The Sir Horace Gentleman Interview

It's no secret that my novel, Ghost Town takes its name from the single by the Specials that, for many, was the soundtrack of 1981. So for the second of my series of interviews with people involved in the real-life events behind the novel, it's a particular honour introduce a member of the band that was for a time synonymous with Coventry: bassist, HORACE PANTER, otherwise known as Sir Horace Gentleman.

Like me, you first came to Coventry as a student in the 1970s. Can you describe what the city was like back then?

"Sir Horace Gentleman"

I was a student from 1972-75 and came from a small market town.  From the off, we were worried that Coventry was a violent place; it had that reputation. I lived in a house in Bramble Street and from the back bedroom window we could see the hordes of away fans being frog-marched by the police from the train station to the Coventry City football ground on Highfield Road. 

During the punk era you could see a band almost every night of the week - I got swept up in that.

What was your first introduction to Ska? How did that come about? What kind of music were you listening to before that?

I started by listening to the pirate radio stations in the 60s then John Peel at the BBC. The first single I bought was by The Byrds; the first album was ‘Freak Out’ by The Mothers of Invention. I was very impressionable on those days.  

By the time I got to Coventry, I was into Free, The Doors, Fleetwood Mac - blues/rock. I got into soul music - Tamla Motown and Booker T and the MGs. I didn’t play reggae before I joined The Specials and we didn’t start playing ska until Christmas 1978. Ska was like blues, but the guitar played the off-beat, so for me, it wasn’t that much of a challenge. Reggae was harder to play.

What do you think it was that made Ska take root in Coventry in particular?

Ska, along with soul, was the music of the mods and by the time The Specials rose to prominence there was something of a mod revival going on. Coventry, I have now realised, was a multicultural city before multiculturalism existed.  This worked for musicians as well. You got the gig because you were a good guitar player, not because you were the ‘right’ colour.

The Two-Tone label stood squarely for anti-racism. Yet there was sometimes a disturbingly ambiguous relationship with a certain section of the fans - with gigs sometimes attracting skinheads who weren’t exactly ‘on message’. How hard was that to deal with?

Horace Panter today

Racially-motivated violence at Specials' concerts was very rare. I can think of three concerts in our entire career where this happened and it was during our 1980 ‘More Specials’ tour.  The main problem at our shows was young, over-exuberant males suffering from the effects of alcohol and football partisanship. Also, you had to know your skinhead: original and into ska/soul music; gay, or ultra-right!

Black and white kids alike saw Two Tone as ‘their’ sound. But what about young British Asian kids in Coventry? Sukhbender Singh’s play ‘Concrete Jungle’ suggests they, too, identified with the music.  Did you used to see them at Two Tone gigs?

Our concerts were predominantly attended by whites. We bemoaned the fact that there were not more black/Asian fans. There were some, but a very small minority. At that time though, ska was seen by most young people in the black community as being music for old men so it wasn’t groovy.

In Coventry young Asians hadn’t quite found their feet as their culture conflicted with local culture; also, they had reason to be nervous of the skinhead uniform. They did seem to like the music though as it later influenced the emergence of Bangra music which also started in Coventry.

My novel covers the period in the spring and summer of 1981, when the student Satnam Singh Gill was murdered in broad daylight in the city centre. The resulting protests sparked violent battles between skinheads and Asian kids. The Specials’ response to the violence was to organise a Concert for Racial Harmony in the Butts Stadium. My memory of that time is that something in the city changed afterwards. There was a release of tension. Certainly it’s true that, almost alone among English cities, Coventry did not experience riots that summer. How did the concert come about? And do you have a sense of what pulled the city back from the brink?

I remember Coventry as a ‘grimmer than usual’ place in 1981, but I viewed my world through ‘rock star’ tinted glasses back then. We were aware of racial tensions in the city, not helped by the growing presence of the National Front and the murder of Satnam Singh Gill. It was obvious we had to do something about the racial tensions in the city and this was the best way to do it. 

