I came across Sundy Flor’s Twitter account when I was investigating book bloggers online. I checked out her website, Books Unfold, and was impressed with the beautiful graphics she creates to accompany her posts and the interesting format for her reviews. I contacted Sundy Flor to see if she would be interested in reading and reviewing This Much Huxley Knows. She agreed and absolutely loved the novel, you can read the review here. We’ve had several email exchanges since then and it occurred to me readers of The Writer is a Lonely Hunter might be interested in learning more about book blogging and the new fangled Bookstagramming. Who better to ask than Sundy Flor?
Q&A with Sundy Flor from Books Unfold
Can you tell readers about yourself, where you’re from and Books Unfold?
I am Sundy Flor from Davao City, Philippines. I am an avid reader of books from Fantasy and Young Adult to Nonfiction. Books Unfold is my blog where I share my thoughts and the things I learned from books.
It was a fortnight ago that This Much Huxley Knows was released. Since then, lots has happened including a Twitter launch which involved some love authors sharing their experiences of childhood to celebrate my seven-year-old narrator, Huxley.
You may remember around three weeks ago, I wrote a post about the blog tour I’d organised to promote This Much Huxley Knows. (You can read it here.) Last week, everything went according to plan and book bloggers who had signed up, posted a review or excerpt on the agreed day. It wasn’t without last minute hitches, one blogger had mislaid the electronic copy of This Much Huxley Knows but with only a short while to spare, managed to read and review the novel in record time.
It’s an anxious time waiting for the launch of a new novel. Fortunately, I’ve received lots of wonderful early reviews for This Much Huxley Knows on Goodreads. If you’ve offered one, let me say here and now how terribly grateful I am. Getting positive feedback is a brilliant way to calm the nerves. I’ve also been distracted by housework and went back to one of my old favourites – cleaning the oven – such a satisfying job!
You can now pre-order a kindle or paperback copy of This Much Huxley Knows from AmazonUK, AmazonUS, Barnes and Noble or if you want to grab a bargain, order it through the Book Depository with a 10% discount and free postage worldwide.
Lovely reviews continue to be posted on Goodreads about This Much Huxley Knows. Do pop over and take a read – I’m really chuffed with the response to this novel. This Much Huxley Knows will be released on 8 July and I’m planning some social media activity to celebrate the launch.
Meanwhile, I’m continuing to write across genres and I recently had word that a poem I’d written during a workshop offered by Tolu Agbelusi will feature in the first Quay Words anthology to be published by Literature Works.
Librarians based in Cork selected the first five hundred words and a two sentence pitch of my work in progress Little Swot for feedback from literary agent Simon Trewin as part of the Cork World Book Fest. Alongside nine others (including Jean M Roberts and Andrew Wolfendon – both fellow Black Rose Writing authors) I read my pitch an opening to a large Zoom audience. The feedback was as follows:
include only the most pertinent information in the pitch
think about adding three new paragraphs the at the beginning of the novel to act as a prologue
make the dialogue sound less written and more spoken
Here’s my revised elevator pitch for Little Swot, a dual timeline crime novel
Following redundancy in 2010, menopausal journalist Stephanie Brett investigates the earlier disappearance of a teenage, West Country girl in a cold case podcast. Through the 1978 timeline, Carolyn Forster tells her own story of infatuation and exploitation.
I’m still working on the new first three paragraphs and the updated dialogue. Watch this space for further developments!
My second contemporary novel for adults This Much Huxley Knows will be released on 8 July 2021. In preparation for the launch, advance reader copies have been sent to fellow authors and I’ve received some lovely early reviews posted on Goodreads.
This book surprised me. It’s an innovative, delightful, and insightful story told in first person by a child. The narrator, Huxley, is an innocent, playful, provocative seven-year-old, an “only lonely,” (no siblings), who is achingly searching for a true friend and pushing those around him to be caring and reasonable. What is so extraordinary is that Gail Aldwin beautifully transports the reader inside Huxley’s head and heart.
Huxley is a busy guy: he avoids football but longs for his turn on the monkey bars, covets the relationship his best mate Ben has with his wee sister, Juno, (which is both adorable and sightly heartbreaking), and strikes up a sweet friendship with Leonard, an old man in a scooter. All the while, he keeps himself amused, (and captivates or annoys others), with his whimsical words-within-words.
I’ve been experimenting with genres of books I wouldn’t normally read. With increasing years, I’m told people are less open to new experiences because we feel more comfortable staying within the predictable. As I have a big birthday approaching, now seems a good time to try some new reading material. Please find below reviews for three books that have taken me beyond the contemporary fiction, women’s fiction and historical fiction that I normally read.
First it was the compelling cover image then it was the fascinating title that piqued my interest. From the very first page of The Future Brokers, I was intrigued by this ingenious glimpse into the world of 2050. Medical advances mean that following an accident, George’s body is fitted with devices that give him an edge which becomes of particular interest to others. The world in which he lives is oddly recognisable but strangely sinister. From the multiple viewpoints and distinct voices, (I particularly love George’s sense of humour) I was able to understand the motivations of the different characters which became an excellent way to drive the plot forward. As the threads come together, momentum builds to offer a tense and exciting climax.
