It's an old adage, but I decided I'd stick close to it for my debut novel, Hitting the Jackpot (Bloodhound Books). It's the story of Jack and Cindy, two millennial, gig-economy workers. After a year of marriage, Cindy is divorcing Jack. She knows his lottery numbers as well as he does, so when they come up, and he says he didn't buy a ticket (he always buys a ticket!) she doesn't believe him. So, just how much of it is really based on my own experiences?
I'll start by confessing that I'm not a millennial - I'm a boomer, but I've got a good memory... I've already blogged about the setting, Cricklewood in North London, and how I grew up there. I've also written that the idea of keeping a big win a secret is a memory from my childhood, when my mother always ticked the 'No Publicity' box on her football pools entries. But there's a lot more in Jackpot that comes from my own experiences.
There's a lot of me, for example, in the main character, Jack. I'm male, so is Jack. It was a conscious decision to have a male MC. I have great admiration for writers like Nick Hornby, who is brave (and skilled) enough to make his MC female (Lucy in Just Like You), not to mention his other MC in the same book, who is much younger than Hornby (and is also black). I really didn't have the confidence to step that far out of my comfort zone on a debut novel. I made Jack's favourite film A Room With a View because it's mine - Lucy Honeychurch was my all-time screen crush for many years. The Martian by Andy Weir is his favourite book - certainly one of mine. I gave Jane Austen to Milly because she's a firm favourite of my wife.
Jackpot has three main themes: love and money are the first two, and who doesn't have experience of finding (or losing) either (or both) of them? But the third theme is very personal to me: language. As well as being male, Jack is an English teacher. I've spent most of my working life as a primary school teacher, which means I teach a lot of English. But I've also spent the last 15 years teaching Spanish primary children their entire curriculum in English, in Spain. That's where I get my inspiration for the linguistic tussles that Jack has with María, Iker and the rest of his students.
I've always found the language classroom a rich source of humour, and don't for one minute imagine I spent all my time laughing at the mistakes the seven-year-olds in my classes were making - no, most of the laughter was aimed at myself, as I confessed the errors and mishaps as I tried to live in Spain with (then) only a rudimentary grasp of Spanish. How the children howled when I told them I'd once asked a waitress for dos besos (two kisses) when I meant to say dos vasos (two glasses). I felt my small students were able to shake off any fear of making mistakes in their new language, as they saw how willing I was to laugh at my own bloopers. And I also found my own experiences making mistakes in Spanish to be as valuable as the mistakes my students were making in English, when constructing the 'language-lesson' scenes in Jackpot. I bundled all of the enthusiasm of my young Spanish students together and merged it to create the character María. Don't tell any of the other characters - but María is my favourite.
Teaching (and learning) languages have given me much pleasure in life: I hope the inclusion of this element proves entertaining for readers, as well as providing Jack with a particular character and way of viewing the world - I wouldn't want to think I was the only person who wonders why you can't order'two chickens and chips'. For some reason, you have to say two chicken...
Some (Australian) readers might complain that I've used one huge stereotype in my book (although I would claim it's an archetype): Cindy, the brash, mouthy, sporty Aussie. Is she a stereotype? I've worked with a number of Aussies in my time, and whether she's a stereotype or an archetype, her character functions because there are more than a few grains of truth within it. The majority of the Aussies I've met or worked with have been 'outdoorsy', confident, often outspoken. I always thought you'd need to be pretty confident to travel half-way round the world and 'start again'. So, maybe the only Aussies I've ever met have been so confident because they're the ones who have left Australia (I've yet to visit). I chose an 'Aussie' for Jack's 'wife' for two reasons. The first was because I wanted to set up a strong character who would have no fear battling Jack for the money. The second reason was simple: more fun with languages. I wanted to add the 'Strine' element to my exploration of how languages are learnt and used. Madam Radwańska was another device to include some Eastern European language features.
