Irvine Welsh is writing a romantic novel

Irvine Welsh has revealed he is working on a romance novel.

The Trainspotting author, 65, said the book was about “toxic masculinity guys” being blindsided by finding love.

Speaking to an audience at The Edinburgh International Book Festival, he said: “I’m doing a kind of romance novel now.

“[It’s] a novel of kind of horrible toxic masculinity guys who fall in love for the first time and are totally kind of blindsided by it.

“Not with each other, although maybe there is a hint of that in one of the relationships.”

Asked if he was now reading a lot of romance novels to familiarise himself with the genre and help the writing process, he said: “Every genre has its rules basically… they impose themselves whether you like them or not but it’s good not to see them at the start.

“It’s good to just jump in to write as purely as you can and then eventually you think to yourself ‘well this makes sense, that makes sense’ and you realise you are sort of obeying the sort of diktats of the genre in some way.”

Welsh said he was also working on several film and television projects including a show about Trainspotting character Francis Begbie, with Scottish crime writer Jenni Fagan involved in the scriptwriting.

He said: “We’re talking to directors now. We have scripts and we’ve just been trying to get that on the go.”

Welsh said his latest book, Resolution, was “by far the best” in his Crime trilogy of novels.

The first two – Crime and The Long Knives – have already been adapted for TV starring Scots actor Dougray Scott as cop DI Ray Lennox. Welsh said that if Resolution is made into the third series, he could then “close the book” on the trilogy.

He said: “I think so, yeah. I don’t want to create a kind of Oor Wullie type detective that’s going around 30 years from now.

“You have to come up with something interesting for that one character…. There’s other characters.”