A Chat with Steve Stack

A fond farewell to the many inanimate objects, cultural icons and general stuff around us that find themselves on the verge of extinction.


We’ve all heard of the list of endangered animals, but no one has ever pulled together a list of endangered inanimate objects.

Until now, that is.

Steve Stack has catalogued well over one hundred objects, traditions, cultural icons and, well, other stuff that is at risk of extinction.

Some of them have vanished already.

Cassette tapes, rotary dial phones, half-day closing, milk bottle deliveries, Concorde, handwritten letters, typewriters, countries that no longer exist, white dog poo…

…all these and many more are big a fond farewell in this nostalgic, and sometimes irreverent, trip down memory lane.

Hi Steve and welcome to High Heels and Book Deals. Tell me about your journey to publication.

Well mine was a bit different to most people. I was working for The Friday Project when they were still an independent publisher and had an idea for a book. It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit was intended to be a riposte to the Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? books, and also the Grumpy Old Men TV series, both of which were quite popular at the time. I had a couple of publishers who wanted to take it on but I knew we needed the turnover that this book could bring if it was successful. So I chatted with the team and they were very keen to do it in-house, which is why I wrote it under a different name. When HarperCollins bought The Friday Project this second book was already lined up but I fully expected them to ditch it. Instead, they proved to be more than up for it.

Where did you get the idea for 21st Century Dodos?

It came to me when I was writing the first book, which was an A-Z of nice things. I realised that some of the things I had included were actually quite rare these days and my brain went off on a tangent and I started listing loads of stuff that you might consider endangered if you were the sort of person to consider an inanimate object endangered, which clearly I am.

How did you remember/do the research for all the items in the book?
I had been making a list for a few years but when it came to crunch time and I had to start writing the bloody thing I asked my friends on Twitter and at my blog if they had any suggestions. I had hundreds of responses. Many of them were already planned for the book but loads weren’t and they really helped. They are thanked in the book, but they won’t be getting their hands on my royalties.

What’s the most missed item for you? 

It changes from day to day, and many of the things in the book are still around just not as common, but today I am missing Woolworths quite a bit as I need to buy some paper cups and no fucker in my home town seems to have them.

You have a very busy day job. How do you find time to write?
People assume I am busy but I am pretty good at time management and I refuse to take my work home with me. I have two kids who are a wonderful distraction but are also old enough, at 12 and 10, to amuse themselves and actually don’t want to spend all their time with dad. The whole family were great when I was writing this, though, and gave me time and space to plod away at it. Once I had a pretty decent longlist of possible entries and had done my research I buggered off to a friend’s cabin in the middle of the Scottish wilderness for ten days and wrote a big chunk of it there. When I got back it was just a case of adding some more content, checking my facts and fine tuning.

Bear in mind that each of the 134 entries are relatively short – the longest is 3 pages – so it was really like writing 134 blog posts. If I broke it down into manageable chunks then it wasn’t too much of a chore.

Has knowing the industry helped you to get published?
I was very lucky. I knew a lot of agents and publishers both professionally and socially so it was relatively easy for me to get them to consider my work, and once the first Steve Stack book sold well it was a lot easier to progress with the second book – but that’s all ‘who do you know’ stuff.

I get asked about trends a lot, mainly from writers and agents. I think trends are bollocks. Apart from a few stand out exceptions – teen vampires, conspiracy novels with the word ‘code’ in the title – there are no trends. There are just books that sell and books that don’t.

You’re great on twitter and you have your own blog. What’s your take on the social media/building a platform debate for authors?

Social media is a great way for authors to interact with other authors and with readers and it can help to spread the word about your work. But it doesn’t actually sell many books. Outside of a small circle of your closest Facebook and Twitter friends it is hard, and probably stupid, to expect that many people to cough up actual cash to read your words. They get to read them every day for free.

Any publisher that has paid a big advance for a book by a ‘Twitter sensation’ soon realises that most people on Twitter don’t buy books.

I haven’t done that by the way. Paid a big advance to a Twitter sensation. Other people have. The fools.

What is your best writing tip?

David Mitchell, the novelist rather than the serial panel show guest, once told me that if I didn’t have time to write a novel then I should write a few sentences of a novel. And then write a few more the next day. Repeat till complete.

And your worst writing habit?

I drink a lot of tea and eat a lot of cake while writing.

And finally, what’s your poison, high heels or flat shoes?

Ladies, if you all wore sensible shoes you would rule the world.

Thanks for that Steve and the best of luck. You can read my review of 21st Century Dodos here.

A chat with Laura Wilkinson

Megan Evens appears to have it all: brains, beauty, a successful career as a foreign correspondent. But deep down she is lonely and rootless. Pregnant, craving love but unable to trust after the destructive affair with her baby's father she returns to the security of her birthplace in Wales.

When Megan's son is later diagnosed with a terminal condition, a degenerative, hereditary disease, everything she believed to be true about her origins is thrown into question. To save her son Megan must unearth the truth; she must excavate family history and memory.

