…April come she will… Simon and Garfunkel MUST’ve had Ms Taylor in mind…

One of the joys of Facebook is being part of a social collective without necessarily having met your friends. I can’t remember when I asked Seumas Gallacher to friend me, but I am so grateful he did because, apart from blogging words of wisdom, he makes me laugh. Out loud. A lot. And I love the Jack Calder books.

So you can imagine how much we looked forward to meeting him at the Holiday Inn in central Manchester, where Seumas had paused for a few hours after flying to the UK from his home in Bahrain, to meet up with fellow writers before zipping up to Glasgow to repeat the exercise and then, finally, going home to Tobermory to see his family.

We were joined by authors, Sally Cunliffe and her husband, Sandra Robinson and Glen R Stansfield for what I can only describe as an hilarious couple of hours chat while Seumas plied us with coffee and croissants. There seems to be nothing that this man can’t put a twist on to make you laugh. Bit dangerous with croissants, but then, I didn’t have to clean up!

What did we talk about? What didn’t we talk about, more like! Writing, naturally. We covered the idiots of the working world (I bet Dilbert would have loved to have been sitting with us for that one), daft television programmes, his singing career, my singing career and many other things. But mainly, we laughed. The two and a half hours sped by so fast. And then, the icing on the literary cake, he gave Paul and me autographed copies of the first two books in the Jack Calder series. ‘The Violin Man’s Legacy’ and ‘Vengeance Wears Black’. Yay!

I already have all four books as e-books (3 = Savage Payback’ and 4= ‘Killer City’’). No 5 is – allegedly – coming out later this year. He has also written a book on how to market yourself as an author – Self Publishing Steps to Successful Sales. Of course, it goes without saying that I have bought all his work just at the point where he is beginning to give books away. We had a few words about that!

But Seumas isn’t just an author. He won ‘Blogger of the Year’ and now has a following of over 30,000 people. Why? Because he always looks on everyday things with a far from everyday approach. But don’t take my word for it. Go to https://seumasgallacher.com and check it out for yourself.

My head was buzzing with ideas by the time we had to leave. And it still is. I just hope I can remember them all long enough to make notes!