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WORK TITLE: The Jump
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/22/1970
WEBSITE: https://dougjohnstone.com/
CITY: Edinburgh, Scotland
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb2006023538
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb2006023538
HEADING: Johnstone, Douglas, 1970-
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035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca07091206
040 __ |a Uk |b eng |c Uk |d InNd
053 _0 |a PR6110.O48
100 1_ |a Johnstone, Douglas, |d 1970-
400 1_ |a Johnstone, Doug, |d 1970-
670 __ |a An investigation into the mass dependence of photonuclear pion production, 1995: |b t.p. (Douglas Johnstone)
670 __ |a Tombstoning, 2006: |b t.p. (Doug Johnstone) p.[ii] (writer, musician & arts journalist based in Edinburgh; has a PhD in nuclear physics; his first novel)
670 __ |a Living.Scotsman.com, 26 July 2006: |b home made (Doug Johnsone, aged 36)
670 __ |a Sunday herald, 8 Jan. 2006: |b stars in their eyes (Doug Johnstone, aged 35)
PERSONAL
Born July 22, 1970, in Edinburgh, Scotland; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Ph.D. (nuclear physics).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, musician, songwriter, freelance arts journalist.
AWARDS:Amazon Kindle number-one bestseller for both Gone Again and Hit and Run, which was also a Fiction Uncovered winner.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Novelist Doug Johnstone was born July 22, 1970, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a writer, freelance journalist, songwriter, and musician living in the seaside town of Portobello, a suburb of Edinburgh. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics and worked designing airborne radars before he turned to writing. Johnstone writes modern parables and commentary on Scotland and its defining myths. He has published short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and his work has received praise from Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin, William McIlvanney, Megan Abbott, and Christopher Brookmyre. Johnstone is also a cofounder of the Scotland Writers Football Club, and he has released two solo albums, Keep It Afloat and I Did It Deliberately.
In 2006 Johnstone published the novel Tombstoning. In the story, hapless David Lindsay lives peacefully in Arbroath until his friend, under mysterious circumstances, falls off a cliff to his death. Since Lindsay was the last person to see him alive, he rapidly leaves the town so that the police do not ask him questions. Lindsay has been away for fifteen years when his high school crush, Nicola Cruickshank, contacts him and asks him to the school reunion. His feelings for Nicola outweigh his desire to run from his past, so he returns to Arbroath. When another person falls off the cliff, Lindsay must decide whether to run again or stay to find out what is going on.
Johnstone next wrote The Ossians. In the funny and satirical story, the band called the Ossians is led by the charismatic yet self-destructive lead singer Connor, a twenty-four-year-old musician who is opinionated and is frequently beaten up. Ready to sign a major record deal, the band embarks on a two-week tour of Scotland during which they encounter a series of bizarre incidents, such as a seagull massacre, drug deals, a stalker, a bomb-testing range, random shootings, and more attacks. Johnstone explores issues of identity, community, friendship, arrogance, and rural Scotland.
Johnstone’s 2011 novel Smokeheads was nominated for the Crimefest Last Laugh Award. In the story, four friends from college, now in their late thirties, are on a whisky-fueled weekend at the remote Scottish island of Islay. During the weekend they meet divorcée Molly and her control freak ex-husband, Joe, who is a police officer. One of the friends, Adam, who has imbibed a particularly large amount of Islay’s famous single-malt whiskeys, begins to woo Molly, much to the dismay of Adam’s friends and especially Joe. The story, which delves into violence and black humor, is Johnstone’s debut on the Faber crime list.
In Gone Again, published in 2013, Johnstone presents photographer Mark Douglas, who is taking pictures of stranded whales off Portobello Beach in Edinburgh. After his son’s school calls to say that his wife Lauren has not yet picked up the boy, Mark begins to wonder what has happened to her. As the story progresses and the police search for her, Mark recalls how Lauren has disappeared before. Then the police make a shocking discovery.