Enlisting the help of former colleague Jack North, a man with a secret of his own, Megan embarks on a journey of self discovery and into the heart of what it means to be a parent.





Hi Laura and welcome to High Heels and Book Deals. Tell me about your journey to publication.

When I completed the first draft of BloodMining I joined a writers’ group. A number of people in the group were ‘proper authors’ as far as I was concerned, they had MAs and some had published novels, and they were encouraging and positive. So, I wrote another draft and entered a competition, and when I was long listed it spurred me on. I wrote another draft. I submitted to half a dozen agents, two of whom came back saying, ‘We’d love to see the full manuscript,’ and though, in the end, they didn’t take me onto their books, getting that far made me feel it was worth pursuing. And so I wrote another draft… there’s a pattern here. When I heard about a couple of competitions run by independent presses I thought, ‘Have a go, what have you got to lose?’ To my surprise, and delight, I was short listed in both but I never expected to win.

And what’s it like having a debut novel out in this current climate?

Unbelievable. It really hasn’t quite sunk in, even now, a year after receiving the call from Debz Hobbs-Wyatt at Bridge House informing me that I’d won their debut novel competition and they’d like to publish the book. After the short listings and near misses with agents I’d consigned BloodMining to the ‘failed first novel’ drawer. So it’s amazing and scary, and, of course, utterly wonderful. Writing a novel involves dedication, commitment and a huge amount of hard work. After two years of writing and rewriting it’s also a relief to see it come to fruition – to know that the graft was not in vain. I feel so lucky and privileged that people will read my story.

Are you a plotter or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-panter?

Pantser. I imagine planners have to do a lot less rewriting than I do…

How long does it take you to write a first draft and how many drafts do you then complete?

It took me almost a year to complete the first draft of BloodMining, and another year to sort out the mess. A total of around seven drafts. The first draft of my second novel was much faster – six months – as it seemed to pour out of me. It’s taken another year of redrafting (three in total) as I’ve been interrupted for all sorts of reasons, some nice (like working on BloodMining again to get it publication-ready) and some not so nice, which I won’t go into here!

Have you had any jobs previously that have helped you to develop your writing skills?
I’ve worked as a journalist, editor and copywriter, so I’ve been working with words for many years, and although there is a massive difference between writing non-fiction and fiction (and fiction is harder!) I learned discipline, a sense of style, good grammar and sentence construction and other important stuff.

Today, I work part-time in a junior school, with a lovely bunch of people, and I also work as an editor for Cornerstones, one of the leading literary consultancies. I read manuscripts, and offer detailed, constructive feedback. It’s a great feeling when authors write back to me saying that they have found my reports useful and inspiring. I’d love to write full-time but until (if…) I’m offered a sizeable advance it’s not going to happen. I have to feed my kids!

How long have you been writing and have you always written novels?
I started writing fiction about six years ago, after I’d had my children. My little one was about eighteen months old. I’ve recently read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which is part memoir, part feminist rant, and one of the many interesting things that she talks about is how having children spurred on her ambition. I relate to that. Time becomes so limited after children, and it’s a cliché but I realised that life is short, I wanted them to be proud of me, and I needed to get on with it. At first I wrote short stories and when I met with moderate success, I felt bold enough to give writing a novel a go.

What’s your next book about?
The relationship between a beautiful, damaged artist and a deformed boy. One is on a quest to look ‘normal’, the other experiments with cosmetic surgery as a means of artistic expression. Set in 1980s Manchester and noughties London it explores obsession, concepts of beauty, and the meaning and value of unconditional love. It’s pretty dark, but there’s humour in there too. I’m at the polishing stage, planning to send it out to agents soon. But I’m still battling with a title – it’s had four so far. Titles are so hard to get right. At least they are for me.

What is your best writing tip?

Read, read, read. Practise.

And your worst writing habit?

Over using certain words. God, my first drafts are littered with them!

And finally, what’s your poison, high heels or flat shoes?
Heels, most definitely. I love ‘em. I do own a trusted pair of Converse All Stars and a couple of Fly London boots, but now that the gingers (my boys) are well past the toddler stage, I’ve reverted to heels.

Heels make me feel slimmer and more sophisticated, which, quite frankly, I need. And although I’m not Kylie small, I am a mere 165cm so a bit of extra height is very welcome. I’m passionate about shoes and boots, and have tons of the things cluttering up the wardrobe, but even those I don’t wear very often (like the leopard print pointy-toed stilettoes) I can’t bear to throw away. Sometimes I get a selection out in the bedroom and just slip them on for the hell of it. I guess at heart I‘m still the little girl who loves dressing up.

Small selection of my faves: gorgeous embellished gold sandals, heavenly light and easy to wear, banana yellows that go with almost everything, versatile black courts, sling backs, animal prints. Love them all.

Thanks very much, Laura and the very best of luck with BLOODMINING. You can find out more about Laura over at her website here. You can also follow her on twitter at @scorpioscribble