Authorpreneur Dashboard – Carolyn Steele
Queenie's Teapot
Literature & Fiction
A post-Brexit, post-Trump romp through the world of what-if... In a world where democracy has been declared no longer fit for purpose, a cohort of randomly selected British Republic citizens receive their call to serve in parliament. As the strangers gather to learn their tasks for the next three years, the Cabinet Support Team try to fit jobs to skills—but Queenie can’t do nuffin’. Naturally she becomes head of state. Together the new government muddles through, tackling unrest on the streets and a spot of global bioterrorism in addition to their own journeys of self-discovery.
Book Bubbles from Queenie's Teapot
Reverse engineering the Trump gag.
The first draft of this daft little vision of a post-democracy world emerged before the chatterati had decided to agree with me that democracy was over. By draft two it had become a post-Brexit novel and by the final draft it was also post-Trump. I had to rush it out a little sooner than intended before real life nicked all the gags. Don't tell my editor but I sneaked the Trump reference in at the last minute. Couldn't resist it.
How do you choose a name?
Does the character come first or the name? Some of my people took ages to name, one went through three changes before it felt right, but Minnow began as a name. My partner wanted to go ice fishing, you see. I don't get fishing, even the nice-weather sort, so why the hell I agreed to go along is a mystery. I spent several hours in a wooden hut, feet and bum frozen, watching minnows swim round and round in a small bucket. 'Minnow,' I thought. 'Min-now, mi-nnowww...nice sounding word. would make a good name for someone. What would this person be like?' And by the time we sped back over the ice of Lake Erie on a skidoo (the best bit of the day by far) with our empty bag of no fish, another character had entered Queenie's world.
Interdependent hell
When we meet Queenie and Bert, their relationship mirrors a couple my son and I once has the misfortune to lodge with for a month. They had been married so long, the mutual annoyance and fury were the only things they lived for. Every time one of them left the room, the other one would regale us both (my son was nine at the time) with a litany of shortcomings. 'Why are they married if they hate each other?' the small boy asked me at one point. Thankfully, Queenie and Bert's journey down the road of mutual loathing is about to take an interesting diversion.
