Interview with Martin Signorin, author of The Luck Illusion

 

 Today, My Writing Life is interviewing Martin Signorin, author of The Luck Illusion. His work as a teacher, together with experiences in his own life, led him to examine what luck truly means. Martin is a British nonfiction author who has lived in Bulgaria since 2005.

 Martin argues that “luck is compressed causality”. What we call good or bad luck may be the visible result of many influences operating together, including health, family background, education, financial security, geography, relationships, opportunity, probability and unexpected disruption.

 

My Writing Life: What motivated you to write The Luck Illusion? What is the purpose of your book?

Martin: When a question has been spinning in your head for years and you suddenly feel compelled to find an answer, you have to write it down.

It began with people who seemed to experience persistent good or bad luck, with the pattern often continuing in the same direction.

 Why should that be? The investigation began properly once I retired and had time on my hands.

The aim was to share what I found clearly and memorably. It needed to be credible and supported by established research, but readable without a background in psychology, philosophy or probability.

I was never trying to remove the word luck from our language; it still has value. Calling a successful person fortunate can leave room for humility, while describing somebody as unlucky can offer a pardon from harsh criticism.

Empathy shaped the book from its earliest planning.

Understanding the circumstances behind an outcome does not remove personal responsibility; it allows that responsibility to be judged more honestly. The difficulty begins when luck becomes the final answer and enquiry stops. I wanted readers to ask what remains hidden beneath it.

 

My Writing Life: How did your work as a teacher and your personal experiences influence the book?

Martin: After graduating in music composition, I turned to teaching because sharing what I knew felt natural. I worked as a peripatetic special needs teacher, specialising in dyslexia, before moving into primary school teaching.

Teaching in poor and affluent areas made it impossible to ignore how differently children’s social environments shaped their prospects. They were judged by similar standards, yet arrived with very different levels of security, encouragement, experience and expectation. It showed me how unfair life can be before a child has made any meaningful choice, and how easily that disadvantage can continue.

Those experiences gave me the idea for Walsdos, apparently born unlucky, although I could just as easily have written about someone seen as lucky from birth. I felt I already understood some of what lay behind those differences; the research tested that understanding and revealed other causes I had not fully considered.

Running a smallholding in Bulgaria had taught me something similar: effort mattered, but so did weather, prices and timing. Cancer and its treatment later disrupted my sporting life and what I had expected to be a stress-free retirement, eventually forcing me to give up the smallholding. Walsdos also loses parts of the life he expected because of illness. It felt like bad luck, but I knew it wasn’t just that.

 

My Writing Life: What makes your book unique? What do you expect readers to get from your book?

Martin: Its short length and accessibility are part of what makes it distinctive. The subject did not need four hundred pages merely to appear serious. Pairing research with Walsdos’s fictional life shows the ideas at work, while the Setback Audit lets readers examine their own outcomes.

I wanted the book to provoke thought and surprise readers with what lay beneath a word they had used all their lives. I hoped they would finish with a fuller understanding of success and failure, recognising effort without treating it as the sole cause of an outcome.

Since publication, readers have told me the book changed how they see luck or stayed with them for days. Laura Hattersley’s Reedsy Discovery review said it “replaces superstition by challenging readers to view success and failure more realistically”; Jeyran Main called it “compassionate without being simplistic”; and BigAl’s Books and Pals wrote that some of its points had “adjusted my thinking for the better”. Vagabond magazine wrote that it lets us see “Walsdos’s story – and our own narratives – with new eyes”, concluding, “We can say he has succeeded.”

I find such comments genuinely humbling. The book demanded much more time and uncertainty than its length suggests, and hearing that it achieved its purpose makes all the effort worthwhile.

 

My Writing Life: Why did you choose a fictional character for a nonfiction book?

Martin: Mainly because I wanted a less abstract format. Heavy academic studies have their place; this book needed to reach general readers without asking them to spend weeks absorbing theory.

Walsdos allows readers to watch those causes gather around one life, becoming experiences with consequences instead of items in a list. The research and reasoning remain nonfiction; his story gives them a human setting.

Using a real person would have risked presenting one biography as proof of a wider argument. Because Walsdos belongs to no single real life, he can stand for many and bring an emotional dimension less common in serious psychology and philosophy.

