Mark Baillie on his novel, Salvage

Mark Baillie’s debut novel Salvage was published by Tippermuir Books in 2024 and featured in Book Week Scotland’s debut showcase. Mark’s short fiction has appeared in Livina Press, Analogies and Allegories Literary Journal, Zin Daily and Bubble Magazine. His non-fiction has featured in History Scotland, Travellers’ Times, and Mark's research into press bias against Travellers was published in the Journal of Media Ethics.

Our Traveller crushes this episode are Dr. Lynne Tammi-Connelly and Shamus McPhee.

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Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens

Conceived of by Paulina Stevens

Edited by Viktor Pachas

Music by Viktor Pachas

Artwork by Elijah Vardo

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Romanistan.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

I'm Paulina.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

And I'm Jez. And today we're here with Mark Bailey, author of the novel Salvage.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Mark Bailey's debut novel, Salvage, was published by Tipper Muir Books in 2024 and featured in Bookweek Scotland's debut showcase. Mark's short fiction has appeared in Livina Press Analogies and Allegories Literary Journal, Zinn Daily, and Bubble Magazine. His nonfiction was featured in History Scotland, Travelers Times, and Mark's research into press bias against travelers was published in the Journal of Media Ethics.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Thank you so much for joining us, Mark. We're so happy to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Thanks very much. It's nice to be with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Yeah, so we love to start with the basics. Where are you from? Where's your family from? And anything else that you'd like to share about your background or lineage?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Mm-hmm. So I'm from Edinburgh in Scotland, and both of my grandparents on my dad's side of the family were from traveler families from down around the Scottish borders, near the border with England. And my my general interest with writing about travelers stemmed from an oral history that I did with my granddad just before he died, about almost 20 years ago, so quite a long time ago. And I've been writing in one form or another about travelers and taken uh a big interest in traveler history since then. And after after I did the oral history with my granddad, I went on to trace my family tree back to 1800. Uh so over 200 years. Um and I found when I did that that all my ancestors going all the way back to that point had all been horse dealers or basket weavers or hawkers, um going all the way back. Um so that's that's what kind of got me into reading and writing about travelers.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Writing into your ancestry is so familiar to us. So we really we feel you.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's a great way to kind of I think for me what worked was uh when I was doing that, I had no kind of uh pretense about trying to write a novel at some point because we're going back about 20 years, so it was something I was just generally um interested in and wanted. The main thing was my granddad was getting really old. I mean, he was I think 92 or 93 when I spoke to him. So, you know, and I'd grown up hearing all these amazing stories about his life when he was younger. He'd he'd been a hawker, like selling door-to-door carpets and stuff. And I th one morning I just thought he's not going to be around that much longer. And I just suddenly got fixated on sitting down and speaking to him and capturing some of these amazing stories, um, which really was not easy because he was, like I say, he was about 92 or 93, he was as deaf as a post, and his eyesight was going and his memory was patchy, right? So it was not ideal circumstances to be trying to do an oral history with someone, but we persevered and captured these amazing stories. But it was then when I went back to revisit those stories, um, like almost 20 years later, and I'd kind of amassed a lot of knowledge just because I'd read a lot of history books and done other types of research. It just was kind of like the right place and the right time to then take all that stuff and and kind of start to build a novel.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, I really feel like we can understand um kind of your point of view. Like it's not really a well-known documented history, or there isn't a lot of books. Like we're some of the first people to really bring a lot of this stuff into the media.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Absolutely. I mean, you I'm sure you guys know it's it's predominantly traveler culture's predominantly an oral culture, or it was predominantly oral. Um, so there's a lot of stories that are probably have been lost to time because people have died and generations have passed on and so forth. So um I think that was definitely in the back of my mind at that point when I thought I really must sit down and and get a recording tape and and capture some of his stories.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Yeah, I'm so glad that you did.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So I want to ask, um, and knowing about your background, do you consider yourself a rebel?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Well, it's a good question, and I guess I don't normally consider myself a rebel, but I think in this context, and for you guys, I again definitely rustle up uh an answer. So when I was looking at my family history, and like I say, I traced back 200 years, so that was doing pretty good because that was actually going all the way back to the very to the point where they started, it was it became mandatory to actually um keep records for births and deaths and marriages, right? So it wasn't possible to go any further back. So that was doing pretty good. But I found out that um going back to the male, the the lineage of men, like my my granddad, great-granddad, great-great-granddad, and so forth, they they were all called, starting with my dad, they were all called Matthew or William going back for two 200 years. And I was the first first male to not be called either Matthew or William for 200 years. So I I think I think that in a in a way kind of makes makes me a rebel a little bit. Um although the other thing that I'm secretly a little bit disappointed about is it's a traditional thing in traveller families in Scotland, or a lot of them, for people to have nicknames. I think particularly the men. And like my dad has a nickname, my granddad had a nickname, his dad had a nickname. So I don't have a nickname, and I I don't I don't know why I didn't get one, but I'm I'm kind of secretly a little bit arked about the fact I didn't get one.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

