9: From GP to Award-Winning Author: William Rayfet Hunter

Cathy (00:11)

Hi, and welcome to Will Raifett Hunter, who has joined the Indie Book Club as our first fiction author, actually. Most of our podcasts have been either non-fiction or talking about genre. So big welcome to you. ⁓ great pleasure.

Will (00:26)

Thank you so much. you for having me.

Cathy (00:30)

our sponsor is InkSpot Publishing. And InkSpot is working very closely with World Privilege Plus on a very special project, which hopefully we can talk about publicly in a few months time.

⁓ So thank you so much to them for the introduction to Will. so let’s get on and talk about your book, Will. Before we do that, do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Because you haven’t always just been a writer, have you?

Will (00:50)

it.

I, my name is Will. I am the author of Sunstruck, which came out in May. but until fairly recently, I was a doctor. so my background is not in, literature and not in, not in kind of the study of English, but I’ve always, always written. But yeah, I worked as a doctor for about six years.

during the pandemic and for a few years after that and recently have made the transition over to writing full time.

Cathy (01:24)

amazing because actually very few people manage to make a living by writing full-time so congratulations.

Will (01:32)

Thank you. is,

it remains to be seen whether or not it’s a long term sustainable, but at the moment that is just about getting me there.

Cathy (01:41)

Okay, well, I’m just going to show the cover of the book again because it’s such a great cover and it was a really fascinating read. And I just wondered whether you found all the comparisons to Saltburn helpful or irritating.

Will (01:59)

That’s a really

good question. I think any comparison to a cultural juggernaut like that is going to be helpful in certain ways. think Saltburn was a smash hit at the time it came out. Everyone was talking about it. So when you are trying to market a novel, it can be really useful if people have like an immediate reference point. I think there were some really crucial differences between this and Saltburn and kind of the…

the style and the message and what I was trying to do with it. And I think it kind of lands in a different place for me anyway. yeah, I also think Saltburn coming out, I actually, I saw the trailer for Saltburn the day I handed in my first draft to my editor. Yeah, and I kind of was like, yeah.

Cathy (02:41)

did you? But I think it’s really

important to say that, know, Saltburn was really all about the shock value where, you know, there was a very shocking story about an outsider who, infiltrates this family and actually in much like that wonderful Korean movie Parasite, I know if you’ve seen it, he sort of, he takes, it’s a brilliant movie and he takes over, whereas

Will (02:51)

Hmm.

Yes.

Yeah, that’s great.

Cathy (03:08)

Whereas yours is a much more subtle story about class, about race, about belonging and identity. And it’s not as if he’s trying to take anything away from the Blakes, this family that he’s actually just trying to belong, isn’t he? And ⁓ that sort of goes wrong in unexpected ways, which I think, and it’s a very…

Will (03:21)

No.

Yeah, it is.

Cathy (03:34)

subtle story which Saltburn was not. and ⁓ it’s a very well written story as well. I have to say that the quality of the writing is great.

Will (03:38)

Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you so

much. think what I will say about the sort of comparison is that with Saltburn cropping up when it did and then kind of the idea for Sunstruck having been in my mind for a while, I think it speaks to a cultural and political moment that we’re in that these stories are getting traction again and that people are wanting to tell them and that people are interested in watching them or reading them in that.

as wealth inequality kind of widened dramatically after the pandemic and sort of like as we move through the 2020s, you’re seeing like an up crop of these stories about class, about race, about trying to transcend those things in a period of economic inequality. And my book was largely inspired by books like looking at, mostly America, but sometimes the US back in the…

in the 20th century, kind of things like the Great Gatsby Brideshead Revisited. So those sorts of that legacy of looking at what it means to have wealth and power and privilege and like why people might want access to that as normal working life becomes unsustainable, like economically and socially.

Cathy (04:52)

Before we delve into that, because it’s very interesting, the points that you’ve brought up, can you just tell us a little bit more about the Merkey Book Prize, the one that you won, and how it was set up? It’s Stormzy, the one behind it, is that correct?

Will (05:07)

Yeah, so back in, I think it was 2018, ⁓ Stormzy created the the Merky Foundation and that has a lot of different branches. One of them was to set up Merky Books, which is an imprint at Penguin Random House. They ⁓ were tasked with finding

like unrepresented talent, diverse voices and sort of championing those stories. And as part of that, they set up the Merky Books New Writers Prize, which was a prize for writers who hadn’t had any published like long form work and who didn’t have any representation with an agent. And I was the fourth winner of that prize in 20, well, was the 2022 prize I found out in 2023. And the prize is that you get a publishing contract and they help you develop your novel.

and Sunstruck is the outcome of that.