The weather wasn’t great but it didn’t rain. Attendance wasn’t that good; I think people were wary about the whole place becoming a focal point for rival factions to congregate and cause trouble, but they didn’t. The National Front had threatened to show up but, again, they didn’t. It was definitely worth it. As you have noted, there was no repeat of the civil disobedience that infected other British cities in the summer of 1981. It would be nice to think we had a part in that. 

[Follow this link to see photographs from The Specials' Concert for Racial Harmony, held in the Butts Stadium, Coventry on 20th June, 1981: http://thisthen.co.uk/bands/specials/festival-against-racism/?nggpage=2 ]

How has Coventry changed since those days?

The factories have closed.
The pubs have closed.
The independent stores have closed.
The precinct has been rebuilt (badly).
Horizon Studios got knocked down and they build the Central Six shopping mall.
The Polytechnic became a University and has expanded dramatically.
I daren’t even mention the football team!

I jokingly say ‘Coventry: European city of low self-esteem - 35th glorious year’ but it’s a joke! If you’re from Cov, you’ll get it.*

That would have something to do with Coventry City winning the  FA Cup in 1987? Ah, the glory days! Thank you, Horace.

Read more about Horace Panter on http://www.horacepanterart.com/

The Brixton Bard Interview: Part I

How DJ Yardman Irie Became Author Alex Wheatle

My novel, Ghost Town, is set in 1981. It begins on the day of the New Cross Fire and ends on the day of the Royal Wedding, spanning the time of the Brixton riots. The main part of story is located in Coventry, where violent clashes were taking place between skinhead and Asian youths. But Brixton and the events unfolding there play a small but crucial role.

I am therefore thrilled to introduce Alex Wheatle, author of East of Acre Lane and one of my inspirations when I was working on that part of the story.

Alex, you were living in Brixton at the time of the 1981 riots. Can you tell me a bit about who Alex Wheatle was back then, and what his experience of the riots was?

I spent most of my childhood in a children’s home in Surrey so when I moved to a social services unit in Brixton in 1977, it was a bit of a culture shock for me. I fell in love with reggae at that point and I reclaimed my identity but I couldn't believe the violence and threatening behaviour of the police! I was very much like any other young black teenager at that time - trying to find my way in the world, wanting to go to the best parties, trying to imitate the best reggae singers of the day.

From when I arrived in Brixton in 1977, the tension between the police and young blacks was mounting. I heard stories of police brutality all the time. The police brought in 'Operation Swamp' a new initiative on Stop and Search, in the early months of 1981.  Me and many friends of mine were sometimes stopped three or four times a day. I think it was the Friday (10th April) 1981 when I was shooting pool in a pub just off Brixton Hill. A young black guy came running in and he was alleging that another young black man had been stabbed to death by the police on the Front Line (Railton Road) 

The rumour that a police officer stabbed a young black man to death swept the whole of Brixton that Friday night. There was a call for action or for some kind of response. Everyone I knew went down to central Brixton knowing something or other would kick off. Many wanted confrontation. Central Brixton was packed with police and many young blacks on the Saturday morning (11th April) The tension slowly mounted throughout the morning.

Then, the police attempted to arrest a cab driver whose nickname was Wadada.  He was an innocent man but the police manhandled him. People started protesting and then, a man called Johnny Brixton, launched the first blow of the Uprising, by punching a police officer.  The battle started at that point with young black men like myself wanting to 'protect' the Front Line area of Brixton from the police.  I saw the first molotiv cocktails in mid afternoon...

How did that Alex Wheatle turn into Alex Wheatle the writer?

Following the 1981 Brixton Uprising, I served a prison term for resisting arrest, assaulting police officers, etc and during my sentence I was encouraged to read. I devoured authors like CLR JAMES, CHESTER HIMES, RALPH ELLISON, RICHARD WRIGHT.

When I finished my term, I became a DJ for a reggae sound system I had built with friends of mine. We called it Crucial Rocker and I was the MC/lyricist. My performances were terrible when I first began but when I found the discipline to write or work on my lyrics every day, I steadily improved. My DJ name was Yardman Irie and for the first time in my life people were commenting that I was actually good at something.

