Friday, November 29, 2024

And the winner of the Saltire Prize is......



As some of you may know, I started writing at the age of 'quite old' after I fractured my back and ended up in hospital for a very long time. Before that I hadn’t written a word of fiction. By the time I was back on my feet, literally in this case, I had written over quarter of a million words. They ended up becoming books 1 and 2.   'Absolution' starts off with a female lying in their bed having everything done for them. And it wasn’t until much later somebody pointed out that it had been written by a female in bed having everything done for them. 

The answer to your unasked question is a Papermate pen and a clipboard because you can write whilst lying on your back.

                                             

                                                    Ajay getting her award.

Apropos, of absolutely nothing, the story was  inspired by some lines from the Waterboys song A Girl Called Johnny.... "A girl who discovered her choice was to change or be changed."

So if we take a timeline from me being in hospital to me appearing in the British Embassy in Berlin next month as a sort of Scottish tartan noir cultural ambassador(??)  many people along that timeline have pushed me, prodded me, encouraged me, slapped me about etc but none more so than the lady who won the Saltire award last night... Ajay Close. 

My memory is quite hazy and sometimes my imagination just fills the gaps but this is the story.

When I had finished my quarter of a million words but wasn't quite strong enough to be back at work full time, I joined the afternoon writers' group in the local library. There was stunned silence when I read the opening of Absolution... 'White nothing but white, nothing but the rhythmic breathing of life.'

The writer in residence basically told me to go away and come back on the Thursday night when the audience would be slightly tougher. ( Much tougher to be accurate ) Weirdly, I am now in charge of fiction in that writers' group, or so I think.

                                      

                                 Ajay, insert joke re light at the end of the tunnel!

Back in the day, the council paid for a writer in residence to take writing groups. They are generally authors, who like to give something back to the community.  Then along came Ajay who I think has a PhD in the works of Larkin- I might have made that up but I don't think so. She was an award winning journalist in the more intellectual end of print media. And a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge ( I suspect it was Cambridge), and generally a mega intelligent human being. The sort of person who can tell you that something is crap but can also tell you how to put it right. As a writer she is very literary, working on political themes. 

She once read my whole typescript for me, and once she had slapped that about a bit, she suggested I send it to Jane Gregory who is the agent for Val McDermid and Anne Cleeves, Minette Walters etc  and so my writing career was born. 

I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t turned up that night or if Ajay had never taken the job. She now works up in Perth. I remember meeting her other half at some thing we were doing together and he was very patient in explaining to me what steampunk was. I had no idea.

                                             

                                     Ajay's writing really impressed John Le Carre.

                                          What more do you need to know.

Anyway, Ajay  has always been a beautiful writer, shades of Donna Tartt about the way she writes but without the twirly bits if you get my meaning. The book that won the Saltire for her is not about the Yorkshire Ripper, it's about the women living in Leeds during that time, different stories about the different women and what it was actually like. Much more literary then crime. 

In fact, the book is totally about the quiet heroic women who went about their business during that time and fought back. And fought back against the police who, with the distance and judgement that  time allows, made some bad decisions.

For those that don't know, the police at that time advised women to stay in as they couldn't catch the guy who was murdering women - thirteen in all. Famously the floor of the incident room nearly collapsed due to the weight of the paperwork.

 Here's a review "This novel successfully evokes the atmosphere of the late 70's, early 80's. It brought back that time very clearly with skilful detail and realistic dialogue. It's a page turner because of the tension around the activities of the serial killer, who is reminiscent of Peter Sutcliffe, but it is the women in the feminist group who will stay with you after you've read this book. They were brilliantly written and startling and captivating."

And just to end with a story, I was promoting this book to a patient who said they were doing social work training at the time "The Ripper" was active and because of what was going on and the fact that she was often out at night, her husband used to drive her from home visit to home visit. Three times he got a knock on the window of his car from the boys in blue, "What exactly are you doing here, sir?"

 Congratulations Ajay, I hope it soars!!

Caro

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