In which Octavia Cade talks about writing The August Birds… “Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their Inspirations and Influences. In this feature, we invite writers to talk about their new books, older titles, and their writing overall. Today, we are delighted to host Octavia Cade – one of our favourite writers AND Book Smugglers Publishing author – to talk about The August Birds, her first ever novel (we read it. It’s awesome), which is out now. Please give a warm welcome to Octavia! Several years back, I wandered into a cinema – as a grad student I went quite often in an attempt to avoid writing my thesis – to see a film about Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki raft. (An ethnographer, Heyerdahl sailed from Peru to Polynesia in a balsa wood raft to prove it could be done.) The PhD research I was doing was in science communication, so I figured it probably counted. Anyway, I noted while watching that Thor and Co. washed up on the 7th of August, 1946. This date caught my notice because it was exactly two years and a day […]