Cathy (05:59)

And so when you won the prize, you actually hadn’t finished it. So you had to put your skates on and got on with it.

Will (06:03)

No. Yeah, I did. had,

for the second round, they asked for 5,000 words. I think by that point I’d probably written about around 7,000. And then they were like, okay, so when will you have it finished? And I’d obviously never written a book before. had no idea how long it would take. I was, yeah. So I…

Cathy (06:22)

And presumably you were working ⁓ as a GP at the time, right? So time must have been…

Will (06:29)

Yeah, I was like, okay, I guess I’ll get it done in six months. And they kind of looked at me and were like, really? I was like, is that not right? I ended up doing it in about nine months, I think, in the end. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’d had the idea for a while. So I think when I sat down to wrote it, a lot of it had been written in my head already. But I work best with a deadline. If I’m given more time, I will use it all. I think I’d probably realistically…

Cathy (06:40)

That’s pretty good.

Yes.

Time expands,

yeah, time definitely expands to fit the available task, doesn’t it? So, yeah. But actually, you touched on some really interesting points there, one of which is that while a lot of publishers have tried to… ⁓

Will (06:58)

Yeah.

Totally, totally.

Cathy (07:14)

represent previously unrepresented voices, they haven’t given those voices the marketing budget to go with it. And they’ve quietly published books that then have actually gone nowhere. And all books need a marketing budget. And I think what’s really interesting about the Merkey prize is they do actually back it up with proper support and budget.

Will (07:19)

Hmm.

Yeah, they really do. They really do. And it’s been,

they’ve been really, really good and they’ve really championed this work and the other books that they publish, also, they do a lot with them. And I think they are leading by example in what they’re trying to do for voices of color and for queer voices. And yeah, they also have a really nice kind of environment. So I know the other prize winners, but I also know other authors who were published by Murky and

there’s a real community because it is, yeah, it like publishing is quite a homogenous industry. And I think that’s both reflected on the sort of writing side, but also just like throughout the structure of publishing. It is very, very white largely. And I think that it’s change that needs to be happened, but that the murky are a big part of that change, which is, it’s nice to be part of.

Cathy (08:05)

That’s lovely,

Yeah, brilliant. But you also touched on something else, which is interesting. You said that you’d pretty much had most of Sunstruck in your head already, which ⁓ is I personally believe that first novels are often the best because they’re the one that the author’s been thinking about for pretty much all their lives.

Will (08:37)

Hmm

Yeah.

Cathy (08:48)

⁓

Or for a leader, whereas the second book often is a real struggle because you suddenly have to write to a deadline. You have to come up with something because you’ve got a book deal or, you know, so, so what are you writing next?

Will (08:59)

Yeah.

Yes, good question. I have been sitting on second ideas and really grappling with them for a while. I think because we had quite a long lead time between when we finished the edits and when Sunstruck came out. I essentially spent most of last year mooting various…

plots and various ideas and most of them were quite bad. But I have settled on something now that’s a little bit different to Sunstruck. It touches on kind of some race and some class things. Again, it’s ⁓ looking at the story of an immigrant family from Jamaica, but with a more zoomed out perspective, longer time frame and kind of different themes. A lot about family and a lot about masculinity and the way men love each other.

But again, it’s been one that I sort of thought about early on and then went into a back corner somewhere in my brain. And then when I went through other ideas that I thought were more exciting or more kind of commercially viable or what people would want to read and kind of ended up shooting all of those down myself, I kind of came back to this other idea that I’d had.

it had flourished in that box on its own and I was like, ⁓ this has legs. So I’m going to get, well, I’ve started on that, but I’m going to give some more energy to that in the coming weeks.

Cathy (10:25)

Okay, great. And I really want to talk to you about your PG Woodhouse project, but we’ll come to that at the end, okay? Okay, I’m a huge PG Woodhouse fan, always have been. So that would be a really… So let’s go back to Sunstruck. I’ll just show the book again. And so can you tell me why you chose to not give your narrator a name?

Will (10:30)

Yeah. Yeah, feel it. Me too.