I continued my reading and it actually helped to widen my vocabulary which was useful to me when I sat down and wrote lyrics. I was also searching for books that reflected the lives of my friends and myself. I only came across the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson that spoke for me. At this time, I never had the dream of becoming a writer - instead I wanted to be a reggae star!

After many years, I decided that if I cannot find a book that I can relate to in terms of my own experience then I'd better write it myself. Brixton Rock was born in about 1995 when I first put biro to A4 lined paper. It was finally published in 1999 by BlackAmber Books following many rejections from other publishers and agencies. Wanting to tell the story of Brixton 1981 through a West Indian family and employing my own memories and experiences, I started work on EAST OF ACRE LANE in the fall of 1999.

You wrote East of Acre Lane twenty years on.  Why then? Was it hard, as a black writer dealing with a controversial subject, to find a publisher? Or was the time just right for that book?

In fact it was a good time to be a black author in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Not so good now because the industry seem to want Zadie clones who have just stepped out of Oxbridge. I believe there's room for every type of black writer in the UK, if only the industry allowed it.

The X-Press in the mid 1990s demonstrated that there was an audience for books written from black perspectives. Courttia Newland's The SCHOLAR had gained critical acclaim in 1997. Mainstream publishing was now looking at black writing to include in their lists, so when I delivered EAST OF ACRE LANE to my agent, there were 3 or 4 publishers who wanted to publish it. 

Where in Brixton Rock I reined in my 'Brixton dialogue' a touch, as I wasn't sure how it would be received, in EAST OF ACRE LANE I really went for it and I think because of that it gave it a raw authenticity that the critics loved.

It was a good time to publish a book in 2000/2001 about the Brixton of 1981 - about 20 years had passed since the Uprising and I believe there was an interest to hear the black perspective from that time rather that the perspective of the media, politicians, etc.

Music plays a massive part in East of Acre Lane. In fact, I believe you wrote some of the Yardman Irie lyrics at the time of the riots and revived them for the book. Tell me about the relationship between the book and its ‘soundtrack.’

I came from a sound system background. I built a sound with friends of mine and I was the MC. When I wrote lyrics back then, I always worked with music playing in the background - usually reggae. I always had a Brixton suitcase booming out classic reggae.

When I started writing novels I didn't change this approach. For example, the title EAST OF ACRE LANE came from me listening to Augustus Pablo's seminal album EAST OF THE RIVER NILE. I also wanted to give a nod to the people I hustled with, walked street with, partied with, played music with and so on - that's why I introduced the musical references. And in the back of the mind was the hope that if somebody was out there who wanted to adapt EAST OF ACRE LANE into a film script, the soundtrack was already there!!!

Thank you, Alex.  Fascinating to know where the names comes from, by the way. I can remember when I first came across the book, over ten years ago, I imagined the name was an echo of Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Part 2 of the Brixton Bard interview – in which Alex Wheatle reflects on how things have changed since 1981, is coming soon.

Up Close and Distant:

On writing about times and cultures not one’s own

A few years ago, I read Peter Ho Davies’wonderful novel, The Welsh Girl, set in North Wales during the Second World War. In the midst of a critical scene, the eponymous Welsh girl, under great duress and trying to stop someone doing something, says in Welsh, ‘nargois.’

Now, like Peter Ho Davies, I grew up with one Welsh-speaking parent, hearing Welsh around me but never learning to speak it properly. When I read the word ‘nargois,’ I could immediately hear the sound of the word in my mother’s voice. Phonetically, it was perfect. But something about it bothered me. I did some ferreting about and discovered three things.

First of all, the word we were both thinking about is not spelt ‘nargois’ but ‘nag oes.’ Secondly, it probably wasn’t the right word for the situation anyway. Welsh is a strange language, with no simple way of saying ‘no.’ You always have to say, “no, he hasn’t,” or “no, I don’t,” or whatever is appropriate in the context. In this case, what the Welsh Girl should have said was “Paid!” meaning ‘don’t!’ What she actually said was “No, I haven’t.”