In 2016 Johnstone published the contemporary psychological thriller The Jump. Ellie Napier is grieving the loss of her fifteen-year-old son Logan, who committed suicide by jumping off the Forth Road Bridge. Returning to the scene to try to learn why her son would do that, she comes across Sam, another teenager about to jump. Seeing a chance to redeem herself as a failed mother, Ellie talks to Sam and succeeds in convincing him to come down to safety. When she notices blood on his shirt, Ellie realizes that there is more to the story than a depressed teenager. She finds herself embroiled in Sam’s life, his troubled family, and secrets for which she was not prepared. Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer acknowledged: “A horrifying series of events builds to a less than credible conclusion.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly June 13, 2016, review of The Jump, p. 79.
ONLINE
Doug Johnstone, https://dougjohnstone.com (March 31, 2017).
Scottish Book Trust, http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/ (March 31, 2017).
about
picture by Chris Scott
picture by Chris Scott
Doug Johnstone is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His eighth novel, Crash Land, was published by Faber & Faber in November 2016. His previous book, The Jump, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Novel. Gone Again (2013) was an Amazon bestseller and Hit & Run (2012) and was an Amazon #1 as well as being selected as a prestigious Fiction Uncovered winner. Smokeheads (2011) was nominated for the Crimefest Last Laugh Award. Before that Doug published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008). His work has received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, William McIlvanney, Megan Abbott and Christopher Brookmyre.
Doug is currently writer in residence with William Purves Funeral Directors. He is also a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow, and was RLF Fellow at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh 2014-2016. Doug was also writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde 2010-2012 and before that worked as a lecturer in creative writing there. He’s had short stories appear in various publications and anthologies, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature. He is also a mentor and manuscript assessor for The Literary Consultancy and Emergents in the Scottish Highlands.
Doug is one of the co-founders of the Scotland Writers Football Club, for whom he also puts in a shift in midfield. He is also a singer, musician and songwriter in several bands, including Northern Alliance, who have released four albums to critical acclaim, as well as recording an album as a fictional band called The Ossians. Doug has also released two solo EPs, Keep it Afloat and I Did It Deliberately.
Doug has a degree in physics, a PhD in nuclear physics and a diploma in journalism, and worked for four years designing radars.
He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children.
Doug Johnstone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Australian footballer, see Doug Johnstone (footballer).
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Doug Johnstone (born 22 July 1970) is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His new novel, Smokeheads, is published by Faber and Faber on 3 March 2011. He has previously published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008), which received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre.[citation needed]
Johnstone is currently writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde. He has had several short stories appear in various publications, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature. He is a singer, musician and songwriter in several bands, including Northern Alliance, part of the Fence Collective. Northern Alliance have released four albums, as well as recording an album as a fictional band called The Ossians.
Johnstone has a degree in physics, a PhD in nuclear physics and a diploma in journalism. He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children.[citation needed]
Author Confessions: Doug Johnstone
Doug Johnstone
Category: Reading
Tagged: Author Confessions, scottish authors
By Paul Gallagher
Wednesday 4 June 2014
0 Comments
Doug Johnstone is the author of six novels, most recently The Dead Beat (Faber & Faber). His work has been an Amazon Kindle #1 bestseller, a Fiction Uncovered winner and a Goldsboro Last Laugh nominee, as well as receiving praise from Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh and Chris Brookmyre. He is also a journalist and musician, and is one of the co-founders of the Scotland Writers football team.
And here's what he had to say when faced with the fearsome Author Confessions questionnaire!
Which author or fictional character would you most like to party with?
Tyler Durden from Fight Club. I suspect that if I somehow managed to survive the night, I wouldn’t remember much of it. Probably just as well.
How do you arrange your bookshelf?
It’s a shambles. It started off in alphabetical order, but I keep buying books and getting review copies, so that I have far too many, then I just shove ‘em in anywhere. Every now and then I take a huge load down to the charity shop, then the order gets even more shambolic as more get added randomly. It’s usually just after I’ve given something away that I want to read it again, so have to go buy it again. And so it goes on.
Is there a book by someone else that you wish you’d written?
When I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road I cried at the end, because it was so good I felt like giving up writing altogether
Oh my God, loads! Anything by Megan Abbott, Willy Vlautin or David Vann for a start. I remember reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and thinking it was just the best idea for a book waiting to happen, and executed so well too. When I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road I cried at the end, partly because I was so emotionally involved in the story but also, a bit, because it was so good I felt like giving up writing altogether.