Yeah, yeah, I can. So the book follows this unnamed narrator. He joins his friend Lily’s family in the south of France on their holiday and falls in love with her oldest brother Felix. And he goes then on a journey of trying to be accepted into this world to which he doesn’t belong.

But along that journey, it’s also a struggle with his own identity, who he feels he is internally and how he moves in the world. And so by not naming him, it allows the other characters and the reader to…

to name him and to identify him themselves. Variously the characters call him, his grandmother calls him son, his friend Lily calls him white boy, the Blakes call him darling and kind of various terms of endearment that serve to welcoming him in but also keep him at a remove in a way. And in not naming him.

Cathy (11:38)

She’s his friend,

Jazz, isn’t it? It’s Jazz. He calls him Whitey or White Boy. So, which is very interesting because it’s almost like she’s, it’s done in a teasing way, but there’s an edge to it, isn’t there? She’s reminding him.

Will (11:41)

Yes. ⁓ yeah.

Yeah, there’s a kind of… Yeah,

there’s a claiming but also a reminder of his difference from her. She is very culturally black. She grew up in London. She’s both her parents are Nigerian and he is mixed race and he’s maybe not as immersed in black culture. And so she does remind him of that in a teasing way, but it also kind of is othering to him as he’s internally, he doesn’t know who he is. And so…

throughout the novel he doesn’t have a name and it’s kind of reflecting his inward inability to latch onto an identity of his own.

Cathy (12:26)

And his father is curiously missing in this story. Whereas his mother obviously has ⁓ a much greater role, which is really interesting.

because your narrator is quite morally flawed in many ways. And I thought that was ⁓ a brave choice because, you managed to make him morally flawed without alienating the readers, which is quite an achievement, I think. ⁓

Will (12:41)

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I never…

I wanted… Everyone in the book does quite questionable things, morally. Pretty much every major character has a moment where you kind of…

you look at it and you go, I’m not sure I would have done that in the situation, but there is always a justification or a defense or an emotional reasoning of how they’ve got there and you are allowed to see it. And what I tried to do and hopefully have done is not let anyone off the hook for what they’ve done, but to give some insight into why they might be doing it. And I think that’s what I find interesting about people in kind of the world and in real life is that

Even when someone does something where like as an observer or as the person that they’re doing it to you can be like, why would somebody do this? They have a reason that is like probably rooted in their system of morality that you might not agree with, but they are able to justify that to themselves in some way. that exactly. Yes, exactly.

Cathy (13:50)

⁓ Well, we’re all the hero.

Aren’t we? We’re all the

hero of our own story. so it’s, you know, even even Hitler was the hero of his story, obviously. And, but I thought it was really interesting that so he falls in love with Felix and and Felix has incredibly strong feelings towards him as well. But there’s a betrayal there because Felix will never acknowledge the relationship publicly because it’s bad for his

Will (14:02)

Well exactly.

Yeah.

Yes.

Cathy (14:20)

So for those who haven’t read the book, Felix is an up and coming actor, he’s incredibly good looking, comes from this very privileged background and you can imagine, I sort of imagined him as like a Rupert Everett type character, you know, although he’s blonde, isn’t he? He’s blonde, which, but anyway, nevermind. He’s good looking and he’s sexy and he’s, know, and I’ve got to say there’s some quite steamy moments in your book.

Will (14:32)

Hmm… Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cathy (14:47)

which, you know.

Will (14:47)

It does get a little

steamy, yeah. Yeah, no, it, yeah.

Cathy (14:52)

So very, which is great actually,

think it really highlighted the sort of fizz factor between the two men. And it was more than sex, they obviously had feelings for each other as well. But there’s a betrayal on both sides. It’s not just, so Felix betrays the narrator by not acknowledging the relationship or taking it seriously. And he cheats on Felix and.

Will (15:05)

I mean.

Yeah.

Cathy (15:18)

you know, Felix

obviously feels this really deeply. and I suppose the only character who really comes out unblemished is poor Lily, who his friend who invites him into the family in the first place, who obviously is a very kind hearted person. And she’s really guilty only of being incredibly naive, isn’t she? So.

Will (15:27)

Hmm

Yes, yeah, think,

yeah, Lily is really interesting to me and I love people’s reactions to her. think I never wrote her in a particular way to either kind of for people to feel sorry for her or to get quite annoyed by her, but people have had both of those reactions. I think she is quite naive. She’s very trusting and maybe a little bit blinkered.