I know, and you can't force a nickname because um I've often wanted to for myself, but it it simply can't be done.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I guess I guess it has to come from other people that know you. So it's just I've never picked one up, unfortunately.

Who Are Scottish Travellers

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Maybe you will. Not too late. So we often get this question and we answer it as best we can. You know, there's there's good information out there with traveler orgs, but we really wanted to invite someone with traveler heritage to answer for our listeners who might not know um the basics. Who are the traveler people culturally, ethnically, and historically? Um, and people often want to know how they're different from Roma, but um just that answer alone will make it clear how they are.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, so in the Scottish context, um, there's been travelers in Scotland for at least five or six hundred years. Um, and the first document to actually record the presence of travellers in Britain was a letter from the King of Scotland. Um I think it was around about 1500, so that would have been King James IV or King James V. Um, and it was a letter to the King of Denmark, and it was requesting safe passage for a group of people that were referred to as Egyptians. And of course, that's where the the term gypsy comes from. It was this belief that Romani travellers were from Egypt. So it the letter referred to them as Egyptians, and it referred to a lot of family names that in subsequent history books that came out, those families were present again in the history books that came out in various um histories. Um again in the Scottish context, it's really important to flag there's a substantial group of people in the travelling community in Scotland who use the term or self-identify. Um they use the term knocking. I don't know if you guys have heard of that one before. Um, or knacking, depending on which part of the country they're in. And that's the term they use. Um I I'd never actually heard that term. I grew up just hearing traveller or gypsy traveller. Um so that's a new one on me that I've I've found out about quite recently. But essentially, it's um in Scotland um researchers at some point, I think during the 19th century, found realized travelers had their own language, Kant. And someone noticed that a lot of the words that were used in traveller can't were really, really similar to words from Hindi, from India, and started to make links and essentially worked out that um travellers in Scotland were probably the same people as Romani travellers in other countries in Europe, and that they all had this common ancestry that dates back to um this kind of exodus of a group of people from India. So um that's kind of stretching my knowledge on it about as far as there's other there's people that are a lot more expert on it than me, but that's that's that's kind of the rough shape of it in Scotland.

