I’m Back: From Outer Space to Buckingham Palace

It’s a beautiful feeling to be back within the welcoming arms of the DAO family. While I was gently told my blog space still exists, I haven’t done any for a while. Now that’s going to change – are you ready for me?!

And why so long? It’s a pertinent question, and one which leads me pertinently into this blog. Now I am close to pensionable age – even though writers rarely retire, and this one certainly won’t – I thought it was a good time to examine aspects of my career. Refreshing those who know me, and introducing myself to those who are new to my work. Whatever our previous connections, I hope you will enjoy latest  context, hindsight and examination.

Recently I met Queen Camilla. Yes, Her Royal Highness. Even as an old anti-monarchist punk, I still dressed up – my version was to do my Frida Kahlo for the Buckingham Palace garden party. This occasion came about through my connection with the marvellous Royal Literary Fund, who have supported me for a while, particularly since my brain traumas in August 2023. The RLF were also the initiators to this piece of mine, commissioned for The Bookseller, the UKs leading publishing trade magazine/platform. The piece went up last December to tie in with Disability History Month and UN International Day of Disabled People.

These achievements brought me the sweet spot highs that come with progress. Such moments sustain me in my commitment as a writer, feeding my undying passion to push fiction that has a disability narrative. In some senses, I live a double life as a writer. Depending on my mood, it strikes me as comical as much as frustrating – that I’m still perceived as super successful. Part of some criperati – a club assumed as high-wheeling, with outstanding connections and financial success. Outside of the finance, maybe I am, and I just don’t get it?

The truth is both banal and much more tiresome. Recently, I realised yet again, that I am an awkward, multi-spoked, multidimensional tesseract thing, while they try to put inside a very smooth and normal hole. Penny Pepper doesn’t do normal, and I’m aware many disabled creatives go through similar challenges.

Yet so many people out there notice when Google says I have a public profile. This plainly creates a false sense of glamour, and a belief that I must have a bulging bank balance! Oh, what dreams are made of…

Disabled writers are not, of course, the only ones to experience this, as in reality it truly is a tiny minority of all writers who can live by their writing work alone. This is consoling, and naturally I have great empathy for us all, in particular those of us who are marginalised. I’ve also learnt to be kinder to myself, hugging each success to my weary bosom.

I wonder who will be surprised to know that I wrote my first serious novel in the 1990s. By serious, I mean it was a polished and admired piece of work. Strangeness and Charm was science fiction – naturally, the main protagonist was a disabled woman. A cultural ambassador, specialising in communication with new intelligent life forms. Quite speculative, quite feminist. Sex, murder, optimism, and satisfying resolutions – in space.

But no one knows about this novel because it was never published, despite having some champions who were successful writers at the time. For those who know sci-fi publishing, it even received a personal and rather lovely rejection from DAW, in America. But its Britishness got in the way, as did disability – and attitudes towards that were much worse in the UK. Publishers here said disability was ‘negative’ and that ‘no one would want to read about it’.

This view lasted a very long time, though these days it’s much more about the market, fitting a niche, having an established social media profile – on top of being good enough as a writer.

The internet has helped many of us circumnavigate barriers, with online working, hybrid events and more connection and consciousness of the disability story. Yet it has also pushed things in a certain direction for new writers. Now, we have to be massive social media influencers, too – and therein lie new looping barriers. If you have complex access requirements and chronic fatigue, how the hell do you manage all this, alongside the actual writing?

Back to now, I’m on novel number four. It’s out there, in the hands of my agent – maybe in my next blog I can talk about how I was taken on by an agency, and what it really means? She is incredibly supportive, through all my various projects, however they come to me.

So, dear DAO friends, I’m back. Do share your own thoughts in the comments below – your successes and your frustrations. Let me know if you’d like to hear how I developed particular pieces of work, such as this piece of flash fiction, published in Litro Magazine last week.

Seeing ‘A Sandwich For Lunch’ out in the world was another pleasing victory. And there’s the rub – the wants of the industry, if nothing else, expect these things to be shared. Though, naturally, I am proud to do that, simply as a writer.

I thank the lovely folk of DAO for letting me back in, and I will be sharing more next month.