Cathy (15:58)

Yes.

Will (15:59)

I think there’s some sort of willful ignorance of the the situations and the the power dynamics But yeah, I’ve had some some readers say like she really annoyed me and I’m like that’s really interesting because Things kind of happened to her and she’s quite passive in them but I think most people are doing things are quite self-serving throughout the book, but but she’s not really

Cathy (16:11)

Yes.

Well, she is in a way because obviously she invites the narrator to, and this only becomes clear later, she invites the narrator to France because she is in love with him. And she, you know, or at least she fancies the pants off him, which, you know, when you’re that age amounts to more or less the same thing, don’t you think?

Will (16:28)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

And that’s something that I have to remind myself sometimes when I’m talking about the book and when people have questions about why certain characters would do things. And I’m like, well, they’re in their early 20s. And when I was 21, when I just left uni, I can’t tell you a single reason, like actual logical reasoning behind any of the decisions I made. I just made them. It was a… ⁓

Cathy (16:53)

Yes.

where you’re full of hormones, you’re

young, you’re experimenting, you know.

Will (17:06)

Yeah,

your world is like, you’re leaving uni and so suddenly you’re being treated like a proper grown-up and you have no idea what you’re doing and that’s kind of what’s playing out in the novel.

Cathy (17:19)

And also young people are just inherently selfish. It’s not, and it’s not a judgment. It’s just, it’s, you know, they, haven’t yet learned to put themselves in someone else’s shoes properly. And, know, I think.

Will (17:23)

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s

neurochemistry and it’s psychology. They aren’t quite fully developed yet.

Cathy (17:38)

Yeah

and where did you go to uni?

Will (17:41)

I went to Newcastle Uni. ⁓ Yeah, it was great. Which features in the novel actually, I thought I’d give a bit of a shout out to my uni days. So it’s been nice having friends. It’s been cool in the first half when he describes their uni days, they are in Newcastle. It’s sort of…

Cathy (17:44)

lovely, that’s a lot of fun.

I don’t remember it featuring. How did you?

Will (18:01)

the names of bars and of certain student areas where people lived sprinkled in. So I had some messages from friends at uni being like, I think I went to the party that you’re describing in the book.

Cathy (18:12)

and Girls Without Tights as well, even in the dead of winter.

Will (18:16)

Yes,

very much that, braving the elements.

Cathy (18:20)

And of course it’s the home of Viz Comic, which I’m a big fan of. So yeah. Yeah. Brilliant.

Will (18:24)

Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

Cathy (18:30)

the other areas where I thought characters were quite morally flawed, it was very difficult reading this sometimes and deciding who was right and who was wrong, is ⁓ jazz, you know, and there’s an episode that happens in the Notting Hill Carnival, which is very difficult to read without quite strong emotions. And you’re not 100 % clear on exactly what happened. Were you deliberately vague about that because… ⁓

Will (18:38)

Yeah.

Cathy (18:57)

I presume because if you specify it too clearly, you invite judgment. What was the rationale behind that?

Will (19:07)

think I wanted to make it feel real, like what would happen in that moment. It’s very busy, it’s very chaotic. You might not get a good view of events and when violence is maybe breaking out, people are panicking. The narrator has probably had quite a bit to drink by this point. So what you’re seeing is his perception of it, but also it’s sort of filtered through memory.

Cathy (19:24)

That’s it, yes.

Will (19:31)

And it was also important because later on there are different versions of this event that are being pushed by the people involved. to have the narrator witness it but to not exactly know what he quite saw leaves that ambiguity there so that both people who have a really strong opinion of what happened can state their truth when actually the events are probably part way in between.

Cathy (19:58)

Yeah, I think that was quite a wise and brave choice actually, because any police officer will tell you that even if you have multiple witnesses to the same event, even when it’s not chaotic and even when booze or drugs are not involved, getting the same account from different people is almost impossible. And so it’s, you know,

Will (20:10)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Completely, yeah.

Cathy (20:23)

⁓ So I did think you did that really well.

Cathy (20:26)

So we were discussing morally ambiguous characters and situations. And one of the things that really struck me in the book was jazz. That’s the narrator’s friend who is of…

Will (20:32)

Yeah.

