Hello, you're listening to Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. I'm Hazel Butterfield and a huge book fan, so I absolutely love doing this show. Get Booked is all about talking to authors, chatting about anything and everything books related, and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that the good books can provide. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week sharing who they are, what they do, and what inspires them. Now, today we have the author Alex Woolf, and we're going to be discussing his book that was released in January of this year, Mr. Jones. And what an absolute joy this was to read. One of those books that you think is leading you in a particular direction and then another, but you know, you're a huge book fan and you read so many books that you kind of think you have a bit of an intuition for these things, and yet you are still completely in the dark as you carry on reading. And Mr. Jones is a great combination of an incredibly drafted enigmatic folk tale of Mr. Jones, set in what is a suburban normality where such things are just silly tales for playground gossip beyond any comprehensible reasoning. And yet there's an undeniably something crazy going on, something happening. And then sometimes the unexplainable can get you questioning your own sanity. When you get to a point where you finally admit that the only answer is explained by your own psychosis, potentially. Life can send us crazy, and that is what Mr. Jones is all about. Um, Alex, thank you for joining us here on the show. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for having me here. You are very, very welcome. It's one of the joys of my job is reading books like Mr. Jones and then knowing full well I'm going to be speaking to the author and going into so much more detail. It's a great book. I did actually say to your PR people, I was chatting to them the other day and I was like, yeah, I got some funny looks the other day because I was in a traffic jam and I had to carry on reading while I was in the traffic jam because it was at one of those points where I was going, I just need to know what's happening. It's a thriller. It's fantastic. Fantastic. It is quite different to anything that I've read recently. And before we get stuck into more about Mr. Jones, why don't you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself? Right, well, I have been an author for about 20 years now. I started off as a writer of children's non-fiction. Because that was my background. I was in publishing for a long time, editing books, but not quite having the nerve to try and write them myself. And then at some point, I just decided that I could do better, a better job, let's say, than some of the authors I was editing. So I just decided to give it a go. And I had been writing fiction for pleasure since my teenage years, but I had never had the confidence to believe that I could make it as a fiction writer. So this was like a way in. I knew with non-fiction I was on safe ground. I wasn't holding myself up to great sort of criticism, as long as I did my job right. And I wasn't revealing too much because I'm a fairly private person, and I feel sometimes with fiction one is revealing quite a lot of one's own self. So yeah, so non-fiction was a good way in, and I did that for about 10 years. And then I— while I was doing that, I was writing a short story actually about a sort of time-traveling young, young man, um, set in the 22nd century. And, uh, I— this story just grew and grew and grew into, uh, the size of a novel. And, uh, I, uh, I thought, I thought it was pretty good. I didn't know what to do with it. Um, and one of the publishers that I work with— worked with regularly with my non-fiction happened to be starting a fiction list for young adults and I thought with a bit of tweaking I could make this book work for the YA audience. And I showed it to him and he agreed, and that was the beginning of my fiction writing career. And I've been doing that mainly, I have to say, for, yeah, well, for young adults since about 2011. But I've also been writing for adults, such short stories for magazines, that sort of thing, and a few novellas for very small independent publishers, but I'd not written a sort of full-length novel for adults until Mr. Jones, so this is a bit of a new departure for me. Yeah, I mean, you've written over 200 books, haven't you? Yes, it sounds like a hell of a lot. It does. I have to say that a lot of these books were very short. They were sort of 32 pages long and, you know, not too many words, and they didn't take me very long. I am quite a quick writer anyway, but I did them sort of, you know, they didn't take too long to write. And also, I have been doing this for 20 years, so, you know, you do build up quite a few books in that time. You do, you, and I suppose the more you do it, you get a rhythm and it's somewhat, I wouldn't say easier, but you, well, the more you do it, the more you practice, I guess. I do love it that it's described in your crib sheet that you have written on a vast range of subjects including I like this, right? Aliens, chocolate, asteroids, sharks, Tudors, flying reptiles, soap, bees, and acne. I mean, that's quite a list, isn't it? Well, it's— but it's all true. And, you know, I thought when I was sort of writing the crib sheet, I thought I need to just look at, you know, the whole range of what I've written and try to find the most diverse and odd juxtapositions of titles, and that's what I came up with. But yeah, I've written on all those things and many, many more. Wow. Do you know what's quite interesting with Mr. Jones is I came across your book in the writing community. I think I actually saw a picture on Twitter, and I was absolutely thrilled that I knew your PR people, and I was like, right, this is the book that I need to read because The actual cover itself is quite intriguing. You must be so impressed with the book