Why Overlap Gets Ignored

SPEAKER_03 10:49

So for listeners who want to learn more about the difference and similarities uh between and among Roma gypsies and travelers, this is from the Traveler Movement website, travelermovement.org.uk. And uh just you know, if you're nerdy like us, sometimes it's nice to understand in technicality because there's a lot to say. So, Romani, Gypsy, Roma, and Irish traveler people belong to minority ethnic groups that have contributed to British society for centuries. Their distinctive way of life and traditions manifest themselves in nomadism, the centrality of their extended family, unique languages, and entrepreneurial economy. And it's reported that there are around 300,000 travelers in the UK and that they're one of the most disadvantaged groups. The real population may be different as some of these members of communities do not participate in the census, and we also discuss this in the episode. So, Irish travelers are a nomadic group of people from Ireland, but have a separate identity, heritage, and culture to the community in general. An Irish traveler presence can be traced back to 12th century Ireland with migrations to Great Britain in the early 19th century. The Irish traveler community is categorized as an ethnic minority group under the Race Relation Acts of 1976 and a bunch of other acts. Some travelers of Irish heritage identify as Pavi or I might not be pronouncing this correctly, but Mincier, uh, which are words from the Irish traveler language Shelta. Whereas Romani people, uh Romani gypsies, have been in Britain since at least 1515 after migrating from uh continental Europe during the Roman migration, originally from India. And so, as we know, you know, the term gypsy comes from Egyptian, and this is a misnomer. So while there are groups of travelers who may travel through Britain, such as Scottish travelers, Welsh travelers, and English travelers, many of whom can trace a nomadic heritage back for many generations and who may have married into or outside of more traditional Irish traveler and Romani Gypsy families, there were already indigenous nomadic people in Britain when the Romani gypsies first arrived hundreds of years ago. And the different cultures and ethnicities have to some extent merged. And so there's definitely overlap, but not all um identify as each other, basically. Paulina, you were saying that you found out something really interesting about why this isn't talked about, that there is overlap between these communities a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yes. So this is a lot, so everybody take a deep breath and prepare. Okay, both Roma and Irish travelers were persecuted, segregated, and expelled from towns in Britain and Ireland starting as early as the 1500s. They were often forced into the same roadside encampments, work routes, fairs, and informal trade networks. Over generations, this proximity led to intermarriage between some families, borrowing of slain, trade jargon, and survival strategies. How shelta, like traveler can't, is primarily English in its origin, but in areas where Romani and travelers' families intermingled, especially along Britain's southern routes, you do see loan words from Romani dialects, which in turn contain Hindi and Sanskrit roots. And then there's also more overlap, like shared public labeling. So gypsies became an umbrella term for any people, kind of trap traveler people, outsiders that whether they were Romani or not. So while average Irish travelers as a group aren't genetically Romani, some families indeed have mixed traveler Romani descent, particularly in England, Scotland, and Wales. And why it's so underacknowledged is so fascinating. But basically, for academic classification, so scholars tend to treat Irish travelers and Roma as distinct ethno-linguistic groups for clarity. Acknowledging overlap complicates that framework. And then political representation. So in census and equality law, these groups are categorized separately. So public discourse follows that line, community preference. So many Irish travelers identify strongly as Irish and want to distinguish themselves from Roma. While some Roma groups do the same in reverse, so researchers often avoid conflating them out of respect. And then one of the most obvious things is lack of documentation. Most mixed heritage histories were oral, not written, and overlooked in archival research. So all in all, the reality today in the UK, especially, you'll find families who describe themselves as traveler gypsy or Romani traveler. These blended identities reflect that centuries of coexistence, intermarriage, and shared discrimination blurred some boundaries. It's part of history that sits between anthropology and lived experience. And it is totally valid, even if it's not the official academic narrative. And you know, and that's what we're here for. That's why Romanistan exists to help bring these things to light.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Yeah, and it's so interesting how the linguistics, again, really help us understand where we come from. Like Shelta being predominantly English and Irish Gaelic, whereas the Kent being more similar to Hindi, you know, that reflects, you know, the Scottish travelers maybe having more of a Romani influence, whereas maybe in Ireland there are pockets of people who have less or none of that. Um, but essentially, yeah, it's uh like everything that we talk about, it's complicated and nuanced and interesting. So uh let's carry on with the episode. We just wanted to take a little time out because we thought there might be more questions and we want to make sure we do our best to answer.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

All in all, Roma people have origins from India, and travelers have origins from Ireland, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Also, just to kind of riff off of the last question, I think that maybe you can there really is no true way, I guess, to answer. There really is not a lot of written history. I think that there is obviously a different origin of I I guess of the the culture, but what you were saying about travelers um sometimes like speaking some some of the language, like what I was told growing up was that travelers and Romani people in Ireland were usually basically segregated in some of the same areas, which then led to some obviously everybody kind of being together at some point. But I believe that there are some basically, I think the question is hard to answer because there's everything. I think there are um a majority of travelers that are distinctly from Ireland. There are some travelers that are Romani people that identify themselves that way because of the similar history, and I believe that there are some travelers who are have mixed ancestry, and and that's kind of my take on it, just for our listeners.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

