Author Interview with The Magic Wor(l)ds

Thank you to The Magic Wor(l)ds Blog for having me on. You can read it here:


Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?


Hi Stefanie, thank you so much for having me as a guest blogger! I’ve always wanted to be an author…in fact, eight years ago, I started writing a book called ‘How to Write a Book,’ but after starting the first chapter I realised that I probably wasn’t the right person to write that book. Oh, and I realised that it probably already existed, and that I should probably read it.


Since then, writing a novel has always been in the back of my mind. I embarked on a stand-up comedy career (alongside a more normal career in finance) and then left it all behind and went travelling with my wife. When I came back, I started working on my first novel; We Are Animals, which is largely set in the countries we visited.


Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?


I was big into Roald Dahl when I was a kid, always dreaming of all the magical crazy worlds he concocted. The beauty of his writing is that it can appeal to every age; I remember starting young with The Enormous Crocodile and then moving onto George’s Marvellous Medicine and Matilda. As a teenager I carried on, reading The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Boy and Danny the Champion of the World. In a similar vein, I remember my grandad reading Spike Milligan poems to me and both of us loving the nonsensical whimsy in them.


My tastes probably haven’t changed much as an adult. I love Jonas Jonasson (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared) and Andrew Kaufman (All My Friends are Superheroes) so it’s all slightly surreal humour.


More than anything now, as an adult, I love reading books to my two-year-old. I bought him The Enormous Crocodile just last week in fact, or, as he likes to call it, ‘big snap snap.’


Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?


He is a totally different type of author to the ones I’ve discussed so far, but I would love to have a chat with Khaled Hosseini. His novels are so desperate and tragic, but also completely engaging, hopeful and full of beauty. I’d love to know more about his inspiration and the process he uses. I’d also like to tell him how A Thousand Splendid Suns had me in floods of tears on a crowded train in India, and how I hold him directly responsible for that.


If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?


Oh, I’d have Professor Dumbledore over for sure, if for no other reason than the feasts at Hogwarts always sound amazing. I’d like to think he’d be able to create one of those feasts round at my house, although I suppose that wouldn’t make me a very good host, and I’d need to buy a bigger table.


From We Are Animals I think I’d like to meet Hylad; a big, soft, northern bloke who spends most of his life living in Sweden looking for someone who isn’t there. I think he’d be good company!


Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?


In all honesty, I wrote almost all of We Are Animals during my lunch breaks at work over a period of four years so I guess my biggest ritual was to make sure I’d prepared a packed lunch the night before so I didn’t have to leave the office. Occasionally I wrote on a bus or on a train, and then I liked to try and get a seat to myself. Reading that back, I certainly don’t write in luxury, do I?!


Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 

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Published on March 09, 2020 09:01
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