Cathy (20:40)

Nigerian background. She’s assaulted one evening, sexually assaulted, raped by one of Lily’s rich privileged friends. and the narrator refers to them in the book as the the Jack Wills group. Is that right? Or is that Jack Wills anonymous, which I thought was rather brilliantly described actually.

Will (20:56)

Yeah, Jack was anonymous.

Cathy (21:03)

And I just wondered, so jazz has this horrible experience and this obviously colors and shapes the way that she views poor old Lily who obviously is innocent and doesn’t know anything about this. But it’s a judgment on the sort of people that Lily’s hanging out with. And maybe, you know, as we did discuss how innocent Lily is and willfully innocent, I think you mentioned willful ignorance. And this is a really good example of that.

Will (21:08)

you

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cathy (21:32)

And yet, jazz and the narrator don’t do anything about it and they don’t call the guy out and they don’t… Can you just explain what your thinking was around that whole situation?

Will (21:47)

Yeah, I think there’s a few things going on, I think at university, especially kind of at the time that I was there, I would hope that it has improved, but I think there is definitely a culture of turning the other way when it comes to things to do with sexual assault.

and towards people’s attitudes around sex and consent I think it’s poorly taught and poorly understood and then there is something about the complicity of people who might have heard rumors, have heard tell of something and are unwilling to…

to do anything about it because it’s uncomfortable. And I think that’s where Lily and the rest of her friends, that’s kind of the role they play. And it’s that complicity through silence or through looking away that contributes to a culture of turning a blind eye to that sort of violence. When it comes to Jazz and the narrator in the kind of the present day in the story where they’re talking about it, I think there is a feeling that…

because the people involved, because Rupert who was involved is so privileged, because there is already this culture of looking away, of not being believed, that the process of reporting something like that, the process of trying to be believed about something that happened maybe a number of years ago, something that happened, was perpetrated by someone in a relative position of power.

is going to be so difficult and likely to not succeed ⁓ that there’s almost no point in doing it. And I think that’s quite, it’s a very commonly cited reason for people not wanting to come forward in situations of sexual assault and is something that is very, very common and quite close to my own heart in terms of experiences that I know people who have gone through and similar experiences that I’ve had.

and I think it’s it was important for me to present the event as realistically as possible. I think if I’d gone further into it and trying to find some justice for jazz, one it would have taken the book in a very different direction and through that interaction would have what the reason it’s in there and the reason I included it is to add more layers to the very complex

Cathy (23:58)

Yes.

Will (24:09)

web of systems of power that are being looked at in the novel, where whiteness and money are a big part of it, but there’s also a huge amount of misogyny in the book and a huge amount of power that is in the hands of men, and this was one of the strands that shows that, how certain people in the novel are disempowered and certain people in the novel are able to get away with doing things that they definitely shouldn’t be able to if the system were different.

Cathy (24:33)

Yes.

Very much so. In fact, I think it was Chinua Chaby, the author of Things Fall Apart, which is one of my favorite books. He wrote about black women and he said, as a black man, he has it pretty tough, but he said, spare a thought for black women because they are probably at the very, bottom of life’s totem pole, and especially where ⁓ they

Will (24:40)

Yeah, that’s brilliant.

absolutely.

Cathy (25:03)

they clash with these systems of power that you’ve just described. So, and I agree with you, would have taken your book in a very different direction, but it was very disturbing reading about it.

Will (25:08)

No, absolutely.

Cathy (25:15)

because it’s not just that Jazz is a black woman, just as a woman, calling that sort of behavior out is very problematic because you need evidence, and you need to have the stomach for the fight as well. And a lot ⁓ of victims just don’t have that. So it was just really important for me to ask you about it. So.

Will (25:20)

Mm, totally.

Thank you.

No,

absolutely.

Cathy (25:39)

Do you think the landscape has changed a little bit in light of the Me Too movement and also everyone’s invited and movements like that?

Will (25:52)

I survivors feel more emboldened to talk about it. I think some of the networks that might have protected perpetrators are being dismantled.