I love that. Thank you, Capolina.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Um, Mark, I want to ask you what is your relationship to the word gypsy? Is it one you use for yourself? And we always just want to ask either why you would identify that way or not, and and why, like your relationship with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah. So in in the UK, the the term gypsy traveler, so gypsy hyphen traveler, it's it's a commonplace um uh term. It's generally accepted as a term not seen as derogatory. Um most of the lobbying organizations in the UK, there's maybe about four or five in the UK lobbying organizations for traveler rights, um they used use the name themselves in their titles of their organizations and in the names that in the reports that they produce and and stuff like that. Um and interestingly, when I was I was trying to get an agent for salvage, and I was doing that thing that all authors do, like firing off, like sending my manuscript to like hundred hundreds of agents like all over the place. And uh I I sent to a few in in the States, and I got back an email from a lady, and it was a very long email, right? Let's let's call it a rebuke, because that's basically what it was. Um but she she was basically saying that she liked the premise of the story, but she wouldn't be able to consider it because it used a slur throughout the manuscript. And she said that the term gypsy was a slur. And it you know, it it was it was an interesting response. And I think to try and be kind of even-handed about it, I think what it was overlooking was one uh in the UK it's the terms not uh seen. I mean, context is always important and can make the difference, but generally uh the term gypsy is not seen as offensive. In in the UK it's not. Um, like I say, it's used by uh travellers' rights lobbying organizations quite consistently. Um but I and I think the other thing that was overlooking was salvages set in 1983. So like it definitely wouldn't have been regarded as derogatory, you know, over 40 years ago. Um so I get that was a bit of a lesson for me in the kind of sensitivities around the term, that particular word. Um but for me, I mean, I I don't um I don't self I like when I do the census that that they do occasionally. I don't identify as a traveler. And it's that's just um simply because I don't I don't travel and um I'm I I refer to myself as someone with traveler heritage, but I don't refer to myself. My dad is ethnically a traveler because both his mum and his dad were were both travelers, um, but I I don't refer to myself. So but it's just a personal choice, really. I know that um some people look at it differently. So but that's that's my take on it.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Mixed identity is complicated and um nuance can um can be lost in certain contexts, and it's so interesting what you're saying about the novel getting that rebuke because obviously, as someone with traveler heritage, you get to decide how you call yourself. Like there's the context of like the word is different in the UK, and we're often struggling to clarify that, Paulina and I in the US, where it is often used more as a slur, or definitely just with the evocation of stereotypes. And at the same time, a lot of Roman use and reclaim the word, us included. And it's like if we say it, we can say it's it's so interesting how that nuance is lost. So we we're especially excited to ask you this question because um the the word is complex and it's very context dependent. And I think sometimes people are trying to um be advocates and in that can accidentally commit like erasure and yeah, and uh it's it's especially difficult in the context of the kind of creative space, like with writing.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah. And it's it's I I think what an annoyed me, if I can be honest with you, more about that response was that overlooking the fact that in 1983 in the UK, it absolutely would have been a commonplace term in not being able to see past that. So expecting you know, to to kind of infringe on the that kind of creative context of the story, that was the bit that kind of uh annoyed me uh a bit more than just that lack of general awareness of it's not seen in the UK as an offensive term.

Allyship And Organizations To Know

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. And you know, we were talking earlier about how not all travelers identify as Roma, not all Roma identify as travelers, and there is some overlap in the community, but it's not like a perfect circle all the time. Um, and so why is allyship between our communities so important? And how can we continue to be good allies to each other, you know, even across the ocean?

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah, there's so I mean I think ultimately there's a shared Romani heritage between all groups, and it doesn't matter how many one group's been present in uh one country um or not, um, but there's a there's kind of shared heritage and it's identifiable through things that I've mentioned, like the the fact that there's certain words and terms that were used in Kant that were traced back to India ultimately. But in in terms of kind of solidarity, there's there's a there's a writing initiative in the UK called Write into Culture that's that I've heard about that's an all-female gypsy Romani traveler writers group, and it was founded by uh a writer, a lady called Dee Cooper.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

It's so cool. We love Dee.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah, D D Cooper and Lisa Smith. And that's you guys have obviously heard about it, but it's just yeah, Lisa's great too. Yeah, it's to support women in in developing creativity and writing, it's based on solidarity, and I think it came about from that kind of shared frustration with underrepresentation and and or misrepresentation as well in film and in media generally. So I think things like that are it'd be it'd be nice if there was more of that type of thing. But that's that's a really good example.