 

My Writing Life: When did you start writing? What inspires you to write?

Martin: I used to find writing a chore. That probably began at school, when my English teacher told me I had no interest in the subject and would never pass my examinations. Her judgement stayed with me for many years, although she was probably right about my lack of interest then.

Apart from writing for work and essential correspondence, I felt no passion for the written word until, as I sometimes put it, I ran away from the UK and settled in Bulgaria. This lesser-known country in Eastern Europe gave me many things I wanted to share. During my first year, I kept a daily diary that remains tucked away and unpublished. That was the start. While running a smallholding, I also began writing as a freelance journalist for an expatriate website, and a task I once disliked became something I loved and wanted to keep doing.

Poverty and hardship are often far more visible here, and I was no longer observing them from a comfortable distance. I lived among people whose prospects had been shaped by political change, insecure work, limited money and events beyond their control. That experience deepened my empathy and gave my writing new life.

My interests have never stayed in one area, and I have been involved in music, sport, beer making, cookery and running a smallholding. Writing music has now evolved into writing books.

My philosophy has always carried an anti-establishment, non-materialistic edge, making me question accepted rules and ask why things work as they do. I have seen too much of life in which people are led to believe something because the belief serves somebody else’s purpose. Power and greed often shape what is presented as natural or necessary, even while the planet is being damaged. More than twenty years later, the desire to write about what I experience has not waned.

 

My Writing Life: What kinds of books do you like to read? Are there any specific authors who influenced you?

Martin: There is a difference between what I like to read and what I need to read.

My father used to force me to read as a child, warning that if I did not, I would become a dustbin man. I have to admit that it didn’t turn me into an avid reader, although I didn’t become a dustbin man either. I generally read to find information, not simply for pleasure.

Most of my reading consists of nonfiction and reference books, which I use to deepen my understanding and improve what I can do. I have a wonderful collection covering cookery, beer making, gardening, farming, cycling, running and music, including many scores. I love the sight and smell of the collection and the comfort of knowing it forms a kind of literary timeline through my life.

Fiction largely lives in my dreams because, during the day, reality hits from all angles. When researching, I trace ideas through several sources, follow references and compare the relevant sections; I rarely read every source from beginning to end.

Even so, certain authors have influenced me. George Orwell understood that language can reveal the truth or help conceal it. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath shows how poverty, banks, weather, work, migration, pride and hunger shape individual lives. Daniel Kahneman and Nassim Nicholas Taleb have shaped my thinking about randomness and the stories people tell after an outcome is known. Laurie Lee and Patrick Leigh Fermor showed me how close observation of ordinary people and places can carry a much wider argument.

I am naturally sceptical, and sometimes a writer is useful because I resist what is being said and have to decide why.

 

My Writing Life: Are you working on any other writing project now?

Martin: Absolutely. I am very excited about The Shadow Biography: How Imagined Lives Shape the One We Live, now in its final stages and planned for publication in January 2027.

The book examines the imagined life that can develop beside the one we actually live. Wishes, regrets, missed opportunities and possible versions of ourselves gradually accumulate until we begin comparing reality with a life that never had to encounter ordinary uncertainty or consequence. Like The Luck Illusion, it places a fictional character within a serious nonfiction argument.

I have also begun my third book, provisionally titled The Unseen Audience, which explores how imagined judgements affect what people reveal, conceal or avoid before anybody has responded. Over time, we may begin to inspect ourselves through eyes not yet turned towards us.

 

Author’s bio:

Martin Signorin is a British nonfiction author who has lived in southeastern Bulgaria since 2005. Before retiring, he worked in education, including primary teaching and supporting children with dyslexia.

 

His first book, The Luck Illusion: Why Success Isn’t Random — and What Actually Shapes Your Life, grew from a long-standing interest in the circumstances that influence people before effort or choice can fully take effect. Drawing on psychology, philosophy and everyday experience, the book examines the hidden causes behind outcomes we often describe as lucky or unlucky.

 

Martin writes nonfiction for general readers, combining research with observation, personal experience and reflective storytelling. His work explores familiar ideas that can seem straightforward until examined more closely, particularly questions about judgment, success, failure, choice, and the forces that shape human lives.

 

He is currently working on further nonfiction exploring how people understand themselves, their choices, and the lives they might otherwise have lived.