Sandstone Press

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Posted by Stuart Campbell on 22nd September 2009

Now that the bulldozers have moved into Charlotte Square to scoop up the turf flattened and bleached by thousands of feet during the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it is time to reflect on the experience of being a featured author. It was heady stuff. Being issued with the Author’s Pass on blue lanyard guaranteeing entry to the writer’s Yurt. Self consciously removing it in case I was mistaken for a tosser when browsing in the bookshop. Just resisting the urge to proffer it instead of my pensioner’s pass on Lothian’s buses. Sadly not resisting he urge to wear it in bed hoping that it would work unimaginable aphrodisiacal magic on my clearly star struck partner. A snort of derision and a humphed back. Perhaps I should have worn it around my neck instead.

And why call it a yurt anyway?  Where were the drying goat skins? But given a choice between flowing Highland Park and marginally rancid yak milk there’s a clear winner.

Evidently when Richard Holloway was asked for his idea of heaven he did suggest an eternity spent in the aforementioned yurt would come close. There was though a surfeit of yurt lurkers, an anguished species, the strain of creativity etched on their brows, their eyes on a horizon invisible to mere mortals as they wrested with the challenge of cloning a successful detective. There again it may have been the haemorrhoids playing up.

Eventually I had to stop visiting the book selling tent every half hour to see if anyone had bought a copy of RLS in Love. Were the copies in exactly the same position as they were before? Were all the spines pointing outwards when I last looked? And then it happened. I spotted a little old lady with a copy under her arm. Leaving aside the possibility of her mistaking me for an over zealous in store detective, I approached her, said I was the author, and offered to sign her copy. Bless her, she was delighted and said that she was compiling a literary memorial for her late husband. I found myself on the point of asking ‘Was he a bit of a shagger as well? Mercifully this Turrettes-driven question remained unasked.  I hoped though that she wouldn’t be too distracted by the poems Stevenson wrote when hankering for past lovers.

As my slot, with the delightful and urbane Dairmid Gunn was scheduled for the last day I had plenty of time to do my homework and ordered (free!) tickets for events being chaired by Paul Johnson. I was reassured when one of the authors he chaired was unable to answer a single question from the audience. Paul handled the situation so skilfully he left the impression that her total stage fright was in fact a sequence of meaningful and articulate zen like silences that the audience had been fortunate to witness. I knew I would be in good hands.

Nothing though could have prepared me for the adreleline-fuelled shock of walking, miked up, with Dairmid to the door of the tent and realising it was full. Over two hundred people had parted with good money. I had genuinely assumed that loyal friends and the odd random would be sprinkled throughout the auditorium. It never occurred to me that Sandstone Press would stoop to hiring rent-a-crowd. But so it seemed, except the audience were genuinely appreciative and had come armed with insightful questions. What evidence did I have for suggesting that Stevenson’s relationship with his step daughter may have been more than it seemed? What would RLS have thought about his unloved poems being published? Was he ever satisfied with anything he wrote?

Back in the signing tent, with a whisky at my side procured by a mindful Paul Johnson. The first person in the queue brought me back to earth. She was returning the copy she had previously bought at the launch because it had a crease in it. I was struck dumb for the first time in the evening. A state that persisted when she offered the reflection that ‘There had been too much sex in my talk for the old people in the audience.’ I have thought of many smart retorts since but at the time my gob remained smacked.

I was soon able to recover in the company of friends and family in the Speigletent and was able to savour the sheer pleasure of being part of the EIBF, and the privilege of being Sandstone’s first, but not last, featured author.