Page Turners: ‘Muckle Flugga’ author Michael Pedersen

A hugely acclaimed poet, author of the award-winning memoir, Boy Friends, and now debut novelist Michael Pedersen is a Scottish writer with a deep appreciation for the artform, leaving no one word out of place and emitting an excitement and infectious joy for the literary realm.

He describes his first novel, Muckle Flugga, as “part love story, part character drama, part starry-eyed waltz with the world,” opening on a remote island with “a lighthouse standing sentry, its beam charged by starlight.”

Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer’s future hanging in the balance.

It’s no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.

When one of those lodgers – Firth, a chaotic writer – arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble. A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse’s affections – and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?

Did you always want to be a writer? Tell us about your journey to becoming a published author.

Oh yes, there was a bonfire in my belly for the writerly life from about 12 years old. The first lilted feedback I got from a teacher on a poem lit a fuse that never went out. I did get waylaid studying law at Uni for a few years, but took a literary slant to the abstruse, archaic legal language I was learning and convinced myself I was still studying literature.

I published poetry first, then non-fiction, now fiction. A cherisher of all genres, and a traitor to each, I went from publications in magazines, journals, and anthologies, onto chapbooks, and then a first sacred full-length book. I started writing non-fiction by accident because the words wouldn’t settle as poems. The whole time, I’ve been building up to this first novel.

Alongside this, I worked in literary events for over a decade, having co- founded a collective called Neu! Reekie! here in Scotland. We started as a poetry, animation and acoustic music club, but ten years on had curated and produced shows all over the world with literature at the core of them – hosting take overs for major festivals and national galleries alike. It meant I got to bill/work with some of our brightest lights: Irvine Welsh, Margaret Atwood, Alasdair Gray, Shirley Manson, and Young Fathers among them. Seeing such lustre unfurl upon our stages served as a constant reminder of the true meaning of panache.

What inspired you to start writing?

It was reading, always reading, feasting on books aplenty – Liz Lochhead, JRR Tolkien, Mervyn Peake, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Diane di Prima all ensorcelled me young and fast. This was the language I wanted to speak. Within their collective works (and the hundreds that followed) was the realisation that my own writing had to be better thought through, more fully formed, to be authentic and of value.

I started writing in Scots for my high school magazine, The Porty Blethers – the beautiful quirks of the Scots language offered me wordy disguises and lexical costumes that kept my true, super earnest, intentions hidden from prying eyes. As I got braver, and increasingly resilient to a good slagging, the work became more open and even more angsty — as every teenager rightly should be. To be fair, that never truly left.

The time-travelling abilities buried within novels sealed the deal, and that was me henceforth / forever more / head over heels for this gorgeous quest.

Tell us about your new book, Muckle Flugga. Where did the idea come from?

Muckle Flugga is a book wrought with landscape and lore, bumps-in-the-night and celestial secrets; part love story, part character drama, part starry-eyed waltz with the world. It starts on a remote and rugged island, with a lighthouse standing sentry, its beam charged by starlight.

I knew it had to be a small cast: a lighthouse keeper and his dreamy son at the centre of it all – their world thrown off axis by a stranger’s arrival. It’s an old bonds up against new scenario with a deep historical resonance. The less said about the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson, the better.

What do you hope this book instils in the reader?

Worldly wonderment / a sense of spirited camaraderie / a desire to worship at the altar of each and every powerful friendship that inhabits their life / a tug of war with the notion of heroes and villains and the, often, gossamer-thin veil that drifts between the two / gratitude for this mind-boggling and precious world / all and any of that plus the realms in-between.

What did you learn when writing this book?

It is my debut novel, the learning involved was immense. Foremost, it stridently confirmed to me the sapience and sorcery invested in each well-wrought work of fiction – we must never stop marvelling at our storytellers.

Tell us about your writing process?

I wrote this book intensely, and in quite a gonzo fashion. After carrying the rudiments of the idea around inside my bread box for over a year, I finally sat down to sketch it out. That said, I did this as a script synopsis that stretched over forty pages. When finally, after months of tinkering and tuning, it felt robust enough to become of bookish intent, I sat down to write it out.

I did the majority of the first draft over a one month intensive period with the schedule fully cleared. I began talking to myself as the characters and carrying their dilemmas into my dreams, often waking up with the answer, or, at least, a clearer path through the woods.

Next up, I set off on a mission to find the right editor, and found one of the most glorious humans at Faber. The book then developed and evolved alongside my editor and became the tauter, more tender and triumphant, creature we both knew it to be.

I love to be edited, and to wrangle with my edits. It puts the book through its paces, as it rightly should be.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Och, no surprises here — it’s books, movies, people, theatre, architecture, travel, art in every vital manifestation. I can’t say more than that really.