Today, Feathered Quill reviewer Kathy Stickles is talking with Patrick Finegan, author of Toys in Babylon: A Language App Parody and Whodunit.

FQ: First, I would like to tell you that I absolutely loved this story. I think it is so much fun and such an interesting presentation. I was impressed with every bit of it. I know you explained in the beginning of the book how it came to be, but I am wondering what made you decide to take it and go further and put it out there in book form for all readers.

FINEGAN: The time was ripe. My first novel, Cooperative Lives, was released five years ago but took seven years to compose, rework, edit and eventually publish. I was exhausted. Although I had ideas for a second “weighty” novel, I needed a break. Unfortunately, I dawdled too long and lost motivation.

Then I got sick. Very sick. I spent several weeks in ER and ICU in late 2023 with pneumonia and staph (origins unknown). I became so weak I scratched X’s at the bottom of my discharge papers. Mortality lit a fire. If I wanted to tackle another substantial work, I needed to begin soon. Unfortunately, my writing skills were rusty, and my initial scrawls exposed how acutely I needed practice. Toys in Babylon became that practice.

By coincidence, I discovered a community forum tucked into the corner of a website I consult on occasion for individualized Duolingo progress reports. I began posting daily essays about life – foremost, to reestablish the routine of devoting 6-10 hours each day exclusively to writing. Because I composed each submission in two languages, I spent hours poring through dictionaries, debating whether the chosen words and expressions were ideal. My writing became clearer and deliberate.

It was during this period of re-development that I scribbled Toys in Babylon’s outline. I sent the synopsis to the leadership of Duolingo, hoping to interest it in a jointly-produced screenplay – noting the recent success of Mattel and Universal Studio’s Barbie.

Duolingo declined, but I remained convinced the story had commercial potential. So, I anonymized the original chapters (different company, mascot, management team, and cartoon educators), yet preserved their obvious semblance to Duolingo. I set about making story more comedic, more outrageous, but also darker. I no longer fretted about presenting the company’s leaders in a pleasant light. I also devoted considerably more ink to character development. I completed the expanded English version in a month, the expanded German version in three. The story’s intersecting plotlines practically wrote themselves. Producing screwball comedies won’t bring me literary acclaim, but I definitely had fun.

FQ: I really adored the characters, both human and cartoon. When you were writing it, did you develop any particular favorite(s)?

FINEGAN: I love exploring the chemistry of one-on-one relationships – between, for example, the aging programmer Jacques and the sentient AI being he is tasked with coaching; between the cartoon baker and his overworked office-worker wife; between the two business partners who founded the teaching app juggernaut but who prove themselves inept at basic business management; and between the two teenage girls who crusade tirelessly for social causes, but think nothing of skipping class, trespassing, and burgling neighbors if it helps find a date or buy T-shirts at a concert.

Toys in Babylon is, at heart, a screwball comedy. Wacky characters comprise its core. I had the most fun creating the misfit AI unit, Shelly – a slower learner, perhaps, than the other course-development computers, but a jubilant fan of Shakespearean tragedy, gothic horror films, and the Brothers Grimm. I also had a blast writing about the two teenage girls and their penchant for constant mischief. It wasn’t long ago when my own daughter was a teenager, and any number of her friends could have been Midori or Hami, the cartoon teenagers in my novel.

FQ: Do you have any plans to continue with these characters and give readers another glimpse into their lives or is this the end of them?

FINEGAN: Yes. See question 9 below. The satire continues.

FQ: I see by your author blurb that you have spent most of your life working in law and finance. What made you start writing? Is it just a hobby or something that you see as your new career?

FINEGAN: I retired somewhat reluctantly during the financial crisis of 2007-09 but adapted comfortably to a humbler lifestyle. The first eight or nine years, my wife and I lived life through our daughter – a competitive figure skater and member of US Figure Skating’s world synchronized skating team. I spent my time shuttling between rinks, working on my own skating skills (an abject failure), cheering at competitions around the world, and volunteering for her club. When my daughter quit skating, I began taking fiction writing seriously. My first novel came out in 2019. I have not looked back.

