Today, it’s my GREAT pleasure to have Anthony McGowan on here to finish my sentences.
Anthony’s latest book The Donut Diaries, has an unlikely hero…
Dermot Milligan’s got problems. He’s overweight and hooked on donuts. He has a pushy, over-achieving mother, and a father who spends all his time hiding in the loo. His sisters, Ruby and Ella (known as Rubella) attack him relentlessly from the opposite directions of Chav and Goth. And now, he’s being sent to a nutritionist, Doctor Morlock, who looks like a Dementor from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
As the Telegraph said in a very positive review, “In an age of worrying obesity among even young children – and the perils of bullying at school and name-calling over weight issues – it’s quite a test to write a book about a boy with a donut addiction and be both sensitive and funny.”
And to balance The Telegraph with a real reader, this is a quote from an Amazon ‘reviewer’: I am 12 years old and i am a girl and this was the greatest book i have ever read It was so funny and i had a great time reading It. The only problem was it was a bit rude (it had a poo chart in it) but i recommend it to all ages and gender. Girls because they might see a boy on the cover they dont want to read it but i am a girl and I LOVE IT !!!!
And to be honest, this is exactly why I wanted Anthony on my blog – he doesn’t seem to shy away from the awkward, difficult, ‘a bit rude’ subjects that in fact we all secretly want to talk more about. He’s also very funny. I must admit laughing out loud when I read Einstein’s Underpants and How They Saved The World and I’m guessing I’m hardly the target audience…
So here’s Anthony…
When you were small, you wanted to be … an RAF fighter pilot, then an inventor, then an explorer, then a poet, then a philosopher, then a doctor, and then I ran out of being small. (Would still settle for any of those, by the way.)
You may not say it aloud but … class inequality is a bigger evil than sex and race discrimination.
The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … when my completely insane and unpublishable fourth Y/A novel, Death be not Proud, was accepted by the brilliant Walker Books.
Something that never fails to give you inspiration is … beer. And books – most of my novels sprang out of some other piece of writing – Hellbent is based on Dante’s Inferno, Henry Tumour is Henry IV pat 1 retold; The Knife that Killed Me is my take in the Iliad (with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner in the stew).
Your five favourite words are … consanguinity, meringue, osmium, scrotal, swank.
(I must admit I had to look up two of those words, and the juxtoposition of two made me look again. Oh go on, admit it, you too….!)
And as a thank you for Anthony for coming on here, I present him with a recipe for Beer and Meringue Pie. God, I love the internet…
And The Donut Diaries 2, Revenge is Sweet will be coming out in January, now available for pre-order.
Other Five Sentences …
* With Tania Hershman
* With Abegail Morley.
* With John Siddique.
* With Clare Best.
* With Scott Pack.
* With Jonathan Pinnock.