design. Yeah, I was absolutely thrilled. It was a very talented young guy called Callum Hood who, I have to say, did a superb job. I described to him, you know, what I had in my mind for the COVID And he came up with this, and it was even better than what I'd had in my mind. So yeah, all credit to him, uh, it's a great cover, and a lot of people have commented on it and have said it's really drawn them to the book, which is what you want with a cover. So yeah, fantastic. And how did the concept of Mr. Jones emerge? Because in my opinion, there's quite a bit of apparent life imitating art in a way during the book, but what about reality? Well, it had a bit of a strange genesis, to be honest, and, you know, I, to this day, I sort of struggle to work out exactly where it all came from, but it was a number of elements all happening at the same time. My daughter was 8 years old when I started writing the book, which is the same age as the little girl in the book Imogen, and I would walk her to school every day through this overgrown park near where we live with this rather sort of horrible pond that was covered in algae. And this, I suppose, was— that was the setting I had in mind when I was— when I was writing, when I started writing the book, and I remember one morning, it was a very, very hot summer as well, and I just remember one morning her asking me, "What could possibly live under the algae in that pond?" And it just sort of got me thinking, and I probably said something, you know, quite reassuring like, "Oh, nothing, nothing under there," you know, but at the same time I was sort of thinking, well, yeah, um, that is a bit of a sort of scary thought that something could be living under there. So that was, that was one thing. And then, um, I guess, uh, I was also generally, um, a bit of a paranoid parent, I suppose you'd say. I was sort of worrying about crime and, um, sort of stranger danger, that sort of thing, and, and wanting to protect her. And, uh, I guess, uh those two things sort of came together and sort of percolated through my mind for a while. I don't think I had a very clear idea of the plot at the beginning. I just had this sort of setting and I had this situation, and I knew that I wanted to write about something strange and, you know, slightly sinister going on in this, in this park. And, and I don't know where the idea of Mr. Jones himself came from. It might have been from a nightmare, I don't know. It does feel that way. Yeah, to this day, the idea of this normal-looking man but with a panda mask just gives me shivers. So yeah, it was a sort of just the idea of it. I thought, yes, that is something I want to write about. But as I say, I didn't really know where it was going, so that the first sort of quarter of the book, I would say, was sort of written in a kind of a fever where I was, you know, the words were rushing out and it all felt like it was flowing really well, but I didn't really have any clear idea where it was going. So yeah, I mean, I realized after about writing 25,000 words that it was, you know, it was— I was— I'd enjoyed it, but it 'What now?' And I actually came up with an idea for how to conclude it, which I'm very glad I didn't follow through with because I don't think it would have worked as well. And I actually decided that I couldn't think of a good way to continue the story, so I put it aside. I just left it for about 6 and a half years. Wow. I think with me there's always, there are always ideas bubbling around, so it wasn't as if I just stopped writing. I had lots of other projects on the go, so it was just that I had other ideas that were, that seemed more, that had a clearer structure and I knew where I was going with them. So it was only in the second lockdown in December 2020 that I went back to it and I looked at it because I was looking for something to write. And I just thought, this has got so much energy and so much potential. It would be so sad if it was just to sort of, you know, I was never going to do anything with it and finish it. So I started thinking again, and I came up with a new kind of ending for the story, and I thought it worked really well, but it did cause a few problems because there would be a hell of a lot of new explanation I'd have to provide at the end, and I hate reading books where you get to near the end and suddenly there's pages and pages of what they call exposition. Where the author simply tells you everything that the narrator didn't know. Because obviously when you're dealing with an unreliable narrator like Ben, the main character in the story, there's a hell of a lot that he doesn't know about what's going on. And that's part of the fun, that's part of the mystery and the suspense. But at the same time, it does lead to problems in that, you know, at the end you've got to explain it all. So then I came up with a solution, which was to introduce a second character called Roy. Who would narrate his own story. Every 3 chapters he would have a little bit of his own, and at first the reader won't have a clue what the connection between Roy and Ben is. They wouldn't know why this story is being interwoven with Ben's, but hopefully it'll mean that when it comes to the resolution at the end of the book the reader will be slightly ahead of Ben and they will know a little bit more, so it won't take as much exposition, if you like. Well, that's what I was saying. I kept on thinking that I was, you know, I read so many books, I must, I can see where this is going, and then I just kept on getting it wrong. But that was the pull of it. That's basically why I've been stopping in the middle of the street and just kind of reading for a bit while people pass. I actually missed my connection. I was actually standing on Hammersmith station at one point waiting for my train back to Richmond, and it went straight past me. I didn't— well, it stopped, and I just carried on reading and didn't even realize it was there. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was 30 minutes late home after that. Oh, my apologies. Yeah, I mean, I do really enjoy reading suspense novels, and I think that's a— it's a real— it's very appealing to me because I don't know how a reader experiences my books. It's really interesting to hear people like yourself talking about it in that way because obviously I know what's going to happen, but, you know, I don't know. But I want to imagine that a reader will be really drawn in. And someone once described my stories as being like onions with layers that have to be unpeeled and unpeeled until you get to the truth at the center. And I thought that was sort of, yeah, that's the kind of, those are the stories I like to read, and those I guess are the stories I like to write as well. I think there was so much happening in the book that kind of mirrored just everyday life and normality, and yet there was this dark underlying theme. There was a lot of that I could relate to in terms of I've always walked my kids to school. I live in London, you don't, you very rarely, you know, do anything other than walk to the school gates because it's just so much easier and expected. And you have these really random conversations with these chatterbox children who have incredible imaginations, who kind of go off on these ridiculous tangents. Oh, I wonder that is, and you want to get involved, but also sometimes it can send your own brain going off in all these ridiculous tangents. And there was a lot of that that was happening with Ben and Midge. And yet at the same time, there's things that are happening in our world that we want to protect our children from. And the main character, you know, his wife has just disappeared and we don't quite know why, which sometimes puts us in a mental state where, we're questioning our own sanity, what we've done to make this happen, why this can happen. You're trying to do so much to protect your own children from what could be quite a dark ending that it can affect our mental well-being, on our mental state, which is when we start questioning our own motives and what we've done and what we're thinking and just how sane we are. We know over the last 2 or 3 years the impact of mental illness, mental well-being, and especially, you know, just life affects us, and we're a little bit more aware of how it can affect our psychosis. And it's just the way that Mr. Jones explores how much we sometimes can't trust what we believe ourselves. And I'm sure there's many people that can relate to that who've gone through divorce, or they've gone through bereavement, and they're just sitting there going, I don't know what's right. I don't even know. I don't trust my own mind. Am I reacting and acting coherently, sensibly? Is my brain actually working because too much has happened? Has it been overloaded? We're all overwhelmed at the moment, and it can affect how we perceive life. Life is incredibly subjective, and I think this covers it so much that All the way through, I had no idea whether it was somebody's imagination, whether something was happening, whether somebody else's own bereavement was the reason for the funny goings-on. And that's what really cut to the core. And I think a lot of people will be able to— I mean, this is what made it a thriller, because what's more scary than thinking that you're possibly losing your own mind? Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I think my favorite thrillers are psychological ones where it's all about someone like doubting themselves, and I think that, you know, it was partly possibly because it was— I was written, or the second part of it was written during lockdown, and I did feel quite isolated, and I think you do find yourself prey to sort of thoughts and the, I suppose, what could be interpreted as paranoia. And I think that is Ben's problem in the book. He's— I suppose he's coming from a good place, you know, he wants to protect his daughter. But, you know, he is always worrying and thinking that, you know, the worst is going to happen and, you know, he can't trust anyone. And I guess he's sort of, he's like a lot of people but just a slightly exaggerated version of it, and I didn't actually, I felt sympathy with him throughout, possibly not right towards the end where some of his actions become a little bit erratic, but I could see— We can all be pushed though, Alex. We can, exactly, and we don't know how we're going to react in those sort of circumstances. So I guess I'm always interested in exploring those aspects of human psychology and where they can lead if the circumstances are right, because, you know, I think we are, you know, we regarded ourselves as fairly sane and we we get on with life and we do what we need to do to survive. But at the same time, we are living fairly comfortable lives in general. And, you know, we're not kind of pushed to those extremes. And, you know, if I did feel my family was under threat, I think, you know, it would— you know, I don't know how I would react, quite frankly. Well, I think you actually approached the fact that how would you react when we feel like we're under threat or we are stressed? Is that we get scared and when we're scared, it normally turns into anger, doesn't it? And I think this happens quite a bit between the main character and Midge, where he is fearful and is reacting to his daughter, which is kind of counterproductive and working against him. And I think so many parents can relate to that, parents that are going through divorce and they're unfortunately getting angry with their children because they're so incredibly stressed out. And this is, I mean, the book really did touch on some really realistic and everyday themes. Yes, yes, you know, we've all been there and, you know, kids, you know, they can be aggravating. And, but I think in this particular situation there was a tension within the relationship between Midge and Ben, which was that she was certain that her mom was alive, and he wanted her to move on. And, uh, he didn't think it was healthy, this idea, this fixation with her mom. And particularly because he thought that maybe, um, without giving too much away, someone might be exploiting that. Um, so, uh, yes, he, he, uh there was this tension, and sometimes he overreacted and became angry and impatient. And, uh, you could, you know, you could sort of see why he did that, but you also, you know, you're also worried for Imogen, and you thought, well, maybe he's not being such a good dad right now. He's not being the kind of the dad that she needs. Um, so yeah. Yeah, and I think with a novel, one shouldn't be frightened to explore the sort of, yeah, the dark side of these relationships and go where, you know, where the story leads you and not shy away from that. And, you know, I thought, you know, I tried to create someone who was real and, you know, reacted in his own way, and his way happened to be sometimes quite quite explosive. And all that obviously added to what the reader's own kind of doubts about Ben, you know, because Ben is your classic unreliable narrator, you know. Yep. We don't know anything more than he's telling us, and there could be a hell of a lot of other things going on here that we don't know about. So I guess it was— I was thinking about the thriller element as well as trying to be, create a true and authentic character. I think a lot of it is already in our mind before we even start reading because of the aforementioned cover of the book, and I must, I need to ask, was the panda head always the first image that you had, or was there ever any other potential? No, there was never going to be a giraffe head. No, it was always going to be panda head. And as I said before, I don't know where that came from, but I think there's something about pandas. They're quite cute, but you know, sinister when in a different context they can be quite scary. So I guess I was playing along with that, you know. So a lot of children's you know, toys or cute animals, you know, are great when you see them in the right context, but can look, you know, like— I think, always think of children's dolls, you know, can look quite scary sometimes as well. So, well, children's dolls, clowns, they're all supposed to be things that are meant for children. They can be the scariest things out there. Yes, exactly. So I've just added another Another one. So you do veer towards dark themes. Is that quite organic, or it's just a love that you have? I think it's where my mind goes when I'm writing adult fiction. I tend to write dark thrillers, horror, even when I write science fiction or historical fiction, which I've done They do tend to, um, the, uh, more sinister themes, uh, you know. So I, uh, I don't know why that is. It might be that, um, something to do with my background. Uh, I didn't have a very happy childhood. Uh, I, I grew up in a sort of cult, and, uh, the the, uh, the school I went to, they were very cruel, and, uh, I was, uh, often, uh, physically chastised, uh, you know, beaten. And, uh, I think a lot of that, um, it, it turned— it changed me. I'm sure it did in my terms of my personality. I, I became quite, um, introverted and tended to spend a lot of time on my own. And I guess I'd always been interested by stories, but I don't remember reading too many horror stories when I was a kid. But I think maybe the effect of this school I went to, uh, so moved me into a sort of a different direction in terms of my mind and the way it works. I have no idea So it's a mystery really, but when I got older I started reading a lot of Stephen King, and I loved his books, and I sort of— maybe that was one of the inspirations for me to move in this particular direction with my fiction. I think it's possible that, as you say, that you had a rather unconventional and possibly quite damaging childhood. Do you think you've just found a way to channel that? I mean, if there is certain darkness, sometimes it's good to— I suppose you call it positive attribution— you find an outlet for whatever is possibly going on. Yeah, definitely. That's, that's a very, very astute observation. I, I think, um, because I was I think quite repressed as a kid. I didn't know how to express my feelings, and I think that writing for me became a kind of a channel, and it became an escape. And I've often wondered why I didn't write about my childhood. I mean, my parents who went through it and who are now as vehemently against that particular cult as I am, have often wondered why I don't ever write about it as a form of therapy. And I really don't think I can. I— it's just something I don't want to do. But in a way, fiction is a sort of way of writing about what's going on inside me, but without having to face directly the sort of stuff that happened to me. And so, and it is an escape, you know. Even when I was— I remember when I was at that school, I— we went— one of the— because it was a very strange school, we had to do things like meditation in the mornings. And we would sit in these hard wooden chairs for half an hour with our eyes closed chanting a mantra. And at the age of 13 or 14, it was, it was excruciating. It was so you know, we were tired because we'd just done— we just— we've been up since 5:30 and done circuit training. So, uh, our bodies, you know, we just wanted to keel over, we wanted to sleep. But of course we'd be smacked with a ruler if we nodded off, so we had to keep still and straight with our eyes closed. So what I tend to— well, actually, thanks to a teacher, she, um, well, he said, uh, follow the mantra wherever it leads. So I, uh, I imagined the mantra as a little dog, and I, I started following it around, and those became these adventures in my head. And I really do believe that's where my writing began, because, uh, I, I was telling myself these stories, and, uh, it became a kind of, um, something I almost looked forward to every morning because I knew that I could escape off into my imagination and I could leave this horrible reality behind. So writing really did begin for me as an escape from, from the, the horror of this school, and I think it has remained that to this day. It's somewhere where I can go that's completely in my head, and I don't have to think about anything going on in my, in my life. And that's why I think I like fiction so much, because It really is, you can create new worlds and new characters and stories that have nothing to do, well, not much to do with your real life. So yeah, I think that's where it all started. Well, this is why I absolutely love doing this show, because it's not always just about finding a good book to read, it's about understanding the power of finding a way for an outlet or how important it is to be able to— how cathartic it can be to write something. You don't have to write something because you want to get it published or you want somebody to read it. Sometimes it's a way of ordering your thoughts and just being able to get whatever is in your head out and being able to understand it a little bit more as well. I think— The power of being able to understand what is in your head is incredible. And for those that want to share it with other people, I think that is fantastic. And some people, you know, you just have to find what works for you. But I was quite an insular child, and I used to, I mean, I'd read a book in a day. I absolutely loved it. And I think the, especially there's so many issues out there with loneliness, and if you can read a book or you can find a way of loving books. And you don't even have to be able to love reading to involve yourself in fiction and nonfiction because there's Audible and so many different ways to actually consume literature. But it's a way of understanding somebody else. It's a way of getting entertained where you don't necessarily have to speak to somebody else if you don't want to. It's about learning other people— learning about other people and why people behave a particular way or just enriching your soul finding out about something else. And the power of literature, and not just in terms of reading a thriller, is invaluable. And I think so, so many people think they don't have time to read or they don't have time to write, but it's a bit of, a bit of speculate to accumulate, you know. The more, the more people actually understand the different elements and how it can actually help our well-being, I think the better a lot of us will be. I agree. I, I'm— I was a reader before I was a writer, and for me, reading has saved my life. It's been my, my escape, as I said, but it's also been a stimulus to my imagination. And it's, you know, to me, getting into a story is just such a wonderful thing. It's, it's— you're learning about new characters and new situations, and you're, you know, you're caught up in it, and it's almost as if you've stepped into another world for a while. It's something I've tried to explain to my kids, and it's frustrating that neither of them are big readers, because I guess kids, well, a lot of them access their information in different ways these days. Yeah, they're not As you say, I mean, there are other ways of doing it, like with Audible, for example, and I think that might be one thing that we could try. But I— for me, there's nothing more satisfying than sort of settling down with a good book and just getting immersed in it. And, you know, the hours can go by quite swiftly. Doing that. And what you were saying earlier about organizing your thoughts, I think that's so true. And when I read back a book like Mr. Jones, for example, I'm not quite sure how I wrote it, or what, you know, it would be almost impossible to re— like, to get back into that state of mind. And clearly I was having all sorts of crazy thoughts at the time. And, um, the— it's the process of writing, uh, which can, uh, just, um, it, it's almost an alchemy, you know. It's, it's amazing how all this sort of these crazy thoughts can cohere and form into something, uh, like a, like a story that can be enjoyed by others. And to this day, I don't exactly know how it happens, but, you know, I'm guessing it probably happens to other writers as well, including writers that I admire, you know, and it's quite hard, I think, for writers sometimes to describe exactly what that process is and how it happens, because it is almost like a kind of alchemy. I call it a Ctrl+Alt+Delete. I mean, one of the things I really struggled with in lockdown was, and this sounds so primitive and so kind of like overheard in Waitrose, I guess, but I miss being able to go to a café or going to a pub and reading and writing because that was my control, ultimately. That was my kind of reset when I was a little bit stressed, and you can't do it at home. You've got, you've got the kids, the cat, the dog, your other half, the washing machine finishing, the dishwasher finishing. You can't relax and you can't truly do it, and just sometimes an hour in a café where I'm reading or just writing something down, and as I said before, ordering my thoughts. I have people say to me, "Oh, you're so lucky that you have time to do this." I'm like, "Yeah, but I spend an hour doing this and then the rest of my day is so much more productive because I'm not constantly— my brain isn't being useless because I haven't kind of given it a bit of a break and a refresh." Yeah, I totally get what you're saying about writing in cafes. I don't do that myself, but I do remember vividly when the kids were smaller and they would barge in while I was writing because, you know, they don't— Daddy is at home, therefore, you know, Daddy is accessible. You know, there was no sense that, you know, there was a— this was a workspace. You know, they couldn't get that at that age. So yeah, I mean, it was a constant battle to kind of carve out a bit of, you know, private writing space when the family was around, you know. So yeah, I, you know, I don't think I could have done it in cafes because I need to have quiet. That's just one of the quirks of, you know, of me, I guess, that, you know, I can't write with background chatter so much. You know, well, everyone's different. Yeah, we are, we're all different, and I think it's interesting how so many people who were writing a book, suddenly lockdown hits and they suddenly go, 'Right, can't do it now, I'm not in the right— I don't have the right surroundings,' and then like yourself, just decided to revisit the book in lockdown because it then ignited the whole kind of spirit of it. Absolutely, lockdown was a godsend in a way for me because Obviously, you know, it wasn't, you know, it was a horrible time, you know, but purely from a writing point of view, I got a lot done. I wrote a lot in that period, and I'm really glad I was able to sort of find time to finish Mr. Jones, because I don't know, to be honest, if I would have gone back to it if it hadn't been for lockdown and that period where, you know, the phones stopped ringing because a lot of my editors who usually commissioned me to write books were on furlough and there just wasn't a hell of a lot going on. So, you know, it was ideal in that sense. I just want to point out to all of our listeners as well that can find out a little bit more about you on alexwolfe.co.uk and they can find different ways to follow you and there is the Amazon link on there to go and get the book. I think Mr Jones is fantastic and I can't wait to find out what the next one's going to be. Do you have an inkling of the next thriller? I've just actually finished writing a novel, it's a horror this one, it's about 6 strangers who are trapped in a haunted house overnight. The whole thing takes place over a period of 24 hours, uh, sorry, 12 hours actually. Um, and, uh, it's, yeah, it, it should be exciting. Um, and I've, I'm just about to get it out, hopefully send it out to agents and, and try to get some interest in it. Oh well, if you need anybody as a guinea pig to, uh, give it a read, then send it my way. So are you a big reader yourself? I'm a huge reader, yeah, absolutely. I've loved reading from a very young age. I started off reading a lot of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham. They were my favorites. I then got into George Orwell, and I very quickly got, in my teens, got into Stephen King. And I remain a big fan of Stephen King's to this day. But I've, you know, I've read very widely. Recently I've got into thrillers, and I do— I sort of read on my Kindle, but I also listen to Audible. So I'm kind of hearing two stories at the same time because I'm just, you know, I just Can't get enough of it, really. Do you know what? I am absolutely the same. I normally have an Audible for when I'm out walking. I've got a dog, so I'm walking a lot. I have— especially when I'm reviewing books, I prefer to have the physical book because then it stops you from dipping into Twitter and Instagram and your emails, and all of a sudden this notification's come through and whatnot. But then it also— and the times when you don't have the space to take a book with you, I quite often have something on Kindle, so I'm normally reading about 3 books at the same time. But I just, I absolutely love it. It is, it's, I mean, I can be a little bit of a loner at times. The idea of sitting in a bar on my own and reading a book is an absolute joy. And people say, "Oh, who are you meeting?" I'm like, "I'm not meeting anyone. I'm just, I'm just trying to consume a book without my kids pestering me for food every 20 minutes." My kids are old enough so that it is absolutely fine. But yeah, it's, I think it's an absolute joy if you look, if you love books and the escapism and what you can learn and just being off in your own little world is fantastic. And I mean, that's one of my greatest well-being go-tos really. I know that, you know, as I said before, it's my control-alt-delete. But this, um, something I like to ask all of my guests here on Get Booked because it's a well-being station is what are your 3 top tips on just trying to achieve good mental well-being? Well, I do think it's very important to go for a long walk every day. I, I find that, um, you know, absolutely, uh, imperative, you know, in terms of clearing my mind, um, just getting some exercise and, uh, getting out of my own— well I guess my, my study where I work. So it doesn't have to be a walk, it can be any kind of exercise. I also love playing tennis, and tennis is a wonderful, you know, thing because it's— you are in a completely different headspace when you're, when you're playing. So that's my first one. I, I, well, I mean, I think reading, reading of course is hugely important for me. It's It's— I don't think I could survive, to be honest, without books. And I think we're going through a particular golden age of thrillers at the moment, I have to say. Some of the young writers coming through are incredible. Oh, they just— Yeah, so I think reading would be my second tip. This is the thing, we all need different things dependent on what we're going through at a particular moment, but also sometimes when we're in a kind of brain fog or fog. We just sometimes look to trying to see what other people do. This is why I ask this question for Getbooks. Just sometimes we like a little bit of a reminder, our ideas of what helps other people. And interestingly, even though you said, you know, going for a walk and listening to books on Audible, of late I've actually been reading, I've actually been having, I take my earphones but just for emergencies, there's something about just listening to nothing sometimes, just letting your brain wander and not constantly needing the distraction of, you know, music or just constantly listening to something. We're so used to having things available, aren't we, that we struggle when we're not constantly doing 20 different things at once. That actually