6 minute read
THE SCOOP ON THE SCOOP. Cat Walker
Cat Walker started her debut novel in 2006 and it was published this year. She reveals to Jaq Bayles the trials, tribulations and tenacity needed to complete such a project
When the French poet, novelist and dramatist Victor Hugo gave us the quote: “Perseverance, secret of all triumphs,” he could well have been talking about Brighton’s Cat Walker and her journey to becoming a published novelist. Cat’s novel, The Scoop, was published on March 26, just after the Covid-19 lockdown announcement – not the best timing for publicising anything, especially when the very outlets that would normally be its shop window were closed – but she actually started writing it in 2006. “I’d always wanted to write a novel but had never had the patience or inspiration,” says Cat, who is also remembered for writing Honeybees: The Musical - the world’s first lesbian field hockey musical. “I went travelling in 2006. I hesitate to say to it was to find myself because that’s the terrible middle-class cliché of taking a late gap year, but my job was going nowhere and my relationship was going nowhere.” She started writing a ‘blog’ – “basically emails” – stories of things that happen to people when they are travelling alone, and some of her friends told her she should write a novel based on her adventures. “At first I thought I would just collate some emails,” she says, then adds wryly “but that was just wrong. So I started developing the characters I wanted to explore.” She felt inspired by Zen And The Art Oof Motorcycle Maintenance, the fictionalised autobiography of Robert M Pirsig, first
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published in 1974. “I really loved it because the guy was travelling with his son but it was also the experience of his philosophical journey. He had a mental illness, was battling his own inner demons and working those things out.” In The Scoop, published by Red Door Press, the main character, Casey Jones, “chucks in her job, contacts her old schoolfriend, Danny, and they plan a pilgrimage of sorts to find some real meaning in their lives. What she didn’t plan for was an extra passenger in the shape of Danny’s estranged 12-year-old son, Ari, who has problems of his own”. The story is described as an “intense rollercoaster ride through Europe and Asia’s most beautiful and dangerous places, allowing the history and culture they encounter to change the way they see the world, and each other”. Cat didn’t want the book to be “just a fun route, a jolly jaunt in an ice cream van,” and says: “It’s ended up being topical in a way I never thought it would be. The central premise is to be yourself, be a good person, find your identity. There’s a lot of stuff about accepting other people even when they are very different to ourselves, when you’re travelling through other countries looking at different histories. “The world is quite a small place in the sense that people are people and everyone has their own place in the world. There’s that bit in Desiderata [the 1920s prose poem by Max Ehrmann] about being a child of the universe –we all have a right to be here. A lot of the book’s message is around belonging.” Cat wanted the book “to be the story that it was and the main character just happens to be gay and has a backstory”. Her heroine has felt outside of society, struggling with religious parents and her time coming out. “Anyone reading it would see that this a normal life experience for an LGBTQ+ person. As has come to the fore with Black Lives Matter, they go through life with a slight out-of-placeness. I wanted it to be about acceptance of self and others.”
“One of the big messages is to follow your dreams and my big dream was to get it published. I was not expecting all the rejection letters, but then discovered that Zen had been rejected more than a hundred times. But as the letters mounted up I thought perhaps it needed editing,” she laughs. With trying to get the book published having been on her New Year’s Resolution list “for years and years” it seemed to be getting less likely.
But a couple of years before turning 50, she put her foot down. “I decided it’s been ridiculous and I needed to commit time to it or forget it. I basically rewrote, re-edited, crafted and tried to focus on sending it to small, local and independent publishers.” She came across Red Door Press in Sussex, whose “philosophy is to try to take on books that the industry would have published before it focused on bestsellers and the Richard & Judy Book Club”. Cat continues: “I had really decided that was it and then I’d either self-publish or forget the whole thing.” One day about nine months ago she realised she hadn’t heard back from the publishers and gave them a nudge, only to be told they had already sent a request to see the full manuscript, which she had never received. So she duly sent it in then: “They invited me for a meeting at their offices in Haywards Heath and I hadn’t done any research about what I should be asking them – I spent the whole meeting just grinning at them.” Top comic and Brighton resident Zoe Lyons gave the book an endorsement and all was looking good for that March 26 launch. Then, of course, came lockdown, with public bookshops having to close. A half-launch took place on Facebook but Cat wasn’t able to do any of the signings or public events that had been planned. But that hasn’t stopped the book flying off the shelves and Gscene’s Eric Page gave it a glowing review in our last issue.
So what next, now she’s achieved the original dream? “The best case scenario is it becomes a proper bestseller, I sell the film rights and become a writer full-time. I’d like Phoebe WallerBridge to play the main character but she’s a bit too tall and quirky. If I had the time and opportunity I’d love to write another book but the fact I have a two-and-a-half-year-old and run my own business means I have zero spare time. The one thing I have achieved in lockdown is writing a 25-line poem.”
“A wonderful tale of journeys, both geographical and emotional, that will keep you entertained at every turn... Cat Walker is a brilliant storyteller” Zoe Lyons
MORE INFO
Cat Walker, The Scoop, Red Door Press www.reddoorpress.co.uk/books/the-scoop/
Indstagram: thescoopbycatwalker
Cat’s Peregrine Nation, May 2020 has been included in the bestselling anthology Poems For A Pandemic: Voices From The Front Line Of A Global Epidemic (Harper Collins) raising money for NHS Charities Together.
Her poetry has been included in Niederngasse, Poetic Voices, The Sidewalk’s Edge and Clean Sheets and she has a book of love poetry, Holding My Breath To Keep The Love Inside (Trafford Publishing).
Twitter @CatWalkerAuthor D www.catwalkerauthor.com