But I think there are large institutional problems with power and misogyny and culture that still put women in.

positions of being in danger and of not being believed. I think if you look at statistics around rape and sexual assault, the ones that do get reported and go to trial and get convicted, it’s improving but it’s still no way near what you would hope it would be. But I do think that has been a change. I think there’s been a change in the way that we…

talk to young people about consent. I, at uni, did some work with a charity that did sex education in schools and I think that has shifted. But there is sadly a lot of pushback from a higher up level, from an institutional level and from a media class that think that talking about consent is teaching kids.

have sex too young where I was actually I think there’s a lot of work to be done in the way we talk to women and girls but especially young men and boys about what is acceptable and appropriate and legal about what they are allowed to do and I think that’s where the culture shifts and I think there has been some positive changes but it’s really really complex because then you have this counterculture rising up with kind of in online spaces that is like actively encouraging.

mistreatment and disrespect towards women from young men and boys. Yeah, and I think that’s really dark and really scary. if I look at my male peers growing up, the culture was bad. People were saying and doing bad things, but it was nowhere near as ⁓ kind of explicitly… ⁓

Cathy (27:37)

you mean the Andrew Tate movement and others like that.

Yes.

Will (27:58)

It’s basically spoken about and there weren’t like online spaces where they were really getting into it at least not that I was aware of I think that is a real issue in the in the fight for Progress in in this area of people’s attitudes towards towards women and girls and I think it’s it’s really scary some of the stuff I think there are some amazing kind of male role models and particularly heterosexual men I think are the ones that need to lead the fight on this because once people once young men get into those spaces

a voice like mine isn’t going to change their mind, they’re not going listen to someone like me, it needs to come from like within straight male culture to really challenge those ideas that have quite scarily taken root.

Cathy (28:41)

Yeah, I can see that. And also you have to tread a very fine line between allowing boys to behave naturally without, do you know what mean, without making them so fearful, which is also its own problem where the natural expression of masculinity is now really frowned upon and regarded as toxic. actually ⁓ there’s a very fine line to be drawn, isn’t there? So.

Will (28:49)

Mm.

Mm.

Totally. And if

you’re too punitive about it, you run the risk of pushing people into radicalised spaces online.

Cathy (29:11)

Exactly,

exactly. And the incel groups and the, you know, I mean, there’s a real dark side to the internet, isn’t there? So for all the, for all the benefits that it’s brought to us. But anyway, thank you so much for talking about that. And because you know, we do need to have more conversations about

Will (29:19)

really, really is,

No, problem.

Cathy (29:32)

The other person I thought was really interesting in this book is Annie Carpenter. That’s the matriarch of the Blake family, who is a… Was she Greek Cypriot originally? And did you base her on anyone in particular, or is she a complete…

Will (29:37)

Yes.

Yes. ⁓

No, not on anyone in particular. She’s a she is a fiction completely but she she kind of sprung into my mind almost fully formed It was kind of her and Felix were the first characters that that really Popped into my head and the narrator sort of after them But yeah, Annie Annie is my favorite character I think because she is

Cathy (30:08)

I

sort of got that sense. She’s okay. So just for the, for those who really ought to read this book and who haven’t, she is the matriarch of the Blake family and she used to be a famous singer and it emerges that, you know, the, narrative of the family is that she met the dad in this nightclub and they fell in love instantly. But actually she plotted and planned that moment very carefully because she decided what kind of life she wanted and he was the ticket to that life.

Will (30:37)

Yeah

Cathy (30:37)

And you

know, so she’s very single minded, very, and extremely ruthless about protecting her own interests and those of her family too. And you know, it’s hard to reconcile her being the mother of someone like Lily, who’s so innocent and so sweet. Whereas Dot and Felix are definitely her children, aren’t they?

Will (30:55)

yet.

Yeah, absolutely.

They’ve inherited her ruthlessness, I think. I think with Lily, it’s… I think Lily probably got the sharp end of Annie’s upbringing. I think with Felix and maybe with Doc, because they’re the youngest, there was a ⁓ doting and a kind of… ⁓ The ruthlessness maybe didn’t come as much into play, but I think… ⁓

I think often with mothers and daughters, there can be some quite brutal criticism sometimes. I know I’ve got a lot of friends who kind of, if they have brothers, the relationship of their mums and sons is very different to mothers and daughters. So I think Lily doesn’t want to be like her mum, whereas Felix probably very much does. ⁓

Cathy (31:45)

Yes.

Yeah, and you could sort of

tell Felix is the favorite, isn’t he? Obviously. Yeah. And Dot, you describe her very beautifully. This is the youngest daughter who always slinks away at the first sign of trouble, even though she’s often the instigator of that trouble. She’s a very sort of mischievous character. So, yeah, very interesting family. and they, although they’re rich, they’re privileged, they’re what you’ve, they’re not one dimensional at all.

