A touchingly funny narrative seen through the eyes of a rather earnest schoolgirl who is lumbered with hippie parents - Pony Louder really knows how to use dark humour to great effect!
- CWIP
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
For readers who haven’t (yet!) read your ‘Octopus’, can you tell us about it in one sentence? To paraphrase one reviewer:Octopus is a wild story of an extraordinary globetrotting family, as told by someone who’d rather be at school.
What experience do you have with the hippy lifestyle and the contradictions it brings - how much of your own life has been plundered to offer such wit on the page? The hippy 70s were freewheeling and colourful, and such a fun place to set Octopus. In my experience writers put a lot of themselves into their work: maybe that’s what makes the characters and stories relatable. I wanted this story to feel relatable. We might not know what it’s like stuffing high-grade cocaine into camera tripod legs late at night in an Amsterdam penthouse or to meet Muhammad Ali at LAX, but everyone knows how it feels to disagree with their parents’ big ideas.
Do you find crime an easy bedfellow with comedy writing? Lawless behaviour can be such a hoot. Especially in families. Mine’s a darkish sense of humour. It’s what I lean on most and the energy I want to bring to the page. While giggling through our struggles might not be the ideal way out, I think humour’s our best defence against almost everything.
What inspired you to write a witty time travelling novel? What inspired me to write Octopus? It just felt like a story that wanted to be told.
Which witty novel inspired you the most growing up? The witty novels that really stuck with me as a child were Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I Capture the Castle and Hideous Kinky. Maybe I should have stuck to The Faraway Tree and Narnia, but these are the books that stuck with me. They’re hilarious, chaotic and very real. That sense of living outside normal felt right to bring into Octopus.
How long have you wanted to write and finish a manuscript? Where do you write? Do you take coffee breaks or stick to water /wine/other? Any writing habits gratefully received.
Books have always been such great friends, saving me and making me laugh so many times. So having Octopus out in the world, possibly making other people laugh, feels wonderful.
I’d love to say I write by candlelight in a turret overlooking a storm-lashed Cornish coastline, a greyhound at my feet and an empty bottle of red wine at my elbow. In reality, it’s me tapping at a laptop in the corner of the living room early in the morning next to a moody pot plant.
The most useful tip I know is just to get your arse in the seat.
Finally, can you tell us why you think CWIP is important?!
CWIP is so important, CRUCIAL, because it celebrates women’s humour, something brilliant, unruly, and too often written off. For too long women’s wit has been sidelined and dismissed, treated as if it didn’t properly exist or wasn’t valuable. So CWIP shining a spotlight on that talent feels like something to grab with both hands and kiss hard on the mouth. Figuratively speaking, of course.
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