JF: I love that passage because you tenderly place it in the mind of somebody who is triggering, I think as we’ve talked about the bit that you wrote before, and how that is manifested in the writing. Both of us know somebody who has experienced terrifying moments of vulnerability in terms of their mental health. That passage for me is so tangible, it’s such a real experience of triggering.

I was lucky enough to read the audiobook, and one thing I really enjoyed trying to figure out was how to do the voice of Malamock who speaks in riddles. How did you find that in writing, what was your process?

JG: That was definitely the toughest bit, because I kept getting it wrong. I’d done lots of versions of the book where the Octopus God was speaking but it always felt like a human. It felt like it was fake, like I was trying to do a ghostly voice, or a monster, and it never felt true. It was always a problem, which gave me a sort of creative crisis for a while. The book is in a sense a weird sort of love triangle between Tom, his sister Tess, and the Octopus God. They’re in this sort of very tight relationship that’s pulling Tom apart. If the Octopus God wasn’t credible the book would fall apart. So, it was a real moment and the breakthrough came when I had the idea of using the cut-up technique from William Burroughs, the Dadaists and T.S Elliot, from sample culture – I thought this could be a way of throwing some randomness into the process and giving up some control, thinking maybe I’d find something.

One of the other odd things which occurred during the writing of this book was the prevalence of the number eight everywhere. And so, Tom starts to see it everywhere, I started seeing it everywhere, the chapters are divisible by eight, it took me eight years to write. Which created a lot of problems when the first version of the book was created and the cover had an octopus with four legs and they were resistant to changing it!

Anyway, I cleared all the furniture out of my writing room and got lots of texts – both religious and literary – and cut them all up into single words and sentences, and put them all into a bag, drew a circle and decided I’d just take out of the bag eight times in eight lines, when I was concentrating and present in the moment. The stuff that came out of the bag was making this weird sort of sense. And for the first eight lines the language came out with this odd cadence and repeating patterns, I thought ‘OK, this feels like maybe a multi-dimensional, otherworldly being’. I then tried it again, and, when my mind was wondering, it just didn’t work. The words came out as this nonsense and had no use, so, when I was concentrating again, I thought ‘OK, I’ve got eight great sentences here, I need some more’, and kept repeating this over and over again, and there’s about 1000 pieces of paper in the bag. I was pulling the same bits out all the time and thinking I needed something else. I then came to realise that that’s the simply the vocabulary it’s giving me – the realisation was extraordinary! What it’s made me really want to do now is try to introduce that randomness element, or just a bit of the process where you’re not in control, and I think that is really in important in creativity.

Do you find that in the process of writing songs?

JF: I’ve heard that Bob Dylan did that, and I did try to write lyrics with the same intention, but I think I should try the kind of words in the bag technique.

If I’m really stuck, I’ll just free write, and then if there’s something I can’t interpret that day, I’ll look back on it the next day. It’s as though there is a secret map of my mind that I wasn’t able to see at the time.

If you haven’t read the book, Tom’s experience of the Octopus God allows you to really know that he’s having a deep religious experience, and you see how valuable and the importance of that experience is to him. What Jasper does brilliantly in the triangle is that Tom talks with Tess, his sister whom he loves, as well as Malamock, who has come between them, which makes their relationship very problematic. It begins with all the problems and ends with a ceremony of Tom healing that rift.

There’s just so much in the book.

How conscious were you, when writing the book, of this theme of ceremony?

JG: I’m quite conscious when I’m writing to include this ritual element. I need to sit down and set my intention, but then also kind of get myself out of the way somehow. When there’s that part of your brain critiquing, you need to quieten it and let what needs to come out come out.

That sense of needing to hold a space, of setting intention and then being present while it’s happening… I didn’t really think about the book as a thing yet. One of the things you’re trying to do the most, I think, is to ensure that the characters remain free and that you yourself don’t know exactly what they’re doing. When you think you have a good idea and try to shove it in ahead of time, that’s always wrong.

JF: To my mind, even if it’s unconscious to you, that’s bound to evoke an art that is in itself a larger journey towards healing. That’s what stories can be and the resolution in some of the Shakespeare plays, that Act 5 moment, where order is restored. You allow us to live through that journey to heal a part of ourselves through watching these people heal themselves. I thought the book provoked so many questions about spiritual autonomy and belief which is so prevalent now in terms of the various echo chambers we find ourselves in through the internet, and how set Tom in this to kind of compromising position and why he has to work his way out of, or ration with the world. Was there any thought that that was potentially a comparison with how people are finding themselves in the modern age of belief?

JG: On one level there is a philosophical clash going on between him and Tess, as well as indeed him and the medical profession. This is a sweeping generalisation but the profession is generally materialistic and has materialist answers, and Tess also is also a materialist and atheist, believing that her brother is sick. She needs to believe that for her own sanity, she’s become over the years quite hard line in that belief. So, when a drug trial that promises to perhaps remove the voice, she manipulates Tom into taking part in the trial. It’s so easy for her to believe her brother is sick because if he is, all the sacrifices she’s made, makes sense. If he is just having a difficult experience, it doesn’t make sense to the world in which she lives.

When he meets services, he’s constantly coming up against that – the longer he tries to speak his own truth, the madder he sounds. So, he’s learnt to hide it to a point. Which is why often in the outside world that he’s been asked to deny the existence of the Octopus God, who therefore becomes very angry and consequently becomes triggers Tom, making him harder to deal with. I was aware that those two materialistic schools of thought were there, so the book in no way takes any sides, even though you’re looking at the world through Tom’s eyes, no matter what your own opinions are that you can read it and should understand everybody’s point of view. They are all trying to do good in a way.