I am thrilled to have interviewed author Stuart Cavet, who shared with us details of his writing life, his book ‘Something Kind Of Strange‘, which was released on 27th February 2023, and answered a few fun questions. This post contains affiliate links.

Stuart was formerly an international lawyer, living and working across Asia and the Middle East. He now lives and writes in London. He has had short stories and flash fiction published in various journals, and in 2022 he won second prize in the flash fiction category of the QuietManDave competition run by the writing school at Manchester Metropolitan University. His debut novel, Something Kind Of Strange, is published through Amazon.

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Dubai, where I was living at the time, and as I looked outside, across a busy highway to a whole row of skyscrapers, I thought: what if I had the whole city to myself? what if I was completely alone in one of the most modern cities in the world? And about the same time, I was listening to Desert Island Discs a lot, and I would often wonder how any of us – as citizens of the twenty-first century, with our specialised education and our consumer lifestyles – would survive on a desert island compared with someone from, say, the eighteenth century like Robinson Crusoe. I think these two things fed into each other.

Up to a point the plot took care of itself. I had to put myself in the position of the protagonist, Adam Walker, and ask myself: what, logically, would I do if I woke up one day to find that everyone – including my wife – had mysteriously disappeared and there was no power and no technological means to find out what had happened or to call for help? And what would I do the next day and the next. I had to keep pulling on that thread.

There was, of course, the issue of mental as well as physical survival, especially dealing with the mystery of why everyone had disappeared in the first place. I had also to think about how the city would be affected by being depopulated – no power, no air conditioning (in Dubai!), no running water, no working sewage system, no working petrol pumps, that sort of thing – and how that would increasingly affect Adam. In the end, I had two folders full of notes, ideas, research, etc.

I think it was while writing the first draft, maybe a little before. I did have a different title in mind initially, but a television show then came out with the same name! That turned out to be fortunate because it made me realise that the initial title closed off some of the mystery in the book and that what I needed was something more open.

That’s an easy one. It’s really a single-character story, although other characters do briefly appear through flashbacks, memories, dreams etc. I chose Adam Walker for the main character because Adam is the name of the first man (in Christian theology, of course), and in a number of languages ‘Adam’ or variations on that word mean ‘man’.

I wanted him to be universal, a kind of archetype, though having very much his own distinctive personality. Likewise, with his surname, Walker – walking is one of the basic human actions, and I was thinking along the lines of ‘homo erectus’.

I removed plenty. Over a dozen full drafts, I removed about 20,000 words. But then, having identified key plot points, I probably put in another 20,000 words (or more!) to develop them. Some of the things I removed include redundant description of landscape and the detailed process whereby Adam calculates his petrol reserves and requirements – things that could be cut altogether or significantly simplified.

It’s not a ‘genre’ book. It follows a very simple idea and has fun with it without regard to any particular rules or formulae. I was intrigued by the initial idea and by seeing how far I could take it, and I enjoyed having the freedom to do with it just what I wanted.

The writing process took approximately 18 months. As I mentioned, there were a dozen full drafts, and that was writing pretty much full time. I then spent about another 18 months trying to get representation with an agent but ultimately went down the self-publishing route. So about three years altogether.

Strange psychological mystery.

For me, as a self-published debut novelist, getting read. The standard way to get a readership is, of course, to persuade someone to be your agent, have the agent persuade a publisher to publish you, and then have the publisher persuade the public to read you. Up to a point these are things over which you have limited control. All you can do as a writer is write the best book you can. After that everything depends on a host of subjective decisions, however ‘good’ your book. And when you go the self-publishing route, it’s extremely difficult to market yourself credibly to a wide potential readership.

It’s about identity, relationships and our grasp of reality – and though that might sound a bit heavy, it’s strongly plot-driven, with plenty of humour and action, and all in the highly cinematic setting of Dubai. Oh, and did I mention the live shop-mannequins? or the trolls? or the plague-rats?

No, it’s definitely a buddy-free zone.

Most of my quirks are un-writing-related! These probably don’t count as quirks, but I would always write facing a wall (less distractions) and always aim to write 2,000 words a day (got to have a target); and though I did sometimes have music on, I was definitely more productive in a quiet environment (it’s not just that the music itself can be distracting but the choosing and the changing of the music!).

This novel was written at a desk in a spare bedroom.

One of the live shop-mannequins!

‘Why are there no owls in your book?!’