Kirstin Innes’s novel Scabby Queen is on its second print run after catching the eye of Scotland’s First Minister.
As it turned out for the west coast writer, April 2020 wasn’t the best time to launch her second book.
With countries going into lockdown, she found publicity cancelled as bookshops and festivals were hit by the global pandemic.
Publication was postponed until July then, just days before its release, the novel received glowing praise from self-confessed bookworm Nicola Sturgeon.
Sturgeon tweeted: “Exquisite writing and an authentic central character you really care about. Gripping and moving. A literary triumph.” Who wouldn’t be on cloud nine after such a rave review?
So, this just happened… https://t.co/cOkSFtJFM2
— Kirstin Innes (@kirstininnes) July 17, 2020
Charting the story of Clio Campbell, Scabby Queen stretches over five decades, taking in the miners’ strikes to Brexit and beyond. It is a portrait of a woman told by her friends, lovers, enemies and fans.
“It’s not a spoiler: after the introduction the lead character is found dead and I started off with the idea that who would do that and leave their body for a person to find?” explains Kirstin, who lives in a small Renfrewshire village with her partner – the author and playwright Alan Bissett – and their two sons.
“I started working around this idea of a person who was very charismatic and magnetic and formed intense, short-lived relationships. It seemed to make sense to tell her story from the points of view of all of the people whose lives she’d been in along the way.
“Clio was a one-hit-wonder in her early 20s with a hit song about the poll tax. She never had any great success after that, but managed to keep herself simmering along in and out of the public eye. She was a political activist and had a few other high-profile moments throughout her life until she died when she was almost 51.”
Clio wasn’t originally a political activist when Kirstin began work on the book: “The politics of the book came out of my feeling a lot of political despair following the events of the last few years.
“In order to get this book written I completely tuned out and my partner found it quite frustrating because he couldn’t talk to me about current affairs.”
Kirstin began planning her novel in 2016 after the birth of her first child. It was a year when many celebrities died, such as Prince and David Bowie.
“I wasn’t doing much writing, but going out for long walks thinking about what this book would be. It seemed like every week there were three different high-profile deaths and this is when my idea came to make Clio a minor celebrity.
“Carrie Fisher died at the end of 2016 and I was struck by the fact that people had been criticising her for being mouthy and having dared to get old, put on weight and not be the young, desirable figure they remember from Star Wars – and for having opinions.
“Then it all changed on a knife-edge and suddenly she was sainted and it occurred to me we seem to like our female celebrities as long as they’re dead.”