FQ: Can you share with the readers a bit about other book(s) that you have written?

FINEGAN: Bärenmord – Eine Sprach-App-Parodie und Krimi was released September 1 and is a loose German translation of Toys in Babylon. I did not think it fair to satirize Duolingo without first demonstrating I was a serious student of foreign languages. I performed the translation by hand – a truly time-consuming and painstaking undertaking. I considered producing a French version as well, but that was a bridge too far.

My first novel, Cooperative Lives, was released in 2019 and was critically acclaimed but sold fewer than 750 copies. I gave away as many copies as I sold. Unlike Toys in Babylon, Cooperative Lives was an attempt at “serious” literature. It is the tragicomic story of multiple residents (and mutual strangers) in a Manhattan high-rise – their lives thrust together by happenstance, misjudgments, and random misfortune. It is a complicated book, but most readers have found it rewarding. It is available in all major formats at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

FQ: Having no background in languages myself I am wondering how many different languages you have studied and what your favorites are?

FINEGAN: I grew up during the Cold War, when tensions with Moscow ran high. They still do. For a few wonderful years, my school district offered Russian courses for seventh and eighth graders. The teacher was a United Nations translator when the General Assembly and Security Council were in session, an itinerant language instructor when not. I pounced at the opportunity – dreaming my half-Asian-American countenance could somehow blend incognito behind the Iron Curtain as a spy. Alas, my George Smiley aspirations were short-lived. OPEC declared its first oil embargo in October 1973. The price of crude rose from $2.90 a barrel to $11.65. My school district shuttered every language department except Spanish, Italian, French and German, and it cancelled all language instruction below ninth grade. Cold War preparedness was no longer a top priority; the cold winter was. The school district financed tripled heating and bus fuel costs with savings from “non-essential” courses – among them Russian, Japanese and Latin.

Whatever Russian I learned during middle school remained dormant until my forties, when I learned a dear friend was Russian. She is a present-day art curator and the spouse of a French diplomat. We conversed exclusively in German and English when we met, but one day she offhandedly remarked how difficult it was for her daughter to master Russian grammar without formal training. I bought books, recovered most of what I once learned, and practiced Russian whenever the opportunity arose. The diplomat and quadrilingual family were eventually recalled to Paris, but Duolingo launched in 2009, and Russian became my first area of concentration. I ploughed through all but five branches of the original “tree”, but forfeited a 512-day streak because my notebook didn’t adjust automatically to Pacific Time when I flew to LA. I childishly quit studying in protest. Until Ukraine secures lasting peace, that protest will continue.

By 2003, I had already spent several years as Managing Director, Business Development for Swiss Re Financial Services, a large, international reinsurer, and devoted my spare time to improving my German. German was the language that replaced Russian when I entered high school – the only language in which I later conducted business professionally, hired professional tutors, founded and ran a language-focused Meetup Group, and developed lasting overseas friendships (An editor of Bärenmord, the German version of Toys in Babylon, was once, in fact, my pen pal). It was no miracle that I became fluent in German, just hard work. But that Asian-American visage? I will sadly never become a Central European spy.

I loved working for a Swiss multinational – in part, because everyone was fluent in English, the international language of commerce, plus at least two of the country’s official languages (German, French, Italian, and Romansch). Because I enjoy navigating the Alps (avid, lifelong skier), I began studying French and Italian – both with Duolingo’s assistance. Unfortunately, the original Duolingo Italian course was rudimentary – practically useless during a vacation to Milan and surprisingly easy to forget. I trust the reformulated course will bring me closer to fluency.

The Duolingo French course was reformulated several times. After three hard years, I am at the cusp of completing its latest incarnation. I can read most newspapers cover-to-cover, and have learned such gems as: « O cruel matin ! Dans mon cœur, la dernière lueur d’espoir s’éteint. » (Oh cruel morning! In my heart, the last glimmer of hope goes out.) As much as I have learned, I struggle to keep pace with spoken dialog and need to invest genuine time abroad before becoming conversational.

