Help Please! Questions for Mal Peet on LAD!

[Octopus Messiah]

Honored (American spelling, deal with it!) and excited that Mal Peet will be appearing on Litopia After Dark, recording this Wednesday.

Currently reading an advance copy of the Murdstone Trilogy which, spoiler alert, is crafty and hilarious. The protagonist is a writer who loathes self-promotion and his agent is this unobtainably hot, power-lunching Londoner so of course my first questions are: is art imitating life? and: how does he really feel about Mexican food?

Last time we solicited questions from the colony for our show with Susan Greenfield and were able to ask a couple on air.

Which is to say: hey, anybody got any questions for Mr. Peet?
Will do our best to ask!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Well, I haven't read Mal Peet's work yet, but prompted by this, I looked him up and watched a Youtube interview done in Sydney. He's very lively and likeable and I'm relieved at his description of his writing approach. ie largely unplanned. I'm going to have a read of him. He talked about how we all used to be afraid of nuclear weapons, and rarely talk about them now. I'd ask him, and it's true, in my teens I used to have nightmares about nuclear holocausts, but not since then, and it's since fallen off the collective imaginative radar, does he still fear it? Or does he now 'fear', say, jihadism more, even though logically, he sees the older threat is still technically present? What might be his thoughts on collective fear, the changes in the story of our collective fears, observed in our own lifetime? Some fears are constants, such as the fear of losing loved ones, others are susceptible to change, or terrorise the imagination. My mother for instance, is terrified at the very idea of Yellowstone blowing, and the volcanic winter that would follow. She has asked me, do I see it in my cards? Well, it's overdue, supposedly, but it's a long long way off, I'd say. How does fear drive and shape Mal's writing?

 

[Octopus Messiah]

Thanks for that KE... strangely I had questions for him about fear myself-- and shall endeavor to work this in!

 

[Octopus Messiah]

Really enjoyed spending some time with and interviewing the hilariously curmudgeonly Mal Peet last week.
I posed him the above from Katie Ellen (fanks dahlin'!) and he said something like: What an intelligent and thoughtful question!
As if he expected any different from the Colony-- the nerve!
Anyway, the interview should be up soon after our Three Faces of War series, which started today! Will keep you posted.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Will look forward to the hilarious curmudgeonliness. You don't half seem to have your work cut out on LAD, but that's big personalities for you, and you give them a good run.