SHOWRUNNING
Alexander Maskill’s awardwinning novel is out now
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It’s been a year since student Alexander Maskill was named the latest winner of Terry Pratchett’s Anywhere But Here, Any when But Now first novel prize, which bagged him a contract with P terry’s publisher Transworld.
“The whole project has been a part of my life for almost two years,” says Maskill, who was sitting his exams when he heard that he’d been shortlisted for the prize. “It probably caused me to drop a grade in my degree – that said, I’ll take a 2: 1 and a book over a first and no book!”
The Hive Construct is set in “New Cairo” amid a viral outbreak. But Maskill didn’t blow too many uni hours writing its history: “I was more concerned with the present of New Cairo, making it feel like a functional, lived- in city. My model was Baltimore as portrayed in The Wire more than anything.”
Maskill’s now preparing for life as a published author, learning from the process of working with an editor. “What I submitted to the award was still largely a first draft,” he says. “Now I’m working on plans for a sequel. And there’s another very different project I’m toying with that has a working title of The Funeral Diner – I can only describe it as Arrested Development by way of House Of Leaves, which illustrates nothing so well as what a weird guy I am.”