reminds me of my third third point, which was to set limits to social media consumption. I think that's really important because, you know, we do often get caught up in it and we can spend ages. I don't think it's— I think it's fun and it's enjoyable in small doses, but if you do it too much it can really— well, I don't think it's particularly good for— well, certainly not for my mental health, because you're constantly— there's something about it, it's very— well, you're on edge. It's superficially attracting— distracting and interesting, but if there's too much of it, there's too much information, and often you're kind of finding yourself comparing yourself to other people and their experiences. And I think it's a natural way of living. I don't think we're wired to have so much input. In a way, what we need is sort of a moderate amount of input, you know. And I think social media is sort of too much in that sense. And I do completely agree with you that sometimes it's good just to switch off. And all that kind of stuff in one's head. And actually, often when I go for walks, I do take the earphones out and I do just listen to nature and, you know, just let whatever thoughts come, you know, come into my head, but don't, you know, don't get too kind of oppressed by whatever's going on in my life. And I find it sort of quite relaxing and a sort of necessary break from everything else really. Well, I think we're overstimulated and reading uses a different part of the brain to what happens with technology. Another reason why sometimes I like to veer away from Kindle because it's still technology, it's still that blue light. And recently I've been going through this thing with my youngest at the moment where he's saying that he thinks that he's got an attention issue, aside from the fact that he's just a boy who constantly needs to be stimulated. I said to him, but you're constantly stimulating yourself with tech and you're reprogramming your brain to constantly require it. You kind of need to recondition. You need to be bored. Can you imagine, you know, back before phones, how we used to have to just find different ways to entertain ourselves, or we were supposed to be bored. We'd have to pick up a book or start drawing. And that's not the first thing kids go to these days, and they're— and then they're these, these little, uh, what are they called, those, those sets to help them fiddle with things because they just need to constantly be doing something. Yeah, I know what you mean, uh, and you know, it, it does seem to be a feature of this generation, uh, we, you know, I do have vivid memories of being bored when I was a kid, but actually finding that, uh, I made up my own kind of, you know, entertainment in a way, and that was sort of part of the career out of it. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there are advantages to just not having a lot to do. You know, we had terrible television, and, you know, compared to now, you know, just, you know, just so much less choice. And, you know, you're often— you were you know, you would either sort of pick up a book, as you said, or you'd, you know, you go somewhere else in your imagination. And often my— I remember playing games, you know, and there would be storytelling within the game. So, you know, we would— I'd be playing with my soldiers, my toy soldiers in the attic of our house, and, you know, this— the soldiers would become characters in little stories. And Sometimes we had a climbing frame in our back garden and that would become a pirate ship, you know. Oh, the good old days! Yeah, yeah. So, you know, all this was going on and, you know, it was really— that was how we got our entertainment. And we didn't have little black rectangles that, you know, entertained us. We had to find our own form of entertainment. Can you imagine? Yeah, well, my kids can't really imagine, but, you know, I tell them. It was, you know what, it's quite interesting, and I won't harp on about it too much, but I did recently go away with my children and I made my eldest teen not have his phone for 48 hours. And the first 24 hours was like he was coming down, right? And then after 24 hours It's like I had a new child. I mean, he hated me for the first 24 hours. I mean, I was the worst thing on the planet. But then all of a sudden, it's like the fog lifted. And it was all of a sudden a nice child that wanted to talk about things and play in the pool. And I was like, ah, imagine this. But yeah, it's bonkers. If someone can come up with a solution to that, that'd be fantastic. And yet ironically, the next thing I'm going to ask you, which is— Yeah. —is the person that you admire in the public I, because if we're going to be looking, if we're constantly going to be on tech, we might as well at least be looking at people who fill us with inspiration rather than gloom. Yeah, well, I would have to say Stephen King. I wouldn't say that he's my, you know, that he's the best or most skillful writer that I've ever read, but his stories are constantly entertaining, and I probably had more joy reading his stories than probably any other writer because he's written so many. And, you know, it's just phenomenal. And, you know, I would love to have been as prolific as he is. You know, he's incredible. And, you know, what an imagination over so many decades. So yeah, timeless as well, they keep on getting reimagined and rewritten and, you know, made into films and it's just— exactly, yeah, he is fantastic. Yeah, absolutely, I love that. Well, we're running out of time, thank you so much for chatting to us. I think you've got an incredible story, I can't wait to find out about the next book and when it's going to be released. Mr. Jones is fantastic, and I think it's, it's quite, it's quite unique, quite different. I did really enjoy it, and regardless of the fact that it made me late home. Because— and a quick reminder to all of our listeners, you can find out more about