Incunabulum reviewed in Northwords Now

 

One of the things that has frustrated me most in my writing career over the last thirty years is that I can't persuade publishers to take my novels. Doesn't that just mean you're no good as a writer? I hear you say. Well, maybe. Yet I've won accolades and prizes for my short stories, the memoir I co-wrote was a best-seller, and I've been given writers' bursaries and fellowships. It's bizarre! Rejections are always along the lines of 'You write beautifully, but...' e.g. 'not what we're looking for at the moment' / 'not right for our list at the moment'. 

In 2007, The Daily Telegraph newspaper ran their 'Novel in a Year Competition', judged by author Louise Doughty. I submitted the opening chapters of a post-pandemic novel I was working on, and was thrilled when it reached the longlist and had an extract actually published on their website. (You can still read it there today, though it's behind a paywall now.) I acquired an agent, and he tried his hardest to sell it to publishers on my behalf, but it got nowhere. At that time, I was told my writing 'fell between two stools'. In other words, it was judged to be neither sufficiently literary nor sufficiently commercial. The agent recommended I cut the beginning, starting, instead, with the 'shoot-em-up' scene. Hmm.

Maybe I'm too thrawn to have my novels published in the mainstream. Too stubborn. The thing is, Incunabulum is the opposite of a 'shoot-em-up' kind of novel. While there are action scenes - fight scenes, violence - this is at heart a novel about a woman who yearns to belong: to be loved and to love in return. It's about an older woman who has been emotionally isolated for most of her life, yet when the world around her is devastated by a pandemic, she ultimately finds herself surrounded by familial love and everything that 'home' represents.  

But how to get that published? The agent and I gave up and moved on. Incunabulum lay dormant in my computer files. Until early 2020, when I decided (now aged 64) that I'd nothing to lost and might as well revive it and publish it myself. So I did, with the help of Keith at PotHole Press. We published it a week into the UK Covid-19 lockdown. Did it sell? Hardly at all. Friends and acquaintances bought it and I was overjoyed at their feedback (and reviews on Amazon!), but the literary establishment is closed to self-published or 'indie' authors. It's close to impossible to get the book stocked by the distributors from whom libraries and bookshops obtain their stock. And the newspapers and literary journalists don't take it seriously. After all, if a publisher can't see its merits, why should they?

That's why I am so thrilled today to see that the Scottish literary magazine Northwords Now has reviewed it. Most important of all, Valerie Beattie's review treated my work seriously, discussing the themes that underpin my writing with academic insight and precision. It's impossible for me to describe how valued that makes me feel. So, sales or no sales, indie publishing Incunabulum has been worth it.