Tune in this Saturday at 2pm for another episode of Hannah’s Bookshelf on North Manchester FM. This week, I’ll be talking to the brill Barrie Condon.

Barrie Condon writes darkly comic thrillers as well as non-fiction. His latest book, The Tethered God, is published by Sparsile Books. Following graduation, and fed up with school in any form, Barrie ran away to sea, his shipping line taking him to some of the choicer trouble spots around the world. This included South Africa at the height of apartheid and Chile just after the violent coup that brought General Pinochet to power. Rich in experience though the seafaring life was, he began to harbour doubts about his long-term prospects after a hurricane in the Atlantic and a major fire on board ship off the coast of Panama. Nursing an ambition to live until the age of forty, he therefore came ashore and eventually became a professor of clinical physics.

Barrie has been a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle for over thirty years and has had novels and short stories published under his pseudonym Fergus Bannon. Now that he’s retired, he doesn’t care what people at work think of a supposedly august scientist writing risqué thrillers, so nowadays he has the courage to publish under his own name. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and two daughters. He travels extensively and, now that he’s had his vaccination, he aspires to return to that and to the pub.

I’ll be talking to Barrie about The Tethered God, his non-fiction works, and about writing in general. And, of course, he’ll be sharing his selections for this week’s Apocalypse Books.

Catch the show on Saturday at 2pm on 106.6FM (if you’re in the North Manchester area) or listen online (if you’re further afield).