The third thing I discovered was that Peter Ho Davies had written an article in the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature Alumni Newletter 2010, in which he talks about his response to a reader who wrote pointing out the error. It wasn’t the only minor error in the text to have come to light after publication, he says, but it was, “the one that really nags, the one that nibbles away at the book’s particular authority over Welshness.”

It was with Davies’ experience in mind that I set out to find someone with a Punjabi-speaking South Asian background to comment on the manuscript for my novel, Ghost Town. The book is set, in part, among the British Asian community in Coventry – something I have no obvious ‘authority’ to write about. I have even used fragments of Punjabi – a language I don’t speak at all.

As an indie author, I have no publisher to help me with editorial support. The integrity of my manuscript is entirely down to the decisions I make during its preparation for publication. It's up to me to find the right people to work with to ensure that the book is not spoilt by any embarrassing (or worse, offensive) errors or cultural misunderstandings.

I was fortunate that, earlier this year, I’d met Kristine Landon-Smith, through her work with Freedom from Torture. Landon-Smith was, until recently, co-director of Tamasha Theatre, a group  set up in 1989 to showcase Asian-influenced theatre. It was Tamasha that first brought Ayub Khan Din’s brilliant East is East to the stage. Landon-Smith put me in touch with artistic director and co-founder of Tamasha Theatre, Sudha Bhuchar, who agreed to read the manuscript.

So was it worth going that extra mile to get things right?  Absolutely! I am pleased to say, I’d made far fewer serious errors than I expected. The silliest, probably, was knowing that ‘beta’ and ‘beti’ were endearments for male and female respectively, but not realising that they meant, literally, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ and were therefore entirely inappropriate between a husband and wife! Not catastrophic, maybe, but enough to spoil the scene’s authenticity.

Bhuchar also helped me add one or two vivid phrases – my favourite being, “Chak de Phate”, which means “raise the floorboards” – a rousing call used to get people dancing the Bhangra.

But most of all, she gave me confidence that I wasn’t being stupidly presumptuous to try and write about a culture not my own.

 An Author's Responsiblity

Just what is an author’s responsibility when it comes to writing about characters ‘distant’ from herself? I put the question to both Sudha Bhuchar and Peter Ho Davies.

“Authenticity implies a kind of straight jacket,” Bhuchar says. “It is more about making people uniquely themselves. I would say when a writer is from a background which is different to that or their characters, then it is their responsibility to get under the skin of those people, but also to check the nuances of speech, language, dialect and so on.”

Davies brought up a different point, in terms of authenticity of portraying historical events. For him, there are three strands to this – how ‘ethically charged’ a particular issue is, how historically distant, and how ‘fictionally distant’ – i.e. how many times it has been portrayed in the past.

“Getting something wrong, even accidentally, about the Holocaust, say, is an ethically charged issue,” says Davies. “On the other hand, at the other end of the scale, when I've written about historical figures like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I've felt much freer, in part because they've already been so fictionalized as to pass from the territory of history into that of legend.

“All of which is to say that the factual burden on a piece of fiction has a lot to do with what it purports to represent. If, say, it's the first representation of some ‘real’ event the burden is different than if it's the tenth or hundredth (in which case it’s in dialogue not only with the original ‘reality’ but also with intervening versions of that reality).

“I've been using the movie Zero Dark Thirty as a short-hand example of this. Some of the criticism (and perhaps praise) it received, I'd argue, came its way because, as the first depiction of those events, it seems (temporarily) definitive. In ten years, when those events have been depicted several times over, our relation to the first movie might be different, I suspect.”

The question of historical and fictional distance was of particularly relevance to me. The events in Ghost Town happened over thirty years ago and  fall into two strands. The smaller element of the book takes place in Brixton. The Brixton riots have been written about many times – in both fiction and in non-fiction – from the Scarman Report to Alex Wheatle’s novel East of Acre Lane. The media revisits the riots and their causes on every major anniversary.

On the other hand, the main part of the book takes place in Coventry, against the background of violent clashes between skinhead and Asian youths. Little known outside Coventry, these events have been portrayed twice, to my knowledge: in Bob Eaton’s play, Three Minute Heroes, at Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre in 2000, and in the radio play by Sukhbender Singh, Concrete Jungle, broadcast on the BBC Asian Network in 2011. For most of the people who read Ghost Town, this may well be the first version they encounter.