In addition to German, French, Russian and Italian, I have dabbled in Korean, Turkish, Mandarin, Greek, Japanese and Icelandic, but never made lasting headway. My favorite languages remain German, French and Italian.

FQ: When Patrick Finegan is not writing or working, what does he like to do? Any particular hobbies that you focus your time on?

FINEGAN: For much of my life, I have been on a quixotic quest to reduce my environmental footprint. Three years ago, I bought enough offsets to, in theory, eliminate 100 percent of the carbon produced during the combined lifetimes of my wife, daughter and me – only to discover afterward that the industry is a sham, that 95 percent of offsets are worthless.

There are also personal acts of conservation. I allow myself no more than two roundtrip flights a year, missing countless important meetings and family gatherings, but freeing up time to write. Hooray! An LED powers every lightbulb in my household, and, except for rare occasions (visiting royalty?), fans cool the apartment instead of AC. In addition, I have never owned a vehicle, convinced that by renting or car-sharing, the planet has manufactured 2-3 fewer vehicles than otherwise. Because I don’t own a vehicle, I spend considerable time walking, hopefully extending my longevity. I receive a congratulatory letter each month from the electric company for numbering among its most efficient customers, but somehow still shudder when I open the invoice. I cannot imagine what the bill looks like for “ordinary” households.

At age thirteen, I became the youngest person to win the US President’s award for achievement in the field of ecology (a modest, unframed certificate signed by President Nixon), sickening myself while field-testing local watersheds for acid rain, eutrophication and… E.Coli, then campaigning door-to-door for Nixon’s presidential rival, George McGovern. (I also campaigned for one of the nation’s first municipal recycling centers and helped update aging watershed maps to reflect subsequent construction. The three environmental activities contributed to the award, not, alas, my stumping for George McGovern and Sargent Shriver.)

Even in 1980, I shunned bottled water; Hudson Valley tap water was just fine. Nowadays, my shampoo and shaving cream come in bars, my toothpaste is a powder, my toothbrush is made of wooden sticks and boar bristles, and my hand-soaps and cleaners are dissolvable tablets. Unfortunately, I also bought a lifetime’s supply of detergent strips, which I later learned, are bonded together by compressed microplastic. The strips do at least reduce transportation costs (no water). Eventually, of course, I will also reduce plastic waste; I have just 400-or-so washer loads to go.

Old habits die hard, so I still consume meat, despite knowing how taxing livestock is on the environment. My college thesis, in fact, was an econometric analysis of whether a sales tax on beef (meat, produce and dairy are exempt from sales tax in most states) might free up enough grain – grain that would otherwise fatten cattle – to compensate for the phase-out of the United States’ Food for Peace program. Imagine that: a thesis on the tradeoff between North American beef consumption and world hunger in 1980! Only now are government bodies entertaining the issue.

I do consume less meat than the average American consumer and am an enthusiastic fan of tofu and engineered substitutes. But even with substitutes, there are tradeoffs. I wonder occasionally whether bean-based meat substitutes generate so much global flatulence that their methane impact counterbalances CO2 reductions from fewer farm animals. Although this is surely not the case for cattle (they belch immense quantities of methane), it may indeed be the case for fish and chicken.

Food waste: I have been composting organic matter to reduce methane emissions at landfills for several years. Even in our tiny metropolitan apartment, I run everything through an electric countertop “composter”, then bury the byproduct under several feet of soil. Composting is probably the most economic and least debatable contribution we can each make to environmental improvement.

In 2012, I became executor of my childhood house but postponed selling it. I invested more time and resources restoring the decaying structure than any sane person would consider reasonable, much less a trained lawyer and economist. Among my many follies – installing 40 kilowatts of theoretical hourly solar capacity on the roof, yet generating only 1-5 kilowatts in practice, because the house and the solar panels are concealed by dense foliage – foliage that I nurtured … to capture carbon.

Hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and many near-accidents later, I am still adding panels. Last year, I produced enough electricity to secure, monitor and control the property remotely – electricity I would not have needed had I sold the property twelve years earlier when my mom died. This year, I will drive electrical costs below what they were when I began remodeling – recouping my upfront investment in, optimistically, 75-100 years – such a relief for my great grandchildren! A popular French commercial encourages citizens to conserve electricity with the reminder: « C’est pas Versailles ici ! » (This is not Versailles here.) No, my renovation project is not, but my bank account suggests otherwise. My environmental odyssey continues.

FQ: I always like to ask about an author’s favorite genres/writers. What types of books do you like to read yourself if there is time? Are there any particular authors that have influenced you and your own writing along the way?

FINEGAN: It depends on the language. In German, I drift toward plot-driven novels such as krimis and historical novels, principally medieval. I found Danial Kehlmann’s Tyll and Patrick Süskind’s das Parfum thoroughly engrossing.

In French, I muscled my way through Alexandre Dumas’ Les Trois Mousquetaires and a couple novellas but am not sufficiently advanced to express judgment.

In English, I prefer literary fiction but have a soft spot for whodunnits. I read whatever makes the Booker, Pulitzer and National Book Award short list, plus the winning entries from book contests I entered – i.e., the “competition”. Self-publishing is such a daunting economic challenge; winners should at least sell books to the authors they “bested”.

My favorite contemporary authors are Richard Powers, Anthony Doerr, Jesmyn Ward, Colson Whitehead, and Elizabeth Catton, but I could have substituted a dozen other authors without regret. I could also do that for the previous decade, and the two decades prior. My favorite author of all time is Edith Wharton, and my favorite novel is The Age of Innocence.

Good writing inspires me to work harder and write better, but stylistic influences are subconscious. Everything I read influences me in some way, but it is impossible to articulate how or why. I have never consciously copied another author’s literary devices or style.

FQ: Can you tell us what is next for Patrick Finegan in life? Any new books on the horizon?

FINEGAN: Toys in Babylon begs for a sequel.

Trouble brews afresh at Ҫok Dilli Corporation, creator of the world’s most successful online teaching app. The marketing department conspired to present the “new” Ҫoki, a cuddly dwarf bear, as an insistent nudge, a nagging “auntie” who appears in-the-flesh at the most inopportune times and places whenever someone hasn’t completed his or her daily lesson, then broadcasts her encounter on TikTok. The public adores this for a while, but the joke grows stale. Ҫoki’s constant, annoying prodding becomes a PR liability. In addition, journalists begin realizing that the TikToks have diverted attention from real scoops: unmet financial targets, data breaches, course closures, technical glitches, and layoffs. The founders once again scramble to extinguish brush fires.

Meanwhile, the company’s mascot seeks psychiatric assistance. Celebrity lifestyle or not, her reputation as a nuisance depresses her, her dreams recall a wildly different past than what she remembers while awake, and her muteness (dwarf bears cannot actually speak) makes her question her suitability as the language-app’s spokesperson. Rivals begrudge her status – among them, the talking sea lion who reads language instruction cue cards in front of a white screen all day, but who yearns to interact in full-blown language skits with the company’s other cartoon cast members.

Then, there is the matter of Ҫoki’s color – pink – pink until Ҫok Dilli Corporation appeases the jealous sea lion with prime-time advertising gigs, including one promoting an eco-friendly body wash. Ҫoki tries the body wash, tossing aside the shampoo her employer supplies her for free – the one that secretly dyes her naturally orange fur pink. Although the transformation registers nothing for the color-blind dwarf bear, it inflames political rivals. “She calls herself pink, yet her roots are orange. Which is she? Such duplicity!” The transformation eventually reopens the missing “persons” inquiry from Toys in Babylon. Is the orange (nee pink) bear an imposter? There are so many tantalizing plotlines. I am confident they will be entertaining.

After I have put Toys in Babylon’s sequel to rest, I will begin a more literary endeavor, the one I have been wrestling with since completing Cooperative Lives. I cannot elaborate yet. The ideas are too undeveloped.

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