‘People are always surprised I make stuff up!’

Author Mike Gayle lives in Birmingham with his wife and two daughters. Here, he tells Ella Dove about the power of reading and why we should chat more in shops

We chat to author Mike Gayle

The Reading Agency is a charity that aims to inspire everyone to read. Its Quick Reads series is ideal for hesitant readers or those who are short on time (readingagency.org.uk).

From a young age, I loved books. As a child, I was convinced that writing was what I wanted to do with my life, but as I got older, I chose to study sociology at university and planned to become a social worker. However, once at university, I started writing about music for the student magazine. I enjoyed it so much that it led to a career in journalism. I ended up as an agony uncle for a teenage girls’ magazine, Bliss. For a while, I thought it was the best job in the world, but as I climbed the ladder I realised I ended up writing less and less. It was a question of: ‘How do I keep writing and making a living?’ I’d dabbled with writing fiction in my spare time, so I picked up an unfinished novel that I’d started years ago and spent a year reworking it. That was my debut novel,

My Legendary Girlfriend,

which was published in 1998. It did so well that I could become a full-time author. I was very lucky.

I wrote my first Quick Reads book, Men At Work, in 2011.

At the time, my wife was a basic skills teacher, and she used to tell me just how often her students were limited in their job prospects because of their inability to read. It made me aware that many of us take reading for granted, so having a scheme like this, which provides books for people of all reading levels, is wonderful.

This year,

I’ve contributed to The Reading Agency’s short story collection, A Fresh Start.

My story is called You And Me, and it’s about a father and daughter going out on a shopping trip for the first time since he split from her mum.

People are always surprised when they discover I make stuff up. There’s sometimes an assumption from people who don’t write novels that you must be just transcribing your life on to the pages – I wish my life was as exciting as those of my characters! As a novelist, I feel my job is to imagine what it’s like to be in lots of different situations. It’s part of the fun.

My latest full-length novel, All

The Lonely People, could not be more right for these times. The main character, Hubert Bird, paints a vivid picture of his retirement to his daughter, who lives in Australia – but it’s all made up. In fact, he’s very lonely. It’s about loneliness, isolation and race. I couldn’t have predicted how poignant it is now.

The power of community is more important than ever. The pandemic has revealed that there are a lot of lonely people out there. People who were already living isolated lives became more isolated because they feared even going to the shops. It’s been a difficult time for many, and has shown us how vital human connection is. We all need each other.

For many years, my wife has had a policy of chatting to people in the supermarket. It has taught me that even a perfunctory exchange with the person at the till can make a real difference to someone’s day. Whether it’s a quick supermarket chat or a Whatsapp group for your street, we need to allow ourselves to be more open to the idea of passing the time of day with people.

My top writing tip? Read. Reading books is the best way to learn how to write them. I love to re-read books in all genres with a critical eye, asking myself why a writer began where they did, or why they ended that chapter in a particular way. Slowly, you begin to realise that it’s not just some sort of magic process but, actually, there’s a craft behind it – and once you can expose that, you can learn from it.

• Mike’s new book, All The Lonely People (Hodder & Stoughton), is out now. His short story, You And Me, appears in the Quick Reads short story collection A Fresh Start (£1, Orion), which showcases 10 bestselling authors.