Will (31:52)

Yeah, yeah very much is.

Cathy (32:18)

there’s real depth there and I think you know that’s what makes it such an interesting weed. and you know I would like to ask you a whole load more questions about Sunstruck but the problem is we then introduce spoilers and I don’t want to do that. So ⁓ it’s probably a really good time to move on to to PG Woodhouse. Here’s my ⁓

Will (32:23)

Thank you, they were really fun to write.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely.

Yes. ⁓

brilliant.

Cathy (32:45)

So, because I saw that you were involved in a, is it a fan fiction coming up where several writers have written a short story based on one of P.G. Woodhouse’s writers?

Will (32:57)

Yeah, yeah so there’s 12 of us

in total. It is an anthology of short stories that has been commissioned for the 50th anniversary of Woodhouse’s passing and it’s been a really great project to get involved with. It’s been really really fun.

Cathy (33:12)

Is it Jasper Ford? Is it Jasper Ford who

organized it? who, how did it come about? Who’s…

Will (33:19)

So

I’m not actually down on who ended up commissioning it. I know that it is from the Woodhouse estate and I am…

I actually mentioned Woodhouse as a kind of reference for Sunstrike when I was writing it. I did an interview that was picked up then by the editor of this collection who got in touch with me and said, we’re putting together this short story collection, would you consider writing one? And the brief was that they are a modern spin on Jeeves and Worcester and that was all we were given.

Cathy (33:51)

I hope more.

Will (33:53)

Yeah, so I think some people have kind of sent them spiralling through time somehow with some sci-fi. I think some people have, I think there’s a murder mystery one in there. Mine, I have just placed them in the modern day, but not really changed that much about them or their dynamic. I’ve introduced some…

Cathy (34:04)

course there’s a murder mystery here.

Will (34:19)

some technology that goes awry and they are kind of grappling with that but they’ve not time traveled or anything they’ve just kind of like stayed in stasis but they’re in the in the present day it was yeah it was

Cathy (34:22)

Okay.

Don’t tell me, does Jeeves

have to say something like, sir, I find it efficacious to turn it off and then to turn it back on again.

Will (34:39)

There is a similar moment to that, yeah. It was really fun. think the thing that I love about Woodhouse is his use of language and his use of humour allows you to so quickly snap into what’s going on because the characters are so familiar and they’re so well drawn and the way he uses language is so distinct.

10 sentences into reading a Jeeves and Worcester story, You Are Fully Immersed. And I read them as a really young kid. My mum would read them to me and then once I could read on my own, I would read them kind of all the time, cover to cover, and listen to the Stephen Fry audiobooks of them as well.

Cathy (35:12)

Yes.

And of course, who

better to read PG Woodhouse than Stephen Fry? He’s,

Will (35:32)

Absolutely. So it was when I got that opportunity, I kind of couldn’t believe it. I called my mum almost immediately and was like, you’ll never guess what’s going to happen. But yeah, it was pretty. Yeah, so they gave us a length. I think, yeah, I think there was a word limit of about 7000 words.

Cathy (35:42)

Were you given any guidelines? you like, for example, the length or?

Okay.

Will (35:57)

And they sort of said, yeah, a modern spin on a Jeeves and Worcester story, and then I ended up sending them in a few ideas. And then they took those to the Woodhouse estate to sign off on them. So all of the stories are officially sanctioned by the Woodhouse estate.

Cathy (36:14)

And when’s it coming out?

Will (36:16)

It is out on the 16th of October. So, yeah.

Cathy (36:20)

Wow, ⁓ okay,

I’m really looking forward to that. And actually, one of the stories I see is written by Dominic Sandbrook as well. He doesn’t even write fiction. He’s obviously a podcaster and historian. ⁓ but P.G. Woodhouse’s Reap is, you

Will (36:35)

Yeah, and Frank, yeah,

yeah, yeah, it’s an excellent collection. I’ve read the other stories and they’re really brilliant. And it’s a real privilege to be like included among some amazing writers as well. There’s some writers who I’ve always really respected on there and it’s real honour to write about characters that I love and bring them to life in a new way.

Cathy (36:53)

absolutely,

In a way it’s a shame it’s just restricted to Jeeves and Worcester because one of my favourite characters is the Empress of Blandings, you know? The pig. So, I mean, way he gives animals characters, you know?