unknown 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Are there any other organizations that you would really like our listeners to know about? Because especially in the US, sometimes um people feel sort of um cut off from uh Romani Traveler activism. Not always, like we definitely have our orgs, but there's just more um where there are more people.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Well, there's a lot of lobbying organizations in the UK. I think, I mean, in the UK, gypsy traveler people constitute about, I think it's 0.5% of the population. Um, but there's there's about three or four organizations that I can think of uh that advocate for travelers' rights um or outreach, stuff to do with healthcare. And so certainly they're quite busy, but that's very much on the the lobbying front in terms of writing to MPs and ministers and and um, like I say, advocating for rights and providing information about housing and that type of thing. Um there seems to be a bit less on the kind of cultural front. Um, but like I say, right into culture's one that's I think doing really good work, but it's just a shame there's not more of that type of thing.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah, and we love traveler pride too. We've talked to a few people from that organization, they're lovely, and um, they're doing some new things too.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah, yeah, there's there's traveler pride as well. I don't I've not met anyone yet from from from there, but I'm certainly aware of them that they're they're doing good work.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

Yeah, they're great.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Salvage is so interesting because as much as it is literary and character driven, it's also deeply historical and political, which is probably the best way to explore these themes through art because the reader is so immersed in very human stories. What inspired you to write Salvage?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah, so it goes back to probably the oral history that I mentioned that I did with with my granddad, and he'd been he'd been a hawker and he had to give it up, I think around about 1970, because it just was not paying the bills anymore. It was starting to die out basically as a way of making a living. Um, and he was really reluctant to do that because he was really proud to work for himself. Um, it had been a traditional way of making a living in my family for generations, what he did, hawking. Um, so but he he he did have to give it up eventually, and this really struck me as kind of symbolic of that tension between the desire to hold on to traditions but live in a changing changing world. Um so so that was that was the starting point. And there was a particular story he told me where he had to he was selling one, he sold one rug and he didn't get a lot of money for it, but he had to split the proceeds across about five or six of his cousins because they were all hawkers and they were all struggling, and they functioned a bit like a network where they helped each other out. But the fact was they were starting to basically cannibalize each other's livelihoods because that there was this dwindling market for what they did, and that really kind of struck me as that splitting the money um as really honourable, but also kind of tragic that that had to happen. Um, so that that was like the jumping off point. I don't know how, but I just thought I want to kind of bring that scene to life creatively. As I wanted to write that scene, I wanted to know what people, what was said, what were the looks on faces, you know, as this like money was split up into like a really, really derisory amount for everyone. Um so I wrote that as a scene, and then I wanted to know, oh, I wonder what happened before that leading up to that, and then I wanted to know what what happened afterwards as well. And it it it grew from there basically as a kind of creative writing piece, and I got loads of characters from that, and I ended up with 80,000 words, which was great. But one thing I did I didn't have a plot, right? So, and just a little tip if you're ever trying to write a novel, it's generally a good idea for it to have a plot, and I really learned the hard way. So that's how it started in a weird way. It started a bit like a Scottish traveller version of Death of a Salesman, right? By Arthur Miller, like this um main character who's hung up on the King of Glory days of when you know making a living was easy, when sales were good and stuff. Totally, completely different to what Salvage turned out to be. Um so yeah, I didn't have a plot, this was my big problem, and I had to go back and look at what I'd written, and there was a bet about uh one of the characters in the story had this tiny, tiny bit of backstory that he'd had a sibling removed from his family when he was young, but he didn't like to talk about it. That was his thing, he didn't like to talk about it, and I thought, oh, I I wonder what would happen if that guy did start, did start to want to talk about it, and then what would happen if he wanted to actually do something about it? And and I thought that's it, that's my story, that's what I need. And that part started to just grow arms and legs, and it got bigger and bigger, and then the background stuff to do with this kind of changing cultures and traditions got smaller, and that's how that's how salvage started to take place. That's how it started to develop from from that. Um so that's that's a little bit about where it came from. Um and I really needed something like that to kind of turn it in. It started to work really well as a missing person plot, you know, in almost quite a conventional way, quite a quite almost quite a commercial way. As I started to write it more like this is a missing person mystery, the two main characters in there, Nash and Emma, they started to feel more like detectives to me, that like a traditional detective duo, you know, slightly mismatched, they don't always get along, that they get the job done. Um and that it just went in a completely kind of new and for me a much more kind of refreshing direction that I knew was going to work.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

That is so interesting. I mean, I as um someone who used to teach writing, I think that sometimes given a form, can you can do so much with it, even if you're kind of pushing against the form, if you're like, okay, this is a mystery of a missing person. And it's like you're it's still very much your own. Um, but that makes a lot of sense. And there's a lot of interesting heritage around um detective novels, too, that you're probably also thinking about yeah, but I mean, it almost didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

