Tell us a little about yourself.
I have spent most of my life teaching English to international students, but in recent years, I have written short stories. These have appeared in several magazines, notably The Scribe, a magazine published by Breaking Rules Publishing, where they appear under the pen name Wag.
I live in Cambridge (UK) on the colourful side of town and can be found staring dreamily at my computer screen, hoping that something useful will transpire.
I’ve wanted to write and have written stories, poems, and scripts in my spare time for most of my life. From a small child, ‘Author’ was my second career choice, right after Admiral. After adults patiently explained that you couldn’t be an admiral straight away and had to rise through the ranks, beginning with swabbing the decks, I lost all interest in a naval career. That left writing—but it turned out that this was an insecure way of earning a living. As my mother rightly said, ‘You need a second string to your bow.’ The one job I was determined never to do was teaching—I hated school. Disappointingly, I have spent most of my adult life in education, drifting into teaching ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). I have retired from the classroom now but am a writing examiner for various ESOL exam boards.
I also have a story, The Boudoir of the Second Empire, in an anthology of ghost stories, The Shattered Veil, published by The Great Void Books. My most recent work is a novella, Dawson Junior G3, published by Breaking Rules Publishing.
Why Do you write?
This question slightly baffles me, and I think perhaps most writers would have the same reaction. I can’t imagine not writing. One reason is that I can, and it’s one of the few things I’m good at. More importantly, I think it’s how I make sense of the world—imagine what would happen if and what would follow after that. Even ordering words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs impose order and meaning and gives a sense of satisfaction.
What genre do you write, and why did you pick this genre?
Mainly I write prose fiction, especially speculative fiction—stories of the supernatural or that involve a mythical element, or science fiction. I have strayed into other genres like historical fiction or crime, but I don’t like to be confined to what people call ‘the real world,’ in other words, the mundane details of everyday life. It seems to me that such details obscure the greater, inner reality of human nature. So, I like to write stories that make it possible to dispense with mundanity and get straight down to the most important issues.
Tell us about your book.
Dawson Junior G3 is a story about a door. In the 24th Century, technologists create an artificially intelligent door, able to run a defense system for a house capable of pulverizing anyone who attempts to break in and disarming any suspect package. The first version was called Dawe, the next was Dawson, the next Dawson Junior, and subsequent versions are G (for generation) 2 and 3. Frank Mayfield, the protagonist of my story, has one of these (a third-generation, or ‘G3’) but feels a little dissatisfied with his whole lifestyle, a sense of being at one remove from reality. In addition to the Door, which provides ultimate protection, he has ‘Companions,’ domestic robots indistinguishable from actual women apart from a tiny socket between the collar bones where the solar cloak which charges them plugs in. They do the housework and also fulfill any sexual needs or whims. All men and women have companions. They are better friends than other humans can be, and also better lovers. They have all the knowledge of the world at their disposal, so they are unbeatable conversationalists and are always ready and willing to have sex. Not surprisingly, real men and women no longer want to meet up: they are happy to stay at home, protected by the Door and pampered by their Companions.
But Companions can’t make or have babies, and the population is plummeting alarmingly. The state forces men and women to meet occasionally and encourages them to get married to increase the population. Frank finds himself forced to marry someone he does not love when he accidentally meets a new woman with a very different set of beliefs who opens his eyes to the limitations of his society. But can he escape his forced marriage and make a future with his new soul mate?
It’s a fast-paced story with many comic moments about how technology can destroy our trust in one another.
How much time do you dedicate to your author career?
I devote the time I can, which would probably seem shockingly short to you. My primary career now is examining, and when I have marking work to do, everything else has to be put on hold, so I don’t write at all for relatively long periods. And a lot of time which could go into writing needs to go into researching markets for stories, to find out who wants what kind of work. Right now, all my time is going into promoting Dawson Junior G3. It’s a time-consuming business, but what’s the point of writing if you don’t reach an audience? During the periods that I write, I usually spend the morning doing admin work and devote the afternoon to writing. If the weather is nice, I take my laptop outside, but this is England, and that doesn’t happen often.
How long on average does it take you to write your books?
So far, I have only published one actual book, Dawson Junior G3, so I don’t know what the norm will be. But I’m a slow writer: I write and rewrite sentences until the rhythm and tone and ‘sound’ of the sentences on the page match the model in my head, which I know is right. I started writing Dawson in September 2019, finished in June 2020, sent it off to my beta readers, read their comments, sat and looked at it and re-read it for a couple of months, and then sent it off to the publisher in August, I think. It was published by Breaking Rules at the end of October 2020 and Breaking Rules Europe (a separate division that had just started) in January this year.
What is the best money you have ever spent on your author career?
I don’t know—sorry!
What is the toughest of being an author?
Disciplining yourself, not doubting yourself, sticking with your work in progress rather than abandoning it in doubt and despair.
What is the best piece of advice you have for other authors?
If you can, get some trusted friends who are interested in writing, and get them to read your first draft and comment on it, correct spelling mistakes, etc. Do everything you can to avoid grammar and spelling errors—they are off-putting to read. Apart from that, follow your own path and don’t pay too much attention to advice—it can discourage you! If everyone followed the current advice on writing and style, we would all sound the same. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
What is your favorite book?
Like most writers, I’m a keen reader. My favourite author is P. G. Wodehouse, and his masterpiece is The Code of the Woosters – but I like all his work. His sentences are beautifully crafted, and his comic timing is superb. My favourite science fiction writer is Ursula Le Guin, and of her novels, my favourite is The Lathe of Heaven. She never dazzles her readers with technology and inventions but always ends up focusing on the society in which she’s set her story. I hope (and believe) that I’ve achieved the same emphasis in Dawson Junior G3. And since childhood, there has been a special place in my heart for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, a breathtakingly magnificent work, which I still re-read from time to time.
Follow WAG:
