How much influence did the time you spent living in Australia have on the research and writing of Mr Mikey’s Ladies, your latest novel?

I lived in Australia - Balmain, Sydney - during the late 1970s to mid 1980s. I finished my university degree in English and Drama there and was the Editor of a national theatre magazine, "Theatre Australia" for six years. I was also a TV presenter with my own arts and entertainment programme, "Review" on NBN3 TV, a freelance journalist covering the performing arts, writing for the "Sydney Morning Herald" and various magazines; I edited books for Currency Press and worked for the Australian Film Institute. Reviewing theatre for all these outlets, meant I probably saw every single show that was on in Sydney for the best part of a decade - for instance I saw Mel Gibson act in his final drama college production, and interviewed him when the following year he played a very young Hamlet. I also interviewed Barry Humphries, Tom Stoppard, Derek Jacobi, David Williamson and Googie Withers, among others.

I have old friends who were students with me who are now at the top of the Australian media, film, theatre and tv worlds, and whom I regularly see, either here or in Australia. Which also means that whenever I go back to Sydney, I immerse myself in theatre - to see the plays my friends have written or are starring in or are reviewing - in a way that I’ve left behind in my normal life! So for me, Australia and the theatre are inextricably linked.

So I guess all this influences me, set up the idea that Mr Mikey would be writing a musical that gets put on at the Sydney Opera House -- and another reason for setting Mr Mikey in Australia was it might give me the chance to go back there more often.

But it’s also that I love the place, especially Balmain, the Sydney suburb where I used to live (in a Victorian semi, not unlike where Mr Mikey and Dolly live) - and there’s something about the richness and openness of Australian social and cultural life that made it a particularly good environment for "the ladies" to have grown out of. The iconic Sydney landmarks also make a wonderful backdrop for Mr Mikey’s musical, "The Ladies".


What was the salutary advice your friend, the real life "Mr Mikey", gave you after reading the opening chapter?

He told me to make Mr Mikey himself more empathetic and less camp than he was in the first draft of the first chapter. He was right because I didn’t want him to come over as a brittle, gay stereotype, so I hope that his genuine affection for Dolly, The Brat and of course, his ladies, is one of the things that makes him a sympathetic and authentic character. And that his falling for Andy is a genuine love affair, not a "gay relationship".

The real Mr M, though, did like the somewhat cynical tone of the narration and slightly bitchy descriptions of the characters that is part of the style of the book - not just Mr Mikey’s own thoughts or words, and perhaps it resonates with a camply humorous view of the world. Oh, and I also have to give the real Mr M credit for coming up with the idea that Mr Mikey had a marriage of convenience to his lover’s sister. We have known Antipodean friends with similar marriages of convenience in the UK - but I thought it was a great plot device and very funny to have a gay widow left with a wife and child to support.

Conversations with him also gave me some great quotes for the fictional Mr Mikey, such as "I’ve never really seen the point of straight men."


Did your third person narrative for this new novel give you a license to ‘direct’ your story, where your previous first person novels had not?

Yes, definitely - it was very liberating after the first person narratives of "Blood and Water" and "Kindred Spirits". I enjoyed developing a thought process and writing style for each of the ladies as well as Mr Mikey himself; being able to show the other sides of the different stories - for instance through Nico, Dan’s and Dexter’s eyes as well as those of the six ladies; and to entangle the complexities of the plot in a way that the reader could see the big picture - and therefore the cliff hangers - while the characters themselves cannot.

It also seemed to have the effect of making the plot flow more easily. With my other two, first person narrative novels, I designed the plots very carefully in advance, knowing that I could only plan to show what the main character was experiencing, but I was able to let "Mr Mikey’s Ladies" write their own stories much more spontaneously and the intricacies and mix ups and misunderstandings wove themselves together comparatively easily.


The novel is a very visual work. Did you approach Mr Mikey’s Ladies with anything resembling a scriptwriter’s eye?

Certainly my background in both theatre and tv script writing has influenced my novel writing. I think I tend to write very visually, and in terms of "scenes" and "action". I’d love to think that all or any of my novels would make good screenplays.

"Mr Mikey’s Ladies" is, of course, particularly theatrical as throughout you know that Mr Mikey is turning the real lives of his "ladies" into the plot of his mega musical - and scattered through the novel you have camp little musical vignettes where he is imagining "The Ladies" lip-syncing to the classic women’s pop anthems that punctuate his musical extravaganza.

My involvement with Australian theatre while I lived there, has also influenced the style of the book. Aussie drama has a wonderful penchant for high theatricality, "camperoo", music hall and showmanship, not to mention the amazing gay cabaret scene in Sydney which inspired some of Mr Mikey’s scenarios.

Another aspect of my media background that contributed to the subject matter of "Mr Mikey’s Ladies" was that I was one of the team who produced the ground-breaking "Lovers Guide" video series. These were the first graphic, sex education videos to be released on the general market with an 18 rating - in the early 90s. I was involved with writing the scripts - and one of my research jobs was to facilitate a focus group of women to find out what they really wanted from a man in bed, what turned them on, what turned them off. And of course I was around the studio shoots, editing the rushes etc. So quite possibly some snippets of information and visual memories of this experience might have found their way into "Mr Mikey’s Ladies"!


Your second novel, "Kindred Spirits" was a partly autobiographical work. How does your latest work compare to its predecessors, in terms of the quantity of autobiographical content?

My first two novels, "Blood and Water" and "Kindred Spirits" took their starting points from autobiographical events, as they track a family who live first in London’s Crystal Palace area, then move to a village in South Norfolk - which is exactly what I have done.

"Mr Mikey’s Ladies" is not at all autobiographical, in that sense, though his Victorian semi in Balmain is pretty much the house I lived in, in Sydney. Certainly none of the ladies or their stories are based on my life, though character-wise there’s probably a sliver of me in most of them. (And see the bit about the "Lovers Guide" videos in the previous question.)

In fact, the character I most identify with is Mr Mikey himself. There was a time when it seemed that most of my girlfriends were having, or thinking of having, affairs; or were unhappy with their relationships for one reason or another - and were confiding in me about their problems. The germ for the idea of the story did come from a couple of friends who were, despite being good friends themselves, romantically involved with each other’s husbands on the side - but all indentifying features have been changed to protect the guilty parties!

On the other hand, I’ve very much enjoyed having a gay man as a central character to voice opinions about straight men that could have sounded like whining if they had come from a more obviously autobiographical (middle aged woman) viewpoint.


Do you share, or did you draw upon, any strong spiritual or esoteric beliefs in writing the part of Mikey’s wife, Dolly?

Dolly is one of my favourite characters - and certainly one of the most fun to write. I do have an interest in different spiritual approaches to life, I do meditate (when I remember to!) and I do own a pack of Archangel Oracle Cards, which someone gave me - but I don’t run my life on a belief in these like Dolly does, nor share her eternal optimism in the forces of spiritual good. (Perhaps I should also say that Dolly’s lackadaisical attitude to personal and domestic hygiene is in no way akin to mine!)

Dolly is probably the most comic figure of "Mr Mikey’s Ladies" - Mr Mikey, the other ladies and indeed the reader, laugh at her beliefs and attitudes all the way through - and yet in the end she achieves her aims and Mr Mikey is left to wonder how it could all have happened without the input of The Angels. She also turns out, in the very last chapter, to have an honesty and a moral streak that hopefully no one saw coming. So perhaps, without really intending to, I’ve written Dolly’s story as a vindication of her somewhat wild and whacky, New Age attitudes.


Is this new book really a ‘hen lit’ novel? Why did you feel it appropriate to classify Mr Mikey’s Ladies in this way?

"Hen lit is a literary genre which focuses on older female characters as protagonists. The genre has increased in popularity as the baby boomers have aged and female readers have sought characters to identify with. Subjects are often romantic in nature, and heroines are usually between the ages of 45 and 65. ...There are usually feminist themes in matron literature, though some works are more overtly feminist than others." (Wikepedia)

"Mr Mikey’s Ladies" fulfils quite a lot of the criteria for being classified as "hen lit": the characters are aged from late 30s to 50s - some of whom could be classified as baby boomers (like me); the subject matter is romance (well, ok, at least as much sex as romance!); and there are feminist themes, however well hidden by the humour.

But I don’t think it’s classic hen lit, chick lit, romance, sex or anything else, come to that. There’s probably too much comedy, and a novel that’s also the outline script for a musical possibly defies conventional categories. All the publishers who read "Mr Mikey’s Ladies" said the nicest things about it, but most have thought it too "eccentric" for their classification system. One said "A straightforward ‘Confessions of a Hairdresser’ would have been easier to sell in".

But publishers and bookseller, and probably readers too, find it helpful to have some kind of classification for books they’re going to buy, and Hen Lit is perhaps the most appropriate for "Mr Mikey’s Ladies". It is about the love lives of women no longer in the first flush of youth, it is about what mature women really want and need in relationships (and perhaps in life); and it does have some "feminist" things to say about men’s understanding of what women want, and what women should be demanding - from life and from their partners, children and families.


What were the criteria for selecting the most appropriate songs for inclusion in Mikey’s musical? Do the songs which you use to illustrate the choreographed scenes have any significance to your own experiences?

The criteria for selecting the songs for Mr Mikey’s musical, "The Ladies", were that they should be well known to (and hopefully loved by) as many readers as possible. I wanted as many people as possible to be able to hear the songs in their heads, be almost humming along and tapping to the beat as they visualised the dance routines - so they were generally classic anthems which I hoped a few lyrics and description of the music would instantly bring to mind.

As in a stage musical, they also had to make a useful comment on the plot; sum up a character’s feelings at that moment; and play on the reader’s heartstrings and empathy. Mr Mikey himself says that the "key note song" for his musical is "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." - the lyrics for which are pretty heavy and significant. But there are light-hearted ones such as "It’s Raining Men", when all Mr Mikey’s ladies seem to be confiding in him about their affairs; and it ends on the most affirmative female anthem of all time, "I Will Survive!".

I can’t say any of the songs have special significance to me, but I know and love them all and if I was to compile an album of my favourite girly pop anthems, this would be it!


Would you consider making any plans to write a musical sequel to Mr Mikey’s Ladies?

Do you mean a sequel novel? If so, yes. I’m planning a sequel novel called "The Ladies Do London", where the musical "The Ladies" comes to a theatre in London’s West End - with Mr Mikey in tow, of course - and have a whole new set of naughty adventures in the UK.

Or do you mean, do I plan to turn the novel into a musical? Well, yes, I’d love to have a go at doing that. I think it could work really well on stage (a la "Mama Mia") - in the Sydney Opera House of course; in a film version (think "Priscilla, Queen of the Jungle" meets "Shampoo"); or as a TV series ("Allie McBeal" crashes into "Desperate Housewives"). Now it’s out as a published book, I’m going to try and interest producers in all these media!