Goodbye to 2021! What I'm looking forward to in 2022!
Around this time of year, I, along with many others, start pondering this past year and contemplating what is to come. I’m not going to mention Covid-19 – it’s not so much an elephant in the room as the most unwelcome house guest ever! Be that as it may, we need to forge on!
This past year was largely about The Rage Room for me, and it really was the little book that kept on giving. Below is an interview I had with Chapters4Change and I hope you’ll enjoy it – why write about dark characters?
In terms of good things to come, the sequel to The Rage Room will be published in Fall 2022; Everything You Dream is Real and I’m so excited about it!
Here’s a bit about Everything You Dream is Real: A futuristic, multigenerational love story and a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller. Filled with a cast of loveable, unforgettable, and entirely unique characters, the novel is a fabulous, adventure-filled sequel to highly-acclaimed The Rage Room – or read it as a standalone. Mad Max: Fury Road meets a futuristic True Romance in a highly original and imaginative novel.
Eleven years after a world war destroyed the consumer-driven, plastic-based existence of 2055, a new order of players jostles for power. Streaky electricity, ravaging drought, a scarcity of food and deadly Monarch butterflies makes for an increasingly desperate situation. Monarch pollen, called butt dust, is both an anesthetic and an addictive drug.
The sequel pits the genetically engineered OctoOne (part octopus, part woman) and her army against The Fountain of Youth compound ruled by an unstable plastic surgeon known as Alpha Plus and his army of mechanical cutting machines.
The novel comes to an epic climax at Carnival and world order is restored. There are happy-ever-afters and a few casualties of war.
A hilarious and at the same time poignant novel, Everything You Dream is Real is filled with delightful puns and ironies, and there is the sobering realization that obsession with appearances, the soul-draining sex-trade, and the thirst for power hold sway in our own world every bit as much as in this dystopian world.
The manuscript leaves you cheering and wishing that everything you dream really would be real.
-.-
So, that’s Everything You Dream is Real! I am also looking forward to being part of an anthology by The Mesdames of Mayhem, Thirteen Spirits and perhaps one or two other anthologies!
-.-
Interview with Chapters4Change:
What inspired you to write The Rage Room:
When people ask me that, I fear I will go on a rant because the reasons are so many!
Originally this book was to thank my mom for being a great mother but, like all my books, it didn’t turn out that way!
It’s about our ever-increasing consumerism, oblivious to the state of our planet. Our increased use of plastic, destruction of nature. Our obsession with looking good to the point where we’ll wear AI filters. And how our children will live in a toxic world - spurred by the thought of what my niece and nephew face.
I’m watching a great series on Netflix called Voir and I wanted to share a few quotes with you because I thought they are so relevant to our topic.
I’m quoting from Tony Zhou, Drew McWeeny and Jennifer Yuh Nelson but of course I’ve adapted this for the world of books!
What happens if institutions fail to punish perpetrators and we take matters into our hands?
What happens if we feel that life has failed us, and we take matters into our own hands?
In real life, violence happens for no reason to good people and is never resolved.
There are so many large and small instances of injustice in the world and a lack of satisfaction and sense of injustice upsets people which is why we have books like The Rage Room.
I admit that The Rage Room is a dark book, albeit it one with humour – well some people think its funny!
Books and movies have clearly delineated boundaries and the revenge in movies is ritualized like a sporting event - like the edges of a rink. And it’s the same in a book. The violence and revenge in a book isn’t like real life and when you pick up a book, or watch a movie, you’re entering a fantastical realm, a realm of hyper exaggeration but that hyper exaggeration vindicates what you may be thinking or feeling or wondering. And any given book or movie can depend on your mood.
When you read a book, you may ask yourself, what do you see about yourself in a character? Every revenge movie relies on a sliding scale between the emotional desire to wreak justice and the ethical implications of doing that yourself.
You ask yourself, f I were in this situation, what would I do? and could live with the consequences?
and drama has very little to do with what we like or what makes us comfortable, that’s part of the purpose of drama.
Drew McWeeny said this which I love:
“Storytelling doesn’t start with 'they lived happily ever after. Art isn't just hanging out with your friends on the couch - art is where we confront things that terrify or upset or traumatize us. It’s crucial we tell stories about characters we don’t like.”
What inspired you to incorporate the idea of rage rooms into the book?
A friend at work mentioned her friend had got divorced and they were going there. I thought the whole concept was just so great that I had to find a way to write about them.