What’s the strangest question you’ve been asked about your work?
I was asked at an event ‘What’s the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?’ I rambled on for a while about drugs, totally implicating myself, and with my parents in the audience! Then Alan Bissett, who was also on at the event dodged it totally, saying he’d once eaten four Weetabix at once.
When do you write best?
Always first thing in the morning for fiction. I get the kids to school, then settle down from 9am to around noon, hopefully bash out at least a thousand words. If I keep writing fiction in the afternoon, I tend to find that the energy in the prose drops, so I prefer to do it in sharp bursts. I do bits and bobs of journalism too, but I do that any old time, with the kids running around, with a beer in hand, whatever. But I tend to find that for fiction my mind is sharpest earlier in the day.
How do you react to bad reviews?
Folk are entitled to their opinions, and if I don’t agree, that’s just life, isn’t it?
I genuinely just shrug it off. I told that to a fellow author and he point blank refused to believe me, but it’s true. I mean, I’m not a maniac, I want everyone in the world to like my books, but I realise that’s not realistic. I think it’s something to do with having been a book reviewer before I was a published author, I can see it from both sides. I have a policy of reading every review, whether good or bad, just once, then I throw it up on my website so folk can see it, and I know where it is, though I never go back and re-read. Folk are entitled to their opinions, and if I don’t agree, that’s just life, isn’t it?
Drugs and alcohol: do they help with writing?
No chance! Nothing I’ve ever written under the influence has ever been anything other than total drivel. Hemingway famously said you should write drunk and edit sober, but for me it all has to be done sober. I occasionally get a good idea for a story when drunk, but I’m usually having too much fun to start writing it. If I remember it in the morning, that’s a bonus. Having said that, alcohol and drugs definitely help with nerves before doing a book event. They might not make you more coherent on stage, but you don’t care cos you’re mashed.
What would your dream job be if you weren’t an author?
Either an international footballer or the first man on Mars. I’m probably getting slightly long in the tooth for both those options these days, sadly. Plus I’m not good enough at football and I get dizzy just going on a roundabout. More realistically, I’d like to be able to do something properly useful, like be a furniture maker or gravedigger. People are always gonna need to sit down, right? And we’re all gonna die sometime. Never run out of work.
Do you ever mentally edit someone else’s work while you read?
All the time. So much so it’s actually a bit of a problem. I’m something of a compulsive self-editor, always looking to cut away, cut away until there are only the bare bones of the story left, the narrative boiled down to its essence. Almost everything I read feels overwritten to me when I’m in that kind of mood, which is ridiculous, I’m quite prepared to admit that, but I can’t help it.
If you could throw a book at a celebrity which book would you throw at whom?
I would throw something really heavy at Piers Morgan. Like a Hilary Mantel hardback edition, something that’s gonna draw blood. And I would throw it edge on.
You can listen to Doug Johnstone talking about his new book The Dead Beat on this edition of Book Talk:
The Jump
Publishers Weekly.
263.24 (June 13, 2016): p79.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Jump
Doug Johnstone. Faber & Faber (PGW, dist.), $14.95 trade paper (292p) ISBN 978-0-57132158-2
Ellie Napier, the heroine of this suspenseful psychological thriller from British author Johnstone (Gone Again), grieves over the loss months
earlier of her 15-year-old son, Logan, who threw himself over the Forth Road Bridge in South Queensferry, Scotland. Elbe spends her time in a
haze, going on long walks or swims, which seem to ease her pain somewhat, while her husband, Ben, devotes all his spare time hoping to uncover
some physical reason that will explain his son's suicide. One day, while making her daily pilgrimage to the bridge, Elbe spots a teenage boy,
whom she later finds out is Sam McKenna, poised to jump, talks him out of it, and takes him home. Noticing that Sam's clothing is spotted with
blood, Elbe realizes that there's more than simple depression behind Sam's attempted suicide. Elbe promises to protect him, feeling that if she
couldn't save her own son, she could try to save someone else's. A horrifying series of events builds to a less than credible conclusion. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Jump." Publishers Weekly, 13 June 2016, p. 79. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA458871717&it=r&asid=809f66319c53f7265ab1ee57b9655088. Accessed 5 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A458871717