These Days is a collection of short stories depicting contemporary issues and how average people are facing them. What inspired you to write these stories?

It was really the relentless daily cycle of news which, for many of us I think, can have a dehumanising effect on the very subject it’s trying to communicate. It’s a barrage. I wanted to illustrate some of the themes with personal stories, to view the social issues through the perspective of people in the eye of the storm.

Whilst many of these issues are global – climate change, the impact of AI, conspiracy theories, corporate power – their impact varies greatly of course according to where and how people live so the stories have a range of settings.

Many of the pieces have a common thread – the need for characters to make big decisions for themselves and their families. It’s really where the political meets the personal and the universal conflicts that drive this.

Your characters are all interesting and relatable. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

I wanted them to be people that readers would recognise – maybe in themselves or their friends but also people they are aware of even if only from a distance. Just as important, I wanted the characters’ conflicts to resonate – the questions facing the characters may well be far from those faced by the reader in their real lives but I wanted the stories to at least allow the reader a glimpse.

For this reason, there are situations that may be quite close to home (the threat of redundancy, the worry of illness) and others that – for most of us – are hopefully quite distant (homelessness, exploitation.)

I also wanted the characters to be rounded so the comedic stories and uplifting perspectives are as important as the themes that often feel bleak to most of us. Life is light and shade.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Climate change was one that recurs in a number of stories – unsurprisingly since it impacts all of us and we probably all often have a similarly helpless view of its scale. The impact of 24/7 social media is another that permeates several stories as it’s a constant in the way that ideas are shared and take root. The pandemic is of course always in the background (sometimes the foreground) too.

All of these are examples of themes for the 2020s. The first two of course predate it too but they seem to have taken centre stage in all that’s impacting our day to day lives right now.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

I have some more short stories in development as well as some non-fiction projects which will likely be out there in the second half of 2022.

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