I only lived tangentially through those events. Much of what I know was gleaned from comparatively thin newspaper accounts – the rest I filled in from my imagination. Inevitably, not every detail will be historically accurate – nor would it necessarily be right to try and do so in a piece of fiction.

So what is the writer’s responsibility?

Do your research, yes. Check your facts, yes. But ultimately, find that core of truth within the facts and portray that truth as honestly and sensitively as you know how.

Going Feral

“The truth is, it ain’t just a race thing.  They talk like it is, but really and truly it’s black against white, young against old, authorities against the rest... There’s bare reasons for feeling vexed right now.”

I have just finished reading Polly Courtney’s remarkable new book, Feral Youth.

Feral Youth is story of Alesha – a fifteen year old from Peckham in South London.  At the start of the book, Alesha is living under the radar, dodging social services, gang violence and her alcoholic mother. But she has a roof over her head, a friend she owes everything to, a youth centre that provides an occasional refuge, and a ‘rep’ that provides some flimsy protection on the streets.  

In the course of a few short weeks over the summer of 2011, even those are taken away.  No wonder Alesha’s angry.  Angry enough that when messages start crowding onto her phone, telling her riots are kicking off all over south London, she is ready to take revenge on the whole self-satisfied world she sees around her.

Only, it’s beginning to look as if the one person she can really trust isn’t from the streets at all.  She’s Alesha’s eccentric former music teacher, Miss Merfield – and she’s trying to tell Alesha there’s another way out.

Courtney has broken some taboos in writing this book. First of all – as many people already know – she is the self-published writer who gained a coveted traditional publishing deal, only to ditch it when she realised she was being shoe-horned into writing books she didn’t really want to write.

To cap that, she has written the book her agent told her not to, the one that was too ‘niche’.  (“How niche are young people?” Courtney demands at the launch.)

Finally, she is a young, white, middle-class woman, writing in the voice of a homeless, mixed-race teenager from South London.  “You can’t possibly be authentic,” she was told, when she mooted the idea.

Polly Courtney at the launch of Feral Youth

Courtney refused to be put off.  Motivated by her own anger at the ill-informed responses to the 2011 riots in British cities, she spent time with girls from Westwood College in Croydon, learning from their point of view what it was like to be a teenage in South London today, how they saw the riots and the reasons behind them – and most of all, listening to their voices and learning how they spoke to one another.

When the riots kicked off in August 2011, I was away on an oh-so-middle-class family holiday in Cornwall.  I looked on from a distance, seeing events unfold on television, reading about then in the newspapers. What I struck me in those first few days was the way commentators were contrasting the supposed ‘mindlessness’ and ‘criminality’ of the 2011 rioters with what they now chose to cast as the ‘legitimate beefs’ of 1981 Brixton rioters.

What?  Did no one remember the initial response to the Brixton riots – before the Scarman Report shed a chink of light on the causes?  Did no one remember Thatcher saying: “No one should condone violence. No one should condone the events … They were criminal, criminal.”

And did no one think, even for a moment, that this generation might also have legitimate reasons to be angry?

Reasons like a dysfunctional drugs policy that criminalises small time users while leaving those that sell the drugs to exert their own warped rule over the streets? Like youths given exemplary sentences for petty crimes while those they are told stole millions sit pretty?  Like the very, very little the poorest in society have being taken from them, budget cut by budget cut, while the richest must be ‘incentivised’ to go on working here?

We think so much has changed, but in truth Alesha’s Peckham has more in common with Dickens’ Seven Dials than it has with the modern day leafy suburbs just a few streets away. And just as in Dickens’ day, I suspect that it may be class prejudice, not race, that is most deeply entrenched in British society.  Combine the two, and you get a toxic mix that poisons the lives of kids like Alesha.  But it’s the demonization of the ‘underclass,’ the wilful failure to imagine life beyond the ordered security of a well-paid existence, that does the most damage and will be the hardest to root out. 

