When I was a teenager and well into my twenties, there was talk of selling out, and what that might mean for an artist, musician or writer. For Gen Xers like myself, we actively be grappled with this dilemma.
Yeah, you were starving, you wanted your work to be seen, but in order to do that, you had to work with Capitalist Overlords who would take your message, decontextualise it for their own ends, and then pay you that money you so badly needed to keep doing your work.
In response, we fortified DIY—do it yourself culture. We found ways to network and get our messages out in zines, community TV, political punk, and guerilla art. All the while whatever we came up with was quickly eaten and spat out by the dominant culture in a form alien to us.
It all seems pretty quaint now that DIY is blown open, utterly commodified in influencer culture. Selling out is not only about ones’ creative work, it is now about framing a life—the days and moments you are given—as a commodity.
That’s the Big Idea I’m using to justify why I have no decent documentation of my recent tour of Edinburgh promoting Ashes & Stones at Indie bookshops. It doesn’t occur to me to ask, hey, could you take a picture of me doing X? I just kind of hope it happens, but it usually doesn’t.
Now, I’m home, and I must rest. I knew I would be tired after coming home, but it’s always a surprise when it hits, how bone deep the exhaustion goes.
So as I am resting in a new rocking chair I bought to celebrate selling out—I wonder at it. Not only the chair but the selling out. My initial print run sold out less than 3 weeks from its initial publication. Ashes and Stones is now in a second printing. The initial print run was modest—which save trees—but also reflects the publishers’ expectations. This meant that just when I needed to be out in the world promoting the book, the bookshops I was going to had already sold out.
I’ve sold out. Thousands of people now know a lot about me, my disability, grief and witchyness. They know about the women whose lives I’ve uncovered, who never had a choice in their stories being told one way or another. And maybe that’s the last thread of my old self resisting any publicity—that young woman in me that doesn’t trust the system, that sees every deal as a terrible compromise, a potential loss of integrity. I have no conclusions. I’m just sitting here rocking with it.
This is the (scant) documentation of #ashesandstones’ whirlwind tour of Edinburgh, which began with my book launch at the incredible Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh’s radical bookshop. This was the first in-person speaking engagement I’ve had in over twenty years, and the first room full of people I have been in in over four years! I was also welcomed by Portobello Books for a wee signing—the book was almost sold out but a rush shipment from the publisher’s stock arrived just in time. My last stop was to see Rebecca at Night Owl Books in the beautiful village of East Linton. It was Rebecca who told me the book had gone into a second printing. Booksellers and Indie bookshops have championed the book, and this has made all the difference.
There happened to be a professional photographer in Night Owl who took this fantastic picture of Rebecca and I. The places I visited were all shops that welcomed me and accommodated my disability. Opportunities for disabled, rural, working class debut writers are different than those offered to the able bodied, and I’m so grateful to the places that made space for me and the voices of the marginalised women I write about in Ashes and Stones.
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