In publicising your work, is there a pressure to conform to a certain chick-litty persona?
AS: Yes. There is. But then again, every novelist is expected to fit into a certain identity. For instance, literary authors feel under terrible pressure to quote Milan Kundera every five seconds. GW: What’s it like to live with another novelist? Are you influenced by each others’ work? AS: It’s not recommended, to be honest! Especially as he outsells me now. I have to call him ‘bestselling author Matt Haig’ now instead of just ‘Matt’. ‘Bestselling author Matt Haig could you do the washing up?’ No. Only joking. He doesn’t make me do that really. In fact, it’s good generally, as we can help each other edit our work and say which bits we think are crap. We don’t influence each other that much though, as our books are so different. He writes about Labradors and I write about speed dating. There’s not much crossover. GW: What’s your writing routine these days? AS: To get a novel finished, I write like a maniac for 3 months – eating rubbish and living like a cavewoman (but with worse person