You’ve stated that you’d consider the genre this book falls into to be speculative prediction instead of speculative fiction. Could you explain what you mean by speculative prediction in relation to this book? It not fact yet but it will be, if we carry on this way. Fiction will become fact.
Many social justice and world issues are addressed in this book. Can you speak a bit about some of those issues and why you felt it necessary to showcase those specific issues in the book?
Anger and social media. how there’s an incongruency between our social selves and real selves. Our sense of self is disintegrating like so many pixels on a screen. People rush to shout ill formed opinions on social media, believe fake news and its so unhealthy. There are healthy aspects too, but our world is very angry, and I feel its because there’s too much flashy stimulus that’s not good for our brains. And intrusive advertising is everywhere and getting worse. Plus, a lack of privacy. I look up memory foam pillows and next thing on Instagram, there’s an ad! It’s horrifying!
Many of the characters in the book are extremely flawed. The book has a lot of explicit language and sexual content, murder, and abuse. Were these characters and the dark content used to set a certain tone and to send a certain message about our world?
I admit I write dark! We don’t choose our creative voice – look at John Lennon’s Help. Desperate message but so cheerful! I am more Deadpool. We don’t control our creative voices, in a sense. I’m kind of the Ryan Reynolds of CanLit!
Which emotions did you hope to evoke in your readers and for what purposes? I wanted to shock people into awareness. I wanted to make people uncomfortable. But I also wanted them to enjoy the book and fall into another world. To me, a book is another world to fall into and I hope to offer that.
In what ways could this book be seen as a call to action? Like The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution, I wanted people to think about the planet. And try to reconnect with spirituality which is very important to me. We have lost our spiritual way, I think. Reading books like Essential Ingredients by Carole Rose Goldeneagle will help us reconnect.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book? I hope people will want to read the sequel! Seriously, to be less on social media. to be more spiritual. try to limit plastic. To be aware of anger.
If you could time travel, is there something you would want to change? The invention of plastic! I’d put a legal limit on its usage.
What did you learn from writing this book? That time travel is not a topic to try to write, lightly! And that I can never write the books I want to! something else always comes out! Books have their own message, their own voice. We don’t control our creativity; it controls us and it’s not always easy!
What does change mean to you? Incremental adjustments of the self. For example, I’m an extremely impatient person. On the one hand this is good - I get a lot done but it makes me tough to be around! I’m trying very hard to change that - I have tried for years with very limited success. Change is not so much changing oneself as changing one’s behaviours so they don’t negatively affect other people. change is acceptance of who you are and working to express that person in ways that flow better with the world.
All my books have been about social issues:
The Hungry Mirror: About body shaming and diet culture.
West of Wawa: A young immigrant, coming of age, failed first marriage, misadventure and discover. Also, historic now, since Greyhounds are no long in existence.
A Glittering Chaos: Secrets and lies that overtake our lives. Mental health. The past cannot be buried. Human frailty (Hans) and strength (Melusine). About finding new love and community.
The Witchdoctor’s Bones: About muti murders, the San people in Namibia, the origins of apartheid and Nazi culture. Muti murders are still going on today.
The Nearly Girl: Mental health, creativity, family
Between The Cracks She Fell: Homelessness and religion - Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islam. The lose of job/identity/income. Losing a sense of community is core to my books - we all need to belong
Rotten Peaches: Obsessive love, race and living during apartheid in South Africa. Not everybody in life is good - some people are rotten to the core. Love Rotten Peaches by Elton John since I was a kid and always wanted to write a book with that title.
No Fury Like That: When toxic relationships end, job loss. Identity - self discovery, the importance of family and community (again). A workaholic is forced to reassess her life.
The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution: Life at middle age, after one’s career ends. Sustaining a marriage over the years, growing apart then coming together. Finding new hope, new goals and new dreams in a world that disregards you. Also, STOP DESTROYING THE PLANET
The Rage Room: About our ever-increasing consumerism, oblivious to the state of our planet. Our increased use of plastic, destruction of nature. Our obsession with looking good to the point where we’ll wear AI filters. And how our children will live in a toxic world - spurred by the thought of what my niece and nephew face.
Everything You Dream is Real: Everything You Dream is Real is Trojan Horse carrying many metaphors; how we get so wrapped up in our own lives that we can't imagine anything else. We can't imagine the fantastical and the wonderful when really, it can be just around the corner. Good versus evil versus moral ambiguity – when push comes to shove, which one would we choose?
-.-
Two books I am really looking forward to reading are: White Lightning by Melissa Yi and The Sisters Sputnik by Terri Favro.