Reading Feral Youth brought back all the anger I felt in those weeks following the 2011 riots.  At the end of it, I was crying. Aching for the Aleshas of this world. There is no doubt that Alesha is at times her own worst enemy.  There were points where I wanted to reach into the pages of the book and shake her for not saying aloud what was going through her head.  But Alesha can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to her.  Everything in life has taught her to say nothing, to trust no one.

Deanna Rodger

Feral Youth is an astonishing achievement.  I have nothing but admiration, both for Courtney’s courage in taking on a story like Alesha’s, and for her integrity in recognising that if it was going to be done it had to be done properly, and that meant working with people on the streets – the kids themselves, and the small groups and charities that work every day on a shoestring budget to try and give them a hand up. 

I can’t judge how authentic the end result is – but others can.  South London poet Deanna Rodger was so impressed enough by what Courtney had achieved, she leapt at the chance of playing Alesha in the book trailer, and to read the opening of the book in Alesha’s voice at the launch party. Sonya Thomas, one of the researchers of Reading the Riots, wrote: “If you want to understand why so many young people took to the streets two summers ago, read this book.” Gary Trowsdale, of the Damilola Taylor Trust, wrote:  “Seeing the world through the eyes of youth, as Polly has achieved in this novel, is something that politicians and leaders of industry need to do.”  

Such is the lack of imagination, the lack of empathy, I’ve seen from politicians to date, I fear the response would be, “See, they are feral, and we blame the parents.” But Alesha deserves better.  Like Celie from The Color Purple, hers is the voice of a barely literate teenager, reaching out to us from a world we’d prefer to pretend doesn’t exist.  But as long as we go on turning a blind eye – it will go on existing.

Perhaps one of the best things that could come from the writing of this book would be for one of the kids from the streets to be inspired to write their own story.  If only there were more Miss Merfields around to teach the Aleshas of this world to trust their own voices. And more people willing to sit up and listen when they do speak out.

You can read more about Polly Courtney and Feral Youth, watch the book trailer, or click to purchase the book at www.pollycourtney.com - where you can also now download the audiobook of Feral Youth, read by Deanna Rodgers.

Echoes: a Post for Refugee Week

Too often, lately, when I listen to the news, I hear echoes from 1981.

I was living in Coventry back then, and the year didn’t start well.  A lot of violence was being stirred up against the then relatively new Asian community - many of whom were refugees from East Africa.  That spring, a Hindu temple was firebombed.  A school girl was attacked with a machete.  And two people – a student and a young doctor – were murdered in broad daylight.

The murder of the student provoked a huge protest movement.  On the May Bank Holiday, hundreds of people marched through Coventry, along the route the young man had fled for his life. When they reached Broadgate, in the city centre, they had to walk between massed ranks of skinheads giving Nazi salutes. As the front of the march entered a square near the cathedral, the tail became embroiled in a pitched battle with the skinheads. Mounted police were used to charge the crowd and break them up.

A few weeks later, riots erupted in a string of British cities.  These were not race riots.  Then, as now, a Recession Generation was being left behind.  They had no jobs, no expectations, and their way of life was being demonised in the media and by the police.  They turned their anger on the authority figures they saw as reinforcing those messages.

God knows what might have happened if that violent overspill of emotion had reached Coventry while feelings were still running so high.  But for some reason, it never did.  Coventry remained one of the few English cities untouched by the riots. 

Some of the credit for that must go to The Specials, the Coventry band whose single, Ghost Town, became the anthem of that summer.  Already known for their message of racial harmony, The Specials organised a free music festival that palpably diffused tensions.  But much of the credit goes to the ordinary decent people of Coventry, who looked into the abyss and chose to take a step back.

I have a copy of the Coventry Evening Telegraph from the day after the battle between the skinheads and the protest marchers. It shows a group of men in suits, standing on some steps overlooking the procession.  The Telegraph identifies them as senior members of various Far Right groups. As so often, in so many places, the fears and frustrations of a disadvantaged generation were being fed and manipulated by those who had their own twisted reasons to provide them with a scapegoat. 

