Ten Years Solo
This month—the 15th to be precise—marks the 10th anniversary of my debut novel, First Time Solo.
Eleven years ago we were living in an apartment in Komaki. I was running my own language school, working afternoons and evenings, leaving the mornings free to write, and write I did. I was 33, I'd first been published when I was eight (I think? Sounds right. A wee poem about a tree) and all I’d wanted to do since then was be a writer. I’d published poems, stories, articles, essays, novel extracts, I’d been shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize, I’d graduated from Glasgow’s creative writing master’s programme, but I still hadn’t published a book and that was the one thing I wanted. Above all else. Literally. My novel on the shelf in a bookshop. I ached for it so much that I spent all my free time on it.
First Time Solo—originally called Thin Smoke Without Flame and then The Wasting Embers, lines from Thomas Hardy war poems (never much cared for Hardy as a novelist, but his war poems…) that captured the overall arc of the story I was telling—was originally conceived of as a trilogy beginning during the Spanish Civil War and ending in Canada in 1945. I made extensive notes for the Spanish section but that was always something of a prequel. The story I was telling was that of Jack, a young Scottish lad who joins the RAF in 1943. His timeline was based on that of my grandfather, Tom, who also provided the initial inspiration for the book. Over the years some—including family members who should know better—have suggested the book is about my grandad, which is nonsense. My grandfather was more like a historical advisor, helping me keep my facts straight. The dates of Jack’s training come from Tom’s log book. Many of the comic sequences come from anecdotes he told me (some after waiting for my mother and grandmother to leave the room, some so rude I couldn’t include them and if you know me, that’s rude). But it is not a book about him.
I wrote the whole 1943 to 1945 story, parts two and three, in effect. Part one never got written but it was the story of Joe’s older brother and so, in a way, the story has already been told through its consequences. Those who have read FTS will know that the book entirely takes place in 1943, up to the point where Jack leaves for North America (it’s never explicitly stated in the book that he’s going to Canada, but he is) to begin his flight training properly. This too was based on my grandfather’s timeline and was the impetus for the whole thing: my grandfather went to Canada in late 1943 and didn’t return until the war was over. Which, when you think about it, is odd.
Secondary Flight Training School in 1943 took about 12 weeks and was done overseas because they couldn’t spare the aircraft, fields, or instructors in Britain. For anyone who has seen Masters of the Air, that is set at the exact same time as First Time Solo. When the allies are flying daily (and nightly) missions over continental Europe, it’s easier and safer to do your training elsewhere. This is where the Empire/Commonwealth came in. Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, eventually the USA too, were used to train future aircrew. There was one hitch: as the Beyond the Fringe crew later joked, far too many wanted to join The Few. There was conscription for the Army and Navy but you had to volunteer for the RAF. By late 43/early 44 the allies had the upper hand and despite suffering heavy losses, were effectively in control of the skies. The days of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz were in the past. The allies, with the US economy behind them, could replace crew and craft in a way that the Luftwaffe couldn’t. In early 1944 the mission was to reduce the Luftwaffe to an irrelevance in advance of D-Day. You can’t land in Normandy without air supremacy. This they achieved.
For my grandfather—and Jack—this created a bottleneck. The RAF dealt with this by lengthening the training, making pilots repeat elements, putting them in a holding pattern until they were needed. Hence, what should have been a three-month stay in Canada actually lasted 18 months. After volunteering to fly combat missions, my grandad sat out the war in probably the safest place in the world. That dichotomy—volunteering for the front line only to spend the war thousands of miles from it—fascinated me.
None of that ever made it into print. The problem with the military, as detractors of Masters of the Air bang on about, is that people are constantly being moved, constantly disappearing, constantly dying. One day your mate is in the bunk next to you, the next day he has been transferred, reassigned, shot down. From a writer’s perspective, this is a nightmare: you can’t build narrative arcs when everyone is forever starting over.
Basic training is fine, people usually go through it as a group, but even then people peel off as their skillsets are identified: pilots, navigators, bombers, mechanics. I could hold the gang together for a few months in England but the second they get shipped off to Canada they would be broken up. Flight school groupings were usually done alphabetically—Adams to Davidson over there, Elliott to Henderson, over there—so short of making them all MacSomething, it would become increasingly implausible that Jack, Joe, Terry, and Doug would continue training together. So, you get a natural break, and that’s where FTS ends. An ending; a beginning.
Then reality. FTS was well-received (apart from by one prick at a national paper), shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize and sold… meh. Meh is fine, it’s okay for a debut literary novel on an independent publisher. It was enough to secure me a new two-book deal (Silma Hill and The Waves Burn Bright) but nowhere near enough to get a sequel. If no one reads book one, fewer will read book two. FTS Two (Second Time Solo?) was doomed.
As a result, beyond converting it into an ebook around 2017 when Freight went out of business taking the book with it, I haven’t cracked the cover in any meaningful way since the launch events ended ten years ago.
I’m kind of terrified what I might find in there. Ten years is a long time in the development of an artist. I am (I hope) a much better writer now than I was a decade ago. There are doubtless things in there that will make me cringe. Scenes I wouldn’t write today. Stories I’d approach differently. But that’s as it should be. Janice Galloway once said that you write the best story you can at the time and then move on. You don’t keep rewriting the same story in the hope that it’ll become “perfect”. I know people that have done that and it has stopped them developing, stopped them publishing. It’s never perfect, just the best you can do at that time.
FTS, for better or worse, was the best I could do in 2014 and it’ll always have a special place in my heart. It was—always will be—my first book and that is special. It was my dream to get that far; one book on the shelf. A decade and nine books later I am enjoying recalling that feeling. It’s so easy to forget, wrapped up as we become in the present. A couple of days ago I was panicking that I have nothing in the pipeline. I have finished manuscripts but nothing close to being published and that makes me uneasy. With every new book I fret that this will prove to be my last. This month I’m trying to leaven that fear with the remembrance of what it was like to publish my first book.
For anyone that hasn’t read First Time Solo—actually even if you have—this has been quite a self-indulgent ramble, so please forgive me. If you haven’t read it and would like to, it’s still available as an ebook on Amazon, and there are secondhand copies floating around from third party sellers. I have about half a dozen copies here in Japan as well, if anyone wants a signed one.