-.-
I wish you all the very best for 2022!
May you be healthy and happy and may all your dreams come true!
This past year was largely about The Rage Room for me, and it really was the little book that kept on giving. Below is an interview I had with Chapters4Change and I hope you’ll enjoy it – why write about dark characters?
In terms of good things to come, the sequel to The Rage Room will be published in Fall 2022; Everything You Dream is Real and I’m so excited about it!
Here’s a bit about Everything You Dream is Real: A futuristic, multigenerational love story and a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller. Filled with a cast of loveable, unforgettable, and entirely unique characters, the novel is a fabulous, adventure-filled sequel to highly-acclaimed The Rage Room – or read it as a standalone. Mad Max: Fury Road meets a futuristic True Romance in a highly original and imaginative novel.
Eleven years after a world war destroyed the consumer-driven, plastic-based existence of 2055, a new order of players jostles for power. Streaky electricity, ravaging drought, a scarcity of food and deadly Monarch butterflies makes for an increasingly desperate situation. Monarch pollen, called butt dust, is both an anesthetic and an addictive drug.
The sequel pits the genetically engineered OctoOne (part octopus, part woman) and her army against The Fountain of Youth compound ruled by an unstable plastic surgeon known as Alpha Plus and his army of mechanical cutting machines.
The novel comes to an epic climax at Carnival and world order is restored. There are happy-ever-afters and a few casualties of war.
A hilarious and at the same time poignant novel, Everything You Dream is Real is filled with delightful puns and ironies, and there is the sobering realization that obsession with appearances, the soul-draining sex-trade, and the thirst for power hold sway in our own world every bit as much as in this dystopian world.
The manuscript leaves you cheering and wishing that everything you dream really would be real.
-.-
So, that’s Everything You Dream is Real! I am also looking forward to being part of an anthology by The Mesdames of Mayhem, Thirteen Spirits and perhaps one or two other anthologies!
-.-
Interview with Chapters4Change:
What inspired you to write The Rage Room:
When people ask me that, I fear I will go on a rant because the reasons are so many!
Originally this book was to thank my mom for being a great mother but, like all my books, it didn’t turn out that way!
It’s about our ever-increasing consumerism, oblivious to the state of our planet. Our increased use of plastic, destruction of nature. Our obsession with looking good to the point where we’ll wear AI filters. And how our children will live in a toxic world - spurred by the thought of what my niece and nephew face.
I’m watching a great series on Netflix called Voir and I wanted to share a few quotes with you because I thought they are so relevant to our topic.
I’m quoting from Tony Zhou, Drew McWeeny and Jennifer Yuh Nelson but of course I’ve adapted this for the world of books!
What happens if institutions fail to punish perpetrators and we take matters into our hands?
What happens if we feel that life has failed us, and we take matters into our own hands?
In real life, violence happens for no reason to good people and is never resolved.
There are so many large and small instances of injustice in the world and a lack of satisfaction and sense of injustice upsets people which is why we have books like The Rage Room.
I admit that The Rage Room is a dark book, albeit it one with humour – well some people think its funny!
Books and movies have clearly delineated boundaries and the revenge in movies is ritualized like a sporting event - like the edges of a rink. And it’s the same in a book. The violence and revenge in a book isn’t like real life and when you pick up a book, or watch a movie, you’re entering a fantastical realm, a realm of hyper exaggeration but that hyper exaggeration vindicates what you may be thinking or feeling or wondering. And any given book or movie can depend on your mood.
When you read a book, you may ask yourself, what do you see about yourself in a character? Every revenge movie relies on a sliding scale between the emotional desire to wreak justice and the ethical implications of doing that yourself.
You ask yourself, f I were in this situation, what would I do? and could live with the consequences?
and drama has very little to do with what we like or what makes us comfortable, that’s part of the purpose of drama.
Drew McWeeny said this which I love:
“Storytelling doesn’t start with 'they lived happily ever after. Art isn't just hanging out with your friends on the couch - art is where we confront things that terrify or upset or traumatize us. It’s crucial we tell stories about characters we don’t like.”
What inspired you to incorporate the idea of rage rooms into the book?
A friend at work mentioned her friend had got divorced and they were going there. I thought the whole concept was just so great that I had to find a way to write about them.
You’ve stated that you’d consider the genre this book falls into to be speculative prediction instead of speculative fiction. Could you explain what you mean by speculative prediction in relation to this book? It not fact yet but it will be, if we carry on this way. Fiction will become fact.