Some time that summer, people stopped listening to them, and they lost their power.

Scapegoats come in all shapes and sizes. But what we should fear is not race, or religion or immigration or asylum seekers.  What we should fear, what we should always fear, is fanaticism, whatever ideology it chooses to cloak itself in.

And the best antidote to fanaticism is the hand of friendship, holding out the sincere desire to understand.

In the course of this year’s Refugee Week, I attended the launch of a book by Jade Amoli-Jackson, a refugee from different generation of East African turmoil.  You can read about her book, Moving a Country, and about Jade’s extraordinary story, on the Words with Jam blog.

My novel, Ghost Town, set against the background of these events in Coventry, will be published later this year.

Turning the Tables

I just wrote a rejection letter to a publisher.

I have to admit it was kind of satisfying. Through a long chain of events that was probably nobody’s fault, I had been kept dangling for two years.  Passed from pillar to post, promised that this time it would be different, told that I was going to hear soon.  This time.  Definitely.

Earlier this year, I gave them a deadline.  (You can take that as the first real stirrings of the Indie Author within me.) 

“Given how protracted this process has already been,” I wrote, “would it be reasonable to request that you get back to me not later than 1^st June?”

1^st June, as it happens, was the day that my novella, Gift of the Raven, was published as part of Triskele Books summer launch.  We had a party in Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road. (What better venue could there be for a book launch?)  

Standing there, looking at the display of Triskele books, hearing people’s comments, I knew – if there had been any doubt in my mind before – this was the way I wanted to publish my novel too.

So today I wrote a rejection letter.

“Dear X ... I asked if I might receive a response from you, one way or another, no later than 1st June. As this date has now passed, I would like to thank you for your interest in my work, but withdraw it with immediate effect, in order to pursue other options.”

I won’t tell you who the publisher was, because I don’t bear them any rancour.  I have some idea of the kind of pressures that editors and agents are under from the big global mega-corps that either own their businesses already or are trying to gobble them up.  Publishing is no longer first and foremost about finding and nurturing talent, about allowing readers time to discover new voices, about supporting authors’ careers.  I’m not saying those things don’t still happen – they do, of course they do.  But they happen in smaller and smaller pockets because too many in those big global mega corps think of books as commodities and authors as production lines.  They don’t open up new production lines unless they’re sure that they’re going be profitable, and they shut down those that turn out not to be. It’s just business.

Maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot.  Maybe I’m cutting myself off from a level of marketing and distribution I can’t hope to emulate as an indie author.  Maybe.  But I will choose when I publish my book.  I will decide what it’s called and what is on the cover.  I will determine how long it remains on sale to readers.  I won’t have the help and advice of a traditional literary editor, but neither will my ideas be overruled by some anonymous marketing professional from a supermarket chain.

I feel liberated.

Tale of a Well Travelled Book

Sixty years ago, just before they were married, my uncle gave my parents a copy of Ronald's Searle's Back to the Slaughterhouse. This was the third collection of St Trinian's cartoons, but it also included many of his lesser known cartoons, with an edge of political satire or social commentary, as well as some he'd combined with verses by Kaye Webb.

Years later, the book travelled with my parents to Canada when they emigrated, and lived on the bookshelves in our basement, where I discovered it as a teenager. When Searle died, last year, I found I could recall its yellow dust jacket and bring to mind in almost perfect detail some of my favourite cartoons.

Meanwhile, however, my parents had moved to a smaller place. At some point, no one can quite remember how, they gave the book away and it was passed from hand to hand until it ended up on a charity bookstall at the local farmers' market. There, by sheer coincidence, it was picked up by a friend of my parents who, reading the old inscription from my uncle, guessed to whom it must have belong.

Last spring, I made my first trip to Toronto in a decade, and happened to look up this friend of my parents, of whom I had been very fond. She tells me, "You'll never guess what I picked up at the Farmers' Market a few months ago." And I tell her, "I can't believe it - I've been thinking about that book."

And so now the book I loved so much as a child is back in my hands again, just as if the god of lost books had been keeping track of it all along.

First Published on the Words With Jam blog