A Ten Year Anniversary Redemption In Time For Christmas
Stories That Defy Description
Pudding Press has needed to do a second edition of Murder in Marrakech for a while, but it was only when it recently worked itself to the top of a to do list that I realised it has been ten years since it was published. I did what possibly a lot of people do, which is not really do enough about promoting it properly, moved onto a new thing and still haven’t managed to find the time to write the next title.
As a result, I have had mixed feelings about the book since it was published. In one way, I know it is the most authentic thing I have done in my creative practice ever. However, in another way it faded into my thirties and I didn’t really want to think about it, let alone promote it with confidence.
A few things made this more acute, such as its overall problem fitting in with a genre or easy marketing narrative. There were mixed reviews from a few five stars, and really touching things people said to me, to the one star Goodreads ones saying it was terrible. The middling three star reviews all said the writer could write but they didn’t know what on earth the book was about.
This was about right and I actually took heart from it, because I had been told something similar once by an agent I had been sent to with a film script. She said I could certainly write but no one was going to touch my script with a barge pole as it would need a lot more work to be commercial. I did actually spend a few years after that writing commercially, so yes I guess I probably can write to a professional level, but my fiction writing certainly does not seem to be to everyone’s taste.
Everything I Owe Breton
The stories in Murder in Marrakech had been collected since around 2008, but when I finally wrote it over a summer in 2013, I had been seriously ill on and off for a couple of years, studying and dealing with the aftermath of some personal loss. I had spent much of my sickness lying on a sofa reading Andre Breton and researching fictive art theory until day bled into night and my semi-waking hours were plagued with fevered dreams of the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism.
Heaven only knows what my most excellent editor and sometime film collaborator thought, but I took on board her edits, and a much better book appeared. Breton had claimed that, in the spirit of Surrealism, he just let the words pour onto the page and then didn’t edit. Reading all his work, I did not believe him because these stories were certainly psychologically loaded but not the tangled mess of automatic writing they purported to be. However, he taught me that starting with an unedited mess is the way that works well for me in terms of both writing in general, and storytelling. I have never been the type of writer who knows what they want to say. Rather the writing process reveals to me what the story is going to be, or what I believe, so his thoughts around writing legitimised what I have always found best to do, and that is how Murder in Marrakech and Other Stories was written.
In the summer of 2023 I had a mild relapse and for some reason I decided to read this book again for want of something to do. I decided I could face the cringe factor.
What You Get for Facing the Cringe
Surprisingly I felt okay about the book. If anyone thinks they might fancy it, it was finished in a long afternoon and not a super long read. I could sense the passage of time in reading the book, and that it was by a much younger self. A less mature self, and yes there was still a cringe. However, I felt very able to stand by it, and it is exactly where I was by 2013. Things can move on but for me this was an accurate representation of the work I could make at that time, and while I would never write anything like this again I suppose that is the point of getting older and working on your creative practice longer. I also don’t sell lipstick and shampoo any more, don’t go out with my college boyfriend etc. Life moves on but you can still live with the person you used to be.
It was around this time that I realised if it was going to be reissued that it should be in 2024, or the ten year anniversary of its writing. There was a lot wrong with that first edition, from working with certain freelancers I would never work with again, to promoting it all wrong, to bad general decision making to appalling formatting. I liked the cover though, but I am a bit over the hand-writing is drawing obsession I used to have for about five years, and have been recently buying commercial and beautifully designed fonts instead.
I didn’t start Pudding Press Ltd until 2016, although it was published under the Pudding Press label. You can do all sorts with branding and labelling if you are self-employed, so I didn’t need to turn it into an actual publishing company until I decided I was committed, or even at all. I had some paid-for help from an academic publishing project, who were awesome because doing a little project with them had taught me all about the possibilities of professional publishing. I was proud to sport their label, although that turned out to be a pointless expense, much like a lot of other things. They didn’t really come through with what they said they would for the payment and shut up shop fairly soon after. I have since become much further involved with academia, but I wouldn’t say I trust academic intentions yet. Lipstick and shampoo were much easier to judge, and I know I keep saying I will write about this one day but…
Returning to the Beginning Means Business
Evidently there are many reasons you may start a publishing company, rather than just self-publishing. Self-publishing itself has come very far in the last twenty years, and now self-publishers often work with professional editing structures and graphic designers et al. It was a little less common even a decade ago, but I also wanted to be able to run projects. I was reminded recently by a social media business coach post, that you can achieve so much more with a team, and this was what I had always experienced with arts projects and really believed in. I wanted a professional structure and hierarchy, that would get things done, rather than just collaboration, and I wanted to be able to pay people, sort out professional contracts etc.
Probably most of the good intentions stopped there. The life coach quote reminded me how exceptionally bad I have actually been at achieving this dream over the last decade. I currently work with an absolutely wonderful team in my academic job. We are a small team for what we’ve needed to achieve over the last few years and are becoming responsible for a pretty large turnover, partly as a result of the quality we’ve been able to produce. It would have been impossible for any of us to achieve or even conceive of any of it alone, and yet I am astounded every day at some of the lovely work people come out with, and also their repeated willingness to strive and create brilliance. It actually frees me up to do what I am good at too, which is very much more the spinning plates and direction of general outlook. I can pay attention to detail if I must, but honestly it isn’t the thing I excel at, and you wouldn’t make a great graphic designer out of me. Working with a team means we all get to do the things we are better at, can compliment each other and there is also camaraderie.