Will (37:08)

Yeah.

Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I did think of how happy we’ve been. Yeah,

yeah, no, he really is excellent. And it was such a privilege. When I got the commission, I then kind of redownloaded loads of the audiobooks onto my phone and I was listening to them at kind of double speed and watching the Fry and Laurie adaptation on the BBC and reading them. my, I changed.

Cathy (37:40)

So you were immersing

yourself, immersing yourself to get the…

Will (37:42)

⁓

I wanted to the voice right and then I was talking to a friend and she was like, do realise you’re talking like Bertie Worcester at the moment? I was like, yes, kind of have to, I’ve been completely immersed in this world and I need the voice to stay for as long as I can, until I’ve written it at least. But yeah, was very jolly hockey sticks around my apartment for a while.

Cathy (38:03)

Yeah.

that sounds amazing. And so is there going to be some sort of nice launch party and, you know, events surrounding the book?

Will (38:13)

I hope so, yeah.

Yeah, I hope so. I think there is an event, a launch event happening. I don’t know the details yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be ⁓ a nice affair. Maybe the movie will be on theme, maybe I’ll dress as Jeeves.

Cathy (38:28)

definitely. Or maybe Augustus Fink-Nottle or one of the other minor characters.

Will (38:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. It was really fun bringing them back. I’ve got a few of them kind of crop up ⁓ in various parts of the story. It was really nice to sit with them. There’s some mischief from the ants and from his nephews as well.

Cathy (38:51)

Yes, exactly. No, that’s amazing. And so when can we expect your next book? You said it’s swirling around in your head at the moment. How much time have you got to do it?

Will (39:00)

Yes.

So I don’t actually have a time frame which is bad for me because I need a deadline ⁓ but I’m hoping to write it over the next probably year. think I want to have a complete draft done by spring next year but it will be a little while to publication. I’ve got some other irons in the fire.

in terms of breaking maybe into TV and maybe doing some other writing. So I’m trying to balance projects at the moment. Yes. Yeah.

Cathy (39:27)

Screenwriting.

Amazing, that would be great. Actually, I’ve never done a screen… I helped a friend with the screenplay and it was amazing how much… You just whizz through it. You can even do it when you’re in the supermarket queue because you can download it onto your phone. Whereas when you’re writing a novel, it’s much more… You sit down at the computer or take notes or whatever. Whereas this is…

Will (39:32)

Yeah, it’s lame.

Hmm.

Yes, yeah.

Hmm… Yeah, yeah.

Cathy (39:57)

It’s really quick and speedy and you can whiz through it.

Will (39:59)

It’s great,

it’s great and you also, it flips, you have to flip what you’re doing. think novels are very internal both for the writer but also for the voice, like the narrator, especially if it’s POV, like first person POV, but even third person, it’s very descriptive, whereas with a screenplay, all you have is your words and your action and you can’t get flowery about it. So it’s really, you have to…

Cathy (40:22)

Yeah, it’s very visual,

isn’t it?

Will (40:25)

Yeah, so it’s a very different medium and I’m really enjoying learning the ropes there and hopefully hopefully it’ll lobby some stuff coming up.

Cathy (40:34)

Have you been commissioned to do something or is it your own

initiative?

Will (40:39)

So it’s my own initiative, I’ve kind of teamed up with an agent so we are looking at different projects and I’m on submission for some other people’s projects at the moment to try get into some writing rooms. So it’s early days but it’s very fun so far.

Cathy (40:53)

sounds like it. do you have any connection to Adam Kay? Have you met him? You should because you have a lot in common. know he obviously was a junior doctor himself and you know he now writes full-time and his books are very funny and you know he’s…

Will (40:57)

No, ⁓ I haven’t actually. No, can’t. Yeah, we’ve got a similar story. Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve read his

books.

Cathy (41:15)

And he’s, you know, obviously he does screenplays too. I would say the two them have a huge amount in common.

Will (41:19)

Yeah, you bet.

yeah, no, I should. I’ll seek him out. I’m sure there’s a connection somewhere. I’ve just not discovered it yet.

Cathy (41:28)

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, wouldn’t be too hard to get the two of you together, I’m sure. and he’s a very nice guy as well. I’ve met him only once, but very nice guy. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you and good luck with your next book. So.

Will (41:42)

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much.

Cathy (41:48)

I’m