Interview
by Pat Black
Booksquawk
speaks to Brendan Gisby, author of Lost Between The Bridges and founder of the
short story site, McStorytellers.com.
Booksquawk: It
would seem that Lost Between the Bridges has an element of autobiography to it
– how much did you draw on real-life experience for the stories?
Brendan
Gisby: That’s an easy one to begin with, Pat.
All the stories in the collection are autobiographical. I think it was Hemingway who advised, “Write
what you know.” For the most part, I try
to follow that advice in my work, writing about real people and actual events
from my life.
B: The stories
revolve around bars and nightlife. How
do you think nightlife has changed in Scotland over the years? Do you see any positive, more cosmopolitan
habits emerging, or is it the same old pint-blootered-fight-chippie-taxi
rigmarole?
BG:
I hate to say it, but I’m probably too old now to answer that fully! However, having lived in both city centre and
small town locations, I can say that Scottish city nightlife has become much
more sophisticated in the last couple of decades. But I don’t think that’s as true of
small-town Scotland, where there are still plenty of dimly lit, spit-and-sawdust
pubs peopled by hard drinkers, local “characters” and wee hardmen.
B: You describe
these as a depiction of “lost years” – and yet they're vital to your
development. Do you ever think how
things might have turned out differently for you in terms of the paths you
took, either as a writer or in life?
BG:
They were definitely formative years, Pat, during which I learnt lessons that
stood me well in the years to come. So I
wouldn’t go back and change one minute of them.
But, yes, I do sometimes think that I could easily have taken a
different path – studying Literature at Edinburgh University, for example, and
going on to become a famous author and a member of the Scottish literati with
an overblown ego. But then I don’t think
I would have liked the person I had become.
I’m happy I remained a working-class rebel!
B: Scotland is
entering a time of change. In so far as
it's possible to provide an answer that's not book-length, what's your feelings
about possible independence and the artist north of the border?
BG:
Pragmatism was one of the lessons I learnt during those formative years. When it comes to the question of Scottish
independence, however, all pragmatism is blown out of the water and my heart
rules. My mother was Irish, the daughter
of a soldier in the Irish Republican Army in 1916 and beyond, so I was brought
up on tales of the struggle for Irish independence, and I recognised from an
early age the cruelty and utter arrogance of the Old Etonian-led English
(sorry, British) Establishment; not the English people, I should stress, but
their Establishment. My vision of an
independent Scotland is of a nation rid forever of that Establishment, together
with the English pound and the sycophancy that surrounds the English
monarchy. Sadly, politics being
politics, I know that vision won’t be achieved.
As
for the impact of independence on Scottish artists, I’m not part of that elite
and I don’t want to be (see “working-class rebel” above), so I couldn’t
possibly comment.
B: Tell us a bit
about McStorytellers, and the Edinburgh eBook Festival.
BG:
McStorytellers is a website dedicated to showcasing the work of
Scottish-connected short story writers.
I set it up over a couple of years ago as a bit of a protest against
other bigger sites where both the authors and the characters of the short
stories they published seemed to occupy a sort of middle-class tweeland. Not surprisingly, therefore, the site is edgy
and irreverent with a distinctly Scottish flavour. Since its launch in 2010, it has published
over half a million words in more than three hundred short stories penned by
some fifty authors, including regular contributors like yourself, Pat, and
fellow-Booksquawker Bill Kirton. And
it’s all for free! Currently the site
receives in excess of ten thousand page views each month. Here’s the link.
McStorytellers
has a residency at the Edinburgh eBook Festival. The Festival is the brainchild of Scots
author and playwright Cally Phillips.
Cally would be able to explain this much better than me, but it’s a
virtual festival running in parallel with the official Edinburgh Book Festival. For authors and publishers, particularly
those who support epublishing, it provides an alternative platform to the old,
staid Festival that is dominated by the self-styled “cultural elite”, who are
still struggling to grasp the whole epublishing thing. The eBook Festival was launched last year to
much acclaim. The 2013 event promises to
be bigger and even more successful.
Here’s the link to the Festival site.
By
the way, McStorytellers and the eBook Festival are jointly hosting a
McCompetition this year called “Being Scots”.
Any Scots-connected short story writers who read this might want to find
out more here.
B: What are you
working on at the moment?
BG:
I seem to have been speaking about my latest work-in-progress for years now,
but it is almost finished – honest, guv!
It’s a novel, a fiction called “The Burrymen War”. As is the case with most of my work, it’s set
in the Ferry, my hometown, and it’s characters are based on real people from
there. While the story is about a
fictional murder that’s committed during the Ferry’s ancient Burryman ceremony,
the real aim of the novel is to demonstrate that religious bigotry and
sectarianism in Scotland aren’t confined to football matches in Glasgow; they
are alive and flourishing all over the country – and have been for hundreds of
years. Anyway, if I was arrogant, I
would say it’s a cross between “Trainspotting” and “The Wicker Man”. But I’m not.
And it isn’t.
Read the book review here.
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