Scottish Bookshelf
An interview with author Barbara Henderson, organiser of NessBookFest, plus all the latest reviews
WHEN Barbara Henderson moved from Germany to Scotland, she had no idea that the country would have such a big impact on her life.
Inspired by both the dramatic landscapes and history, Barbara has built a life, a writing career and a book festival since she first arrived here 28 years ago.
October is always a busy time for the children’s author as she prepares for the Inverness literary event NessBookFest, but this October looks to be particularly hectic with the launch of her fourth novel, Black Water, a Scottish smuggling story featuring Rabbie Burns.
Barbara clearly isn’t the kind of person who does things by halves, and as well as balancing her writing career with organising NessBookFest, she also works as a primary school drama teacher in the Highlands where she now lives.
“I moved to Edinburgh in 1991 to study English language and literature. I’d always been drawn to Scotland. It has so many stories, castles and so much history. After growing up in Germany, where a lot of the history has been destroyed, it was wonderful to
“It was an incident filled with drama – it has dragoons, sabotage, canons and quick sand! ”
come here and see so many old buildings.
“During my studies, I started writing short stories, but I never had the guts to show them to anybody. Then, when I reached my 30s, I thought that unless I do something about this dream of becoming a writer, it’s never going to come true.
“So, on New Year’s Eve 2012, I made a resolution to write a children’s novel and I kept it.”
Barbara wrote a number of novels, but it was her fifth effort, Fir For Luck, an historical novel set amid the Highland Clearances, which got her a publishing deal in 2016.
“My road to publication was pretty unusual. I’d heard that there was going to be an opportunity to pitch your book on Twitter. I wasn’t actually on Twitter – I was a bit of a conscientious objector to social media at the time. But when I heard about Tweet Pitch, it sounded too good to miss.”
Tweet Pitch is an annual event run by the organisers of Scotland’s leading creative industries conference, XpoNorth, and the Association of Scottish Literary Agents.
Every January, for one day only, Scottish
writers are invited to give literary agents and publishers a flavour of their book.
“I composed a tweet for Fir For Luck, I think it went something like, ‘12-year-old girl stands between her village and its eviction writ. She chooses to fight. Queue regiment, riots and ruin!’ The publisher Cranachan liked it, so I got in touch and asked if they wanted to see the book and they quickly replied with a yes.
“Within a couple of weeks, they had read it and wanted to discuss working together. I’d received so many rejections up until that point, so to receive such a mind-blowingly fast and unexpectedly positive response was amazing!”
Fir For Luck thrilled readers and Barbara was soon embarking on another book, this time a Victorian novel called Punch. Although writing about history is clearly something the author enjoys, Barbara admits she was reluctant to turn her hand to it at first.
“History has always fascinated me and I love historical fiction, but I’d never really trusted myself to write a novel in that genre. I’d always assumed that I wasn’t
meticulous enough. You have to be so attentive to detail.
“But with Fir For Luck, the story just grabbed me and I felt compelled to write it and get the research right. The experience was really freeing. I didn’t get lots of people coming up and telling me that I’d got it all wrong, and that made me think that maybe I really could do this.”
Black Water sees Barbara expertly combining fact and fiction once again, as she explores the true story of smuggling and excise in the 18th century.
“Black Water features Henry, a fictional 12-year-old boy who is training to work in excise. Henry’s dad is already an excise man and his job is to catch smugglers along the Solway Firth.”
The Firth was a popular safe haven for smugglers, because it gave easy access to Ireland and the Isle of Man. In January 1792, a large smuggling schooner got stranded in the shallows and the riding officer called for reinforcements.
“That’s where my character and his dad come in,” Barbara says, “as well as Robert Burns.”
Barbara had read about the real-life incident of the schooner and Robert Burns, who had just taken up a post as an excise man in Dumfries.
“He was already a well-recognised poet at that point, but it wasn’t paying enough to feed his children.
“It was an incident that was filled with drama – it has dragoons, sabotage, canons and even quick sand!
“Amazingly, the event was all brilliantly recorded by the riding officer Walter Crawford, who kept a blow-byblow account of it in his diary. There are lots of stories about smugglers, but there hasn’t been much written about the other side and that really interested me.”
The book will be officially launched after NessBookFest. The three-day event, which starts on October 1, will play host to a number of authors including Merryn Glover, Lucy Foley and Robert J. Harris.
“The publication of my first novel and the launch of NessBookFest took place on the same year. I was feeling really sad about the fact that Inverness didn’t have a book festival anymore, especially now that I was finally going to be an author myself, so I turned to Twitter again!
“I wrote a tweet expressing how gutted I was and asked if anyone would like to help me make another literary festival happen. Right away seven people came out of the woodwork saying that they were interested – it really was that simple.”
Fuelled by a love of books, the small team of volunteers got together to discuss putting on a book festival with a difference – every event they ran would be free to attend.
“We had a meeting and decided that we could either run a really brilliant book festival next year and give ourselves a whole 12 months to organise it or we could capitalise on all the momentum that we had right that second and pull one together in a matter of weeks – and that’s what we did!
“We ran our first NessBookFest in 2016 and it was brilliant. We didn’t overthink it, we didn’t panic ourselves, we didn’t lose that drive we had behind us, we just really went for it and it paid off!”
It’s not surprising that it paid off. Whether she’s dreaming up book deals or literary festivals, Barbara’s fierce passion and gritty determination make her pretty unstoppable.
Black Water, by Barbara Henderson, will be published by Cranachan on October 31.
“History has always fascinated me and I love historical fiction”