Considering what I have been let loose to do for years at work, and also the arts project management I have done as part of larger commissions, has made me think about how I have always run my company in the wrong way. If it is going to be hard anyway, then I have been choosing the wrong kind of hard. Looking at the expense of launching another edition of a book, has actually made me think about how I might do things better in the future, and why I have never treated my own company like my other paid jobs.
This has even got me thinking about an employee, right when the government have put up employers’ national insurance contributions, of course somehow managing to clobber small businesses more than the billionaire companies. I don’t mind in principle because I believe in a society, in the social contract, in people being able to access doctors and dentists and the like. I know that the government are trying to raise tax but I suppose it is bad timing for me personally. That said, we’ve had a good few freelancers over the last eight years, which is very normal in the arts, but costing out an employee has made me feel it might actually be possible despite the current climate. As someone who always paid entry level jobs quite a bit more than London living wage, I realised that the rise is still only going to cost about 25p more an hour so could maybe be weathered.
When Will the Arts Do Right Like Some Other Sectors Do?
At the same time, earlier today, I saw a giant and famous convention type of affair advertising for volunteers to staff their whole event. It made me depressed because I always assumed they were a big commercial concern. They have vast numbers of stalls and paid-for workshops not to mention ticket sales. Evidently hiring a space tends to be an astronomical expense, and there is the rest, but I worry about this acceptance of never getting paid that is built into the arts industry. I think the volunteers for this event get some merch and experience but this state of affairs is thoroughly depressing.
It has made me determined anew to do a bit better and it has made me consider the problem with the national insurance rise being a problem for the government as much as small businesses. You don’t need to be an exploitative late stage capitalism corporate dragon to find employers’ financial responsibilities a burden these days. In fact, it is the smaller businesses that take the brunt of it and not the big firms, who just don’t like contributing to society. As well as tax rises, there is the very important pension contribution, insurance, sick pay, holiday pay etc. We all need and want these things and they are good. The problem for small companies is we are in an appalling economy, where people aren’t buying our wares and we can’t get the revenue in to actually pay what we need for our staff.
In the arts we seem to have backed ourselves into an even more impossible position of permanently undercharging and therefore paying nobody. I know it is a long time ago, but when I did sell lipstick in a very high end store for a lot of commission, come pay day we all used to put money back into that store, whether it was lunch from the food hall, a designer cardigan in the sale or more cosmetics. We had money, so money circulated, and that is what is not happening right now in the UK economy, and particularly not in the arts.
Money is really just a concept we all agree on, but if we keep it moving then we will all have enough as we pass it back and forth to each other. We might not get out of this depressing and stagnant situation without the arts crumbling, but if we are to try, projects and companies need to show some leadership. Maybe have a smaller event and pay your staff. Maybe just charge more for the ticket and pay your staff.
The Book Still Defies Marketing
Well we will see how the above pans out for Pudding Press. Nothing has changed yet but costing out an employee rather than more freelancers has evidently convinced me I am Henry Ford.
In the meantime, the book is republished with better formatting and a cover that feels a bit more like the stories feel to me now. It also looks a bit less gothic, which might convince people it isn’t actually about murder. In 2022 we found a new printer for Mark Frendo’s great book Human Revolution, but they turned out not to be the best solution, so finally there is a new printer with integrated system on the website, though it will also be possible to buy from mainstream stores if they ever choose to stock it. E books are getting slowly dispersed and it is currently available on Kindle for only £2.99. You can borrow it for free from a library and for those who want to buy, every sale will get the company nearer to that employee.
In terms of marketing Murder in Marrakech and Other Stories is likely to always be a slow burner I think. Recently reframing what the company is and explaining that Pudding Press publishes philosophy, horror and YA might help. Somehow managing to get the point across that this book isn’t actually a murder mystery, despite the name, is maybe going to be an eternal challenge.
The name came from fantasising about an Agatha Christie whodunit in Marrakech, which is key to the titular story, but it has caused its share of confusion. Everyone knows that indie authors rely heavily on friends and family to buy books but I never did that, and have only ever knowingly let a couple of friends read it because I was just too close to it. I was mortified in 2015 when my long-time writing friend (and all round good egg) told my mother on his deathbed that I had published a book, and apparently she read it. We never speak about it. Overall I cope better when strangers read my writing, but that doesn’t do much for your Amazon reviews.
All I can say about the book is that it is six short stories, mostly each situated in a city, and they all talk about the comfortingly bizarre in everyday life. It might fall into the category of magical realism, which I wasn’t at all familiar with when I wrote it, although I was familiar with key texts without realising it at the time. I just didn’t know the term. Of what we publish, I think ultimately it falls into the genre of light Philosophy, and it was very much influenced by fictive art theory.
Sometime before writing it I had written a fine art dissertation about a ham sandwich that gets discarded and dissolves in the gutter, and I did rather well with that piece of art theory. This is very much in that vein. You could read it for the stories and know nothing about art theory, or I suppose you could have a different experience if you do. My editor said Jungians would like it but where are they when you need a review or a sale?
Ultimately, I was surprised reading it back that the stories are more soothing and uplifting than anything I feared. I maybe wrote it in a dark time but it doesn’t reflect that at all. They made me realise that I should finish writing the other thing that has been on my mind since 2008, and that being a bit more high concept it might be easier to promote.
Having the book published again though is at least a good way to end the year, and I hope will allow me to move on with other creative writing. Much of that came from facing what I had written, and so that feels like an achievement for 2024. I currently have a lot to do this month but am looking forward to rest at the end of December and I hope everyone reading this has a good festive season. I have actually managed to keep to writing this Substack once a month all year, and would like to thank anyone who has read any of these articles, as well as a huge thank you to subscribers. Even one reader is worth everything.