Iconic author reveals shock at horror legend pal Stephen King's surprise Scottish football connection

Scottish Sun

21 hours ago

The author is back in Scotland this week to launch the Stirling-based literary bash
HORROR icon Stephen King left author pal Linwood Barclay stunned when he arrived for a chat wearing a Buckie Thistle strip.
The two bestselling writers have been mates for decades but The Shining and Carrie legend's support for the Highland League minnows was a twist Linwood just did not see coming.
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Linwood is coming to Scotland and excited to meet his fans
Credit: Getty
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Stephen King is a supporter of Highland League side Buckie Thistle
King, who has sold more than 350million books, struck up a friendship with the Moray club after he featured them in his 2020 bestseller If It Bleeds.
And the 77-year-old proudly sported the green and white merch when doing a video conference with Linwood for the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival during lockdown.
Linwood - who is back in Scotland this week to launch the Stirling-based literary bash - said: 'I did that Zoom call with Steve for Bloody Scotland four years ago and that was the sweater he wore.
'I remember because I thought, 'what the heck is that?' as I had no idea of his football connection.'
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Now after writing over 25 best selling crime books the former journalist will follow in his famous pal's footsteps with the release of his first horror novel called Whistle.
It features a children's author called Annie Blunt who moves to a small town in upstate New York with her young son Charlie for a new start after the tragic death of husband.
But when Charlie finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed in the grounds of their new house it sets in motion a disturbing set of events.
However, Toronto-based Linwood insists he wasn't nervous even when he sent his first draft to the undisputed king of genre.
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He says: 'I wasn't intimidated by that. I think the fact is that if you had told me 30 years ago when I was reading Steve's novels that I would even know his email address, never mind emailing each other, then I wouldn't have believed it.
'But Steve is very supportive and encouraging. I feel very privileged and lucky to have the friendship I have with him.'
Trailer for Stephen King's 'excessively violent' new movie BANNED by four TV networks
However, far from talking about the grim and grisly, the pair normally swap Netflix recommendations.
Linwood, 70, says: 'Every once in a while I get an email and it's like, 'are you watching this show, such and such?'.
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'I sent him a note last week saying 'If you've not watched it yet you should try Mobland (with Pierce Brosnan and Tom Hardy)'. I really hope they make a second season of it.'
He adds: 'But it really is very troubling in the sense that I remember being at a book event a few years ago where all of the writers were sitting around saying 'are you watching this show?'. Nobody was saying, 'have you read this book?'.
'It just sort of hit us that the competition is not other writers, it's these TV shows where you can binge all this material at once.
'So I feel like you've got to write something that will make people stop streaming TV at least for a little while.'
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Fans of Linwood's books, including The Accident, Elevator Pitch and Find You First, praise his explosive scenes.
But the writer believes that is down to his love of 60s TV shows including The Man From U.N.C.L.E starring Scots actor David McCallum as Russian spy Illya Kuryakin.
He says: 'That was my favourite show and from the age of 11, anything I wrote I was thinking of it like it was on a screen.'
But the married dad could only dream of being a bestselling author when he grew up on his parents trailer park in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario.
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In the early 70s when he was 16, Linwood ended up running the place following the sudden death of his father. He recalls: 'My mum managed it, but I did like, 90 per cent of the work. Including the daily task of burying fish guts, from the fisherman who had gutted their catch.
'I had to haul it out into the woods and bury it. So on days when the writing doesn't go well, I always think it could be worse. I could still be burying fish guts.'
Linwood left the trailer park to begin a long career in newspapers until the publication of his first novel No Time for Goodbye in 2007 - which became an instant international bestseller.
But now with his first horror novel he's hoping to emulate pal Stephen. The model train enthusiast says: 'My book starts off with a train set because it just doesn't seem fair to me that in the horror genre, when it comes to toys, it's always dolls that get to be evil or maybe a little mechanical monkey or a rocking horse.
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'So I thought, 'I wonder if I could make toy trains scary?'. I want this book to be able to do for toy trains what Chucky did for dolls and or what Stephen King did for clowns.'
Whistle by Linwood Barclay is out now in hardback priced £20 and in audio and ebook from HarperCollins.
For more info on the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, visit the website.