SCOTS author Louise Welsh has written eight novels.
Her latest, No Dominion (John Murray £8.99), was published last week.
It’s the final instalment of her Plague Times trilogy about life on a Scots island after most of the world’s population has been wiped out.
IT’S funny how childhood holiday memories result in you going back when you’re an adult, too.
As a child growing up in Edinburgh, my mum used to clean for a consultant in Morningside who had a holiday cottage he kindly let us use.
It was in Aultbea, which is on the shores of Loch Ewe.
It had these amazing sandy beaches and I’ve still got some of the photographs. When you look at them it could be the Caribbean, with my sister Karen and I looking like we’re soaking up tropical sunshine.
But I remember my mum and dad all wrapped up, telling us to take off our jackets and look like it was warm!
It’s an area of the world I’ve been back to many a time. It’s not far from Ullapool where I had a three-year stint being involved in running the Book Festival.
That’s a great place to spend the weekend and after the last time, Zoe and I jumped straight on a ferry on the Monday to explore the islands.
We took in Lewis and Harris, North Uist, Benbecula and Barra before heading back to Oban.
With my writing I’ve been lucky enough to visit more than 20 countries but you still come home to places like those and realise there’s nowhere more beautiful.
I do have a fondness for Germany, though, where I lived for a while.
I stayed in both Berlin and Bamberg, which is about an hour from Nuremberg by train.
It’s one of those places that has such a Disney look about it, that it almost doesn’t seem real.
The architecture is stunning as it’s one of the few places that wasn’t bombed heavily during the war.
It’s very cycle-friendly and it also has a lot of breweries where you can sample the wares sitting in one of the lovely beer gardens.
Bamberg is a really popular place where Germans holiday but I love that it’s really not so well-known elsewhere.
It’s drawn me back for breaks several times since I lived there.
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