I Predict a Riot

This is the one where the name ‘change’ kicked in – i.e. ‘Colin’ was dropped from the covers and the publicity material - it’s really a marketing thing, trying to get the titles to a whole new audience (not that there’s anything wrong with the old one, you’re all just lovely) and building something of a brand.

The book actually started off as a serial for the News Letter, a Belfast morning paper. It was just after I wrote ‘Belfast Confidential’ and I was looking for something of a challenge, so I started writing it under the title of ‘Belfast City Limits’. It was only supposed to run for a year, but I enjoyed writing it so much that by the time Chapter 15 appeared in the newspaper, I’d already written more than a hundred other chapters. It was also supposed to be just a nice little soap opera set in Belfast - but it quickly changed into something else, so that I was telling multiple stories, some of them quite surreal and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Although people seem to love it, it’s also the one I’ve had most complaints about – because of the LACK of swearing. What swearing there is is ***** out, which is a hangover from the newspaper publication. I just thought it would be fun to keep it in – but most of you seem to hate it and are demanding the return of real and proper swearing. I’ll see what I can ******* do.