the outlier №241 - making hay and fantasy rugby

author interviews, hay festival outtakes and quick musings on Aussie bookman Luke Bateman's book deal

It didn’t feel like it last week but now it feels like I’ve been very productive!

I’ve been to Hay Festival with TikTok which mercifully wasn’t the 6-day long bacchanal of last time, instead being a 3-day jaunt with a few drinks. I’ll elucidate how best to navigate the festival below and share a few of my musings.

Then if you want some book chatter, I recorded two interviews with brilliant guys last week. First up was Teacher of the Year Oli McVeigh, talking about boys’ literacy and how to get through to them in the classroom.

Then I spoke to YA and soon to be adult fiction author Josh Silver about his work, the themes and experiences that interest him, commodified trauma and how he uses fiction to explore feelings with classrooms of pupils.

His new book Traumaland is really good. Go and get it now (amazon / independents) after listening to this!

I really enjoyed both of these chats – feel free to give me some suggestions of who to talk to next and make sure to subscribe if you want to support more of this kind of thing.

making hay

I have a really good time at Hay Festival, the long-running 10 day book event held in the Welsh countryside.

Fair enough, I get a good deal, able to swan in and out of the various events mostly at my leisure and have food and drink readily available, but to be honest, it works better as an experience if you don’t overburden yourself with things to do. Here’s a bit of advice if you’re planning on catching ghe last couple of days of this year’s event, or if you’re thinking about heading to a similar one in future.

• leave room in your schedule

There’s so many talks, events, workshops and walks going on that it’s easy to give yourself a day away that feels like work.

Pick a couple of ticketed events to anchor the day around and leave time to wander and explore. The festival is free to enter and there are also free events going on that you can usually just turn up at and listen to.

• wear layers, bring waterproofs

It’s Wales in the not quite summertime. In the 3 times I’ve attended I’ve had everything from freezing cold and torrential rain to baking hot, should be shirtless kind of sunshine. Look at a forecast, layer up and pick the right kind of footwear. Don’t be the guy in gumboots in the sunshine (almost me this time).

• head into town

There’s plenty going on in Hay-on-Wye which is a beautiful place in its own right. You’ll never complete all the bookshops there are to peruse (Richard Booth’s is the obvious pick) and the food is good too – try The Granary Cafe.

• bring your own food (and maybe a chair)

The food at the festival can quickly get expensive and the queues are long. Think about bringing your own sustenance and something to sit on as the deckchairs get claimed when it’s bright out and everyone wants to read their new book!

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I saw all kinds of talks, and even joined a sustainable storytelling workshop where we came up with our own near-future narrative, but the best thing I saw was Laura Bates talking about her new book with Samira Ahmed.

Bates was really well-prepared, convivial and funny yet serious, while Ahmed pushed her on her answers in a polite but forthright manner. Sometimes the events can be a little too cosy with everyone agreeing but this one was well-judged, fascinating and a little depressing. I’d like to read Bates’ new book, The New Age of Sexism, which details how AI and tech are enabling new kinds of misogyny that cause all kinds of harm.

Elsewhere, I enjoyed Caroline O'Donoghue with Jack Edwards, the festival poet who would tap out a poem on request (apparently he usually lurks outside the Tate Modern by day), and Rebecca Solnit with James Rebanks.

me, Laura Bates and the festival poet (poems on demand)

fantasy rugby

Recently, I was sent an Aussie version of myself. Luke Bateman is a former NRL player turned bachelor contestant who started a TikTok account where he immediately began sharing his love of fantasy books while sat in the cabins of various bits of farm machinery.

Fantasy and its smutty cousin romantasy (you’ll have seen one of the A Court Of Thorns and Roses series somewhere), are booming and Bateman quickly attracted a very large audience.

Everyone seemed very pleased with this new, handsome and earnest addition to the BookTok sphere until he announced that he’d signed a 2 book deal with Simon and Schuster based on nothing more than a concept and his social media success. People on social media are now not very happy at all, saying he’s taking space from authors of all sorts who have spent years in the trenches querying and pitching their manuscripts to a publishing industry that they perceive habitually ignores them in favour of white guys. The first book is slated to come out in early 2027, a speedy schedule for anyone, let alone someone with no writing track record or even a manuscript.

The whole endeavour begs the question of who and how the book will be written. For me, someone who has pitched publishers with proposals and existing writing samples in the past, I can see why people would find this element of the deal bothersome.

I think a fair bit of the discourse misses the mark and in this case, Bateman’s identity is less important than his celebrity. Ghostwritten nonfiction and fiction books are not uncommon from the famous and it would probably annoy people if they realised how many fiction books from name brand authors benefit from a helping hired hand or two (or more). If this was a nonfiction ‘my story’ then no-one would care but because it’s fiction, it’s drawn some ire.

A publishing friend of mine thinks the project is a smart move and that the speed of Simon and Schuster has been remarkable, particularly compared to the usual industry timelines. Many books take too long to appear and miss their moment, with books about the crypto boom being a more obvious example. Bateman is hot right now so if this is what they want to do, they need to move fast and break a few hearts.

In general, Bateman is doing good things for books and this deal is more interesting and future-forward than people are giving it credit for. I’d like to follow up on this piece but if you have an opinion on the news or know a bit about the demographics of fantasy publishing then let me know post-haste!

a book

The Names by Florence Knapp is one of the big fiction releases of the year and I’d say it’s certainly worthy of your consideration. It’s the kind of clever concept that other people will wish they’d thought of, a blend of the film Sliding Doors and One Day by David Nicholls, and it’s particularly impressive given it’s a debut.

Cora, mother of two and a victim of domestic abuse, takes her baby son to the registry office to confirm his name as Gordon, after his father and grandfather. What she decides to do splits the narrative in three and we check back in with the boy and his relatives every 7 years afterwards.

It’s a deceptively simple, extraordinarily compelling read, one that I couldn’t wait to finish, even staying up late last night to find out what’s happening at the final checkin with the strands of a life lived three ways. If you can stand the subject matter, some of which is pretty grisly, it’s a great book to take away somewhere and plough on through. ( amazon / independents )

a listen

Catch up on The Outlier podcast! Let me know what you think to the latest episodes.

a quote

‘The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.’

– Carson of Downton Abbey

lastly

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