Lucky 13 Interview With Jamie Mollart

1 – Can you start by telling us a little about your current book?

Kings of a Dead World is a dystopian novel set in a near future where the resources have run dry. An extreme solution, The Sleep, has been adopted, where most of the population are placed into enforced hibernation for 3 months, waking for a month to live their lives, before being put back into Sleep.

The novel follows an elderly Sleeper, Ben, who is caring for his wife and Peruzzi a Janitor, one of the elite who are kept awake to supervise the Sleepers.

It’s a novel that explores the way we use time, personal culpability and our relationship with the planet and tries to be thrilling and exciting in the telling.

2 – Are you a plotter or a panster?

A bit of both.

I plan the overall plot quite extensively but allow my characters to do their own thing in the framework.

I’m really interested in plot structures and tropes such as MacGuffins ,so I’m a bit too much of a writing geek to be a pantster. I really enjoy the world building bit of writing, allowing the whole thing to percolate before you start putting the plot down on paper.

3 – Savoury or sweet?

Savoury all the way. Although having said that I’ve just eaten a magnum and it was lovely, but generally speaking I’d opt for crisps over sweet every time.

And as for the people who think it’s okay to mix sweet and savoury together, that’s just plain wrong and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

4 – Three books to a desert Island. Go!

Blimey. That’s a really tough one. They’d have to be pretty big books so they can fill all those hours, and they’d have to be pretty in-depth to occupy my mind as I’m building my escape ship from coconuts and twigs, so I’m going to go for:

Underworld, by Don DeLillo – because it’s a masterpiece in form and structure but works on so many different levels. I could read it repeatedly. That is can be so brilliant at a sentence level as well as structurally over 1000 pages blows my mind.

Oscar and Lucinda , by Peter Carey – to remind me that while I’m all alone on an island there is still love and friendship out there. It’s probably the most perfect novel I’ve ever read and contains one of the greatest set piece imagery of any novel of any time, which I’m not going to spoil here.

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton-Ellis – It was hard to decide which of his books to choose, because I love American Psycho and Glamorama, but I’ve read both of them a good few time and this one needs a bit of a revisit. And it’s got the most heart out of all his novels, he lets his guard down in it more than anything else he’s written and shows us his relationship with his father.

5 – Star Wars or Star Trek?

Star Wars without a doubt, but I’d like to only include the original trilogy, Rogue One and Solo in that? I wasn’t a big fan of the new ones, the stand-alone films worked much better for me and let’s face it the prequels were bad, the last half an hour of Revenge of the Sith excluded.

I’ve never really got Star Trek to be honest, apart from the bit in Wrath of Khan when they drop the creatures into their helmets, that’s scarred me from childhood.

6 – If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

I’ve been desperately trying to think of something pithy and clever to put here, but you know what I’m going to be lame and go for flying.

For anyone who knows me this is a strange choice because I’m scared of heights, but I’ve had a recurring dream from childhood where I’ve flown by doing breast stroke in the sky and it’s always been pretty cool.

7 – Music or Silence when writing?

Music all the way. I have music on pretty much from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I’ve got a playlist of the music I was listening to during the writing of Kings of a Dead World if you’ve got Spotify…

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0DDJppJ6FzwnOX9Ro8Z6js?si=23c7564ef1fa45de

8 – If you could live anywhere in the world, and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose?

The Atlas Mountains just outside Marrakech in Morocco.

Truly a little bit of heaven here on earth.

We’ve been to Morocco multiple times and it never fails to enthral us. It’s the most welcoming country and a melting pot of Arabic, European and African cultural influences. The food is amazing, the sun is warm and the landscape is stunning.

I’d move there tomorrow if I could.

9 - Your favourite karaoke song?

If you heard my singing voice, you’d know why I don’t do karaoke. Truly horrifying. I couldn’t do it to you. But if I absolutely had to, on pain of death, it would be Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana.

10 – One piece of advice to an aspiring writer?

I’m going to cheat here and tell them to read the two articles I’ve written for Writers and Artisits yearbook which between them contain 21 pieces of advice…

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/10-things-ive-learned-getting-my-first-novel-published

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/lessons-i-learned-writing-my-second-novel

11 – You win £1 million, but you must give half to charity. Which charity do you chose, and what do you do with the rest of the money?

I’d give £500,000 to Donate4refugees (https://donate4refugees.org/) It makes me incredibly angry how our current government treat refugees and use them as scape goats whenever they’ve fucked something up that they want to distract us from.

I don’t want to get all preachy, but it really makes my blood boil how we can turn our backs from our position of privilege on these brave people.

Do we really believe people would take that journey if they had the choice?

I’d then take the other £500,000 and spend it here https://choose.love/

12 – Horror films, yes or no? If so, any favourites?

Definitely, but I’ve not seen a good one in many years.

There was a real heyday in the 70’s and 80’s. I love The Shining; anything by David Cronenberg and David Lynch; Don’t Look Now; Alien (yes, it’s a horror film); Rosemary’s Baby; The Thing; An American Werewolf in London; and The Evil Dead.

I think I might need to watch at least one of them tonight.

13 - What are you currently working on?

A piece of speculative fiction that addresses head on the theme of toxic masculinity that runs through most of my writing.

I’ve set up a heady mix of football violence, tribalism, toxic masculinity and the Egyptian book of the dead. It’s either going to be the best thing I’ve written or a hideous mess, I’ll keep you posted…