A Dog’s Purpose meets The Happy Ever After Playlist in this charming, pitch-perfect take on relationships as seen through the eyes of a wise pug named Doug, who is determined to play cupid to fix his owner’s love life with his own four paws.
We chat with author Matt Dunn about his new release Pug Actually, as well as the best and worst writing advice he’s received, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Matt! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m an award-losing (nominations: 3, wins: 0) novelist from England. I spend a large part of my year in Spain because it has this thing England doesn’t called ‘good weather’. I’ve been a full-time writer since 2005, with fourteen (and counting) published novels to my name. Previous jobs have included fitness-equipment salesman, headhunter, and even professional lifeguard (think Baywatch but with less of a tan), but I much prefer writing for a living, so please keep buying my books. Oh, and I collect Avon aftershave bottles from the 1960s/70s in the shape of vintage cars (Google them – they’re really cool) and according to my wife have way too many.
How is your 2021 going in comparison to that other year?
Great – though (whisper it) last year wasn’t actually that bad for me: I rented a house on a small (but perfectly-formed) island in the Mediterranean called Menorca and sat out the pandemic there. It’s been pretty productive for me work-wise as lockdown forced me to spend longer at my desk (I even spent some of that time writing). Plus, I really got into doing online HIIT workouts and baking banana bread (yes, the two are linked).
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading was Bridie the Bantam (I must have been two or three years old, so when I say ‘reading’, I might well mean ‘hearing’). It’s about a hen who finds abandoned eggs and (spoiler alert) sits on them till they hatch. I’m sure the fact that a book about effectively getting all the glory for someone else’s work had such an impact on me means something, but I don’t like to think too deeply about what that might be.
Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity was the book that made me want to become an author. I knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what I wanted to write until I read that. Every time I start a new novel, I reread it, just to remind me of the level of brilliance I should be aiming for. I’m writing my fifteenth novel now, and I’m still not there yet.
The book I can’t stop thinking about is my current work in progress. As a writer you’re always ‘on’ (i.e., ‘on’ the lookout for material – situations/snippets of conversations/characters you can incorporate into your books). Sometimes I come up with ideas or solutions to tricky plot points at the strangest times – the middle of the night, out on my bike – and if I don’t write them down there and then I’ll probably forget them. The ‘notes’ app on my phone is probably the one I use the most. After the one to check my Amazon ranking.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I was thirteen (which is a LONG time ago). Every week at school, someone would be given the opportunity (though ‘picked on’ was more how we saw it) by a teacher to write a report of the most recent cricket/rugby/hockey game we’d played, which would then have to be read out standing up in front of the whole school during assembly – a process so scary it sometimes caused voices to break mid-piece. Typically, these reports tended to be pretty dull (“they scored, then we did, then they scored again…”), demonstrating all the literary flair you’d expect from spotty pubescent schoolboys, but when it came to my turn I decided to try to liven things up a little by putting a couple of jokes in (I’d repeat them here, but you had to be there. And thirteen. And, possibly, know the kids who were the butt of those jokes…). Anyway, to my amazement and delight I actually got a few laughs, and while in retrospect those laughs might have been because my flies were undone, the reaction was as addictive as crack cocaine (I imagine). There and then I knew that being a comedy writer was what I wanted to do.
Your latest novel, Pug Actually, is out June 29th 2021! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Pug plays cupid. Hilarity ensues!
What can readers expect?
Like all my novels, it’s a romantic comedy, so expect romance and comedy. Although this one’s narrated by a pug named Doug, so also includes canine shenanigans aplenty.
What inspired Pug Actually?
Our family dog Patch had a unique talent: Whenever my sister brought home a new boyfriend, if Patch didn’t think much of them, he’d sit by their feet and growl softly to show his disapproval. Usually, he turned out to be a much better judge of character than my sister was! They say you can tell a lot about a person from how they treat animals, and I think you can also tell a lot about a person from how animals react to them, so, I got to thinking, what if I took that a step further, and someone’s pet dog actually tried to intervene in their love life…
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
Trying to make a pug a credible narrator for a contemporary romantic comedy was an interesting one, but once I found Doug the pug’s voice, he kind of took over (fortunately!). Whether that’s because I share a number of characteristics with the stubborn, wrinkly, flat-faced compulsive-overeater, I couldn’t possibly comment. Whenever I got stuck, I reminded myself that my best-ever-seller, A Day at the Office, was a multi-viewpoint novel set over the course of one day with five separate storylines that all had to intersect (and tie up neatly). Compared to that, turning a dog into a plausible hero should be a piece of cake.
Since this novel features dogs, do you have any special pets in your life?
I don’t have a pet at the moment, sadly, as I travel too much. I’m pretty tight with Dior, my friend’s Bedlington Terrier, who lives just round the corner and is the best natured dog I’ve ever met. There’s a gecko called Gordon in my garden I’m pretty fond of too. Although that’s mainly because he eats the mosquitos.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Doug turned out to be a BLAST to write. The novel’s written in the first person – or rather, first canine – so putting myself inside his head and telling it from his (street level) point of view was escapism at its best. Plus, it gave me – sorry, I mean Doug – license to misbehave somewhat more than normal.
What do you love about the romance genre?
The fact that I can give it a different ‘twist’, for example, a male point of view of contemporary relationship issues – or even a dog’s. Plus the absurdity of the dating game, the awkwardness of relationships, the incompatibility of the sexes, and the fact that true love hardly ever comes easily – or goes smoothly – means there’s a lot of material out there.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best: ‘Read the bestsellers in your genre and see how they achieve their page-turning quality’, from an agent who politely but constructively rejected my first novel, Best Man. I’ve never forgotten it. If you’re a writer, first and foremost you need to be a reader.
The worst: ‘Why don’t you get a proper job?’ From my wife’s mother.
What’s next for you?
I’m just finishing off my fifteenth novel, which I can’t say too much about for legal (okay, superstitious) reasons. Then I’m seriously considering taking Doug for another (literary) walk around the block.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Crikey – there’s a question! Well, the aforementioned High Fidelity, for one, if there’s anyone left who hasn’t read it. Cloud Atlas is probably my other all-time favourite novel – the standard of David Mitchell’s writing, incorporating several genres in the same book, is so incredible I’d probably pay to read his shopping list. In terms of contemporary British romantic comedy novelists, Mhairi McFarlane’s killing it at the moment.