The rich, sensory writing in The Heron drew me into the story. Jean Roberts introduces the setting of the novel as Pine Tree House, Oyster River, New Hampshire. Using a dual timeline, the story switches from a contemporary narrative to the seventeenth century. Abbey is a feisty protagonist who visits the house and is inducted into paranormal happenings by Jeremiah and Miriam. She navigates the past and the present to identify similarities in experiences. This is a confidently told story, full of detail and description. It’s an impressive, sensory and engaging read.
A patchwork of women’s experiences, Mother of Floods is embroidered with traditional tales to pinpoint key beliefs and values. The rich prose adds rhythm to the story, resonant of the drums that bring about change. In this ambitious debut, White weaves together stories of family struggles in Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Iraq. In Britain, Dave the deceased husband of Martha, slips into the virtual world to keep tabs on his family, discover new insights into their challenges and dilemmas, and intercepts to give the support he was unable to offer while alive. Their story explodes into one of universal significance. The dystopian world that evolves casts light on individual experiences and the golden thread that joins us. A remarkable story.
I became aware of Jessica Norrie and her novels through membership of a Facebook Group called Book Connectors. As the name suggests, it’s a place to connect, particularly targeted to authors and book bloggers. It was with real interest that I was drawn to Jessica’s novel The Magic Carpet. There are certain commonalities in our experiences as authors (we were both formerly teachers) and in the subject of our novels. Jessica’s novel The Magic Carpet covers the experiences of five families with children attending Year Three in an outer London school during the start of the academic year 2016. This Much Huxley Knows is set in the suburbs of London during the autumn term of the same year and is written from the viewpoint of a seven-year-old boy in Year Two.
Following email exchanges, I invited Jessica to The Writer is a Lonely Hunter in order to find out more about her experiences. I extend a warm welcome to Jessica and invite her to answer the following questions that occurred to me while reading The Magic Carpet.
Although The Magic Carpet focuses on particular families during a specific time period, did you write this novel with universal truths in mind?
Towards the end of my teaching career, I felt the need to distil thirty years, thousands of individuals, situations and conversations into something coherent, otherwise they’d all continue buzzing round my head and I wouldn’t feel free to concentrate on anything else. As everyone knows, all human children and adults combine their similarities in different ways that make them into individuals but with common interests. I wanted to see if I could get at that.
There is a large cast of characters in The Magic Carpet and the use of multiple viewpoints. How did you plan and write the novel to offer perspectives from so many different community members?
A 7-year-old said one day “If we only write in capital letters, you can’t tell us off for not using them.” That says so much about how children’s minds explore ideas, and what’s good and bad about learning to write. In the book I gave Mandeep the idea, and a grandmother who’s probably dyslexic but never diagnosed and helps with his homework after school, then I filled out the family, added neighbours, worked my way along the street… Actually five families reflect a fraction of what teachers encounter daily. Whenever I was struggling with the multiple POVs I reminded myself I was usually bombarded with thirty at once. It was just a question of keeping order.
As the title of your novel suggests, traditional stories and personal histories are central to the writing. How important do you think traditional tales are to learning and development as a child and throughout life?
I was an exceptionally lucky child because with a bookseller father I had a huge variety of brilliant children’s books. But especially to children from homes without books, traditional tales are essential. They overlap across cultures and they’re stepping-stones to other reading. They help order good from bad too although I think nowadays we’d be rightly wary of handsome princes who break in and kiss us in bed or cripple us in tiny glass shoes. Traditional stories are also versatile to teach with and happy teachers make for happy learners! As opposed to fronted adverbials which are vicious spells cast by bad fairies.
James Kelman was accused of cultural appropriation in using an eleven-year-old boy from Ghana to narrate Pigeon English, a novel about gang culture on a south London estate. What are your views on cultural appropriation?
Pigeon English is a fantastic novel, partly based I understand on Damilola Taylor. Anyone from any background is free to take that story or any other and write it their own way – Edna O’Brian did with Girl, encountering the same accusations. Opinions have hardened in recent years and I wouldn’t dare write The Magic Carpet now. Not because I think I shouldn’t, but because I’m terrified of trolls who expect everyone else to accept their opinion but don’t compromise or listen themselves. That’s not to say that evidenced criticism for poor research, or for perpetuating stereotypes and tropes isn’t absolutely valid and welcome.
You can’t set a realistic novel in London with only one ethnicity. It’s obvious to anyone who’s lived in diverse streets and learnt in diverse schools. By coincidence, Guy Gunaratne published his excellent In Our Mad and Furious City while I was finishing TMC. It also has five London narrators from different backgrounds. Does he have more right to do that because he’s BAME? He writes Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Muslim yet he’s not any of those. As a white woman, do I have more right than a man to write about domestic violence against women? Was I fair to set it in an Asian heritage household? Sadly, domestic violence exists in all cultures. Fortunately so do good stories and writers.
If opportunities to write and publish were historically fairer, this debate wouldn’t arise and everyone could develop empathy and imagination by writing and reading whatever they’re drawn to. Until very recently opportunities for writers from any kind of minority have been so limited that it’s logical now to justify ring fencing their life experiences and histories for them. But in the long term if all writers only write about what they know best it will limit everyone.
the writer is a lonely hunter 