By Jess Scaffidi Saggio, Lucy Powell, Katie Farr, Iona Fleming, Ayman Sabir
2024 has been a great year in the publishing world, with so many amazing stories having been released by both well-established writers and debut authors. Here at The Publishing Post, we have spoken with a variety of this year’s best authors – from Sarah Brooks to Patti McCracken, we have been spoilt for choice! Our team has outlined the highlights from our interviews this year, so keep reading for more…
At the very beginning of the year, we interviewed Nathan Evans, and what a start to the year. Evans’ tear-jerkingly beautiful fourth novel, One Last Song, is a love story following Joan, a proud gay man, who has always fought for LGBTQIA+ rights but now finds himself in a care home surrounded by carers and residents who do not accept his sexuality. However, Joan soon realises that fellow resident, Jim, may have more in common with him than the two had realised.
It was fascinating to uncover the main themes behind Evans’ novel, namely the acceptance of an umbrella of genders and sexualities amongst generations, and homophobic attitudes often present in care homes. Evans was inspired to write this touching romance story after watching a Channel 4 documentary which explored the experiences of queer elderly folk in care homes who found themselves having to conceal their sexuality. This compelled Evans to explore the topic from two different perspectives: Joan, who refuses to go back into the closet, and Jim, who felt he had to hide his sexuality.
Despite touching on such sensitive themes, Evans does this in a way that does not undermine the importance of these issues, whilst also keeping a light-hearted tone. Evans celebrates a diversity of genders and sexualities in a beautiful way, and this novel is generally a particularly impressive feat given that it is Evans’ first piece of long-form fiction!
In April, we were thrilled to interview journalist and author Patti McCracken about her debut non-fiction book, The Angel Makers. McCracken provided us with fascinating insight into the research and preparation involved to enable her to accurately portray the series of real murders in 1910–1920s Hungary on which the book is focused. Although an experienced journalist, McCracken found writing a full-length non-fiction novel to be a completely different process, requiring a huge amount of time as well as extensive travel to become intimately familiar with the places and culture discussed. It was inspiring to hear about the enormous dedication and perseverance taken to write the book over a fourteen-year period.
In June, we spoke to Sarah Brooks about her historical fantasy novel The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to The Wastelands. The novel, which takes place on a train in an alternative Victorian era, combines reality and fantasy while uniting an eccentric cast of characters including Weiwei, Marya and Henry Grey. Written from three perspectives, the characters developed their own distinct voices.
We really enjoyed learning about Brooks’s process while writing this novel: what began from Brooks’s own experience travelling from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian railway in her student years led to extensive research on the railway and history of Siberia. The story, however, diverges from history: the railway is immensely important, but here it is because it connects the Wastelands, a vast area connecting China and Russia and threatening a host of unknown terrors. Here Brooks was influenced by the emphasis in East Asian literature on the connection between the human and natural world. The characters occupy a world they are aware possesses a “strangeness,” without understanding too much to give away the story. This blend of the historical and reality created a connection to the real world for readers to hold onto as they read.
In September, we spoke with ST Gibson about her fantasy, gothic novel Evocation. This book forms the first part of a sprawling four-part series called The Summoner’s Circle – the second book Odd Spirits came out in October. Gibson said it was written in conversation with the urban fantasy books she grew up with – and with secret societies, Faustian deals, and messy relationships, this is a book that certainly delivers that in spades.
We really enjoyed how Gibson explained more about how the book was inspired by the European ceremonial magic craze in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Transposed into the twenty-first century, we saw how Gibson through her book wanted to open a whole new world of what this could look like in the “Instagram and Discord” era of occult forums.
Moreover, finding out more about Gibson’s inclusion of polyamory in Evocation was eye-opening – particularly about a relationship dynamic that is rarely depicted versus that of the traditional love-triangle. That her three lead characters were “a three-sided, equally weighted triangle” was a refreshing change, yet still just as complex, coupled with complications of love, lust and jealousy that are present in all relationships.
2024 has been an incredible year filled with wisdom and passion. We have spoken to many amazing writers, and we cannot wait to see what 2025 brings...