Jack of all writing trades, Paige Nick, has published a new comedy, Book People.
Image: supplied
“We’re all a little bit crazy,” says author Paige Nick, of Green Point.
Paige is the author of 10 books, and in her most recent novel, Book People, which was published earlier this month, she’s taken inspiration from her real-life Facebook book club and exaggerated it.
The result is a laugh-out-loud story that is full of surprises.
“Some of the stuff that happens in real life, you would look at it and go, ‘you couldn't make that up’. People are crazy, but that's the joy of life, we're all a little bit crazy,” she said.
Paige, “a freelance advertising copywriter, author and columnist”, as her blog, A Million Miles from Normal, describes her, last dropped a book, Unpresidented, in 2017.
Before that, she’d also written Death by Carbs (2016) and Dutch Courage (2015). Paige had been writing steadily since her debut book, A Million Miles from Normal, in 2010, including co-authoring The Girl Walks in series with Sarah Lotz and Helen Moffett. The choose-your-own-adventure erotic novels were published in 21 countries.
After Unpresidented, a political satire, she took a break from writing.
“After I finished Unpresidented, I didn’t know what I wanted to write next. So I let myself off the hook. Until this idea hit me, and then I was ready to go again.”
What inspired her to write again was some of the shenanigans on her Facebook page, The Good Book Appreciation Society, which she started in 2013. The group has more than 23 000 enthusiastic and book-passionate members, and sometimes, their debates get heated.
The Book People plot is based on the shenanigans of the members of the Good Book Appreciation Society Facebook page.
Image: supplied
“There have been lots of arguments, lots of fights, scraps and scrapes. So I've taken those experiences and I've escalated them. I’ve made them a bit more exaggerated to create the novel,” Paige said.
Some of the text and review threads in the book are from the club’s page verbatim, with the permission of the original thread authors.
“There's a lot of real life and a lot of very made-up stuff. It's a mix of both,” Paige said, adding that no one has been almost murdered in real life, which is the one way that the art did not imitate life.
When Paige is not busy writing or copy editing, you may find her hosting the show Book Choice on Fine Music Radio or writing the occasional column for the Sunday Times.
Paige wrote a weekly column for the newspaper for many years but stopped a few years ago to free up time for her other projects.
“I write for them on an ad hoc basis,” she says. “If I have a thought for a column, they're always open to having it, but I don't do the weekly column anymore. I love that column, but it's really tough to do a column by deadline every week, and work, and write books, and do all the other things I do. So, I miss it, but it has also freed me up a bit for other projects.”