And there's there's a bit of a lesson here about sometimes doing research is a bit of a dangerous thing because I think it was on in the sort of year two of it took three and a half years to write it. Um, but I think in the sort of second year when I had that plot, I had that nailed in my head of this is a missing person mystery about a child. And I spoke to a guy called uh Bob Dawson, who's a really eminent researcher in the UK, knows a lot about uh traveler history. I had a call with him and I spoke to him and explained the premise to him. And he said, Well, the problem you've got is that if that was a real scenario, someone in the early 1980s trying to find a relative, they would have had like virtually like zero chance of success just because documentation was so poor, it was pre-internet and all that stuff. They you know could almost guarantee it wasn't gonna succeed. And he wasn't saying that as a criticism, he was just saying that's the way it was, you know. So I came off that call feeling a bit downhearted, you know, and like, oh god, you know, how am I going to make this work? And I actually was starting to think, I just don't know if I can make it work. And then I thought, well, actually, it's fiction, it's a novel, and there's a bit of artistic license that you can use. I I don't want to say too much just about a plot.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

We try not to spoil it.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Yeah, exactly. I don't I don't want to put any spoilers in, but that I had to remind myself this is a piece of fiction that you're writing, and you can do things that maybe wouldn't necessarily happen in real life.

Writing Process Research And Self Care

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Yeah, I love that. And and things do happen in real life that are miraculous all the time, you know. We that's what it's the stuff of news stories and nonfiction sometimes. So this is something that Paulina and I think about a lot, and it's something that um sometimes people who write to us and have creative dreams and endeavors want to know about because sometimes writing about your history, even if it is through the lens of fiction, can get really heavy. You're dealing with intergenerational trauma and all kinds of things. So, what was the writing process for you like? And how did you take care of yourself while immersing yourself in difficult history that was kind of close to home?

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Yeah, so um, in terms of the process, I I was a I don't know if you've heard this term before, but I was a pantser. I wasn't a planner.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

No, I don't know that one, but it sounds fun.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

You can probably work it out.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Yeah, like f fly by the seat of your pan.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah, absolutely. Um so it's yeah, so I was I was a pancer for, like I say, when I ended up with 80,000 words and no plot, I was definitely that was the product of being a plant a pantser. And then when I looked at it and thought, oh my god, you know, I need to to do something with this to make it give it some pace and make people want to kind of keep reading, then I became a planner. And I think that was at the end of two years, um, that I became a planner. So it it it was definitely there was a lot of ups and downs uh because I hadn't done anything like that before. Um and like I say, after speaking to Bob Dawson, um I almost gave up, but then decided to come back to it and give it another push, which really works. So I I think that's that's a big part of it. And and but I d I didn't do uh a lot of research because, in a sense, I'd already done a lot of research because it was the product of almost like 20 years of looking into my own family history. And I should say as well, there was not any few people have asked me, did this happen in your family? Have you found evidence of of kids being taken away? No, there's there's not been anything like that uh that I've found out about in in my family. Um so that that's basically that was just something that picked up from reading you know all the various history books, something I was very much aware of. The thing that really took me by surprise was I did not find out until I'd finished writing Salvage that there was a campaign on on the go by a a ri quite a small group of campaigners in Scotland to get an apology from the Scottish government. Um and they'd been campaigning for about ten almost ten years, roughly, and around about the time I finished Salvage that campaign was kind of coming, start starting to really get to a point where it was in a position to get uh apology uh from the government, and that was just a complete fluke that it almost coincided exactly with that. So one of the real pleasures about producing Salvage was um after it was published, I've met some of the campaigners and had correspondence with them. Um and some of them have sent copies of Salvage to contacts that they have in other countries. So that that was a real pleasure, but it wasn't it wasn't an intentional part of writing Salvage because I didn't know about the campaign when I started writing about it.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Well yeah, that's so serendipitous. It sounds like you had 20 years to process the the more raw emotional content too. So I mean I think that 20 years was probably very helpful, not just because it was, you know, it's set in your mind, but also you you were able to move through the feelings connected to it.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Yeah, I mean I think for anyone that's kind of interested in learning more about it, I would say go and look at the Scottish Government report that came out in June that's you can get from the Scottish Government website. Um and what they did that was really encouraging was they took a lot of uh first hand accounts of people, they had focus groups and they invited traveler families to come, anyone that they could find. Um but obviously the challenge with this is that you've got the fact that people are getting older and soon there'll be generations of people that are gone that have passed on that you know, their experiences of this, because this is something that goes back quite a long way. Um I mean there's evidence of it happening through the middle of the 20th century, um and maybe into the kind of slightly later part of the 20th century, but people are aging, obviously, so there's a challenge there in terms of could you s could the government or the researchers that are working for the government speak to people that were directly involved, or had they had did they were they recounting experiences there they'd heard from older relatives, if that makes sense? But yeah, I would I would say anyone that wants to know more about it, it's really shocking, but please do have a look at that uh Scottish Government report. I think for me, um two of the most shocking things about it are well one the church was involved and they had they had quite a significant role in helping with children's removals. So I think it was about a week after the government report came out that the Church of Scotland issued an apology as well for its role in the removals. So that was really shocking, um, and a lot of people uh likewise might be very shocked to to hear about that. Um but also to me it was a real shock that the government they they didn't try to put a a number against the number of kids that were were taken because they just don't know. Um and and the reason for that is the documentation is really poor. In Scotland the Adoption Act wasn't introduced till 1930. So basically, anything happening not happening before that, there was just a lot less legal requirements and regulations on organisations to document what they were doing in terms of taking kids away from their families. Um so that was one of the reasons the government just really couldn't put a number against it. But it it was probably going on for for for centuries. And there's the period that gets referred to as the Tinker Experiment, which I think is was was in the twentieth century, but it wasn't limited to the twentieth century. There was there's evidence of it going on in centuries before that as well. So it's a lot. And look it is it probably would be really hard to put a number against it, but it's it's going to be a lot of lives that were ruined because of those practices that went on. Yeah, that was that that that was I think there's there's a lot there that probably shock people that that can be unpacked. So I think if people have read the book, that's great. But there's a lot of other because there's a a government report that's now come out that people can if they want to find out more about it they can Yeah thank you.

