Thread 13: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 12 Observer reports currently available online: The real Salt Path | The Observer

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to read at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently 12 interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for twelve very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Have the sales or thefts of fudge gone up recently?
Will Simon's head ever turn up?
Has the shed of doubt yet burst at the seams?
Will the old charabanc hold up as a tour bus for our hip new band The Drive-By Scolders?
And finally, how much salt can we possibly cram into a giant pinch?

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

@Gouache

Some influencer creating a fake profile on Tattle to defend herself is hardly in the same realm. What an odd article.

That's exactly what I thought. Strange comparisons between SW and herself, and the other person.

But she had absolutely no way of knowing this would sell. So many books (particularly non fiction) either never get published or just don't sell very well. So the whole 'let's write a book' (whether about things they had done, really did, or didn't do at all) is still taking a huge gamble. The average author makes £7,000 per year. That wouldn't get them very far.

So it's almost as though she KNEW the book would be a success from day one.

I think, & hope in part for their sakes, RayMoth are Rice Davies ilk. They’re pretty tough IMO & may even have anticipated & planned for scenario where chickens home to roost. They’ve been pretty careful, the movie was the problem & all coming true beyond wildest imaginings. Ros Hemmings speaking out at some point might have been on their radar. That wasn’t a cool rebuttal, however.

NB: Keeler’s autobio good & interesting if you’ve not read.

Maybe, like head of PRH, they’re gamblers?

If they had nothing to lose, having lost everything, then, without a moral compass to guide them, it was probably an easy decision to make. Publish and be damned as the old saying goes!

Yes the face of the rather smug, gambling CEO of Penguin came to my mind.

They seem to have a pattern of enjoying their huge gains for a while, then it all comes crashing down. It makes me wonder if they had smaller ones before they made it big?

Agreed. I’ve never met any of my agent’s other authors.

I also wouldn’t expect RW’s agent to issue a statement, any more than I’d expect Gillian Anderson or Jason Isaac’s agents to.

I think my main point was - all that time that SW spent writing TSP, was time she could have spent looking for and working in an actual earning capacity. Like most writers do when starting out, you write and work at the same time and write in your downtime. You don't 'decide' you're going to write a bestseller and therefore you don't need to even try to make any money in the meantime, because this book is going to make you rich! (It might be what you secretly think, and what you devoutly hope, but it's so so rare to actually even make any kind of living wage that all the full-time authors I know are supported by an earning partner or are living off savings).

I know this is all hypothetical because we have no idea what was going through SW's head, but it's almost as though she KNEW all she had to do was write this book and then all their troubles would be over. Which makes me wonder in a strange and almost paranoid way, whether the book had actually been written YEARS before, and she'd been told by a publisher that it could be a winner but she just needed to work on putting some more jeopardy or human interest into it and she put it away until she could work some sad stuff in.

But they’ve been contacted for comment constantly by the media so it goes beyond just putting out a statement. And one of her agents spent some time tracking down people who’d made comments on Substack, sharing the link to RW’s ‘rebuttal’ and asking them to think again. If they could do that why couldn’t they respond to the many questions about how they felt now about this author: book they’d helped put into the world.

Judging from the synopsis of How Not to Dal dy Dir,(and it's subsequent verified sales) I somehow doubt this hypothesis!

You might have hit nail on head here

There was a male cafe chap in Mullion for example, as flagged by owner, years ago.:.

The more I think about this, the more plausible it seems. This makes a lot of sense.

I think the she just got lucky — someone who expected her book to be a bestseller would have handled the lies, omissions, massaged timelines etc much more efficiently, and got the whole backstory straight. And of course, that success has been her undoing. The two sequels, the heavy promotion, the film with its high-profile stars and heavier promotion. She must have known this was likely. Fortunately for her, she’s made her money.

But I can't help but wonder what her Plan B was? She spent time writing and working on that book - what were they living on then? She could have got at least a part time job to help bring in the cash, but she doesn't seem to have done - what was her alternative if the book fell flat? And there was a FAR greater chance of that happening than of the book being a success.

I think there are a lot of people out there (myself included for a while) who think (with regard to TSP) that 1-1=0.
1( Welsh house repossession in 2013) - 1 ( CBD/CBS diagnosis in 2015 = 0 ( TSP : 2013-4 walk with 2015 CBD diagnosis retrofitted to 2013 for dramatic effect).

But what if 1+1 =2? That would turn everything on it's head! Just a thought and a very Machiavellian one because it would imply an awful lot of fiction....

Which makes me wonder in a strange and almost paranoid way, whether the book had actually been written YEARS before, and she'd been told by a publisher that it could be a winner but she just needed to work on putting some more jeopardy or human interest into it and she put it away until she could work some sad stuff in.

I think you could be onto something there, not least because HNTDDD (RayMoth’s infamous pre-TSP novel) seems to have lots of similarities to TSP. I really wish we - or Chloe H - could get hold of a copy to work out what the similarities actually are between HNTDDD and TSP, to either strengthen or discard that theory.

I'm not saying writing isn't hard work because it absolutely is, but I feel SW's ego wouldn't let her even consider a hard-working, regular job that 'normal' people do - she sees herself as far above that.

Just like she wouldn't even consider a council house - she's a snob.

What do you mean? I’m not following.

Maybe the walk didn't start in 2013.

Okay, maybe it didn’t, but I don’t understand the 1+1=2 thing. Sorry if I’m being dense!

What if the walk started in Aug 2015 in response to a CBD/CBS diagnosis in June 2015 as evidenced by the neurologist's letter uploaded onto SW's website? Consider the implications....

The 2 certainties we have in the TSP equation ( according to the Observer article) are a) the Welsh house repossession in June/July 2013 and b) the first neurologist's letter from June 2015 uploaded onto RW's website. The rest is the narrative contained in TSP and subsequent interviews by SW....

Since the investigations, I'm convinced SW played this as a con from the beginning.

No, she didn't know it would work but she knew the formula that could work.

She had enough self-belief at one time to think one of her books would sell enough with the prize draw for the house, so I don't think we can doubt her confidence.

So she knew what didn't work, and amended the narrative.

I wonder if the 'Christmas lights' brain scan was her starting to edge away from Tim's diagnosis in a lead up to declaring him cured in the planned 4th book, as he's now lived too long for it to possibly be CBD.

That would have stopped any questions and in her mind it'd all be wrapped up very nicely. Because we're all stupid enough to have swallowed up everything else.

What has made it a winner is that it is non-fiction.

It does seem very episodic in parts - rather than continuous. It has strong echoes of 500 mile walkies, Paddy's guide book.

Then the two massive back stories ....

I hope Chloe H can get hold of a proof copy of the 4th book. That might help clarify things further.

What if the walk was never The Walk?

House repossession
CBS talk (importantly, not CBD diagnosis)
A few days holiday walking, some photos

The novel then written with the whole timeline re-worked for ultimate pathos, email sent to the big issue to present themselves as homeless, establish the New Very Sad Story, agent found, publisher interested... the rest is history. Or re-written history.