The narrative was a mixture between a true anecdote and a film I grew up with (She’s All That, a late nineties makeover film starring Freddie Prinze Junior).

Years ago, I would walk my younger sister round to a local hall where she did taekwondo lessons. One evening, I got there while the scouts were finishing up, and the toughest, roughest kid in school was there in his full scout attire. Hat, shorts, badges, the works. He swore me to secrecy and begged me not to tell anyone at school. I respected his wishes, and we never crossed paths again.

It tickled me that the scariest guy at school was himself terrified of people learning he was part of the scouts.

During the planning and development phase, a close friend of mine who’s a school teacher was telling me about what a problem online misogynistic influencers have become in his school. He name dropped Andrew Tate, among others, and detailed how the volatility of subscription to these videos was impacting the students. A widening gap in respect for female teachers, rife sexism between students, and a rise in homophobic language were all directly linked to the consumption of these “red pill” videos.

My friend’s school was gearing up to do an assembly about this new Tate trend, and they pulled out, fearful of inadvertently driving more kids towards these misogynistic videos (telling a teenager not to do something could make them want to do it more).

Getting an alternative narrative to Tate’s radical sexism into schools became a focus of what we were trying to achieve with King of Nothing. Anton’s character is relatable, which makes it easier to show the links between empathy and intelligence in a way that teens can understand.

My books take a few weeks to write, to the point where I’m happy with them.

Then the editors ask for a bunch of general changes that give the story and characters more solid structure. And so begins the process of playing tennis with the manuscript, making changes and sending it back, making more changes and sending it back. Each time I receive it, the changes get more and more specific, to the point where it becomes the airtight finished book that readers get to enjoy. This takes several months.

I honestly love the process of editing, seeing comments and suggestions from editors that know and love the characters just as much as I do.

It typically takes a calendar year from story inception to finished article.

I loved watching Laurel and Hardy as a kid. They were a double act whose brand of slapstick centred around a silly character (Laurel) reacting to a serious character (Hardy), and vice versa. Growls, my protagonist in the book Steady For This, was definitely the sillier character, based heavily on myself at his age.

Now that I’d written from Laurel’s POV, I was asked to write in a more serious voice, which to me was the total opposite of Growls. Thankfully, I have lots of serious characters to bounce off in my real life. Most notable is my younger brother, who’s so spectacularly grumpy that I love annoying him, always getting the funniest reaction from teasing him. He’s also very streetwise, so that helped when he’d proofread a character that was essentially written in his voice, and it added authenticity to a character that was already pretty fleshed out.

I also have a friend, Abass, who’s very responsible and has very little space to suffer fools. His reactions of being “done” with annoying people definitely inspired Anton.

My life experience in the world building is pretty much one-for-one. My secondary school in South London was rough, which added to fun. Teenagers have changed in a lot of ways since I was one, and many ways they haven’t. I write what I can based on my own experience, and use my younger cousins and general observation from my many school visits to fill in any gap in knowledge.

Sports, music, and roasting each other are still prevalent in male teenage culture, so the day to day experience of growing up in a friendship group in South London is something I know just enough about.

Matthew is the softest, most annoying parts of me. Well meaning, incessantly playful towards anyone with a grumpy disposition, and about as athletic as a sloth.

Anton’s Mum, almost by process of elimination. All the other characters, Kehinde, Rochelle, Matthew, they’re all variations of real life characters who I’ve known and met and spent lots of time around.

Anton’s Mum was a lot more nuanced, in that I didn’t know her as well as the others. I didn’t want her life to be defined by trauma, but by love for her own mother and for her son. I guess I’m trying to say that everyone else was more clearly formed in my mind, and Anton’s Mum took more interrogation to get to the wonderful, finished character that she turned out to be.

Yes, mostly.

I knew that Anton’s attempt to “change” Matthew would backfire and result in Anton changing for the better.

I knew that Anton’s Dad’s arc would need to stay open ended, as it’s harder to change mindsets the older we get. Also, we didn’t think it fair, or beleivable, that Anton could change a grown man’s perspective in such a short amount of time.

We knew that the set piece at the end would need to be big, and that the boys would save each other in a way.

School is tough. The power dynamics between perceived popularity and the shy kids hasn’t changed, the authenticity of the world and the characters within it are hopefully relatable, and the inclusion of character tropes and relationships that haven’t always had the positive attention they deserve are all relevant to student readers.

Whether it’s Rochelle’s intelligence, Anton’s toughness, Matthew’s softness, or even Fernanda’s goofiness, I’d bet that any student can see part of themselves reflected in any one of these characters.

At first, definitely not. Anton is all about appearances, and to be seen reading a book would unfortunately lead to some form of teasing or ridicule.

By the end of? Hell yeah he’d read this book, especially if it’s recommended to him by Josh, Rochelle or even Matthew. The Anton we know at the end of the story is so open to personal growth, and sees so much more value in learning academically and generally, that he’d pick this book up in a heartbeat. Kehinde, not so much.

If any part of King of Nothing results in more respect and kindness, especially towards girls and women in schools, then we’ve done our job.

I’m generally not proud of anything, writing is just a job that I happen to have and completely love, and it’s hard for me to be proud of something I’ve written.

If I’ve entertained or provoked thought with any part of this book, then that’s the part I’m proud of.

CW: Please note Nate’s answer touches on domestic violence

Unfortunately, people very close to me have been victims of domestic abuse and violence. Knowing how common it is for women to feel unsafe in their own homes, out in the world, at work, at school, I wanted to do Anton’s mum justice without feeling like a mouthpiece or “white knight”. Sexism and domestic violence is a story I know well from listening to others, but it’s a story that’s not mine. Nor is it mine to tell. Lots of elements of Anton’s mum’s past are based on true events, and that emotional weight and the gravity of the subject needed to not be played around with. Thankfully, my editor was SO on it with how we handled the sensitive subjects, that I was more than happy to let her take the wheel. My job as a writer is to write, but my job as a human is to listen.

Also, my grandmother passed away in the months before writing King of Nothing. Grief was very fresh in my life, and it poured into my writing of this book. It was as difficult as it was cathartic, and still makes me emotional to think about.

Kindness. Please. I’ve done dozens of school visits, and have seen first hand the result of these stupid Andrew Tate videos. The “red pill” language and blatant sexism is in your face. I watched hours of Tate content to understand the arguments that are used to back him. I came up short. And honestly nauseous. It’s SO stupid for anyone to believe he has any intention beyond exploiting hatred of women, in order to make money and stay relevant.

So kindness is the one thing I hope readers will get from reading this. To know and understand that people are just people is to escape small mindedness.

Also, masculinity isn’t a dirty word. I want teenagers to think long and hard about what type of man they want to be.

There is an intelligence that comes part and parcel with kindness, and to sacrifice that for the desperate chase of intangible popularity is really not worth doing.

A direct response to the misogyny circulating among students in UK schools.

A (hopefully) funny book for teenage boys that are ready for the next step in reading.

King of Nothing is funny, like Nate’s debut Steady for This which recently won the Branford Boase award for 2024, and serious and is a fantastic book for library shelves and KS3 classrooms.

Both are currently in our class set promo and you can read their full descriptions by clicking the images below.

We’d like to thank Nathanael for answering our questions with such depth.

He is on our Author Event list which includes contact information, please email if you would like a copy.