Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m five-foot-seven, with brown eyes, I’m getting fatter by the year, and I’m strangely alluring to cats. They seem to turn up, from out of the woods, and demand that I adopt them.
I have written six books. They’re blimming amazing, and you should probably read them all.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I explain my motivation in the introduction of “DEMOCRACY: A User’s Guide”. Here is what I say…
“My previous book, “Individutopia”, tackled one of the subjects we will discuss Part Four: The corporatocracy. In Individutopia, the main character seeks to free
herself from corporate control; going in search of the sort of earthy, small-scale democracies we shall meet in Chapter One.
Individutopia was well received by most readers, but a couple of one-star reviews did stand out. The first called it, “Insane leftist propaganda… (that) rang like a communist manifesto”. The other suggested we should accept corporate control because, “Over one-hundred-million people were murdered by communist and socialist regimes in the Twentieth Century alone”.
Such reviewers seem to believe that there are just two political systems: American-style capitalism and Russian-style communism. We should accept corporate control because the only alternative is so ghastly that its death-toll is nine digits long.
I wrote this book to lay such a belief to rest (and to add some substance to the topics covered somewhat more whimsically in my novels).
In reality, these two political ideologies both involve top-down control. The former gives power to corporations, banks, plutocrats, and yes to governments too. The latter gives all the power to the state.
I dislike both ideologies. I want to live in a world in which no-one rules us from the top-down. For me, this is the essence of “Democracy” – a system in which the power is held by all the people, or at least by the majority.
Perhaps this definition is different from your own. If it is, I hope you can bear with me!”
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I spend a lot of my time wrestling cats whilst writing. They have a habit of climbing up onto my lap, and even onto my keyboard itself.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
David Graeber sadly passed away a couple of days ago. I can’t believe that. It’s so sad. The guy was an utter legend, and a true inspiration. His book, “Debt”, inspired me to write Money Power Love. “Bullshit Jobs” inspired the third section of Occupied and all of Individutopia. I quote the guy regularly in “DEMOCRACY: A User’s Guide”.
George Orwell and Salman Rushdie are also big inspirations. They’re like the kings of political fiction, aren’t they?
Gabriel García Márquez’s style, in “Love in a Time of Cholera”, really helped me to write Money Power Love. I re-read some Kafka and “A Brave New World” before writing “Individutopia”. And I had fun putting in Shakespearean insults into my first book, “Involution & Evolution”. That guy sure did have a way with words!
I love reading stuff by Naomi Klein, Owen Jones, Paulo Coelho, Milan Kundera, Ha-Joon Chang, Dan Ariely – to name just a few of the greats.
What are you working on now?
My garden!
I like to take a few weeks off after I’ve completed a book. “DEMOCRACY: A User’s Guide” took about 18 months to research, write and edit. I was working pretty much every day, and it left me sort of drained. So I need a bit of a break. I’m going to build a new set of steps, up the hill which leads to my house, and I’m going to build a pond for the 18 ducklings I bought that are soon going to turn into ducks.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Amazon Adverts. They’re not as good as they once were, but most of my sales come through adverts on Amazon.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Hmm.
Follow your heart, write want you want to write, and don’t expect to sell a single copy.
Or write the sort of stuff you know sells, in the same style as other authors, and you might just sell a few copies. But even then, don’t expect to sell a single copy.
The key is to promote, promote, promote.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Take all advice with a pinch of salt.
What are you reading now?
“Incidents in the life of a slave girl”.
It’s research for my next project…
What’s next for you as a writer?
I feel it’s time to write my first ever series. I’m thinking a work of historical fiction, inspired by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Haitian Slave Revolution…
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Big ones! Ones which would take a lot of time to read, and thus keep me occupied for a while. Ones which could be turned into toilet paper and kindling thereafter.
I suppose “War And Peace” springs to mind. I’ve never had the time to read that before. Maybe some sort of anthology or box-set-in-a-single-book type thing as well.
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