About Jamie

I'm Jamie Wallace — a writer, coach and walker based in Argyll.

I grew up in Lowland Scottish town with a Gaelic name and a complicated history. I left. I came back in my imagination. I wrote about it. That's roughly how all of my books begin — with a place that will not leave you alone until you've paid proper attention to it.

I came to writing through walking. Or perhaps I came to walking through writing. The two have always been inseparable for me. Long roads ask long questions. In August 2018 I left Glasgow and flew to Biarritz, stayed a night in Bayonne and then in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and on 3 August began walking the Camino Francés — 500 miles across northern Spain. I arrived in Santiago de Compostela on 5 September. The following day I travelled to A Coruña, planning to rest for a few days. I changed my mind. I walked back instead — along the English Way — and arrived in Santiago on 9 September 2018. My gran's birthday. I did not plan that. On that walk I earned a second Compostela certificate by persuading the Pilgrim Office to accept my photography and blog posts from the Whithorn Way as evidence of prior pilgrimage — the first time they had ever accepted this form of documentation. I regard that as something close to a miracle, and I believe I had some divine support in the room. I have since walked the Portuguese Way in two stages: Lisbon to Coimbra in March 2024, then rejoining at Porto and walking to Santiago de Compostela — arriving on 1 November 2024, All Saints' Day at the Cathedral. I have also walked the Whithorn Way from Glasgow to Galloway, and the West Highland Way. Each of those journeys has produced, or is producing, a book.

I hold an MA with Honours in Gaelic from the University of Glasgow, an MSc in Psychology from the Open University, and qualifications in coaching, NLP and Timeline. I am a professional coach and I run Colmcille Coaching from Argyll. Before coaching, I spent years building something that hadn't existed before — a Gaelic-speaking community in Clydesdale, designed and organised from scratch, with a full language course, an online learning platform, and a public open day in Lanark that nobody had attempted before in that community. The experience of holding a vision others couldn't yet see, and building the coalition to make it real, is where the coaching philosophy was forged. The coaching and the writing feed each other — both are interested in what happens when a person is honest enough about where they have been to understand where they are going.

My first published novel, The Way That Loved Me Back, follows a character called Callum Jackson on the Camino de Santiago. The name is a literary choice — a fictional distance from a real journey. Callum carries something of Gran Jackson in his surname. He carries something of me in everything else.

I self-publish through Jamie Wallace Publishing because I want full ownership of the work — the words, the decisions, the relationship with readers. The goal is to place these books in Waterstones and independent bookshops across Scotland and beyond. That work is in progress. Currently, readers can buy direct or on Amazon and Blurb.

If you have read one of my books and want to say so, I would genuinely love to hear from you. If you are a bookseller interested in stocking them, please get in touch.

Tha fàilte ruibh an seo. Daonnan.
You are welcome here. Always.

Also find me at Colmcille Coaching — professional coaching, NLP practice and consultancy rooted in Argyll, Scotland. [colmcillecoaching.co.scot]