed my mind about hundred times. The only thing that stayed with me was the thing I shared with the author.
No matter how dark and gloomy Scotland is, sometimes, through Rebus eyes, he made me miss it, even though I’ve never been to Scotland.
I will go one day. I will go to Rebus Scotland.
Meanwhile, I still have 16 books to read…
Svetlana Tishchenko 