Do I really know how to cook a paella? I've lived in the Valencian region of Spain for the past 17 years and have developed a love of a good paella. As for cooking one? Well, that's debatable. A good friend booked my wife and I onto a one-day 'Paella Specialist' course at the Escuela de Arroces y Paella Valenciana a few years back, where we learned the paella-cooking process under the expert guidance of José Manuel Benito. We have the certificates stuck to our fridge to prove it. But, while my wife and I, and English visitors, enjoy our paellas - well, the English visitors say they do - would we cook paella for any of our Valencian friends? I don't think so. Jack might. But I certainly wouldn't!
The cheap holiday on a Thai beach? Yes, I'm afraid I've been there and done that. Although to be fair to Phuket, my visit was in 1990, and I confess I've greatly over-egged the 'horrors' that Jack experiences in Jackpot. Phuket in 1990 was a relatively tranquil town with a beautiful beach. The twenty-first century version I've imagined for the book is simply that - a figment of my (or Jack's) imagination.
The giant rabbit costume? Ummm, yes, I'm afraid that was me, Chapel Break First School in Norwich, circa 1988. My apologies to all the children who have never wanted a pet rabbit as a result of my 'Book Day' antics. And thanks to my headteacher at the time, Alan Dunn, who saw the chaos unfolding, and laughed throughout it all.
The enormous Japanese penis? Yes, again, I'm afraid that is very much based on fact: Tagata Jinja Shrine, Aichi Prefectura, 1991. And apologies (again) to Jude, for not warning her that the box of slides might need 'a little bit of weeding' before she took it to my parents' house to share with them our exploits in Japan.
Shelly, the colour co-ordinated girl? Huge praise to Miss Julie, a reception teacher at the New English School in Kuwait, where we taught in 1989-90. I have no doubt that the children in her classes knew their colours as well as they knew their names due to Miss Julie's inventiveness and dedication to the primary craft. The image of her parking her Suzuki Jeep every Monday, and wondering which colour she'd be wearing for the week, thrilled the children (and myself). Boris Johnson wants to give an honour to his dad? Clueless.
My dad the car-tinkerer? Yes, all true. As is the role I (Jack) played, grumpily 'learning things' when I really wanted to be inside watching Football Focus to see if George Best was fit to play Burnley at Turf Moor. (As I've mentioned, I'm a bit older than Jack.) I chose a Ford Fiesta for the book as I wanted an old car that could still be seen on British roads - the real car my dad worked on was a Vauxhall Viva HA, you're not likely to see many of them on the roads any more. Sadly, the reference to Syd's cancerous lungs is also a wave to him - gone much too soon.
And a brother? No. Two sisters. Neither remotely interested in football. I guess Rich might be the brother I never had. And the Beemer? Actually, no. I've never been much of a car fan. For me, they're just four wheels and four seats, I'd have been quite happy in Jack's Fiesta, which is very like all the cars I've ever owned. Even when I might have been able to afford a Beemer, I always much preferred buying a ticket to ride - somewhere far away.
So, the question you're probably all waiting for me to answer - did I ever keep a lottery win a secret from my wife? Well, actually... It was in the late 1990s, I was part of a school syndicate and we 'scooped' £12,000. There were twenty of us in the group, so if my year 3 maths is working as well as it should be, that gave us £600 each. Hardly 'Hitting the Jackpot', I know, but I didn't tell my wife.
What I did do was book a 'secret' half-term holiday for us, a week in Porto, and told her to clear her diary. I secreted her passport into my bag and drove us to Stansted. By this point she was widening her horizons regarding where we might be off to. As we scanned the Departures board she got very excited at the sight of a flight to Rhodes, so it was then that I confessed that it was Porto, fearing that she might be disappointed if she started thinking too much about Greek salads and Baklava. We might not have 'hit the jackpot', but we loved Porto, and (although I didn't know it at the time) the seeds of my novel were being sown...
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