The Flood

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The Flood was my first published novel. It’s not a crime novel, though it contains secrets and revelations. Nor is it a thriller. Fair warning: it’s a young man’s book, all about the perils and pitfalls of growing up.

I wrote it when I was a student at Edinburgh University. I have the feeling it started life as a short story, only the story started to grow. Before I knew it, I had written a full twenty pages — too long for Radio 4’s short story slot (for which two of my stories had already been accepted), or for most of the magazines and other outlets for “shorties” that I knew of at the time. I decided that instead of trying to edit what I already had, I should just call it “part one” and keep going. I’d already written one novel, entitled Summer Rites, a black comedy set in a hotel in the Scottish Highlands. The plot revolved around a one-legged schizophrenic librarian, a young boy with special powers, and the abduction of a famous American novelist by the “provisional wing” of the Scottish National Party. Curiously, no one had seemed to agree with my judgment that Summer Rites was a fully realised contender for the title of Great Scottish Novel. Undaunted, I set about turning my short story The Falling Time into a new novel called The Flood.

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