Traveller Activists Worth Following

SPEAKER_03 44:57

It's one of these things where um the removal of Romani and traveler children is something that has happened pretty much everywhere where we are, everywhere the diaspora is and um this has happened to indigenous people in um in the Americas as well. I mean people can in the US look into like the Indian adoption project and all kinds of it basically just forced assimilation and cultural genocide of uh nomadic people, of marginalized people. And it's something that we need to talk about more. And there are people with these traumas in their living memory. And so we really appreciate you writing about this and exploring it in your book because it's something that not enough people know about and yet it's so prevalent and was such so commonplace for so long. And still happens in in different ways. Yep, I think that's a lot of things um who is your Romani or traveler crush? Basically someone who you admire who you want to shout out so other people can follow their work it needn't actually be romantic.

Next Novel And Pre-Brexit Britain

SPEAKER_00 46:34

We just are cute yeah no that that makes it a lot easier for me if it's not romantic um so that there's like like like I said one of the real pleasures about doing salvage was that I managed to meet some of the campaigners that were involved in getting an apology from the government. And they were they're quite a small group of campaigners and they worked ferociously for over a decade I think it was and there was actually twin campaigns originally one was to do with housing arrangements that had been forced on certain traveller families and then there was another one running parallel to that at one point to do with the removal of kids. And then the individuals behind those obviously got together and realised let's let's join up. So it it was on quite a journey as a campaign but um they they did incredibly well in Scotland there's not a lobbying organisation I don't think for for travelers there's about three or four in England but there isn't one in Scotland. So really that group of people um were incredibly tenacious for a really long time in persisting with um flagging issues to the government and insisting on an inquiry that eventually happened. So those would be um if yeah the the can the traveler crush so there's there's a lady called Lynn Tammy Connolly who um was quite prominent in the campaign towards the end and there's a gentleman who I've met a couple of times whose real pleasure called Seamus McPhee um who did a lot as well so yeah those would be my two names that I'd mention yeah we're familiar with them just through their activism and they're so wonderful so we really hope people go find them, find their work Yeah so um what projects are on the horizon for you um so I I finished another novel um which is again picking up on on traveler themes um it's a bit more modern than salvage it's kind of set in a what was called pre-Brexit Britain trying to capture a bit of the atmosphere of what the country was like in in the years just before Brexit. And I think just coming back to your earlier point about linkages between Romani traditional travelers long term in the UK it's a story of friendship between a traditional traveller woman who manages a campsite and a Roma mother and daughter from Slovakia who are in the country who've come into the country illegally um I wouldn't say too I wouldn't give away the whole plot but that's the kind of basis of it but interestingly I was talking to somebody who knew had already produced Salvage and I was telling them about this new piece that I'm working on and I was telling them a little bit about it and it's about travelers and then he said oh wait a minute are you really writing another book about travelers? And it was it was kind of like the insinuation was it was like well if you've written about that topic once surely you've exhausted it right you know how can how can there be any mileage in it to do another book on it. So that was kind of quite an interesting response and I think it it shows um quite a you know limited kind of understanding about how rich um the history and the culture is and how much there is to talk about really yeah I mean you can write so many books on a culture that's such a wild comment but so interesting.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Yeah it was it really kind of took me took me aback actually that as if there could only be one novel you know yeah I doubt that they would apply that to other groups that's so interesting.

