Spend time in Edinburgh with a Stand Up Guy and Nina Kaye

Submitted: 11th January 2024

Nina Kaye’s Stand up Guy in Edinburgh

Always a good idea to spend time in Edinburgh. Great city for a date? The city of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Lots of lovely locations to wander around and discover love when you have Nina Kaye as your guide!

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

Nina Kaye

Stand up Guy Nina Kaye It was actually the location and setting that drove the storyline for Stand Up Guy.

Being an Edinburgh based author, whose books are mostly set in and around the city, it felt like a no-brainer to write a romcom that’s set during the Edinburgh festival (which is actually a handful of different festivals that run largely in parallel to each other).

I was also excited to bring the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (known as ‘the Fringe’) to life in a story, having enjoyed this event myself over many years. I’ve seen a lot of Edinburgh festivals come and go, and what I’ve always enjoyed about them is the lively atmosphere, the pop-up food and drink stalls and the comedy.

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

In fact, as I’ve written in the book’s acknowledgments, when I came up with the idea of a struggling Fringe comedian meeting a lonely Edinburgh based young woman, I was really enthused about this storyline – until I realised I’d have to write some stand-up comedy! The idea that someone might read it and say ‘Pah! That’s not funny at all!’ was quite daunting. But then someone close to me pointed out that, of course there would be people who didn’t find it funny, just like not everyone likes the same books or movies or even stand-up comedians. That made me feel a whole lot better.

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

The Grassmarket (c) Nina Kaye

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

Edinburgh is such a beautiful canvas for my books. I feel quite lucky to have it at my fingertips, and I especially enjoyed building this story around the events of the Fringe, which brings such a vibrant atmosphere to the city. However, what you can never plan for as an author, is changing circumstances, especially in the turbulent times we live in. What I discovered once this book was already written, was that the iconic end of festival fireworks that – prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – were always the big finale, have sadly been discontinued after 40 years. Having already written them into my book, I now see this content as a bit of a tribute to them. They provided the perfect setting for one of the key moments in the story, so I’m glad I have them in there.

St Giles Cathedral (c) Nina Kaye

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

I generally use real locations and street names in my books, but the businesses I include (shops, cafes, hotels, bars, etc) are almost always fictional. This allows my readers to follow my characters movements, either recognising the places they’re familiar with, or connecting with them for the first time through armchair travel.

Castle and Princes Street (c) Nina Kaye

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

The places around Edinburgh that appear in the book were partly dictated by the festival focus and partly chosen by me to give my readers an immersive experience of the city. The Old Town (the High Street, Canongate, the Grassmarket, George IV Bridge, etc) and the buzzing festival venues of Bristo Square, George Square Gardens, and latterly, the Pleasance Courtyard, take centre stage. It was also important to me that Lea, my main character, lived right on the edge of all this excitable hustle and bustle. This was to show the stark contrast between the emptiness or her life socially, while she felt like everyone else in the world was out having fun right on her doorstep.

The Meadows (c) Nina Kaye

Map of Locations in Stand up Guy

In short, come to Edinburgh in August and experience the Fringe for yourself! That said, it can be an expensive time to visit and Edinburgh is a great location for a short break at any time of the year. I’d also say that, with the city’s range of festivals attracting around 4 million visitors every year, and a decent portion of those people coming during August, I expect that some of my readers will already have ‘seen’ the setting of Stand Up Guy. Where that’s the case, I hope the story will bring back happy memories of an enjoyable visit to Scotland’s capital at its liveliest time.

Thank you for a wonderful tour in such a wonderful city!