Picture this: an author sits in her favourite writing haunt in the spring of 2017. With her second novel Valerie almost ready for release, an irresistible thought has begun prickling at the back of her mind. What if there was a sequel? What if it was the start of a series?
Since that thought didn’t disappear, she started writing the sequel. The plot, as it turned out, was based around a leadership election in the Conservative Party that would elect both a party leader and a prime minister. After all, there had been an aborted attempt at a leadership election in 2016 that’d led to the coronation of Theresa May as PM. The likelihood of there being another one before the novel was ready for publication was fanciful. Right?
Fast forward some two years later and I’m almost ready to release Amy. In the spirit of not rushing a novel’s development, it’s taken a while to get to this point. Unfortunately – and you might have seen this one coming – I’ve been caught in something of a topical storm.
Back in May, Theresa May resigned as PM and triggered a leadership contest in the Tory party. There was foul language at Kit Eyre HQ, especially since the Tories began tinkering with the rules to accommodate the large number of candidates. Two things spring to mind:
- Candidates previously needed just two nominations from fellow MPs, but the 2019 contest increased that to eight.
- The elimination rounds to trim the candidates down to two previously took place twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To streamline the process this time, an extra Wednesday elimination round took place.
Naturally, it irked that the Conservative Party was torpedoing all my careful research, but I’ve elected to ignore it as Amy is set in early 2016. Something else, however, was harder to ignore.
Spoiler alert for the UK: Boris Johnson is now Prime Minister.
Second spoiler alert for the UK: the final three candidates in the race were all privileged, middle-aged white men.
Now, whatever your personal view on the Conservative Party, it’s undeniable there are female MPs and ethnic minority MPs representing the party in the UK Parliament (67 and 19 respectively as of the 2017 election, though the figures have altered slightly). What I’m saying, though, is that the Tory party isn’t completely male and white. It was disappointing to see another leadership election dominated by the same tired faces who think they were born to rule.
Alas, I’d already completed several drafts of Amy before this race kicked off and I’d imagined an altogether different scenario. What if an Asian woman could really challenge for the top job? How would that play out and could she win?
I might not have intended to write a novel critiquing the Tory Leadership Election of 2019 when I began writing this novel back in 2017, but I think I might just have managed it.
Oh, and Amy will be released on Friday 13th September – how’s that for the perfect release date for a novel based in Westminster?
Get started with the series now and read Valerie, available in paperback, on Kindle and in Kindle Unlimited.