Many social justice and world issues are addressed in this book. Can you speak a bit about some of those issues and why you felt it necessary to showcase those specific issues in the book?
Anger and social media. how there’s an incongruency between our social selves and real selves. Our sense of self is disintegrating like so many pixels on a screen. People rush to shout ill formed opinions on social media, believe fake news and its so unhealthy. There are healthy aspects too, but our world is very angry, and I feel its because there’s too much flashy stimulus that’s not good for our brains. And intrusive advertising is everywhere and getting worse. Plus, a lack of privacy. I look up memory foam pillows and next thing on Instagram, there’s an ad! It’s horrifying!
Many of the characters in the book are extremely flawed. The book has a lot of explicit language and sexual content, murder, and abuse. Were these characters and the dark content used to set a certain tone and to send a certain message about our world?
I admit I write dark! We don’t choose our creative voice – look at John Lennon’s Help. Desperate message but so cheerful! I am more Deadpool. We don’t control our creative voices, in a sense. I’m kind of the Ryan Reynolds of CanLit!
Which emotions did you hope to evoke in your readers and for what purposes? I wanted to shock people into awareness. I wanted to make people uncomfortable. But I also wanted them to enjoy the book and fall into another world. To me, a book is another world to fall into and I hope to offer that.
In what ways could this book be seen as a call to action? Like The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution, I wanted people to think about the planet. And try to reconnect with spirituality which is very important to me. We have lost our spiritual way, I think. Reading books like Essential Ingredients by Carole Rose Goldeneagle will help us reconnect.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book? I hope people will want to read the sequel! Seriously, to be less on social media. to be more spiritual. try to limit plastic. To be aware of anger.
If you could time travel, is there something you would want to change? The invention of plastic! I’d put a legal limit on its usage.
What did you learn from writing this book? That time travel is not a topic to try to write, lightly! And that I can never write the books I want to! something else always comes out! Books have their own message, their own voice. We don’t control our creativity; it controls us and it’s not always easy!
What does change mean to you? Incremental adjustments of the self. For example, I’m an extremely impatient person. On the one hand this is good - I get a lot done but it makes me tough to be around! I’m trying very hard to change that - I have tried for years with very limited success. Change is not so much changing oneself as changing one’s behaviours so they don’t negatively affect other people. change is acceptance of who you are and working to express that person in ways that flow better with the world.
All my books have been about social issues:
The Hungry Mirror: About body shaming and diet culture.
West of Wawa: A young immigrant, coming of age, failed first marriage, misadventure and discover. Also, historic now, since Greyhounds are no long in existence.
A Glittering Chaos: Secrets and lies that overtake our lives. Mental health. The past cannot be buried. Human frailty (Hans) and strength (Melusine). About finding new love and community.
The Witchdoctor’s Bones: About muti murders, the San people in Namibia, the origins of apartheid and Nazi culture. Muti murders are still going on today.
The Nearly Girl: Mental health, creativity, family
Between The Cracks She Fell: Homelessness and religion - Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islam. The lose of job/identity/income. Losing a sense of community is core to my books - we all need to belong
Rotten Peaches: Obsessive love, race and living during apartheid in South Africa. Not everybody in life is good - some people are rotten to the core. Love Rotten Peaches by Elton John since I was a kid and always wanted to write a book with that title.
No Fury Like That: When toxic relationships end, job loss. Identity - self discovery, the importance of family and community (again). A workaholic is forced to reassess her life.
The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution: Life at middle age, after one’s career ends. Sustaining a marriage over the years, growing apart then coming together. Finding new hope, new goals and new dreams in a world that disregards you. Also, STOP DESTROYING THE PLANET
The Rage Room: About our ever-increasing consumerism, oblivious to the state of our planet. Our increased use of plastic, destruction of nature. Our obsession with looking good to the point where we’ll wear AI filters. And how our children will live in a toxic world - spurred by the thought of what my niece and nephew face.
Everything You Dream is Real: Everything You Dream is Real is Trojan Horse carrying many metaphors; how we get so wrapped up in our own lives that we can't imagine anything else. We can't imagine the fantastical and the wonderful when really, it can be just around the corner. Good versus evil versus moral ambiguity – when push comes to shove, which one would we choose?
-.-
Two books I am really looking forward to reading are: White Lightning by Melissa Yi and The Sisters Sputnik by Terri Favro.
-.-
I wish you all the very best for 2022!
May you be healthy and happy and may all your dreams come true!
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A Writer's Life
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