Fray – the novel written on the bus to V&A Dundee
An exclusive signed, dedicated and embossed edition of Fray is available at the V&A Dundee online shop.
My debut novel, Fray, was written in secret on the bus to and from work at V&A Dundee. No one knew about this until I finished the first draft and shared it with my wife and daughter. Now it’s just been published by HarperCollins, and has been praised by Alan Cumming, Damian Barr and Kirstin Innes, incredible creative people I’ve admired for many, many years.
I had the great privilege of joining the V&A Dundee team at the beginning of 2016, when the museum’s construction was still in its very early stages. The beautiful curving walls were being cast in sections, hidden behind the bright red and yellow temporary building works. It was a very exciting time, but daunting as a new member of staff racing to get their head around how to communicate this incredible project to the world.
I have always written, both professionally in jobs in journalism and communications, but also in secret for myself. I love the creativity and challenge of working with language. Along with my passion for running, writing has been a key way I’ve managed my mental health throughout my life. I’d always wanted to write a full book, but never had the right idea or the tenacity to see it through.
V&A Dundee changed that, in ways I only fully understand now. Being part of a project that was so ambitious and required such long-term commitment unlocked something about how I thought about my own creativity. To see so many talented people working with such focus and dedication to create Scotland’s design museum made me wonder what I could achieve, if I let go and accepted that a book might take years and years of slow, patient work.
I had the drive to write, but I still lacked the core idea. I knew that whatever I wrote would address mental health in some way, as it’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my life. The spark came on a family holiday in the autumn of 2016, not long after joining the museum.
We were in Glen Coe and I went for a run, aiming to climb up to the top of one of the Munro mountains. It was a slightly damp, dark day, but the weather quickly turned for the worse. About halfway up, around 500 metres above sea level, torrential rain came on and the visibility disappeared. It was a terrifying moment, feeling so small and vulnerable against the brutality of the weather and the mountains. I was forced to quickly turn back.
In that moment came the spark for Fray: to set my story in the Highlands, to use the landscape and weather to represent the turmoil of grief, and to tell a story that was open and honest about mental health, but empowering too.
Once I came back from the holiday, my only remaining problem was lacking any time to write, as work was all-consuming in the years building up to the museum’s launch. My short bus trip over the Tay Bridge and back was my only chance in the day to put down a few words, and so the novel slowly grew in ten- and fifteen-minutes bursts.
I’m beyond thrilled now to have Fray out there in the world, and to be sharing this wild and wonderful story with readers. And I’m so very grateful to have been given the chance to work at V&A Dundee, and to see how hard work and commitment over many years can enable incredible, life-changing creativity.
Order your signed, dedicated and embossed copy of Fray now at the V&A Dundee online shop.
Header image: Frame Focus Capture Photography
Article image: Ross Fraser McLean