Where To Find Mark Online

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Exactly yeah how can people best follow and support you in your work because we're sure people are going to want to after listening to your interview yeah I mean I think ultimately it would be great to see more representation in publishing in fiction in particular traveler perspectives um when I first went to meet my publisher so um that was before before I knew Salvage was going to get published and I was trying to get a publisher and I sent the manuscript to Paul at Tippermuir and he asked to see me but didn't say too much obviously at that point and and I thought all right this is really good and you know something might come of this and I kind of prepared this um speech almost that I was going to to try and pitch to make sure we to to try and get him to agree to to publish salvage and I was going to talk about how you know traveler perspectives are really underrepresented in fiction and there's not enough of it and someone really needs to do something about it and it's such a shame because it's a really rich area and and I met Paul and sat down with him and and like pretty much before I'd opened my mouth he he said all of that you know before I'd even spoken so and I thought well that's really good but I must be sitting down with the right person. And it has been a really really good working relationship since then but so but it would be nice to see more of it in publishing and I did notice when I was trying to get an agent um and looking at profile and I I never succeeded in getting an agent and I suspect I won't succeed in trying in getting an agent but you do notice that there was there's a lot of profiles where they say I am really passionate about finding marginalized voices and unrepresented voices and and it was really remarkable almost all of them had something to that effect in their profiles. So when I was pitching salvage I was thinking well this this this bodes well because there's hardly anything published about travelers and they're a really really marginalized group but you know I didn't succeed in getting an agent so um it'd be nice to see something um happening there where there's a bit more of representation more widely but you know I'm I'm glad that I've been working into that area um from my own point of view. So I think for me ultimately if people have read Salvage um and they want to know more about the history of it I would say go and look at the Scottish Government report that came out where you can get um you can you can hear firsthand accounts of how that affected people's lives so that was published in in June this year.

Host Outro And How To Support

SPEAKER_01 54:20

And I think that's I think that's probably all I can think of saying on that that point how can people best find you uh like your website your social media is there a place where you like people to follow you or reach out I'm so I'm on uh I'm not I came off X um for uh after Elon Musk called the dismantling of um UK state or whatever it was I think that was the final straw for me yeah um so I'm on blue sky uh you can follow me at M Bailey and I'm on Instagram I don't have a website um but yeah I'm on I'm on social media social media is plenty yeah yeah yeah yeah well thank you so much for sharing all this information and we are excited to have more detailed information about travelers for our listeners and thank you to our listeners yes we so appreciate you yeah thank you Mark okay thanks very much that was a lot of fun thank you nice to see you both yeah likewise bye thank you for listening to Romanasan podcast you can find us on Instagram TikTok and Facebook at Romanasan Podcast and on Twitter at Romanasanpod to support us join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our coffee fundraiser ko-fi.com backslash romanasan and please rate review and subscribe it helps people find our show it helps us so much you can follow Jez on Instagram at jezmina.vontila and paulina at romani holistic you can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling online or wherever books are sold.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Visit romanistampodcast dot com for events educational resources and more email us at romanistanpodcast at gmail.com for inquiries Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Vantila and Paulina Stevens conceived of by Paulina Stevens edited by Victor Pachas with music by Victor Pachus and artwork by Elijah Bardeau