Sir Ian Rankin feels he has “wasted” time living in a world of fictional characters

IAN Rankin believes he has wasted his life living in a fictional World rather than experiencing major events in his own life.

One of Scotland’s most successful authors, whose Inspector Rebus novels based in Edinburgh have sold millions and been adapted for both the stage and screen, Sir Ian said he feels he has “wasted his life” living in a world of fictional characters. He revealed that he has no memory of some major life events during which he was there physically but his mind was elsewhere.

Rankin introduced his best known character, Rebus, in his 1987 novel Knots & Crosses, and has gone on to feature the fictional police officer in a further 24 books.

The novels have sold more than 35 million copies, while Rankin himself was rewarded with a knighthood in the 2022 Birthday Honours for his services to literature and charity.

The Edinburgh-based author opened up about his “weird existence” in the latest episode of Bloody Scotland: The Podcast, in which he also talks of slowing down into semi-retirement.

Asked how it feels looking back 40 years later, over all that has happened to Rebus and in his own life through the books, he replied: “I do feel I’ve wasted my life, really, living in a world of fictional characters.

“I mean, there’s big moments, big beats in my life that I just don’t have any memory of – holidays taken; first days at school for my kids and that sort of stuff. Because in my head I was somewhere else.

“Physically I was there in the room, but in my head I was working out some plot or some plot point or some theme that I wanted to explore in a book, or getting ideas for things.

“So I was kind of present and not present at the same time. It’s a kind of really weird existence.

“So I’ve spent a lot of my life not actually existing in the corporeal world, but just living with these characters.

“You know, in previous centuries they would have put me in an asylum. I’d be in the madhouse, hearing voices and hanging out with invisible friends and all of that, all the things that we writers do.

“It’s been kind of weird.”

Rankin published his first book, The Flood, in 1986, but did not become an overnight success.

When his first Rebus novel was published the following year, Rankin didn’t think it was the first of a series.

He struggled to make ends meet until the eighth novel in the series, Black and Blue, won the Crime Writers’ Association’s (CWA) prestigious Gold Dagger award a decade later in 1997.

Rankin has told how winning the Gold Dagger was the moment that “changed everything”.

The curmudgeonly cop is now one of the most popular characters in Scottish fiction.

Rankin, who turns 66 next month, appreciates the success he has enjoyed, but admitted he is now “slowing down” into semi-retirement.

He tells the Bloody Scotland podcast, created in association with the annual international crime writing festival: “Look, to be a successful writer is phenomenal, so few of us actually do make it in this profession.

“A lot of people fall by the wayside for various reasons, they don’t get the success they deserve. They get fed up of rejection and just decide to go away and do something else.

“When success comes, and it came fairly late for me – it was quite a lot of books before I was a success story – when it did come I relished it, I enjoyed it.

“I do enjoy it. But now I’m at a stage where I’m slowing down.

“I’m looking at all these other writers around me, young writers who are doing really well and doing things with a crime novel that I can’t do or don’t want to do, taking the crime story in different directions and having huge success with it.

“And I think, ‘well Ian, your pension is coming, just put your feet up pal, you’ve done your bit, you’ve done enough’.

“And my wife, Miranda, is very keen, that before dementia sets in and our knees give out, that we should do a lot of travelling.

“The more travelling she has me do, the less writing I can do, because I can only really write the books in Edinburgh or Cromarty – I’ve got a house in Cromarty and I do go up there a lot and write.

“But I can’t write on cruise ships. I can edit or I can sketch out ideas, but I can’t actually physically write a book when I’m on holiday.

“So I think this is Miranda’s way of easing me slowly into at least semi-retirement.”

Rankin reveals he does have plans, however, to commemorate 40 years of Rebus, and revealed he could write another book to celebrate the landmark.

He said: “I mean next year, 2027, is the 40th anniversary of the first Rebus novel and I would like to do something or some things to help commemorate that and celebrate that.

“So I’ve gone back to the early stories and the early books, looking at the 80s, wondering what I can do with this.

“I’m still finding my way, I’ve not done anything yet. But I would like to do something with Rebus that would commemorate that, and I just don’t quite know what.

“I mean, I would imagine a book, but I don’t know.”

Rankin joked: “I was a whippersnapper when I started doing these books and I got a letter a few weeks ago telling me my state pension arrives in May.

“So that’s it, feet up, no more work for Ian. I’ll just be sitting there smoking cigars while my butler brings me my pension cheque.”

This year’s Bloody Scotland international crime writing festival will run in Stirling from 18-20 September.