today's guest, Alex Woolf, at alexwoolf.co.uk. Thank you for joining me here on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Thank you very much, I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, thank you, and hopefully we'll be able to welcome you back to the show when the next book is released. Hopefully. That was today's guest, Alex Woolf, the author of Mr. Jones, published this year in January. Mr. Jones is a gripping psychological mystery that explores loss, fear, and the overwhelming desire to keep those we love safe from harm. It's a fantastic book, absolutely loved it. Now I've been very lucky to be provided with 3 short extracts from the book to whet your appetite. "Who's Mr. Jones?" I asked Imogen when I pick her up from school that afternoon. "I'm not scared of him," she said, skipping away from me. I chase after her and grab her, steering her towards the zebra crossing. I can feel her ribcage beneath her thin summer dress. "Who 'Who is scared of him, Midge?' I ask her once we've crossed the road. 'Scared of who?' 'Mr. Jones.' She shrugs. 'It's just stories. That's what I tell Aisha and Theodora.' 'What's just stories?' I persist. 'Mr. Jones will come up behind you when you're not looking and he'll grab you. That's what Harriet from 6B says.' Those pale blue eyes of hers didn't shift about with the evasiveness of a liar. They were hard yet fragile, like two little beads of frozen rain, gaping into the empty space between her mother's head and mine, seeing something there that no one else could. Consequences, perhaps, of confessing what she knew about Mr. Mr. Jones. And further up the slope, in the shaded corner of the park, is the snarl of overgrown bushes where I spotted that strange little girl, the Doll Decapitator. My eyes are drawn there again now, as they are every time I pass this patch. It's become a regular feature of my landscape, like the oak tree or the pond like Sid, the big ginger cat who's become a sort of mascot for our road. Only this shabby corner doesn't bring on warm fluffy feelings like the way Sid does. I'm drawn to it not out of desire to see the girl again, the opposite if anything. It feels closer to a duty, a need to keep watch. She's there again now, I'm sure of it. I can't see her, but I'm aware of her, like an extra sensitivity in my skin. She secreted herself behind the broken fence, watching me through the gap. Definitely not one to miss. Alex Woolf was born in London in 1964. His parents were members of a cult, and he suffered abuse at the school he was sent to. As a young boy, he discovered books mainly as a form of escape, and he became a voracious reader, an addiction that continues to this day. In his 20s, he rode a Honda motorbike, attempted to write a novel, traveled a bit in America and Europe, and worked variously as an accountant, a warehouse assistant, print buyer, a dishwasher, and a door-to-door salesman. From 1991, he started working as an editor at various publishing houses, and in 2001 he became a professional author. Since then, he has written more than 200 books, both for adults and for children. His books have sold around the world and have been translated into over a dozen languages, including several YA novels in in Mandarin Chinese. In his non-fiction, he has written on a vast range of subjects including aliens, chocolate, asteroids, sharks, Tudors, flying reptiles, soap, obviously, bees, and acne. His graphic non-fiction title on the World War I trenches was a number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. His History of the World has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into 7 different languages since it first appeared in 2008. Alex's novels include Chronosphere, a time-warping science fiction trilogy, The Shakespeare Plot, a trilogy about Tudor spies, and a steampunk series series Iron Sky. His Victorian supernatural thriller Aldo Moon was one of Love Reading for Kids Books of the Year and was described by best-selling crime writer Peter James as witty, ghostly, and at times deliciously ghastly. Alex is a regular author for Fiction Express, online publishers of interactive stories for schools and is read by thousands of kids in schools around the world. He writes a chapter a week and children vote on how the story should continue. He has won awards for two of his Fiction Express stories and was shortlisted for the Falkirk Red Book Award for his horror novel Soul Shadows. He won the Association for Science Education Book of the Year Award in 2021 for his book Think Like a Scientist. In his spare time, Alex enjoys writing adult short stories and novelettes, often on quite dark themes, many of which have been published in magazines and anthologies by the likes of Siren's Call, Phrenic Press, and Vagabondage Press. He's a co-author of A Novel in Emails: Work in Progress, published by Unbound, and Mr. Jones is his first solo novel for adults. He lives in North London with his wife, two children, and two cats, Juno and Minerva, and in 2015 he founded a writing group in which fellow writers meet every couple of weeks to read and discuss their latest work. He relaxes by playing tennis and going for long walks, usually while listening to an audiobook. Just a quick reminder that you can find You can find out more about Alex Woolf at alexwoolf.co.uk. I'm Hazel Butterfield and you've been listening to Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station, opening discussions and offering support via the incredible writing community out there. Come and join us, get involved, and if you want to catch up on previous shows, you can at womensradiostation.com www.hazelbutterfield.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud. I hope you've enjoyed today's show with today's guest Alex Wolff on Mr. Jones. I know I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting to him, and please do get in touch with me at hazelbutterfield.com if you want to come and join me on Get Booked.